AYTOUN, n'tniin, WILLIAM EDMONSTOU E ( 18134;5) . A Scotch poet. Ile was born in Edin burgh, dune 21,1813. He received his education at the university there, and was called to the Scottish bar in 1S40. In 1845 he was appointed professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres in the Uni versity of Edinburgh, and after the formation of the Derby ministry in 1852, he was promot ed to the shrievalty of Orkney. He married a (laughter of John Wilson. During many years Aytoun devoted himself to literary work. His first important work was The Life and Times of Richard I. (1840)—a subject well treated and sin gularly in consonance with his romantic nature. He was also a master of caricature and parody and many of the Bon Gaultier Ballads were from his pen. In 1848 he published the popular Lays of the Scottish Caealiers and Other Poems, which established his reputation as a poet of the school of Scott. Among his subsequent writings are: •irmilian: .t Spasmodic Tragedy (1854); and
Bothwell (1856), a narrative poem of consid erable length, in the measure and manner of Scott. His edition of the Scottish Ballads, 2 vols., appeared in 1858. In the following year he i..sued, in conjunction with Theodore Martin, translations of various minor poems of Goethe. Ile was for many years one of the most frequent and brilliant contributors to Blackwood's Maga zine. Aytoun was distinguished at once as poet and humorist. His poems exhibit a ballad-like simplicity and a fiery flow of narration, while his tales—the best known and appreciated of which are The Glenmvtchkin Railway and How I Became a Yeoman—possess a certain robust humor and farcical abandonment which made them widely popular. Aytoun died August 4, 1S65. His life was written by Theodore Martin (London, 1867).