The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-07 00:00:00

The Glorious Noctes Anibrosiaum,

The Master-piece of Professor Wilson. A New
Edition, in Four Volumes. Vols. I. and IL
Wm. Blackwood and Sons.
It is like the realisation, at lust, of the Quadrature
of the Circle—(that magic circle of the Great Pro-
fessor's wit and wisdom, the good brown glossy
supper-table in that old Tavern, whilom at the back
of the Register-office, in the City of Edinburgh)—
the issue of this popular edition, in Four Volumes,
of the world-famous Noctes Ambrosial:re. The pub-
lication of such a work, in such a form, at such a
price, and that, too, piecemeal, part by part, volume
by volume, so as to place the edition within reach of
all classes of the reading community, is, in simplest
truth, to our mind, nothing less than an event in
modern literature. For what, in point of fact, are
these Noctes Ambrosianue ? It is not simply, as
above intimated, that the work is the Great Work,
the undoubted Master-piece of John Wilson, under
his familiar pseudonym of Christopher North. It
is that the Noctes constitute in reality about the
most remarkable literary production of an age that
we now look back to as in some sort Augustan in
its character. Among all the literary productions
of that remarkable period, the Noctes, as a whole,
for the diversity of its merits, for the comprehensive-
ness of its survey, for its abounding fun and
frolic, its glittering wit, its racy humour, its
frequent bursts of an eloquence alternately
tender and masculine, its prodigality of whimsical
conceits, its interminable freaks and flights of the
imagination--stands forth :pre-eminent. Master-
piece though it is, it appears to have risen
gradually, and as one may say without any delibe-
rate premeditation. It grew up, so to speak, like
an oak, from the acorn and the sapling. Neverthe-
less, it partook, in the rapid ity of its development, that
is when it had once really begun growing in earnest,
of the nature of Jack's beanstalk in the fairy tale.
And this, with more aptness in the similitude than
might be at first apparent—conducting those who
climbed it to a region quite as marvellous and as
far removed above the grosser atmosphere of this
nether world of commonplace ! It is noticeable of
the Noctes Ambrosiance that they were produced in
the very middle of the period which has now elapsed
of this nineteenth century. Between 1822 and 1835
they were begun and ended. Christopher, it is tree,
dressed in his " Shooting Jacket" afterwards. Chris-
topher, later on, in his old age, like other veterans,
went "Under Canvass." But Christopher in his
prime, in his glory, in the heyday of his wonderful
powers, in the halcyon epoch when his every
faculty was at its best, Christopher with the
crutch handy at one elbow and the steaming jug at
the other, Old Kit North seated at the board of Mr.
Ambrose, the tavern keeper, with Bronte coiled at
his feet upon the hearthrug, with Timothy Tickler
on one side, (that halo and venerable giant with the
silver hair and the ruddy cheek !) and The Ettrick
Shepherd on t'other) that wonderful Shepherd who
wee as far beyond his flesh and blood prototype as
Shakspere's Falstaff must have been beyond his !
the Christopher North, the North that is of the
Noctes Anzbrosiance, " flourished' as th© good old
phrase has it, about 1822-1835. As a conversa-
tional record, as a collection of table talk—the book
is as wonderful in its way as Boswell's. Only that
here the talk is in Dialogue, not in Monologue.
And, what is more, it is a continuous and protracted
succession of extraordinary dialogues among inter-
locutors, two at least among whom (North and
the Shepherd) would have been worthy of being
interlocutors with Dr. Johnson. All this converse
of the Noctes, moreover, being the pure out-pouring
of one man's imagination. The play of the Great
Professor's genius throughout these Scottish
Night's Entertainments at the hostelry of Good-
man Ambrose, is:surelyas marvellous a display of in-
tellectuel vivacity as any literature in the wide world
can show. From the mere versatility of the power
revealed throughout the Noctes Arnbrosian cc, and
that, moreover, with an almost bewildering con-
fusion in the very order or rather disorder of the
revelation of the versatility, we know hardly where
to turn for anything like a parallel. There has
been mention made very recently in the discursive,
and too often superficial, even be it said, of fribbling
Reminiscences of Lord William Lennox, of ; a
Swell Dinner, of more than a quarter of
a century back, down at Greenwich, where
Edmund Kean, the Tragedian, was entertained
as the hero of the night by the late
Earl Fitzbardinge, and where that Protean actor
" in his time," in a very brief interval indeed upon
that evening, " played many parts," to the wonder-
ing delight of his patrician host and associates.
Declaiming fragments of Othello, and Richard 111.,
and Sir Giles Overreach, singing to his own accom-
paniment on the piano a simple English ballad,
fencing as in the death scene of Hamlet, dancing as
Harlequin! A jumble and medley of performances
—nevertheless—as nothing to those of Christopher
North in the Noctes Ambrosiance. Intellectual feats,
chiefly WOO derful where they are achieved nominally
by the Shepherd. Professor Wilson, in these Nights
of Ambrose, plays with a thought as Shakspere plays
with a word. It is perpetually a marvel of mental
jugglery we are watching in the play of converse
among these' inexhaustible imaginary interlocutors
—so many dazzling feats, as it were, of high-art
legerdemain. And the work, in its way, is a very
microcosm. It sweeps the whole horizon of know-
ledge. The ball of wit kept up on the perpetual play
of these conversations—as the glittering shaft of a
fountain " shaking its loosened silver in the sun"
might do with some rosy-golden fruit—is, so to
speak—orbicular. It comprises within itself all that
is typical of this varied world of human life.
Religion and polities, literature, art, science, sports
and pastimes, prose in every imaginable style,
poetry pathetic and humorous, all are here heaped
together in profusion and confusion, littered out in
these inexhaustible dialogues "in most admired
disorder," ranging, in the tone of them, not simply
from the grave to the gay, or from the lively to the
severe, but rising one while to tragical power (as in
the Shepherd's narrative of his Dream in a Hell, or
his account of the Military Execution he had once
witnessed), and sinking at another to the fantastic
babble of burlesque (passim) continually crossing to
and fro, the boundary line between the sublime and
the ridiculous. That Christopher North was the alter
ego of Professor Wilson, every body knows; and,
knowing, 'delights to bear in remembrance. That
Timothy Tickler was the Professor's uncle on the

mother's side, good, worthy, excellent, old Mr.
Robert Sym, sometime Writer to the Signet, born
in 1750, retiring into private life in 1775, and
dying in 1844 at the patriarchal age of ninety four
—it is pleasant and interesting to learn from the
Editor's preliminary announcement• The Pre

face, that is signed simply "J. F. F.," dated
from " West Park, St. Andrews," as far back

as the 18th of July, 1855, when the Nodes
were first collected together. Above all, it
is agreeable to bear in mind while enjoying the
" witching hours" of these Nodes, that in James

Hogg, the author of the " Queen's Wake," is die•

cernible the actual living germ, or faintly-indicated
outline of a prototype of the immortal Shepherd of

'hose aforesaid Noctes Ambrosiance. But it is the

glory of Professor Wilson to have entirely sur-
passed, to have utterly eclipsed by his imaginary

creations "Tickler" and the " Shepherd," the
veritable living nod breathing originals. One
only speaker, intellect, presence can we find here
in no one dagreE surpassed or eclipsed. Through
the noble utterances, the comprehensive genius,
the lordly form of Christopher North, we

recognise the grander voice, the wider mind,
the loftier aspect of John Wilson, of Black-

wood's Magazine. None but himself could be
his parallel. Honour to the great Professor's

memory. He was a Saul amongst the meu of his

generation by a head and shoulders. The swifter
running, the roe-like leaper, the daring swimmer,
the adroit angler, the stripling,, the youth, the

man of middle age, endowed with larger
and keener capacities than other men to enjoy the
delights and giories of life—came in the fuilneas
of time, and in the fullness of his great powers, to
enjoy yet more (happily during many long years
of honour and respect among his fellow men in
Edinburgh) the admiration and the affection of yet
another generation of men, of a select portion of