William Wilkie was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. The son of a farmer

Farmer

A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, who raises living organisms for food or raw materials, generally including livestock husbandry and growing crops, such as produce and grain...

, he was born in West Lothian

West Lothian

West Lothian is one of the 32 unitary council areas in Scotland, and a Lieutenancy area. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Falkirk, North Lanarkshire, the Scottish Borders and South Lanarkshire....

 and educated at Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

. In 1757 he published the Epigoniad, dealing with the Epigoni

Epigoni

In Greek mythology, Epigoni are the sons of the Argive heroes who had fought and been killed in the first Theban war, the subject of the Greek Thebaid, in which Polynices and six allies attacked Thebes because Polynices' brother, Eteocles, refused to give up the throne as promised...

, sons of the seven heroes who fought against Thebes

Thebes, Greece

Thebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...

. He also wrote Moral Fables in Verse. In 1756 he entered the Church, becoming minister at Ratho

Ratho

Ratho is a village and civil parish in the west of Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. It was formerly in the old county of Midlothian. Newbridge and Kirkliston are other villages in the area. The Union Canal passes through Ratho. Edinburgh Airport is situated only 4 miles ...

, Midlothian

Midlothian

Midlothian is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and a lieutenancy area. It borders the Scottish Borders, East Lothian and the City of Edinburgh council areas....

. He was also appointed Professor of natural philosophy

Natural philosophy

Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...

 at the University of St Andrews

University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...

 in 1759.

Life

The son of James Wilkie, a farmer, he was born at Echlin, in the parish of Dalmeny

Dalmeny

Dalmeny is a suburban village and civil parish in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is located on the south side of the Firth of Forth, east-southeast of South Queensferry and west-northwest of central Edinburgh; it falls under the local governance of the City of Edinburgh Council.The name Dalmeny is...

, on 5 October 1721. He was educated at Dalmeny parish school and Edinburgh University, having among his college contemporaries John Home

John Home

John Home was a Scottish poet and dramatist.-Biography:He was born at Leith, near Edinburgh, where his father, Alexander Home, a distant relation of the earls of Home, was town clerk. John was educated at the Leith Grammar School, and at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated MA, in 1742...

, David Hume

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

, William Robertson

William Robertson (historian)

William Robertson FRSE FSA was a Scottish historian, minister of religion, and Principal of the University of Edinburgh...

, and Adam Smith

Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...

. His father dying during his student days, he succeeded to the unexpired lease on a farm at Fishers' Tryste, near Edinburgh. This he carried on to support his three sisters and himself, at the same time continuing his studies for the ministry of the Church of Scotland

Church of Scotland

The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....

.

Licensed as a preacher by the presbytery of Linlithgow on 29 May 1745, he combined, while waiting for a charge, writing and agriculture. On 17 May 1753 he was appointed, under the patronage of the Earl of Lauderdale

Earl of Lauderdale

Earl of Lauderdale is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1624 for John Maitland, 2nd Lord Maitland of Thirlestane, Berwickshire. The second Earl was created Duke of Lauderdale but died without male issue when the dukedom became extinct. The earldom passed to his brother Charles,...

, assistant to John Guthrie, parish minister of Ratho, Midlothian, on whose death in 1756 he became sole incumbent. Eccentricity—his occasionally omitting, for instance, to take off his hat before entering the pulpit—somewhat marred the success of his pastorate.

In 1759 he was appointed professor of natural philosophy at St. Andrews, where he devoted his leisure to experiments in moorland

Moorland

Moorland or moor is a type of habitat, in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome, found in upland areas, characterised by low-growing vegetation on acidic soils and heavy fog...

 farming. In 1766 the university conferred on Wilkie the honorary degree of D.D. Subject to ague

Ague

Ague may refer to:* Fever* MalariaSee also:* Kan Ague, a residential area of Patikul, Sulu, Philippines...

, he died on 10 October 1772. Robert Fergusson

Robert Fergusson

Robert Fergusson was a Scottish poet. After formal education at the University of St Andrews, Fergusson followed an essentially bohemian life course in Edinburgh, the city of his birth, then at the height of intellectual and cultural ferment as part of the Scottish enlightenment...

, one of his students, eulogised him in a memorial eclogue.

Works and reputation

In 1757 Wilkie published ‘The Epigoniad,’ in nine books, based on the fourth book of the ‘Iliad,’ and written in heroic couplets in the manner of Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

's ‘Homer.’ To a second edition in 1759 he appended an ingenious apologetic ‘Dream in the manner of Spenser.’ On the appearance of this edition Hume warmly praised ‘The Epigoniad’ in a letter to the Critical Review

Critical Review

Critical Review is a name shared by several publications, which are unrelated to each other by anything except their names:* The Critical Review was an English newspaper published from 1756 to 1817.* Critical Review...

, complaining that the journal had unduly depreciated the poem when first published. In 1768 Wilkie published a small volume of sixteen ‘Fables,’ in iambic tetrameter

Iambic tetrameter

Iambic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that there are four feet in the line; iambic tetrameter is a line comprising four iambs...

 reminiscent of John Gay

John Gay

John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...

, with a ‘Dialogue between the Author and a Friend’ in heroics. The sixteenth fable, ‘The Hare and the Partan’ [i.e. crab], is in the Scots dialect of Midlothian.

Regarded by contemporaries as very able, Wilkie impressed and shocked them. Meeting him at Alexander Carlyle

Alexander Carlyle

Very Rev Alexander Carlyle was a Scottish church leader, and autobiographer.He was born in Cummertrees, Dumfriesshire, the son of the local minister and brought up in Prestonpans, East Lothian. He was a witness to the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745 where he was part of the government Edinburgh...

's in 1759, Charles Townshend

Charles Townshend

Charles Townshend was a British politician. He was born at his family's seat of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England, the second son of Charles Townshend, 3rd Viscount Townshend, and Audrey , daughter and heiress of Edward Harrison of Ball's Park, near Hertford, a lady who rivalled her son in...

considered that no man of his acquaintance ‘approached so near the two extremes of a god and a brute’. Credited with parsimony, Wilkie said he had learned economy through his having ‘shaken hands with poverty up to the very elbow.’ At his death he left property worth £3,000.