of true criticism.  The matchless papers on Spenser and Homer represent one class, and the articles on Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt the other.  While the former exhibit the tender sympathy of a poet and the enthusiasm of a scholar, the latter reveal the uncompromising partisan, swinging the hangman’s cord, and brandishing the scourge of scorpions.  Of the novelist’s three kinds of criticism—­“the slash, the tickle, and the plaster”—­he recognized and employed only the two extremes.  Neither in criticism nor in the conduct of life was Ovid’s “Medio tutissimus ibis” ever a rule for him.  In the “Noctes” for June, 1823, some of his characteristics are wittily set forth, with some spice of caricature, in a mock defiance given to Francis Jeffrey, “King of Blue and Yellow,” by the facetious Maginn, under his pseudonym of Morgan Odoherty:  —­“Christopher, by the grace of Brass, Editor of Blackwood’s and the Methodist Magazines; Duke of Humbug, of Quiz, Puffery, Cutup, and Slashandhackaway; Prince Paramount of the Gentlemen of the Press, Lord of the Magaziners, and Regent of the Reviewers; Mallet of Whiggery, and Castigator of Cockaigne; Count Palatine of the Periodicals; Marquis of the Holy Poker; Baron of Balaam and Blarney; and Knight of the most stinging Order of the Nettle.”

In 1820 Wilson was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh,—­an office which he held for more than thirty years.  The rival candidate was his friend, Sir William Hamilton, a firm Whig; and the canvass, which was purely a political one, was more fiery than philosophic.  Wilson’s character was the grand object of attack and defence, and round it all the hard fighting was done.  Though it was pure and blameless, it offered some points which an unscrupulous adversary might readily misconstrue, with some show of plausibility.  His free, erratic life, his little imprudences, his unguarded expressions, and the reckless “Chaldee MS.,” might, with a little twisting, be turned to handles of offence, and wrested to his disadvantage.  But the fanatic zeal of his opponents could not rest till their accusations had run through nearly the whole gamut of immoralities.  He was not only a blasphemer towards God, but corrupt to wife and children.  It seems comical enough at this day that he was obliged to bolster up his cause by sending round to his respectable acquaintances for certificates of good moral character.  When at last he triumphed by a greater than two-thirds vote, an attempt was made to reconsider; but the new Professor held his own, and the factious were drowned in hisses.

His personal relations to his pupils were singularly happy.  A strange charm went out from his presence at all times, which fascinated all, and drew them to him.  Their enthusiasm and love for him have been spoken of as “something more to be thought of than the proudest literary fame.”  “As he spoke, the bright blue eye looked with a strange gaze into vacancy, sometimes darkening before a rush