Page:Scotish Descriptive Poems - Leyden (1803).djvu/28

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

ters of antiquity, especially the Grecian, attracted his chief admiration. Of Dryden's Virgil he was quite enamoured; and he was accustomed to read select passages of it to his favourite pupils. Perhaps the influence of this partiality may be perceived in his versification. At one period he appears to have been greatly addicted to metaphysical speculations; for in an elegiac fragment, composed on the death of a valued friend, he enumerates some of the topics of their common studies, and relates that, in the recesses of the green hills of Braid, they had often

Sought, whence the spring of every human care; If self engross, or social passions share; If free self-motion actuate the will, Or ruling force of good determine still; If only pleasure is by virtue fought, Or moral beauty fires the enraptured thought.

The American war, which commenced soon after Mr. Wilson's settlement in Greenock, met with great disapprobation in the trading towns of the west of Scotland; and he seems to have imbibed the prevailing sentiment; for the letter to his son George, which I have already quoted, inclosed the following poetical sketch, which has the appearance of being a rapid extemporaneous effusion:

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