At the age of thirteen, he
was sent to the university of Edinburgh. Here he also distinguished himself
by the superiority of his talents, and in particular by the progress he made
in classical acquirements, and in the study of theology. He had the good
fortune, likewise, while attending college to form intimacies with some of
the most celebrated men of the last century. Amongst these were Dr
Robertson, David Hume, Adam Smith and John Home. Mr Mackenzie, in his life
of the last mentioned individual, says that Wilkie’s friends all spoke of
him as "superior in genius to any man of his time, but rough and
unpolished in his manners, and still less accommodating to the decorum of
society in the ordinary habits of his life. Charles Townsend, a very
competent judge of men," continues the biographer, "and who, both as a
politician and a man of the world was fond of judging them, said, after
being introduced to Wilkie, and spending a day with him at Dr Carlyle’s,
that he had never met with a man who approached so near to the two extremes
of a god and a brute as Dr Wilkie."
While prosecuting his studies
at Edinburgh, Wilkie lost his father who died in straitened circumstances,
but left his son the stock and unexpired lease of a farm at Fishers’ Tryste,
a few miles south of the city, burdened however, with the charge of
maintaining his three sisters who were otherwise wholly unprovided for;
Wilkie, in consequence of this event, became a farmer, but, unwilling to
trust entirely to that profession for his future subsistence, he continued,
while conducting the business of his farm, to prosecute his studies in
divinity and eventually was licensed as a preacher of the gospel although
some years elapsed before he obtained a church. Previously to his assumption
of the gown, he had made himself an export farmer, and so remarkable was he,
in particular, for his successful culture of the potatoe, then but
indifferently understood, that he obtained the facetious by-name of the
potatoe minister. But, while he claimed and really possessed the merit
of being a superior agriculturist to any of his neighbours, he always
acknowledged that he was their inferior in the art of trafficking, and the
manner in which he made this boast and acknowledged this inferiority was
characteristic of the man; "I can raise crops," he would say, "better than
any of my neighbours, but I am always cheated in the market."
While pursuing his farming
occupations at Fishers’ Tryste, which he did with the most laudable industry
and perseverance, labouring much and frequently with his own hands, he did
not neglect those studies which his classical education had placed within
his reach. It was here and while labouring with scythe and sickle, ploughing
and harrowing, that he conceived, and at intervals of leisure, in part wrote
his poem of "The Epigoniad," the work which acquired him what celebrity he
possesses.
Through the influence of Mr
Lind, sheriff-substitute of Mid Lothian, who resided in his neighbourhood,
and who knew of and appreciated his abilities, Mr Wilkie obtained the
appointment of assistant and successor to Mr Guthrie, minister of Ratho. To
this office he was ordained by the presbytery on the 17th May, 1753. Three
years afterwards, during all which time he continued to reside on and
cultivate his farm, he succeeded to the entire living by the death of the
incumbent.
In 1757, Mr Wilkie published
at Edinburgh "The Epigoniad, a Poem in Nine Books," 12mo, and in 1759, a
second edition, corrected and improved, with the addition of "A Dream, in
the manner of Spenser." The Epigoniad obtained a temporary and local
celebrity of no unenviable kind. It was read and admired by the learned of
Scotland, and has been so frequently alluded to in contemporary literature,
that even yet, when perhaps there is hardly a living man who has read it,
nothing like oblivion can be said to have overtaken it. Mackenzie, in his
life of Home, speaks of it as "a poem of great merit, not only as possessing
much of the spirit and manner of Homer, but also a manly and vigorous style
of poetry, rarely found in modern compositions of the kind." The same
critic, after remarking the want of feeling which characterized Wilkie, goes
on to say, "Perhaps it is to a want of this poetical sensibility that we may
chiefly impute the inferior degree of interest excited by Wilkie’s Epigoniad,
to that which its merits in other respects might excite. Perhaps it suffers
also from its author having the Homeric imitation constantly in view, in
which, however, he must be allowed, I think, to have been very
successful,—so successful that a person ignorant of Greek, will, I believe,
better conceive what Homer is in the original by perusing the Epigoniad,
than by reading even the excellent translation of Pope."
After his establishment at
Ratho, Mr Wilkie became a frequent and welcome visitor at Hatton, the
residence of the earl of Lauderdale, the patron of the parish, who highly
esteemed him for his worth and talents, and was particularly fond of his
society.
In 1750, he became a
candidate for the chair of natural philosophy in the university of St
Andrews, then vacant by the death of Mr David Young, and was successful.
After settling in St Andrews, the poet purchased some acres of land, and
resumed his farming occupations, in which he succeeded so well as to leave
at his death property to the amount of £3000. Sometime after his appointment
to the professorship, the university conferred on him, as a mark of its
sense of his merits, the degree of doctor in divinity.
In 1768, Dr Wilkie published
a series of sixteen "Moral Fables, in Verse," 8vo; but these, though
sufficiently ingenious productions, did not advance him, much farther in
public favour as a poet. With this circumstance the remarkable occurrences
of his life terminate. After a lingering indisposition, he died at St
Andrews, on the 10th October, 1772, in the fifty-first year of his age.
Of Dr Wilkie’s personal
peculiarities some curious anecdotes have been preserved. Amongst the most
amusing and extraordinary of his eccentricities was a practice of sleeping
with an immoderate quantity of bed-clothes, and a detestation which he
entertained of clean sheets. He has been known to sleep with no less than
four and twenty pair of blankets on him; and his abhorrence of clean sheets
was so great, that, whenever he met with them in any bed in which he was to
lie, he immediately pulled them off crumpled them together, and threw them
aside. On one occasion, being pressed by lady Lauderdale to stay all night
at Hatton, he agreed, though with reluctance, and only on condition that her
ladyship would indulge him in the luxury of a pair of foul sheets!
He was of extremely
parsimonious habits, although in the latter years of his life he was in the
habit of giving away £20 annually in charity. His parsimony, however, did
not proceed so much from a love of wealth as of independence. On this
subject he was wont to say, "I have shaken hands with poverty up to the very
elbow, and I wish never to see her face again. He was absent to a degree
that placed him frequently in the most awkward and ludicrous predicaments.
He used tobacco to an immoderate excess, and was extremely slovenly in his
dress.