Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

TWO REMARKABLE MEN. 181
of mouth, that it would require the minutest research
to identify exactly what they are about. This pro-
duces a wealth, yet at the same time a poverty—or
rather, a sense of wealth in the midst of actual poverty
—which is exceedingly tantalising to the biographer.
He seems to be told' so much, yet knows so little
learning a great deal of the man, but very little about
him ; a glimpse at his inner self, but nothing at all of
the outside. We shall do our best to put before the
reader this very active member of the brotherhood
the one whose exertions had the greatest influence
upon the new Magazine, the most romantic and pic-
turesque figure among them, notwithstanding the
Jove-like presence of Wilson, who was not by any
means so unusual a type, in his big, magnificent fair-
ness and size, as the darker, slimmer figure standing
by him—all energy and darting wit on one side, all
kindness and tender domestic feeling on the other
fastidious, keen, refined, yet quite capable of picking
up the coarsest missile, and flinging it with a sudden
impulse hotter and swifter than anything the ruddy
Berserker was capable of. Men like Wilson are to be
found everywhere in Scotland, if seldom with his endowment
of genius. Men like Lockhart are very rare
anywhere.-^
He was born in 1794, and was consequently just
twenty-three when ' Blackwood's Magazine ' began its
career,—the most irresponsible age, not yet free of the
traditions of boyhood, yet formally endued with the
^ Though some advantage has been taken in revision, this sketch was
written before the author had an opportunity of seeing the much longer
and more elaborate work upon Lockhart of Mr Andrew Lang : whose
book, so far as its subject himself goes, is admirable, though its tone in re-
spect to the Magazine is naturally to us very objectionable.
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