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JOHN WILSON was born at Paisley, in 1789. After going through a preparatory course of study at the University of Glasgow, he was entered a fellow-commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford; and very soon obtained some portion of that fame of which he was destined to participate so largely. Much of his paternal property was lost by the failure of a mercantile concern in which it had been embarked; but enough remained to purchase the elegancies of life: he bought the beautiful estate of Elleray, on the lake of Winandermere-fit dwelling for a poet-and continues to inhabit it, when his professional duties permit his absence from Edinburgh. In 1812 he published the Isle of Palms; and the City of the Plague, in 1816. In 1820, he became, under circumstances highly honourable to him, a successful candidate for the Chair of Moral Philosophy, in the University of the Scottish metropolis. He has since published but little poetry: his prose tales-"The Trials of Margaret Lindsay," "The Foresters," and "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life"-have, however, amply compensated the world for his desertion of the Muses; and his contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine," which are too strongly marked to

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