Chapter Willis to Wilson of W by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Magazine brought him his opportunity, and to the end of his life his connection with it gave him his main employment and chief fame. In 1820 he became Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh where, though not much of a philosopher in the technical sense, he exercised a highly stimulating influence upon his students by his eloquence and the general vigour of his intellect. The peculiar powers of Wilson, his wealth of ideas, felicity of expression, humour, and animal spirits, found their full development in the famous Noctes Ambrosianæ, a medley of criticism on literature, politics, philosophy, topics of the day and what not. Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life and The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay are contributions to fiction in which there is an occasional tendency to run pathos into rather mawkish sentimentality. In 1851 Wilson received a Government pension of £300. The following year a paralytic seizure led to his resignation of his professorial chair, and he died in 1854. He was a man of magnificent physique, of shining rather than profound intellectual powers, and of generous character, though as a critic his strong feelings and prejudices occasionally made him unfair and even savage.

Wilson, John (1804-1875).—Missionary and orientalist, born at Lauder, Berwickshire, and educated at Edinburgh for the ministry of the Church of Scotland, went in 1828 to India as a missionary, where, besides his immediate duties, he became a leader in all social reform, such as the abolition of the slave- trade and suttee, and also one of the greatest authorities on the subject of caste, and a trusted adviser of successive Governors-General in regard to all questions affecting the natives. He was in addition a profound Oriental scholar as to languages, history, and religion. He was D.D., F.R.S., and Vice-Chancellor of Bombay University Among his works are The Parsi Religion (1812), The Lands of the Bible (1847), India Three Thousand Years Ago, and Memoirs of the Cave Temples of India.