[14] Dorothy Wordsworth, under date of 1809, writes to her friend, Lady Beaumont--“Surely I have spoken to you of Mr. Wilson, a young man of some fortune, who has built a house in a very fine situation not far from Bowness.… He has from boyhood been a passionate admirer of my brother’s writings. [And again.] We all, including Mr. De Quincey and Coleridge, have been to pay the Bachelor (Wilson) a visit, and we enjoyed ourselves very much in a pleasant mixture of merriment, and thoughtful discourse.… He is now twenty-three years of age.”--Coleorton _Letters_, vol. ii, p. 91. [15] John Gibson Lockhart, b. 1794; d. 1854. Connected with _Blackwood_, 1818; _Adam Blair_, 1822; with _Quarterly Review_, 1826-53; _Ancient Spanish Ballads_, 1823; _Memoirs of Walter Scott_, 1836-38. Recent _Life of Lockhart_, by Andrew Lang. 2 vols., 8vo. Nimmo, London. [16] Mrs. Gordon says, quoting from her mother’s record: Mr. Wilson is as busy studying as possible; indeed, he has little time before him for his great task; he says it will take one month at least to make out a catalogue of the books he has to read and consult. I am perfectly appalled when I go into the dining-room and see all the folios, quartos, and duodecimos, with which it is literally filled; and the poor culprit himself sitting in the midst, with a beard as long and red as an ancient carrot; for he has not shaved for a fortnight. P. 215, _Memoir of John Wilson_. We are sorry to see that Mr. Lang, in his recent _Life of Lockhart_ (1897), pp. 135-6-7-8, has put some disturbing cross-coloring (perhaps justly) upon the pleasant portrait which Mrs. Gordon has drawn of Christopher North. [17] Mrs. Gordon’s _Memoir of John Wilson_, p. 222. The statement is credited to the author of _The Two Cosmos_. Middleton, New York, 1863. [18] Thomas Campbell, b. 1777; d. 1844. _The Pleasures of Hope_, 1799; _Gertrude of Wyoming_, 1809; _Life of Petrarch_, 1841; Dr. Beattie’s _Life_, 1850. [19] _Maclise Portrait Gallery_, London, 1883 (which cites in confirmation, _Notes and Queries_, December 13, 1862). [20] De Quincey says that he was the only man in all Europe who quoted Wordsworth as early as 1802. Yet, _per contra_, the _Lyrical Ballads_ had warm praises from Jeffrey (in _Monthly Review_) and from Southey (in _Critical_)--showing that the finer ears had caught the new notes from Helicon. [21] Walter Scott, b. 1771; d. 1832; _Lay of Last Minstrel_, 1805; _Marmion_, 1808; _Lady of the Lake_, 1810; _Waverley_, 1814; _Woodstock_, 1826; _Life of Napoleon_, 1827; _Life_, by Lockhart, 1832-37. [22] He was clerk in Her Majesty’s Foreign Office in London. Carlyle says in a letter (of date of 1842), “I have the liveliest impression of that good honest Scotch face and character, though never in contact with the young man but once.”--Lang’s _Lockhart_, p. 232, vol. ii.