AYTOUN, WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE Scottish poet and humorist, only son of Roger Aytoun, a writer to the signet, and of the same stock as Sir Robert Aytoun. He was educated at Edinburgh academy and university, and at Aschaffen burg, Germany. He became a writer to the signet in 1835 and was called to the Scottish bar in 1840. On his own confession, however, although he "followed the law, he could never overtake it." A preliminary volume of poems entitled Poland, Homer, and other Poems had appeared in 1832. His first contribution to Black wood's Magazine appeared in 1836, and from 1839 onwards until his death he remained on the staff of the paper. His acquaintance with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Theodore Martin began in 1841. They collaborated in a series of humorous and satirical papers in which appeared from time to time the verses afterwards republished separately as The Bon Gaultier Ballads (1855). These are of striking interest as providing a model for later writers of humorous verse, and in particular for W. S. Gilbert (q.v.), in the Bab Bal lads. Aytoun excels in parody, and Montgomery, a Poem deserves to be as well known as Macaulay's celebrated castigation of the fashionable poet. Indeed the lines:— Calm as Great Paul at Ephesus was seen To rend his robes in agonies serene might have been among those selected by Macaulay to be pilloried in the Edinburgh Review. He is equally successful with parodies of Tennyson and Thomas Moore. Perhaps the best known in the collection is The Massacre of the Macpherson, which has continued to figure in many anthologies and song-books. In 1845 Aytoun was appointed professor of rhetoric and belles lettres at Edinburgh university. His services to the Tory Party, especially in the cause of protection, were recognized by his appointment in 1852 as sheriff of Orkney and Zetland. Among his other writings are : Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers (1848 ; also Burleigh Library ed. 1896) ; Firmilian, a Spasmodic Tragedy (1852), in which he ridi cules the writings of Philip James Bailey, Sydney Dobell and Alexander Smith (qq.v.) ; Bothwell, a Poem (1854) ; Collection of the Ballads of Scotland (1858) ; and Norman Sinclair, a novel (1861).
In conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin he published a trans lation of the Poems and Ballads of Goethe (1858). Aytoun died at Blackhills near Elgin on Aug. 4 1865.
See Memoir of W. E. Aytoun (1867) by Sir Theodore Martin, with an appendix containing some of his prose essays. The poems of Aytoun were republished by H. Milford in the Oxford edition (1921) .