great one. Though not deficient in analytic
power, he wanted the judicial faculty. He could create, but he could not
weigh coolly and impartially what was created. His whole make forbade
it. He was impatient, passionate, reckless, furious in his likes and
dislikes. His fervid enthusiasm for one author dictated a splendid
tribute to a friend; while an irrational prejudice against another
called out a terrific diatribe against a foe. In either case, there
might be "thoughts that breathe and words that burn"; still, there was
but little 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 rec