Note 15 — Chapter V
Reading edition
The writer describes not an imaginary, but an actual lecture of Professor Wilson's, which he heard some years ago.
We have honestly given our own impressions relative to Wilson's metaphysical powers, and stated simply what we heard and saw while attending his Lectures in Edinburgh University. Others however may have different impressions; and we cheerfully append the following from Gilfillan as an offset to our strictures:
"It is probable that the very variety and versatility of Wilson's powers have done him an injury in the estimation of many. They can hardly believe that an actor, who can play so many parts, is perfect in all. Because he is, confessedly, one of the most eloquent of men, it is doubted whether he can be profound: because he is a fine poet, he must be a shallow metaphysician;—because he is the Editor of Blackwood, he must be an inefficient professor. There is such a thing on this round earth, as diffusion along with depth, as the versatile and vigorous mind of a man of genius mastering a multitude of topics, while others are blunderingly acquiring one, or as a man 'multiplying himself among mankind, the Proteus of their talents,' and proving that the Voltairian activity of brain has been severed, in one splendid instance, at least, from the Voltairian sneer and the Voltairian shallowness. Such an instance as that of our illustrious Professor, who is ready for every tack,—who can, at one time, scorch a poetaster to a cinder, at another cast illumination into the 'dark deep holds' of a moral question, by a glance of his genius; at one time dash off the picture of a Highland glen, with the force of a Salvator, at another, lay bare the anatomy of a passion with the precision and force of an Angelo,—write, now, the sweetest verse, and now the most energetic prose,—now let slip, from his spirit, a single star, like the 'evening cloud,' and now unfurl a Noctes upon the wondering world,—now paint Avarice till his audience are dying with laughter, and now Emulation and Sympathy till they are choked with tears,—write now 'the Elder's Deathbed,' and now the 'Address to a Wild Deer,'—be equally at home in describing the Sufferings of an Orphan girl, and the undressing of a dead Quaker, by a congregation of ravens, under the brow of Helvellyn."—Literary Portraits, p. 209.