Benjamin Constant

pages of the Life of Savage by Dr Johnson, from memory. But that

elegant piece of writing, created in Wylde an admiration of the

wayward Poet, which proved of the utmost detriment to Wylde

himself. It was the means of betraying him into that careless

dissipated style of life, which doubtless accelerated the effect of

that tendency to aberration of mind, which at so early a period of

his existence removed him from the business & Society of the

world.^47

The Reverend Macknight, feeling, no doubt, that he has gone a little too

far in indiscretion, then apologizes: ‘In these last observations I have

perhaps been too particular’—too particular, that is, for a general History
of the Society for which they are intended. We cannot but be grateful to

him, however, for such refreshing candour. It illustrates once again how

the memory of John Wilde has the capacity to evoke powerful feelings.

More important, however, is the light these remarks throw on areas of

Wilde’s personality that have hitherto been obscure. Thanks to Macknight
we know that John Wilde was something of a bohemian, unconventional

and undoubtedly living in literary poverty when Constant knew him. The

note of censoriousness at Wilde’s way of life is struck again in a letter

addressed to Benjamin Constant on 12 September 1824 by one Frederic

Macfarlan. Recalling their mutual associates in the Edinburgh of the 1780s
Macfarlan mentions ‘Dr Thos Macknight, long one of the ministers of

Edinr., & even then 40 years since one of the first scholars of that City so

justly renowned for fine scholars’. Then Macfarlan comes, as it were, to

Hecuba:

John Wylde, long professor of Civil Law, who gave his lectures all

in elegant Latin: yet, (so feeble is man, even in his best state!) long

before last Century ended, lost the use of reason in great measure.

How truly wise is it to be sober minded, even in the very whirlwind

& tempest of applause!^48

Independently of each other, Macfarlan’s smug satisfaction at a noble

mind o’erthrown by too much acclaim, and Macknight’s more heartfelt

regrets point to a similar conclusion: John Wilde’s eventual madness had a

moral origin in his way of life. But it could hardly have been a way of life

uncongenial to a man like Constant, a young man who despised the safe
and the orthodox. Freedom was what Constant valued most, and Wilde’s

unfettered existence untrammelled by convention and his diet of ideas and

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