He might have used the very words of Gibbon, whose
father nipped, in a similar way, his attachment for Mademoiselle Susan
Curchod, afterward Madame Necker:--"After a painful struggle, I yielded
to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was
insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life." It
is difficult to conceive of Gibbon's wound as a deep one, or of his
struggle as painful. But Wilson, whose affections were far stronger,
suffered much. He almost made up his mind to run away to Timbuctoo, with
Mungo Park; and his deep gloom showed how the iron had entered his
soul. But time and absence and new habits healed his wound, as well as
Gibbon's, without a journey to Africa.
We mentioned above that Wilson carried off the Newdigate prize for
the best poem, in 1806. His subject was, "Painting, Poetry, and
Architecture." He professed, in general, to put a very low estimate on
college prize-poems, and rated his own so low that he would not allow
it to be published with his subsequent poems. But in the "Noctes
Ambrosianae" for October, 1825, he was not above saying a good word in
favor of these much-berated effusions, as follows:--
"_North._ It is the fashion to undervalue Oxford and Cambridge
prize-poems; but it is a stupid fashion. Many of them are most
beautiful. Heber's 'Palestine!' A flight, as upon angel's wing, over the
Holy Land! How fine the opening!
[We omit the lines quoted,--the well-known beginning of the poem.
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