Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Wilson of Blackwood's Magazine

Abstract

In October, 1805, in his twentieth year, John Wilson, gentleman commoner of Oxford, purchased some ground on Lake Windermere. Here it was that, after his brilliant graduation in March, 1807, the winner of the first Newdigate prize settled in his cottage of Elleray. Through diffidence he had been unwilling to intrude upon Wordsworth during his early visits to the Lake District; but by 1808 he had made the acquaintance of the poet and his family, and for the next few years he was on most intimate terms with them, as the letters of Dorothy Wordsworth show. Naturally, too, he became acquainted with the other members of the “Lake School.” De Quincey first saw “Wilson of Elleray” at the dances held at Low Brathay, home of Charles Lloyd, and was introduced to his lifelong friend by Wordsworth at Allan Bank, “at the latter end of 1808,” at a time when both De Quincey and Coleridge were on a visit to Wordsworth, the introduction taking place in a room used as a study by Coleridge. Southey likewise dined in Wilson's company at Lloyd's, and breakfasted with him at Keswick shortly after, but whereas Wilson always felt warm regard for the laureate, the latter could not recover from his abhorrence when he learned of the younger man's passion for cockfighting. “I could not tolerate his manner of life enough to accept the advances which he made towards an intimacy,” writes Southey, with entirely unnecessary indignation, in 1819. Precisely when Coleridge met his fellow-laker is uncertain. We know that Coleridge invited Eliza Nevins, Wilson, and Mrs. Wilson to Grasmere in September, 1808, and that, together with the Wordsworths and De Quincey, he paid Wilson a visit at Christmas, 1809, during which, Dorothy Wordsworth informs us, “we enjoyed ourselves very much, in a pleasant mixture of merriment and thoughtful discourse.” We know that in the seventeenth number of Coleridge's The Friend, on December 14, 1809, appeared that splendid tribute to Wordsworth, the letter of Mathetes, joint production of Wilson and his friend, Alexander Blair.