he liked almost as well
steering the packet-boat from Waterhead to Bowness, till the steamer
drove out the old-fashioned conveyance. He sat at the stern,
immovable, with his hand on the rudder, looking beyond the company of
journeymen-carpenters, fish- and butter-women, and tourists, with a
gaze on the water-and-sky-line which never shifted. Sometimes a learned
professor or a brother sportsman was with him; but he spoke no word, and
kept his mouth peremptorily shut under his beard. It was a sight worth
taking the voyage for; and it was worth going a long round to see him
standing on the shore,--"reminding one of the first man, Adam," (as was
said of him,) in his best estate,--the tall, broad frame, large head,
marked features, and long hair; and the tread which shook the ground,
and the voice which roused the echoes afar and made one's heart-strings
vibrate within. These attributes made strangers turn to look at him on
the road, and fixed all eyes on him in the ball-room at Ambleside, when
any local object induced him to be a steward. Every old boatman and
young angler, every hoary shepherd and primitive housewife in the
uplands and dales, had an enthusiasm for him. He could enter into the
solemnity of speculation with Wordsworth while floating at sunset on the
lake; and not the less gamesomely could he collect a set of good fellows
under the lamp at his supper-table, and take off Wordsworth's or
Coleridge's monologues to the life. There was that between them which
must always have precluded a close sympathy; and their faults were just
what each could least allow for in another. Of Wilson's it is enough to
say that Scott's injunction to him to "leave off sack, purge, and live
cleanly," if he wished for the Moral Philosophy Chair, was precisely
what was needed. It was still needed some time after, when, though a
Professor of Moral Philosophy, he was seen, with poor Campbell, leaving
a tavern one morning, in Edinburgh, haggard and red-eyed, hoarse and
exhausted,--not only the feeble Campbell, but the mighty Wilson,--they
having sat together twenty-four hours, discussing poetry and wine with
all their united energies. This sort of thing was not to the taste of
Wordsworth or Southey, any more than their special complacencies were
venerable to the humor of Christopher North. Yet they could cordially
admire one another; and when sorrows came over them, in dreary
impartiality, they could feel reverently and deeply for each othe