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ALISON, REV. ARCHIBALD,
M.A., LL.B., this distinguished writer on "Taste," whose works
procured him a high reputation among the foremost literary judges of his
day, was born in Edinburgh, A.D. 1757, and was the son of
Mr. Andrew Alison, one of the magistrates of that city. When he had
completed the usual course of an elementary classical education, he was
sent, at the age of fifteen, to the university of Glasgow, where, after
the usual curriculum of Latin, Greek, and Logic, he attended the lectures
of Professor Reid, at that time in high metaphysical reputation, and
formed an intimacy with Dugald Stewart, which continued to the end of his
life. Having been so fortunate as to obtain one of those exhibitions to
Baliol College of which the university of Glasgow possesses the patronage,
Archibald Alison removed to Oxford, where he completed his course of
study, and took the degree of A.M., and afterwards of LL.B. In 1784, he
also took orders, and married the eldest daughter of the celebrated Dr.
John Gregory of Edinburgh. His first appointment in the church was to the
curacy of Brancepath, in the county of Durham. After this, he was
appointed to the chapelry of Kenley in Shropshire in 1790, and to the
vicarage of Ercall in the same county in 1794, by the Earl of Darlington,
to whom the patronage of both livings belonged; and in 1791 he was
presented to Roddington by the Lord Chancellor. In 1791 also, the small
prebend of Yatminster Secunda, in the cathedral of Salisbury, was
conferred upon him by Bishop Douglas. So many pluralities have an imposing
appearance; but their aggregate revenue amounted to nothing more than
eight hundred per annum. Circumstances soon led to Alison’s removal to his
native city, having been invited by Sir William Forbes and the vestry of
the Episcopal Chapel in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, to become senior
minister of that charge. He removed to Edinburgh in 1800, and continued to
preach in the Cowgate, until the congregation removed from that murky
locality to the handsome chapel of St. Paul’s, in York Place. In 1831,
Alison, now an old man, and subject to severe attacks of pectoral disease,
was obilged to desist from his public labours, and confine himself to the
private society of his friends, in which the evening of his days was
tranquil and happy. The high reputation which he had attained both as a
preacher and writer, and his amiable personal qualities, endeared him to
the most distinguished literary characters for which Edinburgh was now at
the height of its fame; and he was in constant intercourse, among others,
with Dugald Stewart, Dr. Gregory, Lord Woodhouselee, Professor Playfair,
Dr. Thomas Brown, Sir James Hall, and Thomas Campbell. Besides these, he
had been in familar acquaintanceship with the illustrious of the end of
the last century, such as Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Adam Ferguson, Dr.
Robertson, and Dr. Blair. He was indeed the literary Nestor of the
day, who chronicled the remembrances of the great and good of a past
generation for the instruction of their successors. Another congenial
spirit, though in a different walk of intellect, whose society he
especially valued, was Mr. Telford, the celebrated engineer; and it was
pleasing to witness the zeal of the venerable pair, while Telford unfolded
his scientific plans for the improvement of their native Scotland and its
fair capital. The death of Archibald Alison occurred in 1839, at the age
of eighty-two. By his wife, who died in 1830, he had six children, of whom
three survived him, and one of them, Sir Archibald Alison, is known to
most of our readers as the author of the "History of Europe from the
French Revolution."
Of the Rev. Archibald
Alison’s life as an author it is now necessary to speak. His "Essays on
the Nature and Principles of Taste," the work by which he is best known,
was published so early as 1790, but attracted little notice—the state of
society being probably far from favourable at that time to metaphysical
investigation. Not discouraged by the cold reception of a subject which
had evidently formed the chief study of his life, Alison, after he had
been for some years settled in Edinburgh, republished his "Essays" with
considerable additions in 1811. He had now established for himself a more
favourable class of readers; and he was so fortunate as to find a eulogist
in Francis Jeffrey, then the Aristarchus of critics, and through the
"Edinburgh Review" at that time the paramount oracle of the literary
world. A very powerful and beautiful article forthwith appeared in that
influential periodical upon the long-neglected work; and the consequence
was, that the "Essays" immediately took their place as the standard of the
"Nature and Principles of Taste." The present generation can well remember
how their boyhood and youth were familiarized with it, and how the pulpit
and the press did homage to its authority. But time has sobered down this
enthusiasm, and Alison is reckoned neither to have invented a new theory
(for its leading idea had been distinctly announced by David Hume); nor to
have sifted it with the most philosophical analysis, or expressed it in
the happiest language. But who shall arrest our fleeting emotions produced
by the sublime and the beautiful, and reduce them to such a fixed standard
as all shall recognize? Longinus, Burke, Schlegel, and Alison, have all
successively passed away, while the science of aesthetics is still
accumulating its materials for future theorists and fresh legislation. The
theory of taste, like that of the weather or the tides, is still the
subject of hypothesis and conjecture. Besides his principal work of
"Essays on Taste," which has gone through many editions, both in Britain
and America, as well as been translated into French, Mr. Alison published
two volumes of sermons, which have also been several times republished;
and a "Memoir of Lord Woodhouselee," inserted in the "Transactions of the
Edinburgh Royal Society," 1818. The character of Alison, which is thus
given by his son, was borne out through a long and well-spent life:—"No
man who held firm and uncompromising opinions on the principles of
religion and morals, looked with more indulgence on the failings of
others, or passed through the world in more perfect charity and good-will
to all men. No man who had lived much in society, could retire with more
sincere pleasure at all periods of his life into domestic privacy, and
into the solitude of the country. * * * * * No man who had attained a high
reputation as a preacher or an author, was ever more absolutely
indifferent to popular applause, as compared with the consciousness of the
performance of duty." |
