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Compare the "enormity of pleasure" which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived from the simplest natural object with the serious protest of Wilkie Collins against the affectation of caring about Nature at all. "Is it not strange", says this most unhappy man, "to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amidst which we live can gain on our hearts and minds?
It was but as a leaf which the great storm swept away as it passed. THE TRAVELLER'S STORY OF A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED, By Wilkie Collins
The dowager, however, had no heart for "the grape-vine" and other foolish devices; she thought it high time for her daughter-in-law to take on herself the serious duties of matrimonial life, and deprecated the fondness of the lady in question for rinks, balls, and festivities. One night Mrs. Wilkie was invited to a skating-party.
But where the devil is he going now?" M. Wilkie had simply paused to replenish his cigar-case at the tobacco office of the Grand Hotel; and, after lighting a cigar, he came out again, and walked up the boulevard in the direction of the Faubourg Montmartre.
It would be foreign to my present purpose to trace the steps by which Dick Tinto improved his touch, and corrected, by the rules of art, the luxuriance of a fervid imagination. The scales fell from his eyes on viewing the sketches of a contemporary, the Scottish Teniers, as Wilkie has been deservedly styled.
He's Auld Kirk." Leeby returned to the kitchen, and Jess sat for a time ruminating. "The lad Wilkie," she said at last, triumphantly, "'ll be to bide at Lawyer Ogilvy's; but he'll be gaen to the manse the morn for a tea-dinner." "But what," asked Leeby, "aboot the milk an' the cream for the lawyer's?" "Ou, they'll be hae'n a puddin' for the supper the nicht.
Standing silent and motionless near the window, Wilkie gazed with consternation at Madame d'Argeles, his mother, who was crouching in the middle of the room with her face hidden in her hands, and sobbing as if her heart would break. He would willingly have given his third share in Pompier de Nanterre to have made his escape. The strangeness of the scene appalled him.
Wilkie the painter once paid him a visit there while in Scotland studying the subject of his "Penny Wedding;" and Dugald Stewart found for him the old farm-house with the cradle-chimney, which he introduced in that picture.
Wilkie was struck dumb for a moment, but eventually recovering himself a little, he exclaimed: "What! you are going to sell everything?" "Yes." "Astonishing, upon my honor! But afterward?" "I shall leave Paris." "Bah! and where are you going?"
With regard to his landscapes, Sir David Wilkie bore witness: 'Titian seems his model, but he has also the breadth and picturesque effect for which Claude and Salvator Rosa are remarkable; and Sir David added of those landscapes, 'they have the very same sun we see, and the air we breathe, the very soul and spirit of nature.
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