Nothing now remains of the Professor's long series of
lectures save a brief fragment or two. Here and there some pupil may be
found, who has treasured up these Orphic sayings in his memory or his
note-book; but to the world at large these utterances will be always
unknown."
We have been considerably disappointed in Wilson's "Letters." We looked
for something racy, having the full flavor of the author's best spirits.
We found them plain matter-of-fact, not what we should term at all
characteristic. Perhaps it was more natural that they should be of
this sort. Letters are generally vent-holes for what does not escape
elsewhere. Literary men, who are at the same time men of action, seldom
write as good letters as do their more quiet brethren. And this is
because they have so many more ways open to them of sending out what
lies within. They are depleted of almost all that is purely distinctive
and personal, long before they sit down to pen an epistle to a friend.
The formula might be laid down,--Given any man, and the quality of his
correspondence will vary inversely as the quantity of his expression in
all other directions. If, Wilson being the same man, fortune had hemmed
him in, and contracted his sphere of action,--or if, as author, he had
devoted himself to works of solid learning, instead of to the airy pages
of "Blackwood,"--the sprightly humor and broad hilarity that were in
him would have bubbled out in these "Letters," and the "Noctes" and the
"Recreations" would have been a song unsung.
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