dead, is chained up in a cell and sleeping on straw. Oh wretched
human race, is this what we and our hopes are destined to come
to?^43Such a series of superlatives in this passage from Ma Vie indicates the
extent of Constant’s admiration and attachment. There was something
special about John Wilde, and all the sources we have about his life concur
on this. We do not know when he was born. A letter in the Speculative
Society’s archives from Robert Paterson to Robert Balfour who, at the
time the letter was written, 7 February 1843, was preparing the excellent
1845 History of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, reports on a fruitless
search of Edinburgh baptismal records:
The register of Baptisms in my possession does not go farther back
than January 1766. And the only individual of the name Wyld that I
find is the following and I rather think it is not the person you refer
to—Alexander son of John Wild and Elizabeth Wilson was born
the 21st and Baptized the 28th of September 1768.^44It is possible, of course, that this refers to the birth of a brother of John
Wilde—whose name was spelt consistently ‘Wilde’ by himself but
variously by others. It does at least seem certain that John Wilde was born
in Edinburgh and that his father, a merchant of the same name, dealt in
tobacco and had premises on the High Street, Edinburgh—not an
unlucrative trade in the eighteenth century, but not to be compared with an
income from land and estates. Indeed Wilde appears to have been poor in
- John Wilde’s name first appears in Edinburgh University’s
Matriculation records under 11 December 1777 when he enrolled in
Andrew Dalzel’s advanced Greek class. Now at this period students
registered and began to work towards a degree at anything between the
ages of 14 and 20 (Walter Scott’s beginning at 12 was exceptional), and
on this reckoning John Wilde was probably born some time between 1757
and 1763. As a resident of Edinburgh like Walter Scott, he is more likely
to have started university studies early rather than late, say at 14 or 15,
which would give a circa of 1762/3 for his birth. He would therefore have
been several years older than Benjamin Constant. Having begun in 1777
with Andrew Dalzel, Wilde continued in 1778–9 studying ‘Literae
Humaniores’—Latin—under John Hill, Logic and Metaphysics under
John Bruce and Mathematics under Dugald Stewart, as well as attending
Dalzel’s Greek classes. In 1779–80 he studied Moral Philosophy with
Benjamin constant 52Benjamin constant 52