It may be well supposed that on leaving Oxford, in the very hey-day of youth, with an amazing exuberance of animal spirits, and the command of an ample fortune, he must have run a somewhat extravagant career. He purchased a beautiful estate on the banks of Windermere, not far from the residences of Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and yielded himself to the full enjoyment of every pleasure. Having built upon his estate a new and splendid edifice, he furnished it with every appliance of taste and luxury, and succeeded by his "magnificent" style of housekeeping, in spending a large amount of his property. He gave himself up to the most diversified pursuits, now conning his literary treasures, and now frolicking in sailor jacket and trowsers, with the young men of the country. The following, from a writer already quoted, will give a lively idea of Wilson's habits and appearance, at this period of his life. "My introduction to him--setting apart the introducee himself--was memorable from one circumstance, viz., the person of the introducer. _William Wordsworth_, it was, who in the vale of Grasmere, if it can interest you to know the place, and in the latter end of 1808, if you can be supposed to care about the time, did me the favor of making me known to John Wilson. I remember the whole scene as circumstantially as if it belonged to but yesterday. In the vale of Grasmere--that peerless little vale which you, and Gray, the poet, and so many others have joined in admiring as the very Eden of English beauty, peace, and pastoral solitude--you may possibly recall, even from that flying glimpse you had of it, a modern house called Allan Bank, standing under a low screen of woody rocks, which descend from the hill of Silver Horn, on the western side of the lake. This house had been recently built by a wealthy merchant of Liverpool; but for some reason, of no importance to you or me, not being immediately wanted for the family of the owner, had been let for a term of three years to Mr. Wordsworth. At the time I speak of, both Mr. Coleridge and myself were on a visit to Mr. Wordsworth, and one room on the ground floor, designed for a breakfasting room, which commands a sublime view of the three mountains, Fairfield, Arthur's Chair, and Seat Sandal, was then occupied by Mr. Coleridge as a study. On this particular day, the sun having only just risen, it naturally happened that Mr. Coleridge--whose nightly vigils were long--had not yet come down to breakfast; meantime and until the epoch of the Coleridgean breakfast should arrive, his study was lawfully disposable to profane uses. Here, therefore, it was, that opening the door hastily in quest of a book, I found seated, and in earnest conversation, two gentlemen, one of them my host, Mr. Wordsworth, at that time about thirty-eight years old; the other was a younger man, by at least sixteen or seventeen years, in a sailor's dress, manifestly in robust health--_fervidus