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In the Civil War he sided with the King's party, and was knighted in 1671 on the occasion of a Royal visit to Norwich. In character he was simple, cheerful, and retiring. He has had a profound if indirect influence on succeeding literature, mainly by impressing master-minds such as Lamb, Coleridge, and Carlyle. Greenhill, 1881. Life by Gosse in Men of Letters Series, 1903.
He felt that he owed a great debt to the master-minds of by-gone ages, who reached perfection of style, so far as it can be attained. Even the English writers of the reign of Anne, to his mind, have never been surpassed. His admiration for Addison was unbounded. Dryden and Pope to him were greater poets than any who have succeeded them.
His orations, whether extemporaneous or prepared his written messages to the states-general, to the provincial authorities, to the municipal bodies his private correspondence with men of all ranks, from emperors and kings down to secretaries, and even children all show an easy flow of language, a fulness of thought, a power of expression rare in that age, a fund of historical allusion, a considerable power of imagination, a warmth of sentiment, a breadth of view, a directness of purpose a range of qualities, in short, which would in themselves have stamped him as one of the master-minds of his century, had there been no other monument to his memory than the remains of his spoken or written eloquence.
His orations, whether extemporaneous or prepared his written messages to the states-general, to the provincial authorities, to the municipal bodies his private correspondence with men of all ranks, from emperors and kings down to secretaries, and even children all show an easy flow of language, a fulness of thought, a power of expression rare in that age, a fund of historical allusion, a considerable power of imagination, a warmth of sentiment, a breadth of view, a directness of purpose a range of qualities, in short, which would in themselves have stamped him as one of the master-minds of his century, had there been no other monument to his memory than the remains of his spoken or written eloquence.
He was eminently social by nature, and fond of talk and controversy, with a superb physique capable of digesting the richest dishes, and of enduring the fatigues and ceremonies of fashionable life; but even the pleasures of the banquet and of cultivated society, to many a mere relaxation, were sacrificed to his fondness for books, to him the greatest and truest companionship, especially when they introduced him to the life and manners of by-gone ages, and to communion with the master-minds of the world.
Though they are now no more, yet is their memory so linked to these scenes that thousands of fond pilgrims still visit these placid waters to throw one glance upon the home of genius, the birthplace of great thoughts. Here Wilson was in his element. His soul feasted itself on the wondrous charms of Nature, and held high converse with the master-minds of literature.
Sculpture in Greece, as elsewhere, was ally to religion; "but whilst the religion of the Egyptians was a religion of the tomb, and their ideal world a gloomy spot peopled by sleeping lions, dreamy sphinxes, or weird unearthly monsters, the mythology of the Greeks, rightly understood, is an exquisite poem, the joint creation of the master-minds of infant Greece; and their art is a translation of that poem into visible forms of beauty."
One can imagine that Archbishop Englebert sleeps the more softly in his silver shrine because of the completed work of to-day. So we speak and think of a great stone-temple, the working out of an idea whose details were at first but scantily given, carried out in ages during which the master-minds that planned it could no more be consulted.
At the same time, it ought to be added, English opinion, when it is seen to be based upon knowledge, is as highly respected as ever. And nobody in America, so far as we know, entertains, or ever entertained, the idea of setting aside as standards the master-minds in British literature.
His mind is ever active while he speaks. The hearer feels its workings, and his own is stirred into action by the contact. It is not given to all to enjoy the conversation and intercourse of the master-minds of the age: in the lecture-room they speak to us immediately; we feel the current of their life-blood; it pulsates through all they say.
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