Wilson left Oxford in 1807, after passing a highly creditable examination for his degree.  His disappointed affections had so weighed upon him, that he had a nervous apprehension of being plucked,—­which, however, turned out to be quite unnecessary.  He was now twenty-two years of age, a man singularly favored both by Nature and by fortune,—­possessed of almost everything which might seem to insure the fullest measure of health, happiness, success, and fame.  Rarely, indeed, do the gods give so freely of their good gifts to a single mortal.  His circumstances were easy:  a fortune of some fifty thousand pounds having come to him from his father, who had died while his son was a mere boy.  After visiting his mother at Edinburgh, and rambling largely here and there, he purchased the beautiful estate of Elleray on Lake Windermere, and there fixed his residence.  These were the halcyon days of that noted region:  the “Lakers,” as they were called, were then in their glory.  A rare coterie, indeed, it was that was gathered together along the banks of Windermere.  Though they are now no more, yet is their memory so linked to these scenes that thousands of fond pilgrims still visit these placid waters to throw one glance upon the home of genius, the birthplace of great thoughts.  Here Wilson was in his element.  His soul feasted itself on the wondrous charms of Nature, and held high converse with the master-minds of literature.  There was quite enough to satisfy the cravings even of his multiform spirit.  He soon came to know, and to be on terms of greater or less intimacy with, Coleridge, Wordsworth, De Quincey, Southey, the celebrated Bishop Watson, of the See of Llandaff, Charles Lloyd, and others,—­then the genii loci.  It may be remembered that his admiration for Wordsworth was already of long standing, his boyish enthusiasm having led him, when at Glasgow, to send his tribute of praise to the author of the “Lyrical Ballads.”  Some fifteen to twenty years later,—­in one of the numbers of the “Noctes,”—­his admiration for the poet had temporarily cooled somewhat.  Then was its aphelion, and soon it began to return once more toward its central sun.  It must have been transient spleen which dictated such sentences as these:—­

“Tickler.  Wordsworth says that a great poet must be great in all things.

“North.  Wordsworth often writes like an idiot; and never more so than when he said of Milton, ‘His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart!’ For it dwelt in tumult, and mischief, and rebellion.  Wordsworth is, in all things, the reverse of Milton,—­a good man, and a bad poet.

“Tickler.  What! that Wordsworth whom Maga cries up as the Prince of Poets?

“North.  Be it so:  I must humor the fancies of some of my friends.  But had that man been a great poet, he would have produced a deep and lasting impression on the mind of England; whereas his verses are becoming less and less known every day, and he is, in good truth, already one of the illustrious obscure ...