Adam Ferguson, Mathematics with Dugald Stewart and Greek with
Dalzel. The last entry in the University Matriculation records states that he
attended Robert Dick’s Civil Law lectures in 1782–3. These lectures were
also attended by other present and future members of the Speculative
Society, to which Wilde had been admitted on 28 November 1780.
Between 1783 and 1788 John Wilde presided over its meetings many
times, and was made an honorary member on 5 February 1793.
45
When
Benjamin Constant made his petition to be admitted to the Speculative
Society on 11 November 1783 he was, as we have seen, sponsored by
John Wilde and Charles Hope.
What kind of man was Wilde that he should draw forth from Constant expressions of
such warmth and sadness in Ma Vie twenty-seven or twenty-eight years after they first
met, and some twenty-three to twenty-four since he had last seen him? Mackintosh,
referring to Wilde’s later insanity, remarks that he ‘has now, alas! survived his own
fertile and richly endowed mind’ and adds that as an orator he ‘had no precision and no
elegance; he copied too much the faults of Mr. Burke’s manner’. But this failing in John
Wilde was clearly compensated in Mackintosh’s eyes by the fact that, ‘He was...full of
imagination and knowledge, a most amusing speaker and delightful companion, and one
of the most generous men’.^46 In a remarkable passage in a memoir on the Speculative
Society by the Reverend Thomas Macknight we are able to glimpse Wilde ‘as in life’,
probably around May 1784:
When I returned to Edinr. after some years residence in England, I
found John Wylde and James Mackintosh (then studying for the
degree of M.D.) the shining personages of the Society. Wylde
possessed an astonishing range of miscellaneous information. But
at 25 , he had no more vigour of mind, than at 18; and he could
understand or relish no philosophy, but Lord Monboddo’s Antient
Metaphysics, on which his mind perpetually brooded. Mackintosh
was the most acute Metaphysician, I ever knew; but his voice had a
degree of coarseness, or want of tone, which excluded him from the
class of Orerotundo speakers. Edwards on Free Will he considered
as the standard of Metaphysical writing: and Park’s Preface to
Bellendinus, then newly published, was the object of his highest
admiration. His power of memory was perhaps never excelled, as
conjoined with such strength of Intellect—whatever he read he
could instantly recollect, and bring to bear on his argument.
It was in conversation that Mackintosh’s talents appeared to
greatest advantage. Many a delightful symposium I enjoyed with
only him and Wylde (whom he called the greatest genius he ever
knew)—after the meeting of the Society was over. We sat for hours
listening to his recitations & remarks. I have heard him repeat 20The charms of friendship 53