LIBRARY 
 
 of Califoml 
 
 IRVINE
 
 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
 
 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART
 
 THE LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHARI 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 9 - 
 
 FROM ABBOTSFORD AND MILTON LOCKHART MSS. 
 AND OTHER ORIGINAL SOURCES 
 
 luttb fifteen Sllustrations 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOLUME THE FIRST 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN C. NIMMO 
 
 NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 MDCCCXCVII
 
 V.I 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press
 
 TO 
 
 THE HON. MRS. MAXWELL SCOTT 
 
 OF ABBOTSFORD 
 
 THESE MEMOIRS OF HER GRANDFATHER, 
 Her Illustrious Great-grandfather's 
 Son-in-law, Biographer, 
 . and Friend, 
 
 Brc
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS Life of Mr. Lockhart has been compiled 
 under many difficulties, some of which I foresaw, 
 while others I did not anticipate. The book grew 
 out of the publisher's wish that I should prepare 
 for him an edition of Mr. Lockhart's " Life of Sir 
 Walter Scott." An introductory chapter on the 
 author of that great work seemed desirable, and the 
 chapter swelled into a biography of Mr. Lockhart. 
 
 The book had not been in hand for more than 
 two or three months, when I found that there were 
 impediments which a fuller knowledge of Mr. 
 Lockhart's professional career would have taught 
 me to anticipate. As regards his relations with 
 Mr. John Wilson Croker, and with the Quarterly 
 Review, documents exist which, perhaps, may some 
 day be given to the world. Their absence from 
 this work is touched on later, in the appropriate 
 place. I am inclined to think that my information, 
 derived from Mr. Lockhart's familiar letters, is 
 adequate for the purpose of his biography, though
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 there ought to be much interesting matter in his 
 letters to Mr. Croker, of which but a very small 
 part, apparently, has been given in Mr. Croker's 
 published correspondence. 
 
 Indeed, my own regrets in this matter are con- 
 cerned with my apparent, though perfectly unin- 
 tentional, slight to the successors of Mr. Lockhart's 
 old allies and associates, rather than with the loss 
 of biographical materials. 
 
 Other difficulties have occurred ; Mr. Blackwood, 
 I doubt not, would have given me every reasonable 
 access to the archives of his house, but these were 
 already in the hands of Mrs. Oliphant for editorial 
 purposes. Mrs. Oliphant has most kindly allowed 
 me to consult her for the avoidance of errors in 
 matters of fact, and Mr. Blackwood gave me a list 
 of many of Mr. Lockhart's later articles. 
 
 Mr. Lockhart's letters to Mr. Southey I have 
 been unable to trace. Mr. Southey 's side of the 
 correspondence, preserved at Abbotsford, is of very 
 little interest or literary importance ; it deals with 
 business between editor and contributor. 
 
 A large collection of private letters from Mr. 
 Lockhart to a lifelong friend was destroyed many 
 years ago by its actual possessor. To a portfolio 
 of caricatures, of which a few were published more 
 than thirty years ago in Mrs. Gordon's ''Christopher 
 North," access has been denied me, but Mr.
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 Brewster Macpherson has kindly lent me his col- 
 lection of Lockhart's sketches. 
 
 I have to thank, first of all, Mrs. Maxwell 
 Scott of Abbotsford, without whose aid this bio- 
 graphy of her grandfather could never have been 
 attempted. 
 
 All the manuscripts at Abbotsford and Milton 
 Lockhart have passed through my hands, and Mrs. 
 Maxwell Scott has assisted me in every possible 
 way, by revision of the book before and after it was 
 in type. The chief documents are eleven volumes 
 of letters to Mr. Lockhart, including two volumes 
 of letters from Mr. Croker, of which, for obvious 
 reasons, I have made no use, beyond a remark 
 on Mr. Croker's character as revealed in these 
 papers. The volumes of letters to Sir Walter Scott 
 include a few (in addition to those from Mr. 
 Lockhart) which have been of service. From Sir 
 Walter's two volumes of letters to Mr. Lockhart I 
 have made selections of such as are not anticipated 
 in Scott's Letters or Journal. Mr. Lockhart's letters 
 to his own family, to his wife, his children, and his 
 son-in-law, Mr. James Hope Scott, have supplied 
 much material. Much more might have been ex- 
 tracted had it seemed desirable celebrare domestica 
 facia. Mrs. Lockhart's letters have also been 
 sparingly used f/ 
 
 For the important though incomplete series of 
 
 VOL. I. b
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 letters to Mr. Jonathan Christie, Mr. Lockhart's 
 lifelong friend, I have to thank the kindness of 
 Mr. Christie's daughter, Mrs. Herrick. 
 
 For permission to quote the Quarterly article 
 on Mr. Lockhart, by his old friend, the Rev. Mr. 
 Gleig, and for the sight of a complete list of Mr. 
 Lockhart's articles in the Quarterly Review, I am 
 indebted to the kindness of Mr. John Murray of 
 Albemarle Street. Mr. Gleig's article is the only 
 authority on the boyhood of Lockhart. 
 
 To Mr. J. H. Stevenson and the Dowager Lady 
 Foulis, the representatives of Mr. Cadell, the pub- 
 lisher of the " Life of Scott," I owe many valuable 
 documents. Colonel Gleig has also provided such 
 materials of his father's, the Chaplain-General of 
 the Forces, and author of "The Subaltern," as 
 he possessed. 
 
 My friend, Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, has 
 allowed me to see and extract from a MS. diary 
 of a Scottish Tour in his possession, containing a 
 description of Mrs. Lockhart before her marriage. 
 
 Miss Bessie Wilson has gratified me with a view 
 of some letters by Mr. Lockhart to her grand- 
 father, Professor Wilson, for the most part already 
 published. 
 
 Mr. and Miss Carruthers of Inverness have kindly 
 lent me letters to their grandfather, Sir Walter's 
 friend, Mr. William Laidlaw.
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 My friend, Mr. Falconer of Dundee, has lent me, 
 and even more kindly copied out for me, an impor- 
 tant letter of Sir Walter Scott's, and a few letters 
 from Mr. Lockhart, in the collection of his brother, 
 to whom my thanks are no less due. 
 
 Mr. S. L. Davey, of Great Russell Street, has 
 aided me with all his wonted generosity to authors, 
 in the attempt to collect scattered documents. 
 
 Mr. David Douglas, the publisher of Scott's 
 Journal, has helped me in the most generous 
 manner, by his great knowledge of Scottish 
 literary history, and by the loan of rare books 
 and pamphlets. 
 
 To Mr. Archibald Milman, whose generosity has 
 been of the highest service, I owe the use of 
 Mr. Lockhart's important series of letters to Dean 
 Milman, without which one aspect of Mr. Lock- 
 hart's industry and character would have been most 
 incomplete. 
 
 To my dear kinswoman, Mrs. William Sellar, I 
 am indebted in this, as in all things, for much aid 
 and encouragement. Mr. Alexander Carlyle not 
 only lent me Mr. Lockhart's letters to his cele- 
 brated uncle, but permitted the publication of Mr. 
 Carlyle's letters, and gave information as to the 
 high regard and affection in which Mr. Lockhart 
 was held by him. General Lockhart and other 
 members of the family have ungrudgingly lent all
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 the aid in their power. Mr. James Traill, son of 
 Mr. Lockhart's lifelong friend, obliged me with 
 some interesting notes : the Dean of Salisbury, 
 also, was kind enough to add to what he had said 
 in his charming volume of Reminiscences. 
 
 I must not omit to acknowledge my debt to the 
 anonymous writer who, in Temple Bar for June 
 1895, suggested the compilation of this work, and 
 indicated many useful references. His name is still 
 unknown to me, but he is " the onlie begetter " of 
 this work. 
 
 Without the generous labours of Father Forbes 
 Leith, S.J., in the Abbotsford MSS., nothing could 
 have been done to any purpose. 
 
 I have to thank Miss Violet Simpson for examin- 
 ing the unpublished correspondence of Mr. Macvey 
 Napier in the British Museum, and for discovering, 
 not without labour, the account of the Scott-Christie 
 duel, published by Mr. Horace Smith. 
 
 My friend, Mr. Edmund Gosse, has greatly obliged 
 me by reading the proof-sheets, and by discovering 
 "Mr. Flatters" (vol. ii. p. 195), though I would not 
 try to shelter any oversights due to myself under 
 his authority. 
 
 To Mr. Maitland Anderson, and Mr. Smith, of 
 the University Library, St. Andrews, I owe more 
 than I can easily say. 
 
 It is not easy to write the Life of a man whom
 
 PREFACE xiii 
 
 few living people remember, and whom none re- 
 members in his prime. On the other hand, the 
 lapse of years makes it possible to say much that 
 a contemporary biographer might feel obliged to 
 keep in reserve. Mr. Lockhart's character too 
 complex to be easily construed was also so strong 
 as to leave its leading traits deeply and permanently 
 marked. His letters best reveal him, and though 
 much has perished, much is left. Through the 
 letters we can see Mr. Lockhart as he really was, 
 not as he exists in hostile report and erroneous 
 legend. The compiler will be more than satisfied 
 if a portrait, however slight, takes, in the gallery of 
 great Englishmen (including Scots) of letters, the 
 place of a shadowy set of caricatures. 
 
 I am aware that, in several passages, this bio- 
 graphy may seem to resemble a speech for the de- 
 fence. But Mr. Lockhart has been so vehemently 
 attacked, and often so unjustly misrepresented, that 
 a defensive attitude was sometimes unavoidable. 
 
 ANDREW LANG. 
 
 July 1896.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 GLASGOW, 1794-1808 
 
 PACE 
 
 " An Ell of Genealogy." Origin and History of the Lockharts. 
 Symon's town. The House of Saint Lys. Lockharts of 
 Symington, of the Lee. The Heart of Bruce. Cognisance 
 of the Lockharts. Sir Stephen and Sir Allan. Homicidal 
 Lockharts. Lockharts of Cleghorn, Birkhill, Wicketshaw. 
 Milton Lockhart. Lockharts of the Covenant. A 
 "Flyting." After Bothwell Brig. Somervilles, Nimmos, 
 Pringles. Lockhart's parents. His birth. His shyness. 
 "Twa Puddens." His early stoicism. School days. 
 Habit of caricature. Glasgow University. His prizes. 
 The Blackstone. The Snell Exhibition. Goes to Oxford 
 in a round jacket 1-27 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 OXFORD, 1808-1813 
 
 The journey to Oxford described in " Reginald Dalton." Prince 
 Charles at Derby. Companions on the way. Letter to 
 Dr. Lockhart. Mr. Jenkyns. The Oxford of 1809. Lock- 
 hart's College friends. Sir William Hamilton. Constancy 
 of Lockhart's friendships. Mr. Jonathan Christie. His 
 description of Lockhart as an undergraduate. Letters to 
 Mrs. Lockhart. Balliol sermons. No Fellowships for 
 Scots. Hamilton's kindness. A wine party. St. Andrew's 
 Day. The Prince's memory. Lockhart "crossed." His
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 wish to join the Spaniards against Napoleon. His lin- 
 guistic studies. Letters to Mr. Christie. Hamilton's studies 
 in magic. Lockhart in The Schools. Dinners at Godstowe. 
 " No Scotch Need Apply." Gets a First-Class. Leaves 
 Oxford. His acquirements 2 8~59 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 GLASGOW, 1813-1815 
 
 Early disadvantages of Lockhart. His loneliness. Reflections. 
 Letters to Mr. Christie. The Theatre in London. Miss 
 Duncan. The Schools. Anecdotes of Scotch clergymen. 
 The stool of repentance. Dulness of Glasgow. Admira- 
 tion of Wordsworth and Byron. Mr. Christie's projected 
 novel. Lockhart's novel. Scotch manners. Mediaeval 
 studies. Double authorship of " Waverley." " Wattie a 
 fecund fellow." Lockhart's own novel postponed. " Lock- 
 hart will blaze ! " His neglect of his own poetical powers. 
 Sordid ignorance of Glasgow. Hamilton and the 
 Humanity Chair in Glasgow. Lockhart's novel. " The 
 Odontist." Solitude. Glasgow society. A commercial 
 ball. Count Pulltuski. "Gaggery." Dinner with a dentist 
 Caricature of Pulltuski. Tour after trout. Scheme of an 
 " Oxford Olio." A pun. Anecdotes of the clergy. A Holy 
 Fair. Lockhart goes to Edinburgh to study law . . 60-90 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 EDINBURGH, 1815-1817 
 
 Edinburgh described in " Peter's Letters." Letters to Christie. 
 Description of Wilson. His inconsistency. His charm. 
 Edinburgh populated by authors. Sir William Hamilton 
 writing on Waterloo. A dinner with Hamilton. Descrip- 
 tion of De Quincey. Lockhart's Essay on Heraldry. An 
 Edict of Glasgow University. Study of Wordsworth. 
 Parodies of Wordsworth by Lockhart. Sir William Hamil- 
 ton an elder of the Kirk. Death of Mrs. Nicoll. Death of
 
 CONTENTS xvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 a friend. Hamilton's baronetcy. His disadvantages. 
 Kean acting in Edinburgh. Literary projects. Lockhart 
 called to the Bar. His first fee spent on punch. Criticism 
 of " Old Mortality." Needless severity." Blacky." Lock- 
 hart's train of negro servants. Description by the Ettrick 
 Shepherd. German tour. Early transaction with Mr. 
 Blackwood. Problem of Lockhart's attachment to Black- 
 wood's Magazine. Lockhart on Mr. Blackwood's character. 
 Intellectual defects of Edinburgh society. Whig arro- 
 gance and ignorance. Lockhart's mission. Scotland in a 
 state of "facetious and rejoicing ignorance." Lockhart's 
 ideas resemble those of Carlyle. His want of earnestness. 
 His opportunity. " Prophesying not to be done on these 
 terms" 9'- I2 5 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 EDINBURGH, 1817-1818 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine. Account of it in letter to Haydon 
 (1838). Lockhart "helps Blackwood out of a scrape." 
 "Row in Edinburgh." Lockhart made the scapegoat. 
 His regrets. His prospects ruined. " Intolerably grievous 
 fate." Parallel of Theodore Hook. Responsibility for 
 Blackwood's. Wilson and Lockhart not paid Editors. 
 Lockhart not the assailant of the Lake Poets. Errors in 
 " Life of Christopher North." The early numbers of the 
 Magazine. Lockhart's articles on Greek Tragedy. Black- 
 wood quarrels with his original Editors. They take service 
 with Constable. Their new Opposition Magazine. Scott 
 and Pringle. Attack on Coleridge. Wilson, Jeffrey, and 
 Coleridge. Lockhart on literary Whigs of Edinburgh. 
 Attack on the " Cockney School." Keats and Lockhart 
 agree in their views of Leigh Hunt. "Vain, egotistical, 
 and disgusting." His "Tale of Rimini." His enmity to 
 Sir Walter Scott. He and Keats fancy that Scott is their 
 assailant. Persistence of this absurdity.! ," The Chaldee 
 Manuscript." Hogg claims the authorship. Burlesque 
 reply. Lockhart's own statement. Analysis of "The 
 Chaldee." " No end of public emotion ' . . . 126-162
 
 xviii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 EDINBURGH, 1817-1819 
 
 PACK 
 
 Blackivood* s next scrape. Its origin. Cavalier and Covenanter. 
 
 Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. His edition of Kirkton. 
 
 Dr. M'Crie assailed for contributing to Blackwood. 
 Lockhart carries the war into Africa. Attacks clerical con- 
 tributors to the Edinburgh Review. Writes as Baron von 
 Lauerwinkel. Criticises critics. Shakespeare. The real 
 Lockhart. On Napoleon. On Jeffrey. Jeffrey's real in- 
 significance. His ignorance. His treatment of Goethe. 
 Lockhart's defence of Christianity against the Edinburgh 
 Review. How far justified. Examples of religious criticism 
 from the Edinburgh. The sceptical priest. Sydney Smith's 
 flippancies in the Edinburgh. " Merriment of Parsons." 
 Evangelicals "nasty vermin." Lockhart on Scottish re- 
 ligion. His reprisals. Personal attack on Playfair. 
 Scott's disapproval. Wilson and Lockhart are attacked 
 anonymously. " Hypocrisy Unveiled." They challenge 
 their opponent. Jeffrey's reply. Mr. Macvey Napier sus- 
 pected. Denies the charge. Extracts from his unpub- 
 lished Correspondence. Sir John Barrow's letter. Playfair 
 
 and the Quarterly Review 163-190 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 EDINBURGH, 1818-1820 
 
 Lockhart meets Scott. "The Shirra." Invitation to Abbots- 
 ford. Lord Melville. Scott discourages the iniquities of 
 Blackwood's. His chuckle. The attack on Keats. Mr. 
 Colvin's theory. Bailey's story. The story criticised. 
 Common friends of Keats and Lockhart. Christie on 
 Keats. Kindly remark of Lockhart on Keats. Lockhart 
 and the scrape of a friend. Action of Lockhart. His 
 relations with his father. Letter to Christie. His view 
 of Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt. Quarrel with Hamilton . 191-205
 
 CONTENTS xix 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 EDINBURGH, 1819-1820 
 
 PACK 
 
 " Peter's Letters." Scott's bequest of his baton. Scott's politics. 
 His comments on "Peter's Letters" in Blackwood. On 
 Allan, the painter. Lockhart revisits Abbotsford. Rides 
 with Scott. Scott's illness. Praises "Peter's Letters." 
 Analysis of " Peter's Letters." Mr. Wastle of Wastle. 
 Jeffrey. Goethe. A Burns Dinner. Wilson. The Shep- 
 herd. Neglect of Greek. Lockhart's supposed irony. 
 The Edinburgh Review. Jeffrey as a critic. Lockhart 
 compared with Carlyle. Defence of Coleridge. The book- 
 sellers. Mr. Blackwood. Story of Gabriel's Road. John 
 Hamilton Reynolds. Description of Scott at Abbotsford. 
 His woods. The Kirk. Letters to Coleridge. Reynolds 
 suggested as editor of a Tory paper. Popular commo- 
 tions. Lockhart as a yeoman. Ballads attributed to him. 
 His betrothal to Miss Sophia Scott. Her letters. Prince 
 Gustavus. Descriptions of Miss Scott. Scott asleep . 206-235 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 EDINBURGH, 1820-1821 
 
 " The mother of mischief." Election to Chair of Moral Philo- 
 sophy. Hamilton and Wilson. Calumnies against Wilson. 
 Scott's defence. Lockhart's "Testimonium." Scott's 
 letter of remonstrance. Promises of good behaviour. 
 Attacks on Lockhart in Baldwin's Magazine. Mr. John 
 Scott, Editor of Baldwin's. Tims. Christie writes to Lock- 
 hart. Lockhart's reply. Demand for an apology. Mr. 
 John Scott's answer. Lockhart in London. A challenge. 
 Curious evidence of Horatio Smith. A pacific second. 
 No fight. An oversight. Christie's statement. John Scott 
 challenges Christie. A moonlight duel. Christie's letter to 
 Lockhart. Flight of Christie and Traill. Distress of Lock- 
 hart. Imputations on his courage. Gallant behaviour of 
 Christie. The trial. Acquittal. Reflections . . 236-282
 
 xx CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 CHIEFSWOOD, 1821-1824 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Life at Chiefswood. Border Scenes. " Valerius." Criticism of 
 the book. Its failure. Letter to Christie. Hogg, Rose, 
 and wild-ducks. Lockhart's love of children. Hugh Little- 
 john. Boswell slain by Dunearn. " Adam Blair." Origin 
 of the tale. Criticism. " Adam Blair" and "Faublas!" 
 George IV. in Edinburgh. Scott's energy. Crabbe. 
 Crabbe on Lockhart. Lockhart on Crabbe. Abbotsford. 
 Lockhart edits " Don Quixote." Begins an edition of 
 Shakespeare. Melrose in July 1823. "Leal Tories." 
 "Reginald Dalton." Letters from Christie. Christie on 
 Hunt and Byron. Report of Williams's death. " Quentin 
 Dunvard " unpopular 283-312 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 EDINBURGH, 1817-1824 
 
 Lockhart's Poems. Spanish Ballads. Sources. Weak lines. 
 Song of the Galley. The Wandering Knight. Serenade. 
 "The Mad Banker." Verses on Jeffrey. On Holyrood. 
 On the Stuarts. Queen Mary. Scott's reference to these 
 verses. " Take thou the Vanguard of the Three." Criti- 
 cism of Lockhart's verse. His reserve. Reasons why he 
 wrote little. His comic verse. "Captain Patten." The 
 Odontist. Trooper lyrics. His skill in caricature. Ex- 
 amples. Fenella. A wet day. Charles Scott. Miss 
 Violet Lockhart. A Presbytery. A cock-fighter. Analogy 
 with Thackeray in verse and caricature. Lockhart almost 
 abandons the Art 313-342 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 CHIEFSWOOD, 1821-1825 
 
 Life on the Border. Birth and death of a daughter. Hugh 
 Littlejohn. Letter to Dr. Lockhart." Matthew Wald." 
 Lockhart in London. Coleridge. Canning. Brontesque
 
 CONTENTS xxi 
 
 PAG 8 
 
 novel. A false quantity. Lockhart at a fire. Yule at 
 Abbotsford. The muffled drum. Scott to Marchioness of 
 Stafford. Sutherland Sheriffship. Constable's scheme. 
 Cheap literature. Lockhart's suggestions. Irish tour with 
 Scott. Meeting with Wilson, Canning, and Wordsworth. 
 Tired of Blackwood. Work at Shakespeare. Asked to edit 
 Murray's paper. Young Mr. Disraeli. Proposals as to the 
 Quarterly Review. Mr. Wright's suggestion. Scott not 
 author of the plot. Lockhart in town. Mr. John T. 
 Coleridge, Southey, and the Quarterly. Later difficulties. 
 Lockhart becomes Editor. Southey's chagrin. Lock- 
 hart's "bonspiel." He leaves Chiefswood for London. 
 Reflections 343-383 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 LONDON, 1826 
 
 Sorrows of 1826. Failure of Murray's newspaper. Scott's ruin. 
 Illness of Hugh Littlejohn. Illness of Mrs. Lockhart. 
 Illness of Lady Scott. Constable in London. " Dear me, 
 Archy ! " "A mad proposal." Cadell preferred to Constable. 
 Constable abandons hope. Mr. Thomas Constable's 
 criticism. Its futility. Lockhart on Scott's trading enter- 
 prises. Sir Walter on James Ballantyne. Defence of 
 Lockhart against Constable's biographer. Ruin always 
 inevitable. Scott's resolve. "Firm as Eildon Hill."- 
 Letters to Lockhart. Malagrowther. Political predictions. 
 Illness and death of Lady Scott. Letters from Sir Walter. 
 Reviews for the Quarterly. Disappointments. Scott in 
 London. A year of misery. Lockhart on novels . 384-416
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 VOLUME THE FIRST 
 
 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART Frontispiece 
 
 Painted by SIR FRANCIS GRANT, P.R.A., Engraved by F. HUTH. 
 
 AN OLD HAND AT THE COCKPIT, OXFORD 
 
 Facsimile of a Water - Colour Drawing by J. G. 
 LOCKHART, in the possession of Mr. BREWSTER 
 MACPHERSON Page 48 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON BUYING BOOKS 
 
 Facsimile of a Pen-and-ink Drawing by J. G. 
 LOCKHART, in the possession of MR. BREWSTER 
 MACPHERSON .,96 
 
 PROFESSOR WILSON 
 
 Drawn by DANIEL MACLISE, R.A 144 
 
 LEIGH HUNT 
 
 From the Picture by BENJAMIN HAYDON, in the 
 
 National Portrait Gallery. P hoto- Etched Plate . 192 
 
 LOCKHART AND SIR WALTER SCOTT (?) RIDING 
 
 Facsimile (reduced} of a Water-Colour Drawing by 
 
 J. G. LOCKHART, in the Abbotsford Collection . 224
 
 xxiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Miss SCOTT, AFTERWARDS MRS. LOCKHART 
 
 Facsimile of a Drawing by J. G. LOCKHART, in the 
 
 Abbotsford Collection Page 288 
 
 FENELLA DANCING BEFORE CHARLES II. 
 
 Facsimile (slightly reduced} of a Caricature by J. G. 
 LOCKHART, of the well-known Scene in " Peveril 
 of the Peak" From the Abbotsford Collection. 
 Double-page Plate 340
 
 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GLASGOW, 17941808 
 
 " An Ell of Genealogy." Origin and History of the Lockharts. 
 Symon's town. The House of Saint Lys. Lockharts of Sym- 
 ington, of the Lee. The Heart of Bruce. Cognisance of the 
 Lockharts. Sir Stephen and Sir Allan. Homicidal Lockharts. 
 Lockharts of Cleghorn, Birkhill, Wicketshaw. Milton Lockhart. 
 Lockharts of the Covenant. A " Flyting." After Bothwell 
 Brig. Somervilles, Nimmos, Pringles. Lockhart's parents. 
 His birth. His shyness. "Twa Puddens." His early stoicism. 
 School days. Habit of caricature. Glasgow University. His 
 prizes. The Blackstone. The Snell Exhibition. Goes to Oxford 
 in a round jacket. 
 
 i 
 
 " EVERY Scotsman has his pedigree," says Sir 
 Walter, in the Autobiographical fragment where 
 he traces his own. The interest in our ancestors, 
 "without whose life we had not been," may be 
 regarded as a foible, and was made matter of re- 
 proach, both to Scott and his biographer, the story 
 of whose own life is here to be narrated. Scott 
 "was anxious to realise his own ancestry to his 
 imagination ; . . . whatever he had in himself he 
 would fain have made out a hereditary claim for." 
 
 VOL. I. A
 
 2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 In this taste there is not wanting a domestic piety ; 
 and science, since Sir Walter's day, has approved 
 of his theory, that the past of our race revives in 
 each of us. 
 
 For these reasons Scottish readers, at least, may 
 pardon a genealogical sketch in this place. Or, if 
 they be unkind, we may say of Lockhart, as he 
 says in the case of Thomas Campbell, "He was a 
 Scotsman, and of course his biographer begins with 
 an ell of genealogy." 
 
 The pedigree of Scott's biographer and son-in- 
 law, John Gibson Lockhart, was hardly inferior in 
 historical interest to Sir Walter's own. Both Sir 
 Walter and his son-in-law were descended from 
 cadet branches of noble houses. If Harden was 
 the " fountain of the gentry " of Scott, Lockhart of 
 Lee was, as we shall see, in all probability, the 
 source of the " gentry" of Scott's biographer. 
 
 In the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire is the parish 
 of Symington, bounded on the east by the stripling 
 Clyde, and rising in the south to the crest of Tinto. 
 The whole district lies high, but, save for Tinto, is 
 not hilly. The waters of the land, except Clyde, are 
 but burns, which, in later life, Lockhart remem- 
 bered with all a Scot's personal affection for his 
 native streams. There is a warm wooded look, con- 
 sidering the height of the general elevation, and 
 the parish is best known, perhaps, for Symington 
 Railway Station, on the Caledonian Railway. The 
 old official name of Symington is Villa Symonis
 
 LOCKHART PEDIGREE 3 
 
 Lockard, Symon's town, whence Symington. This 
 name is understood to be derived from Symon 
 Loccard, who, in the reign of Malcolm the Maiden, 
 was lord of the parish, and founded the village 
 and the church. The name Loccard also occurs, 
 it is believed, in Lockerby, in Dumfriesshire 
 (Locardebi), and certainly in Craig Lockhart, and 
 Milton Lockhart, which is still in the possession of 
 the family. 1 A man of Symon Loccard's importance 
 must necessarily have had forefathers of no mean 
 estate. I have not had the opportunity to trace, 
 through documents, this Loccard (probably derived 
 from " de Loch Ard" a territorial designation) to 
 the house of Saint Lys, and the companions of the 
 Conqueror, but it is a mistaken etymology which 
 accepts Lockhart of Lee as a corruption of Loccard 
 de Saint Lys. 
 
 Whatever the truth of the Saint Lys theory 
 may be, the eponymous hero, so to speak, of the 
 Lockharts, Symon of Symington, founded his parish 
 church about 1153. He also held lands in Ayr- 
 shire, and gave his name to Symontown in Kyle. 
 He appears as a witness to charters and other 
 deeds as late as 1 1 90, and was succeeded by his 
 son Malcolm. 
 
 The Lockharts of Lee, now the chief house of 
 the family, soon eclipsed the parent branch of Symon- 
 town, which disappears in stormy times. In 1300 
 (circa) we find Richard Hastang, an Englishman, 
 
 1 " Lockhart " was only added to " Milton" some seventy years ago.
 
 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 writing to Edward I., "praying for the lands of 
 Simon Locard," in Ayr, "and in the Leye, in the 
 county of Lanark." This Simon Locard of the Lee 
 was knighted by Robert Bruce, and took his side 
 in the resistance to England. After Bruce's death, 
 he sailed with the good Lord James Douglas, to 
 carry the king's heart to the Holy Land. Douglas 
 fell, fighting the Saracens in Spain ; all the world 
 knows how he threw the royal heart into the 
 mellay, crying, " Lead on, as thou were wont to 
 do ! " Sir Simon then took the command, rescued 
 the heart of Bruce and the body of Douglas, and 
 returned to Scotland. His acquisition, in Spain, 
 of the famous "Lee penny" ("The Talisman"), 
 part of the ransom of a Moor, is well known. 
 The Locards now added to their bearings a heart 
 within a fetterlock, and took the name of Lockhart. 
 " Did you ever hear of such a name, Master Hugh?" 
 asks Scott, in his "Tales of a Grandfather," written 
 for " Hugh Littlejohn," the son of John Gibson 
 Lockhart. 
 
 While the Lockharts of Lee, themselves originally 
 of the Symonton or Symington family, thus came 
 to honour, the Symonton branch dwindled and 
 vanished. Probably they took the English side, 
 for Bruce, soon after his accession, conveyed 
 the barony of Symonton, as crown property, to 
 " Thomas fil Dick " ( Thomae filio Ricardi), probably 
 Thomas Dickson of Hesilside, who helped the 
 Black Douglas to surprise the English garrison
 
 LOCKHART PEDIGREE 5 
 
 of Castle Dangerous, on a famous Palm Sunday. 1 
 Thus the headship of the Lockharts was now settled 
 in the patriotic and illustrious house of Lee. 
 
 From 1339 to 1440, the history of the Lockharts 
 of Lee (as far as printed documents go), is some- 
 what obscure. In the latter year (1440) we find them 
 settled in their lands by a charter to Alexander 
 Lockhart, who was followed by his son Sir Allan, 
 knighted by James III., and succeeded, in turn, by 
 his son, Sir Mungo, who died before 1489. 
 
 Now in the days of this Sir Allan Lockhart of 
 Lee comes on the stage a Sir Stephen Lockhart, 
 who owned the lands of Cleghorn in Lanarkshire. 
 About the parentage of this Sir Stephen Lockhart 
 of Cleghorn, who was the direct male ancestor of 
 John Gibson Lockhart, uncertainty prevails. A 
 scholar who has aided me by his researches 2 says, 
 "He may have been a cadet of the Lockharts of Lee, 
 whose history at that period is not well known, and 
 family tradition takes this view, though it has not 
 found support from public documents." On the 
 other hand, the authors of " The Upper Ward of 
 Lanarkshire" 3 (to which most of the information 
 given here is due) find a Sir Allan Lockhart in 
 possession of Cleghorn in 1441. "He," they say, 
 " was undoubtedly a cadet of the Lockharts of Lee, 
 
 1 See Scott's novel, " Castle Dangerous." 
 
 2 The Rev. John Anderson. 
 
 3 " The Upper Ward of Lanarkshire." By G. V. Irving and A. 
 Murray. Glasgow, 1864.
 
 6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 but the pedigree of that family is involved in 
 considerable obscurity in the latter part of the four- 
 teenth and the early portion of the fifteenth centuries." 
 And they represent our Sir Stephen as the son of 
 this Sir Allan Lockhart of Cleghorn. His own son 
 was named Allan. The account already given, 
 however, is, I believe, correct. 
 
 The connection of Sir Stephen with the main 
 stem of the house, the Lockharts of Lee, would not 
 satisfy a strict genealogist, but no Lockharts of any 
 other stem are likely to have flourished in Lanark- 
 shire, so near the centre of the race. Sir Stephen 
 frequently appears in charters and other documents ; 
 he was armour-bearer to James III., he went on an 
 embassy to the King of the Romans, he adhered 
 to his king in the rebellion which ended in that 
 monarch's death near Bannockburn, he was member 
 for Lanarkshire in 1491, and was altogether a stirring 
 and notable man. He died about 1518. 
 
 Sir Stephen's son, Allan Lockhart of Cleghorn, 
 married twice. His second wife was Marion, 
 daughter of John, third Lord Somerville, by whom 
 he had a son Stephen, who acquired Waygateshaw, 
 or Wicketshaw, in Lanarkshire. The Wicketshaw 
 Lockharts were addicted to manslaughter, having 
 a feud with the Hamiltons. In 1539, Alexander 
 Lockhart of Wicketshaw was pardoned for the 
 slaying of James Hamilton. The laird of Lee, in 
 1572, as head of the house, was security for the 
 appearance, to stand his trial, of Stevin Lockhart of
 
 COVENANTING ANCESTORS 7 
 
 Wicketshaw. In 1605 the Hamiltons, pursuing a 
 feud of at least seventy years' standing, had their 
 turn, and the Rev. John Hamilton of Crawfordjohn 
 was indicted " for a savage assault on Alexander 
 Lockhart, tutor" (uncle and guardian of the heir) 
 " of Wicketshaw." Probably these Lockharts of 
 1572 were king's men, as the Hamiltons were of 
 course for Queen Mary, in the Douglas wars. 
 
 In 1606, we find Stephen Lockhart of Wicket- 
 shaw, "Goodman thereof," 1 marrying Grizel Car- 
 michael, a sister of the first Lord Carmichael, by 
 whom he had three sons (i) William Lockhart of 
 Wicketshaw, whose line failed in 1776 ; (2) Robert, 
 who, about 1665, purchased the lands of Birkhill 
 in the parish of Lesmahagow ; (3) and Walter, laird 
 of Kirkton. 
 
 Two of these three brothers were urged, by such 
 dragoonings as Scott describes in "Old Mortality," 
 to fight for the Covenant, under the Banner of 
 Blue. From the second, Robert Lockhart of 
 Birkhill, the subject of this biography was directly 
 descended. 
 
 Of Robert Lockhart of Birkhill, Colonel Wallace 
 writes thus, in his contemporary " Narrative of the 
 Pentland Rising:" "We marched close by Robert 
 Lockhart's house, where Mr. Robertson was with 
 Mr. Robert Lockhart. None of them came out 
 
 1 I have observed " Goodman " used of Grahame of Netherby : 
 the phrase need not indicate a mere "bonnet-laird." See also 
 " Memorie of the Somervilles," i. 496.
 
 8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 (though it was but three or four paces from the 
 house), to countenance us so much ; yet some of 
 our company, in the by-coming, spoke with them, 
 such as Mr. Brysson, Sundaywell, and old worthy 
 Robert Bruce of Skellietoun, who most freely and 
 faithfully acquitted themselves to them!' 
 
 However, on this occasion the descendant of the 
 guardian of the heart of Bruce declined to follow a 
 Robert Bruce, on the weary tramp through the wet 
 moors to the places of testifying at Rullion Green 
 and the Grassmarket. 
 
 What a picture of the scene might Scott have 
 drawn : the straggling "drookit" company of small 
 lairds, farmers, farm-servants, " Knockbreck's two 
 sons, with a few others ; these were the hundred 
 men we had heard were coming from Galloway, 
 for we saw no other," the disorderly array of 
 muskets, swords, and scythes, the closed windows 
 and doors of Robert Lockhart's little chateau, the 
 faithful contendings and flytings of Mr. Brysson, 
 and white-haired Robert Bruce of Skellietoun, and 
 looking on with his arms pinioned, and the smile of 
 the scorner on his lips, the Royalist captive, Sir 
 James Turner, "the motion of pistolling him was 
 slighted, alas, it is to be feared too much." 
 
 It is not, perhaps, the most glorious page in the 
 history of the Lockharts, for the watchword of the 
 godly was, "Though we should all die at the end 
 of it, we think the giving of a testimony enough 
 for all." However, even Mr. Alexander Peden, the
 
 UP A TREE 9 
 
 prophet, kept out of this rising, as foreseeing the 
 end of it. 
 
 Lockhart of Wicketshaw, on the other hand, is 
 said to have joined his little troop to that of the 
 wild Galloway Whigs, among whom the rising 
 began, at St. John's Town of Dairy in the Glen 
 Kens. As to Lockhart of Birkhill, if he once let 
 the Banner of the Covenant pass his door unaided, 
 it is fair to say that he had already tried to prevent 
 its followers from coming so far, and had "earnestly 
 dealt with Mr. Brysone to follow the business no 
 further, .... but to dismiss the people, the fairest 
 way and the handsomest we could, and let every 
 one see to himself, until the Lord gave some better 
 opportunity." l 
 
 In 1679, after the murder of Archbishop Sharp, 
 Lockhart of Birkhill seems to have thought that 
 the Lord had " given them some better oppor- 
 tunity." He turned out for the Covenant, and led 
 the Lanarkshire Whigs, at the battle of Both well 
 Brig, his brother Walter fighting under Claverhouse 
 for the king. Tradition relates that Birkhill fled 
 from the field with Dalyell's men after him, and 
 accompanied by some friends of his own side. 
 Thinking that they had escaped pursuit, the rest 
 of the party deemed it convenient to sing a psalm. 
 Lockhart remonstrated, but they would sing, so he 
 privily withdrew himself and climbed up a tree. 
 
 1 Wallace's narrative of the Pentland Rising, in Dr. M'Crie's 
 " Memoirs of Veitch and Brysson," pp. 399-404.
 
 io LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 His tuneful friends below were arrested, and he 
 escaped, but only to die of privation and fatigue. 1 
 
 In later days (1825), the Rev. Dr. M'Crie edited 
 a work containing references to these forebears of 
 Lockhart's, who, in the too renowned " Chaldee Manu- 
 script," had named Dr. M'Crie "The Griffin," he 
 himself being " The Scorpion." By a curious coin- 
 cidence the most offensive verses of " The Chaldee " 
 (iii. 36-39), are an attack on Graham Dalyell, a 
 lineal descendant of the persecutor, old Tom Dalyell 
 of Binns. But now, conversis rebus, Lockhart was 
 the Tory, and Dalyell was the Whig. 2 
 
 The grandson of the Covenanter of Birkhill was 
 William Lockhart, who married Violet Inglis, heiress 
 of Corehouse, the lady introducing the Christian 
 name of Violet into the family. Miss Inglis's 
 mother was a sister of Somerville of Corehouse, to 
 which she herself succeeded. The lands of East- 
 shiel, Corehouse, and Birkhill were thus united. 
 Hers was a runaway match. The pair had two 
 
 1 " New Statistical Account of Scotland," VI. 579. 
 
 2 What Lockhart seriously thought of the long struggle in which 
 some of his fathers fell, and others were forfeited, may be gathered 
 from an article in the Quarterly Review (December 1848), published 
 under his Editorship. Reviewing the Duke of Argyll's " Presbytery 
 Examined," the critic says, that not in the Established Kirk, but 
 in the Free Kirk and among other Seceders, "we must seek the 
 descendants of Knox and Melville, of Henderson and Rutherford, 
 to say nothing of Cameron or Cargill. Let us frankly accept all 
 men and all systems when we travel back into the past, in their own 
 sense and in their own spirit." The whole passage {Quarterly ', Ixxxiv. 
 pp. 92-93), is a remarkable instance of a truly liberal dealing with the 
 facts of Scottish Dissent, in a Tory Orthodox Anglican Review.
 
 A LOCKHART IN THE FORTY-FIVE n 
 
 sons the line of the eldest failed ; the second son 
 was the Rev. John Lockhart, D.D., minister of 
 Cambusnethan, and, later, of the College Kirk in 
 Glasgow. This Dr. Lockhart married twice ; in his 
 family by his second wife the estate of Milton 
 Lockhart still remains. His second wife was a 
 daughter of the Rev. John Gibson, minister of St. 
 Cuthbert's in Edinburgh, and the eldest son of this 
 second marriage was John Gibson Lockhart. 
 
 The patient reader now sees that from the days 
 of Malcolm the Maiden, and through the houses 
 of Lockhart of Symonton, of Lee, of Cleghorn, of 
 Birkhill, and of Wicketshaw, the future biographer 
 of Scott derived a pedigree for which published 
 documents fail, in the darkness of 1339-1440, but 
 which, none the less, is such as Sir Walter liked 
 to trace. The War of Independence, the chival- 
 rous pilgrimage of the Royal Heart, the feudal 
 anarchy, the Douglas wars, the struggle for religious 
 domination by the Covenanters, are all among the 
 ancestral memories of the Lockharts. Not alien, 
 probably, are the loyal Jacobite honours of the 
 Lockharts of Carnwath, a branch of the Lockharts 
 of Lee, the two houses being now united. What 
 part the Wicketshaw and Birkhill Lockharts took 
 in Prince Charles's campaign of 1745, perhaps 
 "'tis better only guessing." One Lockhart cer- 
 tainly made himself hated for his cruelties after 
 Culloden, and a Jacobite song on the battle of 
 Val (1747) a defeat of the butcher Cumberland,
 
 12 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 has this odd association of two names now happily 
 united 
 
 " Baith Scott and Lockhart's sent to hell, 
 
 For to acquaint mama, Willie, 
 That shortly you'll be there yoursel' 
 To roast ayont them a', Willie ! " 
 
 The houses of Somerville and Carmichael are far 
 off " forebears," and the Puritan strain (not very 
 conspicuous in the son-in-law of Scott) should have 
 been strengthened by descent from Mr. James 
 Nimmo l (1654-1709), who fought and ran away at 
 Bothwell Brig (1679), and, after 1688, getting into 
 the Customs, smuggled in a godly fashion, "the 
 Lord wonderfully and mercifully guided me . . . 
 praise, praise to Him ! " Mr. Nimmo left a curious 
 memoir, mainly of his religious experiences, pub- 
 
 1 Here is the descent from godly Mr. Nimmo 
 
 James Nimmo = Elizabeth Brodie 
 
 James Nimmo=Hon. Mary Erskine (Cardross) 
 
 Elizabeth Erskine =Pringle of Bowland (grandson of Torwoodlee of 
 the Rye House Conspiracy, 1685.) 
 
 A son, laird Margaret Mary = Rev. John Gibson 
 of Torwoodlie | 
 
 I 
 Elizabeth = Rev. John Lockhart 
 
 John Gibson Lockhart, born 1794. 
 
 Tabulated from Mr. W. G. Scott-MoncriefFs account, in the Introduction 
 to "Narrative of Mr. James Nimmo," Edinburgh, 1889.
 
 LOCKHARTS FATHER 13 
 
 lished by the Scottish History Society, and naturally 
 never guessed that a descendant of Lockhart of 
 Birkhill, who fought by his side at Bothwell Brig, 
 would marry a great-great-grand-daughter of his 
 own, Elizabeth Gibson, and so connect the subject 
 of this biography, her son, with her paternal house, 
 the ancient one of Pringle of Torwoodlie, Scott's 
 neighbours and friends at Abbotsford. 
 
 Concerning the characters and attainments of 
 Lockhart's parents, nothing of much interest has 
 reached us. At that time it was still not unusual 
 for the younger sons of landed and ancient families 
 to "enter the ministry." Several examples are 
 found among the fathers of young men, Lockhart's 
 college companions and lifelong friends. To Sir 
 Walter Scott, in his early years, offers of patronage 
 in the Kirk were made. Dr. Lockhart was a 
 scholar, and his distinguished son may have in- 
 herited from him a turn for scholarship, but it is 
 clear that Dr. Lockhart was not a purchaser of 
 modern books, nor a patron of the rising literature, 
 of Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and Scott. 
 
 About 1824 Lockhart's wife quotes a saying of 
 her husband's, "Your father" (Sir Walter) "may 
 be a greater poet, but mine is a greater proser." 
 The old gentleman's letters reveal him as a serious, 
 grave, rather narrow divine of the old Presbyterian 
 school. He could tell a story well, and on a story 
 of a real set of incidents, told by him, Lockhart 
 founded his best novel, " Adam Blair." He had no
 
 14 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 liking for Episcopal religion, and would grumble 
 a little at Lockhart's indifference as to the rival 
 claims of Kirk and Church. In brief, to the 
 ordinary observer, Dr. Lockhart seemed a good 
 specimen of a large class of Scottish ministers. 
 
 About Lockhart's mother even less is to be 
 gleaned. Her letters are plain, pious, and affec- 
 tionate. Probably the peculiar " Spanish " type of 
 Lockhart's face, which is noted by Southey, Haydon, 
 and Scott, was derived from her, for, when Lock- 
 hart lay on his death-bed, his younger brother, 
 Robert, remarked the strong resemblance to their 
 mother. To both of his parents Lockhart was 
 warmly and devotedly attached, but his letters to 
 them will seldom be quoted, as they do not often 
 range above the everyday affairs of the family and 
 its friends. It does not seem that either his father 
 or his mother was keenly interested in his literary 
 work. Nothing in his perplexing character can, 
 with our present knowledge, be explained by in- 
 heritance from his father and mother. 
 
 John Gibson Lockhart was born in the manse 
 of Cambusnethan, on the I4th of July 1794. In 
 his second year his father obtained the College Kirk 
 of Glasgow, and migrated thither. The child was 
 delicate, and Mr. Gleig, who wrote the article on 
 "The Life of Lockhart" in the Quarterly Review 
 (October 1864), thinks that the bracing moorland 
 air might have been better for his health than the 
 smoke and fog of Glasgow.
 
 LOCKH ART'S SHYNESS 15 
 
 As the result of an early malady, Lockhart was 
 partially deaf for the whole of his life. Like short- 
 ness of sight, deafness, even in a slight degree, is 
 apt to be the cause of shyness. A man whose hear- 
 ing is not good, like one whose sight is imperfect, 
 dares not act on his first perceptions, whether of eye 
 or ear. He soon learns that he is very likely to 
 make errors, as of recognising the wrong person, or 
 not recognising the right one ; of replying to what 
 has not been said, or of becoming tedious by re- 
 questing that a remark may be repeated. Lock- 
 hart's partial deafness may thus have contributed to 
 cause his shyness. In a letter written at the close 
 of his life, Lockhart speaks of himself as, with 
 perhaps one exception, "the shyest man alive." 
 Now shyness " is not one mental disorder, but many, 
 and varies in degree and kind with the characters 
 of individuals. It is afraid where no fear is ; it is 
 humble, and appears proud ; it is sensitive, and takes 
 the form of coldness and reserve ; it is dying to 
 speak, and can only think of something inappro- 
 priate to say. . . . It is, in most respects, the opposite 
 of what it appears to be ; all sorts of false imputa- 
 tions are apt to be cast upon him who is the victim of 
 it, and the acute sense of the undeservedness of these 
 imputations in a sensitive mind greatly aggravates 
 the evil"- often by confirming a man consciously 
 in the attitude which his shyness simulates. 1 
 
 1 " College Sermons." By Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, 
 p. 219.
 
 1 6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 These words, this protest, as we may call it, of 
 one who knew well what shyness is, might have 
 been written about Lockhart. Difficult beyond 
 common experience as his character was, his shy- 
 ness yet more perplexes it. The malady, above 
 all when the result of a physical defect, is never 
 allowed for, never understood by the world. Scott 
 speaks of Lockhart's modesty as amounting to diffi- 
 dence, yet he often seemed arrogant. He himself 
 has described shyness as "arrogance not screwed 
 up." His sensitiveness was taken for coldness, his 
 "almost fierce reserve" (as Mr. Hope Scott calls it) 
 was identified with want of heart, for the public pre- 
 fers a callous heart worn on the sleeve, to a tender 
 heart which hides its emotions. Thus "all sorts 
 of false imputations " were cast on Lockhart, and 
 it is more than probable that, as Tertullian became 
 a Montanist because he was called a Montanist, so 
 Lockhart did assume some of the failings with 
 which he was constantly charged. In society Scott 
 speaks of his tendency to be silent, or to converse 
 with one person in a corner, where, in fact, he 
 could hear and be heard. This taciturnity, and 
 his aspect, "his melancholy Spanish head," as 
 Haydon the painter describes it, produced "the 
 Hidalgo airs " laughingly alluded to by Scott. 
 Cyrus Redding in his Memoirs says, " He was of a 
 retiring, reserved habit, and by many not understood ; 
 called ill-natured, sarcastic, and I know not what 
 beside. I can only speak of men as I have found
 
 TWAPUDDENS! 17 
 
 them, and with me he was always pleasant 
 
 An habitual cast, as of pensiveness, appeared con- 
 tinually over him." Let it be added that, as La 
 Rochefoucauld writes, " a wit is often more at a loss 
 in ordinary society than an ordinary man among 
 wits," and we have the secret of Lockhart's failure 
 to be genial and generally popular. In him existed, 
 in a much lower degree, certain of the qualities 
 which made Hazlitt really unfit to succeed in human 
 intercourse ; nor is it to be denied that Lockhart 
 seldom suffered fools gladly. Yet this manner was 
 blended, or crossed, by a conviviality of disposition 
 which, being rarely found in company with a shy 
 and sensitive reserve, increases the complexity of 
 his character. 
 
 As an undergraduate he took his part in college 
 revels, and probably held his own with Wilson and 
 Hogg in the suppers at Ambrose's. It is remem- 
 bered that he once came unexpectedly to Milton 
 Lockhart, when a great dinner of farmers was 
 going on, that at first he shrank into his shell with 
 Hidalgo airs, or, to speak Scotticd, "with the black 
 dowg on his back." 
 
 " Suddenly, when the sweets appeared, one of the 
 yeomen pinched him violently on the leg, and in 
 a voice hoarse with emotion, murmured, ' Gosh, 
 man ! Twa p^tddens ! Yon'll be a kick abune the 
 common.' 
 
 " This unexpected assault and enthusiasm sent 
 
 1 " Fifty Years' Recollections," iii. 52, 53. 
 VOL. I. B
 
 1 8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 John off into a hearty fit of laughter. He shook 
 off the black dog, and, for the rest of the evening, 
 was the life and soul of the party." 
 
 Fitful appearances of "the black dog" occur 
 in the course of his story, and it is not to be 
 denied that the animal was a familiar of Lockhart ; 
 yet he lived much with gleeful folk, such as the 
 famous Lord Robertson, the "peerless paper Lord " 
 of his rhyme, and his after-supper lyrics retain their 
 gaiety. Thus even his shyness was original, and 
 unlike that of other people. 
 
 The early origin, in a physical accident, of a 
 predominant trait has led us far from the infancy 
 of Lockhart. We learn from Mr. Gleig, the only 
 authority on the subject, that from four to six years 
 of age, Lockhart "toddled to the English school, as 
 it was called, and to the writing school, where he 
 acquired elementary education." Of his school days, 
 from six to twelve, at Glasgow High School, few 
 anecdotes survive, or few have reached us. He is 
 said to have been rather clever than industrious, often 
 absent by reason of sickness, "but he always kept 
 his place as dux," or head of his class, as forms are 
 called in Scotland. Full of fun, overflowing with 
 humour, he was yet averse to rough sports, to 
 "stane-bickers," battles with the town boys, such as 
 Scott's youth delighted in, and he hated quarrelling. 
 He was a caricaturist, and if his humour hurt any 
 one, he "sometimes could not even see the wound 
 1 From H. F. M. Lockhart, Esq.
 
 LOCKHART'S STOICISM 19 
 
 which it inflicted." This incapacity seems to have 
 remained, more or less, through his career. 
 
 "At the same time the humorous, gleeful, merry 
 boy was proud and reserved. A natural disposition 
 more than commonly affectionate he kept under 
 perpetual restraint, considering it unmanly to make 
 any violent display either of joy or sorrow. The 
 effort necessary to accomplish this often cost him 
 dear, and on one occasion had well-nigh proved 
 fatal to him. He was very much attached to a 
 younger brother and sister, particularly to the 
 latter, both of whom died within a few days of each 
 other. John would not weep, as the rest of the 
 family did, nor in any other way make a display of 
 his feelings, and the consequence was, that he 
 became so ill as seriously to alarm, not his parents 
 only, but his medical attendant." The boy was 
 indeed father of the man, and his family crest, 
 the Heart within the Fetterlock, was the badge of 
 his nature. The illness alluded to caused Lockhart's 
 removal from school to the seaside. His education 
 was now conducted by his father, a good classical 
 scholar. Perhaps Dr. Lockhart, like the father of 
 Reginald Dalton in his son's novel, " did not wish 
 to have any better companion than his child." 
 " Robinson Crusoe," the " Pilgrim's Progress," 
 "The Seven Wise Masters," "the old genuine 
 banquets of strong imagery and picturesque in- 
 cident," were probably among Lockhart's as among 
 his hero's early studies, and later, as editor of the
 
 20 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Quarterly Review, he asked Miss Rigby to write an 
 article against " the tame milk-and-water diet," which 
 modern dulness tried to substitute for the old 
 immortal favourites. 
 
 In 1805 Lockhart matriculated at the University 
 of Glasgow. He was in his twelfth year, and, 
 though very young boys composed the junior 
 classes in Scotch colleges, he must have been 
 among the youngest. 1 
 
 At that time, Lockhart says, the students of 
 Glasgow University still wore the red gowns, which, 
 
 1 Lockhart matriculated in 1805, presumably in November. 
 
 I append the official information about Lockhart at Glasgow 
 University, which I owe to the kindness of Mr. W. Innes Addison, 
 of the Matriculation Office, and of my friend Mr. A. C. Bradley, 
 Professor of English Literature : 
 
 '"Joannes Gibson Lockhart, filius natu secundus Reverendi Viri 
 Joannis Lockhart, SS. T. D. & Pastoris Parochias de Black Friars in 
 urbe Glasguensi, in Com. de Lanark natus.' 
 
 "The name is written by himself (the rest not) in a boyish but 
 rather good hand clear, firm, and rather large. 
 
 " In 1805 6 he attended the Humanity Class (Prof. Wm. Richard- 
 son), but took no prize. 
 
 "In 1806 7 he got the fifth prize in the Humanity Class 'for 
 exemplary diligence and regularity,' and also a prize (second) 'for 
 excelling at the examinations on Roman Antiquities.' 
 
 " In this session he attended the Greek Class. His name is not on 
 the roll of the Latin Class, but of course he must have attended it. 
 
 "In 1807 8 he got a prize in the Greek Class 'for propriety o 
 conduct, diligence, and eminent ability displayed during the whole of 
 the session.' 
 
 " The prize-men are divided into classes or divisions (not so named). 
 L. comes third in the second division, seventh in the whole list of 
 prize-men. 
 
 "In 1808 9 he got one of the prizes in the Logic Class ' for the best 
 specimens of analysis and composition on subjects of Reasoning and
 
 GLASGOW COLLEGE 21 
 
 during a session spent by his present biographer, 
 about 1864, in that seat of learning, were only 
 donned at the Blackstone examination. The 
 Glasgow gowns appear very scrimped, in contrast 
 with the flowing academic dress of St. Andrews. 
 The College, in Lockhart's time, as in my own, 
 was the black old quadrangle, guarded by an effigy 
 of some heraldic animal, probably the Scottish lion, 
 in whose open mouth it was thought unbecoming 
 to insert a bun. Blackness, dirt, smoke, a selection 
 of the countless smells of Glasgow, small, airless, 
 crowded rooms, thronged by youths at whom 
 Lockhart could not have scoffed for exaggerated 
 elegance in dress, these things make up a picture 
 of the Old College of Glasgow. Now there is a 
 new and magnificent building in a part of the town 
 which enjoys, for Glasgow, a respectable atmos- 
 phere. In a volume called " Janus," written by 
 Wilson and Lockhart in 1826, some one, Lockhart 
 probably, describes the changes in the Old College 
 since 1814. "The inner court, where I have so 
 
 Taste .... and for distinguished eminence and proficiency in the 
 whole business of the class.' 
 
 "The prize-men are divided into Seniores and Juniores. L. was 
 seventh among the Seniores. 
 
 " In the same session (1808 9) he got two prizes in Latin : one 'for 
 the best translation of the seventh book of Lucan into verse ' (his is the 
 only prize given) : the other ' for the best Latin verses ' (he is the first 
 of two prize-men). 
 
 " I have searched the record of the Blackstone prize-men from 
 1805 6 to 1811 13, but his name certainly does not appear. But 
 Mr. Addison tells me that the prize-lists generally have been found 
 not free from mistakes and omissions."
 
 22 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 often paced, has lost its primitive Gothic air 
 altogether," by reason of a new building. "The 
 severi religio loci hardly lingers where it reigned." 
 In the so-called gardens (where Frank fought a 
 duel with Rashleigh Osbaldistone in "Rob Roy") 
 there were no flowers, but flowers of soot. 
 " The queer old lofty tenements, with small 
 garden courts, and occasionally a few fine stately 
 trees in front of them," have long ceased to 
 be. Doubtless the whole quarter was much less 
 smoky, dingy, greasy, and squalid in Lockhart's 
 days. 
 
 Mr. Gleig quotes from Professor Rainy early 
 reminiscences of Lockhart at Glasgow College. 
 Dr. Rainy made his acquaintance in 1805. He 
 had just recovered from the illness caused by 
 suppressed grief, was thin and pale, with feminine 
 features, untidy, a mocker of dandyism in others, 
 fond of poetry, averse from games, addicted to satire, 
 and to caricaturing his professors. These were 
 Richardson, the Latin Professor, and Young of 
 the Greek Chair. Richardson was a contributor 
 to the Mirror, edited by Henry Mackenzie, " The 
 Man of Feeling." Young, according to Lockhart 
 himself, was "a classical scholar unrivalled in Scot- 
 land, a master of Italian literature and of music, an 
 enthusiast in poetry." This scholar was not wholly 
 wasted on boys of twelve, he had ' ' the art to in- 
 spire juvenile auditors with his own delight in the 
 visions of genius, as well as in the anatomy of their
 
 BILLY AND COCKY 23 
 
 records, to the minutest tint and refinement of word 
 and syntax." 
 
 Young had " an extraordinary physiognomy, .... 
 a picturesque profusion of grey hairs, a brisk-look- 
 ing little pigtail, an enormous striped waistcoat, 
 and never-failing Hessian boots," all of which, and 
 " the sharp, shrewd, knowing, inquisitive, hair- 
 splitting look," a contrast to the high, melancholy, 
 earnest enthusiasm of the face in other moods, 
 Lockhart's pencil must have found attractive and 
 bafHing. 
 
 Richardson "wore grand black satin breeches 
 and buckles, and sea-green or snuff-coloured silk 
 stockings with gorgeously-wrought clocks. He. 
 had a delicate rosy complexion, a beautifully curled 
 white wig with a noble toupee in front, and a 
 ponderous queue behind." He was delightfully 
 courtierlike in manner, could " make young people 
 and small people happy," and he and Young were 
 called Billy and Cocky by their affectionate pupils. 
 It was the day of periwigs, cocked hats, pointed 
 canes, ruffled wrist-bands, prodigious Provosts, and 
 rum punch ; an age of Glasgow convivialities, on 
 which Lockhart, as a young man, made some cheer- 
 ful observations. 
 
 More reminiscences of Lockhart at Glasgow 
 were supplied to Mr. Gleig by the Rev. Dr. Smith, 
 an Edinburgh clergyman. Dr. Smith, as a boy, a 
 bejant, or freshman, made Lockhart's acquaintance 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, Ixxxv. p. 37.
 
 24 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 in his father's house, in Charlotte Street, at the 
 north-west corner of Glasgow Green. On October 
 10, 1806, the bejants went trembling to College. 
 Seeing Lockhart, whom he knew, Master Smith 
 wished to seat himself on the same form, but was 
 forcibly ejected by Master Harry Rainy, already 
 quoted. The truth was that Lockhart, Rainy, and 
 Cooper had determined to keep their bench sacred 
 to the sons of the ministry. On finding that 
 Master Smith's father was a minister, Master Rainy 
 received him with open arms, and the bench re- 
 tained its unbroken character. Lockhart's pencil 
 was not idle, and he sketched Professor Young on 
 Master Smith's Livy. He was not fond of fights 
 with the town boys, miniature town and gown 
 rows : his amusement was to collect and recite street 
 ballads. As for his studies, in the Logic lecture 
 (a logician of thirteen) he " suddenly outstripped his 
 competitors." According to Dr. Rainy, he obtained 
 the second prize in the Junior Latin Class. The 
 prizes then, as I believe now, were awarded 
 by the votes of the students. They decided 
 according to the performances of each man, when 
 put on to construe, and by his success in answering 
 questions addressed to the class in general. It 
 used to be curious to observe the eagerness of the 
 ambitious on these occasions. Nothing could 
 possibly be fairer and more impartial than the 
 voting, and the system, though odd, certainly kept 
 up the attention of the pupils. According to Dr.
 
 THE BLACKSTONES 25 
 
 Rainy, Lockhart was disappointed by his second 
 place, and his backers bought for him a well-bound 
 copy of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," one of 
 his special favourites. This was presented to him 
 publicly, on the closing day of the session, by 
 Professor Richardson. Lockhart, who knew no- 
 thing of the matter beforehand, "was deeply 
 moved. This little incident shows that, among his 
 fellow-students, Lockhart was not only respected 
 but loved." 
 
 There are two prizes, medals, at Glasgow, called 
 The Greek and Latin Blackstones. A student 
 "professes," or takes up, so many Greek or Latin 
 authors, and is closely examined in them viva voce. 
 The professor is examiner, and decides the prize. 
 The competitors take their seats in turn, in a 
 curious antique chair, with an hour-glass in the 
 back, and with a seat of stone. This stone was 
 probably, Mr. Gleig thinks, originally a " symbol 
 of infeftment," accompanying an old charter con- 
 veying lands to the College. 1 
 
 Lockhart's list of books was unusually long. 
 His brother, the Rev. Lawrence Lockhart (later 
 
 1 The author may be excused for mentioning two incidents of this 
 examination in his own day. In the Latin Blackstone, a student, 
 (not the winner) translated a phrase in Juvenal, " the screaming 
 
 fathers." "What is the Latin for screaming, Mr. ?" asked 
 
 Professor Ramsay. " Squalentes, sir, sqtialentes patres, the squalling 
 fathers." In the Greek Blackstone Professor Lushington handed 
 his own ^tschylus to a spectator, and examined without book, calling 
 the competitors' attention to such grammatical expressions and turns of 
 phrase as he thought desirable, a singular proof of his great memory.
 
 26 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of Milton Lockhart), says that, on arriving at 
 College after the vacation, he heard how a senior 
 student, a third year's man in Greek, proposed 
 making "a stunning profession." Lockhart, there- 
 fore, mastered the same books, and was successful. 
 He afterwards looked on this as "a shabby trick," 
 for his opponent, had he known what Lockhart 
 was about, might have made a larger "profession." 
 But a brother of the vanquished said, " It was quite 
 fair, we never blamed him for it." " John, on my 
 telling him this, was much delighted," says Mr. 
 Lawrence Lockhart. Probably the examining pro- 
 fessor was guided rather by the quality of the 
 work done, than by the quantity of the w r ork 
 "taken up." 1 
 
 Lockhart's success in the Blackstone settled his 
 career. He was offered, "quite unexpectedly," one 
 of the Snell Exhibitions, founded long before by 
 John Snell, Esq., for Glasgow students going to 
 Balliol. In the author's time, and now, the Snell 
 Exhibitions are the rewards of an examination in 
 written work, like scholarships at Oxford. The 
 income used to be about ^"105 per annum, a great 
 assistance to the purse of a Scottish parent, and 
 doubtless was more, when only one exhibition was 
 given, not two, as in later times. The exhibition has 
 been held by many distinguished men, as Sir William 
 
 1 It is not in the author's recollection that the winners in his own 
 day (Thomas Shute Robertson, Esq., and Henry Craik, Esq., C.B., 
 both later of Balliol,) made a single slip in their Blackstones.
 
 RAT'S CASTLE 27 
 
 Hamilton, Adam Smith, and Professor Sellar. It 
 does not carry the privilege or burden of a scholar's 
 or open exhibitioner's gown. Lockhart's parents 
 hesitated to accept the prize on account of his youth, 
 (he was not yet fifteen !). However they decided 
 to accept, and, like Mr. Jowett, the future Master, 
 Lockhart went up in a round schoolboy's jacket. 
 He came to a Balliol then small, almost obscure, 
 by no means noted for excellence in the schools, 
 but retaining its old buildings, its chapel with the 
 beautiful glass and Jacobean panelling, and fortunate 
 in reckoning among its tutors, Mr. Jenkyns, 
 "the Old Master," who really made the Balliol 
 of to-day. We know not where Lockhart's rooms 
 were, but Southey's, he says, were in Rat's Castle, 
 a dilapidated old pile in the inner quadrangle. 
 
 Such are the brief records of Lockhart's childhood 
 and boyish days. We see him with a character 
 already formed, shy, affectionate, stoical as a Red 
 Indian, proud, quick, industrious when he chooses 
 to work, humorous, melancholy, mischievous, a lover 
 of poetry, an admirer of that great man with whom 
 his fortunes were to be linked, and whose life he 
 was to chronicle.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 OXFORD, 18081813 
 
 The journey to Oxford described in " Reginald Dalton." Prince 
 Charles at Derby. Companions on the way. Letter to Dr. 
 Lockhart Mr. Jenkyns. The Oxford of 1809. Lockhart's 
 College friends. Sir William Hamilton. Constancy of Lock- 
 hart's friendships. Mr. Jonathan Christie. His description of 
 Lockhart as an undergraduate. Letters to Mrs. Lockhart. Bal- 
 liol sermons. No Fellowships for Scots. Hamilton's kindness. 
 A wine party. St. Andrew's Day. The Prince's memory. 
 Lockhart "crossed." His wish to join the Spaniards against 
 Napoleon. His linguistic studies. Letters to Mr. Christie. 
 Hamilton's studies in magic. Lockhart in The Schools. Dinners 
 at Godstowe. " No Scotch Need Apply." Gets a First-Class. 
 Leaves Oxford. His acquirements. 
 
 IT was to an Oxford and a Balliol very unlike 
 those of our time that Lockhart took his way, and 
 by a very different and more expensive mode of 
 travelling. In " Reginald Dalton" he describes the 
 drive from Carlisle to Oxford, in "one of the largest 
 and heaviest, but also one of the gayest and gaudiest, 
 of all possible stage-coaches. It bore the then all- 
 predominant name of the hero of Trafalgar, and 
 blazing daubs of Neptunes, Bellonas, and Britannias 
 illuminated every panel that could be spared from a 
 flourishing catalogue of inns and proprietors." 
 
 A "beer-faced conductor" patronised the ale 
 
 28
 
 BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE 29 
 
 offered, in a foaming can, by the rural waiting 
 wench, wherever the " Admiral Nelson " stopped. A 
 senior man, going up to Christ Church, would take 
 the reins, and perhaps cause one of these collisions 
 in which, at least, "you know where you are," 
 while, in a railway accident, "where are you?" 
 " There is always some one either to laugh with 
 or at . . . . and you have excellent meals three 
 
 times a day, and snowy sheets every night 
 
 We never hear the horn blowing without envy- 
 ing those that are setting out, above all, those 
 that, like our friend Reginald, are starting for the 
 first time." 
 
 So we may imagine Lockhart starting, "eager- 
 hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's " 
 manse. He was obviously impressed most of all 
 by "the richest, and perhaps grandest too, of all 
 earthly prospects, a mighty English plain," when, 
 following the route of Prince Charles, " he saw it in 
 all its perfection from the hill of Haynam, that spot 
 where Charles Edward, according to local tradition, 
 stood below a sycamore, and gazing with a feeling 
 of admiration which even rising despair could not 
 check, uttered the pathetic exclamation, ' Alas ! this 
 is England ! ' ' 
 
 It was not the Prince who despaired, nor the men 
 who sharpened their claymores at Derby, and who 
 would have followed him to death or victory, had 
 their chiefs not flinched. So Lockhart may have 
 mused on the scene of lost opportunity. However,
 
 30 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 he probably forgot that sad memory, in the bustle 
 of the road, "the charming airy country towns," 
 "the filthy large towns with manufactories and 
 steam engines," "the stately little cities, with the 
 stately little parsons walking about them, two or 
 three abreast, in well-polished shoes, and blameless 
 silk aprons, some of them ; and grand old churches, 
 and spacious well-built closes, and trim gardens ; 
 and literary spinsters," such as Miss Anna Seward, 
 in Lichfield. Like his hero, Reginald, Lockhart 
 visited the house where Samuel Johnson's father 
 sold books, "and walked half a mile further, on 
 purpose to see the willow which surly Sam himself 
 planted in Tetsy's daughter's garden." He met the 
 "men "going up, talking of "Classes, the Newdi- 
 gate, Coplestone's pamphlets, and the B.N.C. 
 Eight-oar," for already that distinguished College 
 was famed on the river. 
 
 In the " Admiral Nelson " fared " the young tutors, 
 in tight stocking pantaloons and gaiters, endeavour- 
 ing to show how completely they can be easy, well- 
 bred, well-informed men of the world," or unbending 
 to sing the All Souls' ditty of "the Swapping, 
 Swapping Mallard." Before reaching Oxford, 
 Lockhart may have heard, as his hero does, about 
 his own college tutors, especially the recluse with 
 whom, a solitary pupil, Sir William Hamilton read 
 for a short time, "the most learned man in all our 
 college, but he lives retired." 
 
 To the picture of a first journey to Oxford, as
 
 EARLY LETTER 31 
 
 drawn in " Reginald Dalton," we may add the sketch 
 in an early letter home (Oct. 21, 1810). 
 
 " MY DEAR FATHER, I have the pleasure of 
 informing you that I arrived here last night, about 
 twelve o'clock, in all the safety that you could wish. 
 I wrote from Macclesfield, the stage on this side 
 Manchester, but I had not time then to inform you 
 of any of the particulars of my journey. From 
 Glasgow to Manchester I had the company of 
 Charles Hagen, Doctor of Philosophy, and Pro- 
 fessor of Agriculture in the University of Koenigs- 
 berg : Mr. Plau, a merchant in Memel, &c. : and a 
 Cumberland traveller of whom I know nothing. 
 Mr. Plau came with me so far as Birmingham, but 
 I know nothing of my other companions from Man- 
 chester to Birmingham, except that one was a 
 Welsh student, who more patrio wore a Welsh wig, 
 and a Londoner of very dignified appearance, who 
 passed himself off for a personage of no small 
 dignity. 
 
 " I had every reason to be well pleased with my 
 journey and everything concerning it. Upon the 
 whole I was very much amused, and derived not 
 only amusement but a great deal of instructive in- 
 formation from my two continental companions, 
 both of whom have favoured me and all my friends 
 with an invitation to take up our residence with 
 them whenever we happen to visit their respective 
 cities.
 
 32 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 "I have just been drinking tea with Jenkyns" 
 (later Master of Balliol), "who is exceedingly gra- 
 cious, and desires to be particularly remembered to 
 you all. Hamilton" (Sir William) "has been in 
 college all summer, has read through Aristotle's 
 Organon, and all the works of Hippocrates. I wish 
 I could say that I had done as much, but I hope to 
 make up for my idle summer by my diligent winter. 
 I need not bid you write, for you know your letters 
 are my greatest comfort in my progress. My 
 travelling expenses were exactly 10 after I left 
 you. Ever your affectionate and dutiful son, 
 
 " J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 To return to the old coaching days as described 
 in " Reginald Dalton." At last, they drive into 
 Oxford, " everything wearing the impress of a 
 grave, peaceful stateliness hoary towers, antique 
 battlements, airy porticoes, majestic colonnades, 
 lofty poplars and elms, . . . wide, spacious, solemn 
 streets, . . . everywhere a monastic stillness and 
 Gothic grandeur." Alas, in the words of minstrel 
 Burne, which Lockhart liked to quote, alas ! 
 
 " To see the changes of this age 
 Which fleeting Time procureth ! " 
 
 We may readily imagine how fair Oxford seemed 
 after the black quadrangle and heavy air of Glasgow. 
 In one of October's crystal days, with the elms not
 
 BALLIOL 33 
 
 yet stripped of their gold, and with the crimson pall 
 of red leaves swathing the towers of Magdalene, 
 Oxford looks almost as beautiful as in the pomp of 
 spring. To the freshman care is unknown, and the 
 shadow of the schools does not overcast his new 
 liberty. 
 
 Lockhart, in his novel, makes his hero fall in 
 with a town and gown row, such as his own soul 
 delighted not in, also with a Catholic Scottish priest, 
 Father Leslie, sketched from a friend of his own. 
 The priest had been out in the '45, according 
 to the novel ; if he really fought for the Prince 
 he must have been a very old man in 1809, but 
 many of the Highland army were boys. In any 
 case Father Leslie could remember how " the 
 Honourable James Talbot was tried in an English 
 court, tried like a felon, for being in Catholic 
 orders," and "good Mr. Maloney was sentenced to 
 perpetual imprisonment because he pleaded guilty." 
 The novel introduces us also to the actual Balliol 
 recluse, with "the meagre extenuated hand," who 
 read no modern and few English books, who saw 
 no newspapers, and had no pupil but Lockhart's 
 senior and friend, William Hamilton, not yet recog- 
 nised as baronet. Lockhart shows us also the large 
 dining-room in the Master's lodgings, still extant, 
 and very familiar, not only to Balliol men, but to 
 Mr. Jowett's many guests from all quarters. The 
 Master's surroundings, his parrot and poodle, gown, 
 "grand canonicals and grizzle-wig," may not have 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 34 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 been those of Dr. Parsons, the actual head, but 
 these details help to mark the differences in cos- 
 tume and manners between our Oxford and that 
 of 1809. 
 
 The boy who came up to Balliol in 1 809 did not, 
 of course, enter the huge, polyglot, cosmopolitan 
 college which Balliol has become. Except the 
 Scotch set, in which he chiefly lived, the men were 
 not industrious, nor perhaps much distinguished, 
 as a rule, in any way. The modern activity is 
 the result of the exertions of Dr. Jenkyns (Lock- 
 hart's tutor), of Dr. Scott, and of Mr. Jowett. 
 Lockhart's friends were Mr. J. H. Christie (and 
 a better friend no man ever had), Mr. James 
 Traill, of the old Orcadian family (father of Mr. 
 Traill, the well-known and accomplished living 
 wit), Mr. Alexander Scott, a son of Scott of Ben- 
 holme, and Mr. Alexander Nicoll, later Regius 
 Professor of Hebrew, and Canon of Christ Church. 
 Archdeacon Williams ("Caradoc," "Taffey," and 
 so forth), who performed Sir Walter's funeral ser- 
 vice, the Rev. G. R. Gleig (Chaplain General to the 
 Forces), and Sir William Hamilton were also among 
 Lockhart's intimates. 
 
 All Lockhart's undergraduate companions except 
 Scott, who died early, and Sir William Hamilton, 
 remained his close and constant friends for life. 
 From Sir William Hamilton alone he was estranged, 
 for some reason which neither could ever bear to 
 mention. Yet in Hamilton, Lockhart never lost
 
 BALLIOL 35 
 
 interest ; both " retained," says Professor Veitch, Sir 
 William's biographer, "warm feelings towards each 
 other." " I know not what miserable provincial 
 differences ultimately broke their friendship," says 
 Mr. Christie. 1 The estrangement must apparently 
 have occurred before the writing of " Peter's Letters" 
 (1819), in which Sir William Hamilton is not 
 mentioned. " Lockhart more than once began to 
 tell me the story, but the subject was too painful 
 to him, and he always broke off without finish- 
 ing. Hamilton, as far as I know, was the only 
 friend that Lockhart ever lost, but his admiration 
 and his real affection for him, I well know, never 
 ceased." 1 The cause of estrangement, according 
 to Mr. Lawrence Lockhart, was trivial : a hasty 
 word of Hamilton's. 
 
 This is very strong testimony to Lockhart's 
 power of gaining affection, and to his own loyalty. 
 The man is indeed both true-hearted and fortunate, 
 whom neither death bereaves, nor temper or cir- 
 cumstance deprives, of these friends who made the 
 happiness of his youth, and with whose memory, 
 when death divides us, it is dearer to dwell than in 
 
 1 " Memoir of Sir William Hamilton," p. 40. 
 
 2 So writes Christie, who knew Lockhart for forty years. Miss Mar- 
 tineau, who did not know Lockhart, avers that his friendships "were 
 formed in flattery, and broken offby treachery. . . . Free and constant 
 friendship he never enjoyed, nor seemed to desire " (" Biographical 
 Sketches," pp. 349-350). This was published as soon as Lockhart 
 was dead. Mr. Charles Sumner is in the same tale. " Lockhart has 
 not a friend," he writes in his correspondence.
 
 36 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 the society of the living. For they are never to be 
 replaced, although 
 
 " The primrose yet is dear, 
 The primrose of the later year 
 As not unlike the flower of spring." 
 
 Among these Balliol friends, the central friend- 
 ship was quadrilateral, as in Dumas's famous novel. 
 There was Lockhart, "the Hidalgo," who might 
 stand for Athos ; the clerical Williams was the 
 amatory Aramis of the four, and, if Traill was the 
 Porthos, Christie was the d'Artagnan of the little 
 band. It is touching to see how, throughout life, 
 they who had met as boys at Balliol stood by each 
 other in good and evil, "fall back, fall edge," ever 
 helpful, loyal, and united. 
 
 In the Quarterly Review, vol. cxvi. pp. 447-449, 
 Mr. Christie thus describes Lockhart : 
 
 " I first saw our common friend John Lockhart 
 at Balliol College, in, I think, the year 1809, I being 
 his senior at the college by one year, and two years 
 his senior in age. But we were both boys ; for I, 
 the elder of the two, had not completed my seven- 
 teenth year. At that age we are not critical 
 observers of character ; we judge of those with 
 whom we associate by the pleasure we take in 
 their companionship, and look no further. But I 
 recollect that Lockhart was an excellent Greek and 
 Latin scholar when he came to college, and imme- 
 diately made his general talents felt by his tutor and 
 by his companions. His most remarkable charac-
 
 MR. CHRISTIE ON LOCKHART 37 
 
 teristic, however, was the exuberant animal spirits 
 which found vent in constant flashes of merriment, 
 in season and out of season, brightened and pointed 
 with wit and satire, at once droll and tormenting. 
 Even a lecture-room was not exempt from these 
 irrepressible sallies, and our tutor, who was formal 
 and wished to be grave, but had not the gift of 
 gravity, never felt safe or at ease in the presence of 
 his mercurial pupil. 
 
 " Lockhart with great readiness comprehended 
 the habits and tone of the new society in which he 
 was placed, and was not for a moment wanting in 
 any of its requirements ; but this adaptive power 
 never interfered with the marked individuality of 
 his own character and bearing. He was at once a 
 favourite and formidable ; his tongue and his pen 
 were alike ready, and both employed for merriment 
 and keen satire. In those days he was an incessant 
 caricaturist ; his papers, his books, and the walls of 
 his rooms were covered with portraitures of his 
 friends and himself so like as to be unmistakable, 
 with an exaggeration of any peculiarity so droll and 
 so provoking as to make the picture anything but 
 flattering to the self-love of its subject. This pro- 
 pensity was so strong in him, that I was surprised 
 when in after life he repressed it at once and for 
 ever. In the last thirty years of his life I do not 
 think he ever drew a caricature. In those days I 
 mean in college days he was a frequent writer of 
 verses, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in English, 
 and not unfrequently in both. Though Lockhart
 
 38 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 partook with thorough relish of all the pleasures 
 and amusements of an undergraduate, he was far 
 from neglecting the proper business of the place. 
 He was always a diligent reader made himself 
 thoroughly acquainted with the Greek Theatre, 
 Homer, Pindar, Herodotus, and Thucydides. I 
 mention these, because his diligent and careful study 
 of them fell under my own personal knowledge not 
 as stating the limits of his acquaintance with Greek 
 literature. He was, in fact, an excellent classical 
 scholar, and also read French, Italian, and Spanish 
 in the days of which I now speak : German was a 
 later acquisition. He was curious in classical and 
 also in British antiquities, and much attached to 
 heraldic and genealogical questions. I think his 
 first publication was an article on heraldry, in the 
 ' Edinburgh Encyclopaedia.' County histories were 
 favourite reading with him. I remember his telling 
 me of his being placed at dinner by an American 
 lady, who explained to him that her husband (a 
 gentleman of good position in the States) was 
 descended from an ancient Scotch family of great 
 distinction. 'Little,' said he, 'did the worthy lady 
 suspect that I was a good enough Scotch genealo- 
 gist to know that her husband's name was never 
 borne by any gentleman's family in Scotland.' 
 
 " But though Lockhart was an excellent scholar 
 and a man of great and various knowledge, he was 
 not, I apprehend, what would be called 'a learned 
 man/ We had only one learned man in our (in 
 those days) small college : I mean the late Sir
 
 LETTER TO MRS. LOCKHART 39 
 
 William Hamilton. He was already pursuing those 
 studies which ultimately gave him a high place 
 among those who dwell in the higher regions of 
 learned speculation." 
 
 On December 4, 1809, Lockhart praises Hamilton, 
 in a letter to his mother : 
 
 " MY DEAR MOTHER, Since I wrote last, nothing, 
 I am afraid, has occurred here worth the telling 
 you. I still continue to like this place much better 
 than I could have expected, and, indeed, as well as 
 I could any situation whatever, which places me at 
 a distance from my best and dearest friends. The 
 first term of my Oxonian course ends to-morrow or 
 next day. The six weeks have fled over my head 
 since I came here, and I can assure you, on looking 
 back, they appear to be hardly equal to so many 
 hours. We have next the prospect of a six weeks' 
 vacation, during which, if we except attendance on 
 Mr. Jenkyns' lectures, no change whatever will take 
 place in my mode of spending my time. 
 
 " Most of my English acquaintances leave college 
 next week for a considerable time, and I must say 
 that I shall have some reason to regret their 
 absence, though the best friend I have got here, 
 Mr. Hamilton, is more to me than all the rest put 
 together ten times over, and I am happy to say he 
 does not intend to be more than a few days with 
 his mother in London during this vacation. I am 
 just expecting a long letter from Lawrence and
 
 40 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Johnnie, and if they knew how happy every letter 
 from home makes me, I am persuaded they would 
 not delay the fulfilment of their promises. 
 
 "Yesterday the Sacrament was dispensed here. 
 Mr. Jenkyns had a little conversation with me, 
 according to papa's desire, in the morning. In 
 answer to his request that I should say something 
 about the sermons here, I have to tell you that the 
 only sort of religious instruction which I think at 
 all worth attending to is, the two lectures on the 
 Creed, which Mr. Mouseley (? Mozley) gives every 
 Saturday and Sunday evening in the chapel. They 
 are, on the whole, excessively good and sensible ; 
 as for the sermons in St. Mary's, I think there is 
 hardly one good out of ten. We had one last 
 Sunday on the Catholic Bill, and another the day 
 before on the Greek of Augustine ! 
 
 "Mr. Jenkyns also lectures to us a little on the 
 Sunday forenoons, but I am sorry to say milk and 
 water are the articles which chiefly compose his 
 instructions, though, I am sure, he is really a good 
 man, and has been as yet exceedingly kind to me. 
 I have dined once and drunk tea once at Mr. 
 Ireland's he is very kind and polite. He made me 
 a very obliging offer of supplying me with money if 
 I at any time should stand in need of his assistance 
 in that way. Certainly his family is as original a 
 picture as one could see. . . . 
 
 " Hamilton expects his brother Tom down to 
 spend a few days this week. . . . If he be as agree-
 
 SCOTTISH EPISCOPALIANS 41 
 
 able as his brother we shall have a very pleasant 
 time of it. 1 ... I hope you will excuse this desultory 
 scrawl, as I am very much pressed with some trouble- 
 some analyses. Believe me, your ever affectionate 
 and dutiful son, JOHN G. LOCKHART." 
 
 On February 20, 1810, he writes to a Glasgow 
 collegian : 
 
 " I mentioned in my letters already that the 
 Scotchmen now are not in general so much to my 
 mind as the others the fact is, if I except my- 
 self and two others, they are all connected with the 
 Episcopal Church of Scotland, and a great deal more 
 bigoted than any Englishman I have yet met with. 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow they view in no other light 
 than as so many nurses of infidelity and scepticism. 
 They are all very civil to me, however, and I am 
 very happy with one of them, a son of M'Farlane, 
 the Bishop of Ross. I rather think you will re- 
 member a son of Cocky 's John Young who was 
 an exhibitioner in this college, and has now a 
 curacy in Yorkshire. I met with him here very 
 often in the month of December, and think him a 
 very pleasant man indeed. His father has always 
 behaved to him with his accustomed sourness, and I 
 daresay he is very ill off, with a small salary of ^80 
 or so, for not a farthing will the old boy give him, 
 although we all know that with his wife's portion, 
 
 1 Tom Hamilton, author of " Cyril Thornton ;" the original Ensign 
 O'Doherty in Blackwood.
 
 42 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 &c., &c., he might spare him a good deal more 
 than he would require. Dr. Hutchinson's son is a 
 curate in Norfolkshire, and esteemed stark mad by 
 every man in Oxford. He made his appearance 
 here at the election, and behaved in a most absurd 
 manner. The truth is, there cannot be a more 
 foolish thing than for any Scotchman in ordinary 
 circumstances to enter into the English Church. If 
 he does, he has little chance for any better lot than 
 a chapel in Scotland or a curacy in England. All 
 college preferment (and in many instances a great 
 deal of patronage, vested in the Master and Fellows) 
 is greedily swallowed up by those who have it to 
 dispose of, and it would be a thing quite contrary 
 to etiquette to make a Scotchman a Fellow. Their 
 reason for this, they say, is, that such is the known 
 partiality all Scotchmen have for their own country, 
 that if they once got a footing in any college they 
 would elect none but Scotchmen, and the whole 
 power would shortly be confined to them. 
 
 " Nearly half of the time is now spent during 
 which I must remain here. I have spent it much 
 more happily than I could have expected, but I 
 must now begin to be very anxious for the month 
 of July. . . . Yours affectionately, 
 
 " J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 Scotch Fellows are no longer ruled out at Balliol, 
 where the Master himself is a Scot of distinction 
 (1896).
 
 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON 43 
 
 Lockhart's earliest known letter from Oxford was 
 dated November i, 1809. With the usual bad luck 
 of his early correspondence it seems no longer to 
 be extant, though, in 1869, extracts from it, and 
 from several other epistles from Oxford, were 
 published in Mr. Veitch's " Life of Sir William 
 Hamilton." 1 Lockhart says "to his father," (?) " I 
 don't know how I should have managed here at all 
 had it not been for W. Hamilton." Six years his 
 senior in age, and considerably his senior in stand- 
 ing, Hamilton, says Lockhart, "has behaved to me 
 with all the affection of a brother. Since papa left 
 us I have been always with him or he with me, at 
 breakfast, tea, &c. He makes me carry over my 
 book after evening prayers, and read it beside him 
 all night," quiet work for a freshman. Hamilton 
 advised him as to his associates, advised him in the 
 purchase of books, and against attending balls given 
 "to country Jennies." 
 
 In November 1810 Lockhart chronicles Hamil- 
 ton's success in the schools. According to Mr. 
 Gleig, there was a time when Lockhart took to 
 hunting(as we might guess from "Reginald Dalton"), 
 and probably spent a good deal of money with the 
 Charley Symonds of the period. Hamilton remon- 
 strated, and communicated with Dr. Lockhart, thus 
 " diverting his friend from pursuits which might 
 have spoiled such a nature as his." He even 
 joined a boat club, as every one does now, but 
 
 1 Of these letters only one is known to the biographer.
 
 44 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 he does not seem to have been distinguished on 
 the river, and his letters to Mr. Christie say nothing 
 about hunting. 
 
 In " Reginald Dalton " Lockhart describes fast 
 life at Oxford, the dinner in hall, anything but fast ; 
 the gorging of periwigged Dons (how unlike the 
 ascetic meal of the modern high table at Balliol !) ; 
 the wine in a man's rooms, " from eighteen to 
 twenty -two is the prime of a man's life as far as the 
 bottle is concerned ; " the " sconcing " in a silver 
 fox-head cup, the supper of oysters and brawn ; the 
 bowl of bishop, and the final heroic feat of blocking 
 up the chapel gate with a cart-load of coals, they 
 used snow in the biographer's time. 
 
 This was an out-college man's wine. Lockhart's 
 letters tell of no such achievements, but the public 
 expects riot in a University novel. One St. 
 Andrew's Day he does commemorate, in a letter to 
 Christie, then at Bristol : 
 
 " BALLIOL, Monday. 
 
 " MY DEAREST CHRISTIE, I thought to have an- 
 swered your letter by our friend Tom Cornish, but 
 a paucity of the ready detains him here, so I shall 
 send down songs (and what not ?) by him, but 
 must allow myself to describe our St. Andrew's 
 Eve I forget minutiae. I believe we went there 
 individually without any great expectations as to 
 the matter of fun. For (old Leslie, Hamilton, 
 Baillie, yourself, and the Traills being gone besides
 
 ST. ANDREW'S DAY 45 
 
 Annan, who was hurried to London that very day, 
 and Hannay, whom nobody missed), we looked out 
 in reality for an evening of port and dulness. 
 But di meliora. A man named Taylor of Brazen- 
 nose came there, and M 'Donald, and MacGowan of 
 University ; and Jack Jenkyns, to make a display 
 of his boarding-school-governess sort of authority, 
 issued his mandate against dining in college ; so 
 we took to Dickesons', where nine men had a 
 famous dinner for the small sum of ^8, 8s. We 
 went on with great harmony till about eight o'clock. 
 Taylor, who is a bachelor and a true blue, pro- 
 posed drinking in solemn silence this toast, ' The 
 illustrious memory of the greatest champion of 
 Scottish liberty, civil and religious, the Rev. 
 John Knox, minister of the gospel in the Tolbooth 
 Kirk, Edinburgh.' Jack looked blue, and harangued 
 talis. ' Sir ' (on his legs) ' I hope, sir, I have lived 
 long enough, sir, in the world to drink out of 
 respect to you the devil if you give it. But, sir, 
 I would rather drink all the devils in hell than 
 John Knox, who dung down the cathedral kirks 
 and braw houses of all the Bishops in Scotland. 
 For, sir, I, though not a member of this University, 
 in so high a situation as the other members of this 
 glorious assembly I am an antiquarian a very 
 lover of antiquities ! Yet I will drink John Knox, 
 if you on this insist.' 
 
 " Taylor replied, and after rejoinders, replies, and 
 replications unnumbered, changed his toast to ' The
 
 46 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Brigs of Ayr.' My turn came, and I gave ' The 
 memory of the Prince,' l and I understand, spoke 
 upon him and the merits of his cause with un- 
 bounded applause for I forgot all this in the 
 morning. And the whole party drunk this upon 
 their knees, and Jack reeled home, and so did we all, 
 about half-past eleven. 
 
 " Nicoll went off at half-past seven crying 
 
 ' Oh me when shall I sober me ! ' 
 
 " Tom can expatiate on all these things. 
 " I heard from Hamilton the other day, he is 
 reading law at Edinburgh." 
 
 A prank played by Lockhart on a tutor is 
 remembered and recorded by Mr. Gleig in his 
 Quarterly article. The worthy tutor made a show 
 of Oriental knowledge, so Lockhart wrote some 
 English squibs on him in Hebrew characters, and 
 handed them in as college exercises. The tutor did 
 not discover the fraud, but the Master did. The 
 pupil was once set, as an imposition, a long chapter 
 in the Spectator, to do into Latin. This he accom- 
 plished at great speed, neither missing lecture nor 
 depriving himself of his amusements. He once 
 mentions being "crossed" thrice, crossed in hall 
 and buttery, so that he was cut off from meat 
 and drink. Men were usually " crossed " if they 
 
 1 The Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
 
 "CROSSED" 47 
 
 failed to attend the Dean when "drawn." The old 
 English custom of drawing (or "hauling") is con- 
 ducted under the following rules : You do not 
 attend chapel, or lecture, or you commit some similar 
 offence. The Dean then sends the messenger 
 for you, and he draws you, if he can, and you go 
 before the Dean, and there make such excuses for 
 your sins as circumstances dictate, or fancy sug- 
 gests. But if you, detecting the approach of the 
 messenger, sport your oak, or hide in a cupboard 
 or under a table, he cannot legally draw you, but 
 returns bredouilld. The Dean's next move is to 
 cross you, and starve you into submission, and if 
 that fails, he can "gate" you. Such are the con- 
 ditions of crosses, and in accumulating three at once 
 Lockhart gives proof of a certain lack of discipline. 
 
 Of ladies' society he probably saw very little : 
 nobody did in Oxford till recently. He did not 
 care for what he did see at parties where the men 
 wore cap and gown, and played cards (the Dons, 
 that is) in enormous wigs and flowing bands. 
 The fair were either elderly, or had learned " cold 
 cautiousness" by many transitory flirtations. In 
 "Peter's Letters" Lockhart talks of " spending all the 
 mornings after lecture in utter lounging, eating ice 
 at Jubb's, flirting with Miss Butler, bathing in the 
 Cherwell." After dinner (for which, at Merton at 
 least, they dressed) men drank wine in the gardens, 
 and then took a boat "at Mother Hall's," and rowed 
 improvised races to Iffley, or Sandford. Cheese
 
 48 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 and bread, and lettuces, with a bowl of bishop 
 (mulled port), were the modest supper. Cricket 
 was not what it is now : there was no University 
 match. Runs across country, with leaping poles, 
 were a common amusement. Hamilton once rigged 
 up a perfectly normal and " supraliminal " ghost, 
 visible to the least sensitive, with a skull and a 
 sheet. 
 
 Studious men read very widely and freely, 
 especially in Aristotle and Greek philosophy at 
 large. Lockhart also studied English, the Eliza- 
 bethans in particular, Italian, French, German, and 
 Spanish. In fact, he qualified himself for the pro- 
 fession of letters in a manner now very unusual. 
 His knowledge was already such as befits a 
 critic. 
 
 Mr. Gleig says, on the authority of Mr. Lawrence 
 Lockhart but the scantiness of Lockhart's cor- 
 respondence does not illustrate the subject that 
 he wished to join the Spanish in their struggle 
 against the French. He even offered to take 
 Anglican orders, and go out as a chaplain, if his 
 father would consent. But Dr. Lockhart had a 
 son in the army already, and refused his permission. 
 Lockhart's distaste for arms was confined to those 
 of the flesh, which are used at town and gown 
 rows. 
 
 The following letter to his mother displays no 
 martial sympathy for Spain, or for Mr. Gleig, who 
 did take up arms in the Iberian cause :
 
 AN OLD HAND AT THE COCKPIT. OXFORD 
 (From a Water-Colour Drawing by J. G. Lockhart.)
 
 LETTERS TO MRS. LOCKHART 49 
 
 [Postmark, Dec. 3, 1812.] 
 
 " MY DEAR MOTHER, . . . My life goes on in 
 the old way to which I am now quite accustomed, 
 and in which I believe I may be as happy as I am 
 capable of being anywhere, unless when certain 
 homeward-formed recollections obtrude on the 
 privacy. My summer sojourn here has, I hope, been 
 very useful to me. I have acquired the Italian, 
 Spanish, and Portuguese languages ; the two former 
 so as to read with the utmost ease, and the last 
 more slightly, only from the want of books ; and I 
 am now busily engaged in Greek and Latin for my 
 examination. I have already read everything which 
 I mean to take up, but must do this often before I 
 venture. . . . Who is likely to succeed Gleig here ? 
 That gentleman has embarked into the military life, 
 by grasping at a pair of colours in the 3rd garrison 
 battalion, stationed at the Cove of Cork. Believe 
 me, as ever, your affectionate dutiful son, 
 
 "J. G. L. 
 
 " Balliol, Nov. 28." 
 
 Here is a rather earlier epistle : 
 
 [Postmark, Oxford, Oct. 3] 1812. 
 
 " MY DEAREST MOTHER, I would have been un- 
 willing to delay writing to some of you so long, but 
 have put off day by day in the expectation of letters 
 from you. . . . Our term commences this day fort- 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 5 o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 night, and Jenkyns has already made his appearance. 
 I have no pleasure in the prospect, for excepting 
 one or two friends, for whom I have every reason 
 to entertain the most sincere affection, few places 
 contain so few desirable to me as Balliol. At 
 present we have nothing here but electioneering in 
 all its glories you are happily spared all such 
 spectacles in the North. A namesake of ours, a 
 glib lawyer a silly country gentleman, who is just 
 about to complete his folly by a hopeless effort a 
 young noble in the Marlborough interest, and a 
 worthy Burdettite, summoned hither by the suf- 
 frages of a few blackguards, are the four candidates, 
 and among them they continue at least to din our 
 ears day and night with drums and fifes, and 
 drunken halloos. 
 
 " I was not a little astonished to see advertised, 
 in the end of the last Edinburgh Review, ' Docu- 
 ments in favour of the Rev. D. D., junr., St. Cuth- 
 bert's, as touching the late election for a Hebrew 
 Professor in Edinburgh.' Mr. Murray, who has 
 succeeded, I have long heard mentioned as abso- 
 lutely one of the very first Oriental scholars in 
 
 Europe. Could the fat descendant of the 
 
 be so presuming as to stand against such a man on 
 the strength of a little ill-digested Greek and Latin, 
 and about as much Hebrew, I daresay, as his 
 Aunty Betty ? O vanity ! If I might quote Latin 
 to you, Ne sutor, &c. Let Mr. Davy stick to the 
 West Kirk, and the auld wifies, and the Religious
 
 LETTER TO CHRISTIE 51 
 
 Monitor. But Hebrew professorships, worthy man ! 
 I beg you would, by some means, contrive among 
 you to let me hear a little more frequently from 
 you ; and when you do write, I wish you would 
 give me more domestic news. I am very sure 
 Lawrence's marrow bones need not prevent him 
 from finding abundance of time to write me, at 
 least every fortnight. Yours most affectionately, 
 
 "J. G. L." 
 
 Of Lockhart's letters from Oxford, very few seem 
 to be extant, and most of these are addressed to 
 Mr. Christie. The date is seldom given, and the 
 post-mark is usually illegible. In 1812 he writes 
 " I am going on gloriously with the Italian. I 
 expect in about a week to attack Ariosto ; meantime 
 I have read several novels of Boccaccio and 
 Macchiavel, and am now at the ' Del Principe ' of 
 the latter, which certainly is one of the most 
 wonderful productions I ever read. . . . Our races 
 are going on, but it is wet, and I could see nothing 
 so well worth looking at as Nancy Hodges." 
 
 From Balliol (no date) he complains of Christie's 
 absence. " Perhaps Knight is with you. Heavens ! 
 a small degree of Germanic sentimentality would 
 be enough to make me crazy at the idea. You 
 two, talking, spouting, scandalising, discussing and 
 debating, and reading Southey I, pining in a 
 corner, without one soul worth twopence within 
 a mile of me, that is, except Nicoll. ... I make
 
 52 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 myself very busy, and verily believe that I shall say, 
 olim, ' meminisse juvat' ' 
 
 If we possessed more of Lockhart's letters to his 
 family, written during his residence at Oxford, or 
 his letters to Hamilton, after Hamilton went down, 
 many details might be added to the story of his 
 college life. But eighty years after date, the epistles 
 of a man's salad days are hard to come by. They 
 must usually contain much the same sort of matter, 
 records of work and play, of freaks and friendships, 
 of studies, literary tastes, aspirations towards the 
 future. We do see Lockhart, by instinct, qualifying 
 himself to be, what he became, a man of letters. 
 His linguistic studies were wide, perhaps in modern 
 Oxford unexampled. The language and literature 
 of the Latin races are now little read in Oxford, 
 with the exception of French. The new organisa- 
 tion of examinations is thought to discourage wide 
 general reading, and to make a man the slave of 
 his note-book, the echo of a tutor's or a coach's 
 lectures. In some opinions this restriction is little 
 more than an excuse made by students who have no 
 instinctive bent towards letters. But in Lockhart's 
 time men were certainly left more to themselves, 
 and were less fretted with lectures, examinations, 
 college exercises. Lockhart excuses himself to 
 Christie as a bad correspondent by reason of the 
 scarcity of writing materials. 
 
 "It is not so easy to supply oneself with such 
 things at a moment's notice, as it is when a hundred
 
 ITALIAN STUDIES 53 
 
 careless divils like yourself leave open doors. But 
 now I need not say with what unpillageable neigh- 
 bours I have to do, and this beautiful sheet, natty 
 pen, and delightful Japan ink, are borrowed, aperto 
 die, from that superabundant store of stationery 
 dedicated to the manufacture of the ' Theatrum 
 Naturae.' 
 
 " Oh how I sympathise with all your groans ! 
 I wish the ' Miseries ' had never been written " (he 
 refers to a then popular work on the minor Miseries 
 of Life). "You and I might have done famously 
 as Sensitive and Testy." 
 
 He complains that, if he asks Nicoll to tea and 
 talk, Nicoll brings three folios, and remains absorbed 
 in them, asking with an insipid smile, "What puts 
 you out of humour ? " so that you have no resource 
 but " sitting in the most joyless state of malignity 
 and spleen." 
 
 So here we have an early confession to the truth 
 of that literary commonplace, " the malignity of 
 Lockhart ! " 
 
 " I don't know what good genius whispered in my 
 ear to begin Italian, but I am sure I owe to him 
 every enjoyment of the last six weeks." This hard- 
 hearted being, in fact, was pining like the poetic dove 
 in the absence of his mate. Bristol, where Christie 
 was living, he illiberally calls " an abominable stinking 
 stye of artisans." " I have read two-thirds of Tasso, 
 and a few cantos of the Inferno, besides several
 
 54 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 sonnets of Petrarch. I am sure if you will just 
 commence, you will swear that you never read 
 poetry so bewitching. Spells and magicians, knights 
 and damsels, woods, castles, and enchanted palaces 
 pass before my eyes in such hasty succession that I 
 am most happily enabled to forget, for hours together, 
 the many nibbling worthless cares which continue to 
 render me at times the most miserable of promeneurs 
 solitaires. My dearest Christie, if you have any 
 compassion in you, don't let your letters any longer 
 be, like angels' visits, few and far between. Yours 
 most affectionately, 
 
 "J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 The gilded sand is still shining on " the delight- 
 ful Japan ink" of "these fallen leaves that keep 
 their green," the letters of the dead, and of the 
 undying affection. 
 
 On a dateless Saturday of March, Lockhart sends 
 to Christie "a copy of the ' Gerusalleme Liberata,' 
 as a small mark of my affection, in the same 
 manner that Mr. Random presented to Mr. Morgan 
 his sleeve buttons, and I hope you will, notwith- 
 standing that I don't admire some of Wordsworth's 
 sonnets so much as you, admire as much as I do 
 the Italian gentleman." He announces a friend's 
 engagement to "Miss Sophy," and declares that 
 she is too pretty for a single life. "You will know 
 that, however delightful it may have been to hear 
 Greek comedies, or Greek tragedies, acted at Athens
 
 THE CLASSICS 55 
 
 (which fact, like most other things, I take on trust), 
 there is little of fun or ecstasy either in the repeated 
 perusal of these gentlemen's writings nowadays, still 
 less in reading long prosy accounts about skirmishes 
 between armies, which could with difficulty mount 
 even a corporal's guard at St. James's, and least 
 amusement of all, in devouring Commentaries about 
 morality and politics, subjects so much better under- 
 stood since the days of Christ and the French 
 Revolution." 
 
 From these derogatory observations on the great 
 writers of antiquity, he turns to scandal about the 
 Prince Regent and his wife. The schools were 
 clearly drawing nigh, and the note, at least, indicates 
 the books then read for the schools. 
 
 Christie seems to have suggested a venture in 
 publishing a magazine at Bristol. But, on hearing 
 that money would be needed, Williams and Nicoll 
 withdrew, and Lockhart remarked that he " already 
 owed more than anything less than a Dowager or a 
 miracle can enable me to discharge. . . . 
 
 Hi motus animorum atque haec tentamina tanta 
 Pulveris exiguijactu compressa quiescunt. 
 
 Any mention of coming down with the dust is 
 enough." 
 
 In September 1812, Lockhart apprises Christie 
 of the death of Alexander Scott. " We must all be 
 of one mind that for him afflicted as he was, and 
 good as he was death was the best fate which his
 
 56 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 most tender friends could wish." " Lose no time 
 in coming up hither," he writes to Christie, ill in 
 Bristol, " where you may at least have the comfort 
 of affectionate friends. Your arrival would be to me 
 a most precious relief, for I am left totally alone," 
 the death of his mother having caused Williams to 
 go home. " This sort of misfortune makes most of 
 our grievances appear trifles. I am sure to go 
 home after such an event would be enough to 
 unman any of us." He again entreats Christie to 
 come up " I really consider it altogether impossible 
 to read much, without a suitable seasoning of talk, 
 and talk is scarce. ... I look for Hamilton to be 
 here in a week or two. Would that we might all 
 spend a little time, after the furnace is past, in our 
 old habits, lounging, bathing, port, tea, and then the 
 long, long nights, and every kind of jaw, palaver, 
 criticising, laughing, and so forth. My dearest 
 Christie, do come up, if it is but a month or less, 
 till you must come here to be examined, and do let 
 us have the pleasure of your company for that little 
 space before it," He writes of having received a 
 visit from Signer Belzoni, whom he did not find 
 amusing. This, of course, was years before Belzoni's 
 famous discoveries in Egypt. He chronicles the 
 vanity of " Cadwallader " (Williams), and his tales 
 of ladies who fell in love with him "long before / 
 thought of it." Hamilton, he says, has just read 
 through all the "Scholia" on Homer, and is perus- 
 ing ancient books on magic. These are an empty
 
 DE RE MAGIC A 57 
 
 study, but Sir William, in later life, declared that in 
 mesmerism " there is a reality which deserves far 
 more investigation than it has hitherto received at 
 the hands of men of science," and he quotes " Die 
 Seherin von Prevorst," as "a very curious book," 
 which it undeniably is. "He seriously considers it 
 as worth his while," says Lockhart, "to pore over 
 Wierus and Bodinus, and all the believers in witch- 
 craft from St. Augustine downwards." A fellow 
 student in re magica may agree with Lockhart, who 
 seems to have had no sympathy for pursuits which 
 attracted Hamilton as they attracted Scott. 
 
 One Balliol letter describes a coolness with a 
 friend, followed by too great heat. "He getting 
 fiery insulted me most grossly. I was so fortunate 
 as to keep my temper all the time, and he called on 
 me next morning after breakfast, and made every 
 apology. ... I confess I thought myself ill-treated 
 but it shall not be my fault." In fact, this college 
 friendship was only ended by Lockhart's death. 
 " My reading has been such as gains no credit here, 
 for modern literature is here, as you well know, a 
 dead letter." He wishes he could get congenial 
 work, and fears " his good father " thinks him extra- 
 vagant. He wishes to support himself, while read- 
 ing for the English bar. Williams has passed a 
 triumphant examination, as Lockhart himself did in 
 1813. He caricatured the examiners in the schools, 
 but this was not "unparalleled audacity," as Mr. 
 Gleig supposed. The Master and his tutor were
 
 58 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 full of congratulations, but there was no chance of a 
 Fellowship. Indeed Lockhart is said by legend to 
 have inscribed, beneath a notice of a Balliol Fellow- 
 ship Examination- 
 No SCOTCH NEED APPLY! 
 
 He had, by the end of his nineteenth year, 
 in which he got his first class, read widely in 
 the Classics. His habit of writing "lady's Greek 
 without the accents" would now be reckoned un- 
 scholarly ; and, though a rapid and elegant writer 
 of Latin, he never was a classical scholar in the 
 strict Oxford, still less in the Cambridge sense. 
 But he had learned to know the Greek mind, the 
 Greek thought ; he had been in Armida's bowers, 
 and had laid, at least, the foundation of his Spanish 
 and German lore. Already, it seems, literature was 
 being contemplated by him, not as the task of a 
 life, but as a pleasant gagne-pain till he had quali- 
 fied himself for the bar. He had shown sense and 
 discretion in his Oxford life industry, and the 
 power of making and retaining friends. His letters 
 as yet do no justice to his humour, nor have they 
 the vivacity which we might expect. A good deal 
 of young man's banter has been omitted, as in no 
 way characteristic of his style and fancy. Hardly 
 one allusion to politics occurs in the fragments of 
 his correspondence while at Oxford ; nothing at all 
 points to any party leanings. His real interests
 
 LEAVING OXFORD 59 
 
 were friendships and literature. Like Clough's 
 hero, he 
 
 " Went in his youth and the sunshine rejoicing, to 
 Nuneham and Godstowe." 
 
 " The first step on arriving at Godstowe," says 
 Mr. Connell (a friend of Lockhart's, later a pro- 
 fessor at St. Andrews), " was always to see the eels 
 taken alive out of the boxes with holes in which 
 they were kept in the river. After that, till all 
 was ready, we usually had a match at leaping and 
 vaulting over gates." Both Lockhart and Hamilton 
 were great swimmers at Parson's Pleasure, on the 
 Cherwell. 
 
 The happy years before the entry on real life 
 were few in Lockhart's case, but happy they were 
 and well employed. He had won knowledge and 
 won friends. About them, in his surviving letters 
 from Oxford, there is no satire. They compare ill, 
 perhaps, in his affection, with Christie. Christie and 
 he were David and Jonathan, Amis and Amiles. 
 There is a little good-natured banter of the per- 
 sonal vanity of one youth, and more quantity than 
 quality of intellect is ascribed to him. But there 
 is no display of the fangs of the Scorpion.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 GLASGOW, 1813-1815 
 
 Early disadvantages of Lockhart. His loneliness. Reflections. 
 Letters to Mr. Christie. The Theatre in London. Miss 
 Duncan. The Schools. Anecdotes of Scotch clergymen. The 
 stool of repentance. Dulness of Glasgow. Admiration of 
 Wordsworth and Byron. Mr. Christie's projected novel. 
 Lockhart's novel. Scotch manners. Mediaeval studies. Double 
 authorship of " Waverley." " Wattie a fecund fellow." Lockhart's 
 own novel postponed. "Lockhart will blaze!" His neglect of 
 his own poetical powers. Sordid ignorance of Glasgow. 
 Hamilton and the Humanity Chair in Glasgow. Lockhart's 
 novel. " The Odontist." Solitude. Glasgow society. A 
 commercial ball. Count Pulltuski. " Gaggery." Dinner with 
 a dentist. Caricature of Pulltuski. Tour after trout. Scheme 
 of an "Oxford Olio." A pun. Anecdotes of the clergy. A 
 Holy Fair. Lockhart goes to Edinburgh to study law. 
 
 To have gained the highest University honours at 
 the age of nineteen, when most undergraduates are 
 only entering college, may seem a fortunate be- 
 ginning of life. But whether it was fortunate in 
 Lockhart's case is a different question. Long after- 
 wards, in a letter to his son Walter, on the choice 
 of a profession, Lockhart regrets that he entered 
 life so young, that his resources were so scanty, and 
 that he had in his family, and among his friends, no 
 
 qualified adviser. The task of such a counsellor 
 
 60
 
 LITERATURE OF THE TIME 61 
 
 would not, at best, have been easy. At nineteen 
 probably Lockhart should have prolonged his 
 education, by studying at a foreign University. 
 But the continent was closed by war ; moreover, he 
 had not money, as will later be seen. Possibly 
 enough he was paying off College debts. 
 
 He had contemplated entering at the English 
 Bar, but, except in his pen, was at a loss for means 
 of support while qualifying. It might, in many 
 ways, have been best for him to go to London. 
 He would have been in contact with the central 
 current of affairs literary, social, and political, in 
 these important and strenuous years. Bonaparte 
 was engaged in his death-struggle with Europe ; he 
 fell, he was exiled, he returned, he was overthrown. 
 Of these events Lockhart, living in Glasgow, writes 
 not one word to Christie in the extant correspond- 
 ence. In literature Byron was pouring out " The 
 Giaour," "Lara," portions of "Childe Harold," and 
 occasional pieces which caused tempests in the 
 Courier and the Chronicle. He was marrying, 
 quarrelling, separating, making all tongues wag, yet 
 how little Lockhart has to say about the Byronic 
 affairs, apart from " Lara," will be observed. Southey 
 was publishing his " Roderick," and, in Glasgow, 
 Lockhart could not get a sight of " Roderick." 
 Scott produced in one year " Waverley" and "The 
 Lord of the Isles." The former seems to have 
 reached Lockhart late ; the latter does not appear 
 to have engaged his interest. Leigh Hunt was
 
 62 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 being imprisoned for libelling the Regent, and was 
 working, later, at his " Tale of Rimini." For the 
 moment Lockhart seems unconcerned about Leigh 
 Hunt. Moore was getting ^3000 for his " Irish 
 Melodies"; Coleridge was borrowing 100 from 
 Byron, on the strength of " Christabel," which 
 just paid, or might have paid, the debt. So far, 
 Lockhart knew little or nothing of Coleridge ; 
 even " The Excursion " reached him late, and 
 "fly-blown by reviews," to use Keats's expression, 
 especially " fly-blown " by Jeffrey with his famous 
 " This will never do." 
 
 Thus Lockhart was remote from the mundane 
 movement, after getting his class, and was living 
 in a society which shared none of his interests. He 
 knew little of the men with whom his own name 
 was to be mixed, and he often knew that little 
 wrong, a cause of errors which still hang heavily 
 on his reputation as a critic. When he went to 
 Edinburgh, in 1815, he was affected by the violent 
 prejudices of politics in a small, but intellectually 
 active set, prejudices which were carried into 
 literature. Had Lockhart been able to betake 
 himself to the English Bar, whether he had suc- 
 ceeded there or not, he would have escaped many 
 prejudices, ignorances, and consequent violences. 
 Through his friend Christie he would have become 
 acquainted with John Hamilton Reynolds, the 
 " young one " of whom Byron speaks kindly (Feb. 
 28, 1814), the author of " Sane," the bosom-friend
 
 LOCKHAKTS BEGINNINGS 63 
 
 of Keats. Very probably Lockhart would have 
 been in the set of Keats, Rice, Reynolds, his own 
 friend Gleig, Bailey, and the rest. He might even 
 have been found inditing sonnets to Leigh Hunt, 
 and supping with Lamb, Hay don, and Hazlitt. 
 His politics and his feud with many of these men 
 was an affair of ignorance and accidental associa- 
 tions in Edinburgh. On the other hand, though 
 Lockhart's life might have been more peaceful, and, 
 in literature, more happily productive, had he gone 
 to London, he never would have been, in that case, 
 the son-in-law, the friend, and the biographer of 
 Scott. 
 
 We cannot well compute the relative loss and 
 gain, to Lockhart himself, of his very early, financi- 
 ally ill-equipped, and in many respects prejudiced 
 and thwarted entry into life and literature. His 
 whole career was coloured by his beginnings in 
 Edinburgh. The town was then a brilliant rival 
 of London as far as literature was concerned, 
 thanks to Jeffrey, Constable, and Scott. There 
 was plenty of activity, but it was an activity of 
 little political cliques, agitated by violent passions. 
 By the age of twenty-three, Lockhart was "a 
 lion," stared at as he walked the streets, petted 
 and dreaded. All this was unfortunate. Mean- 
 while, for two or three years after leaving Oxford, 
 Lockhart was poor, lonely, almost aimless, without 
 companions interested in his interests, learning to 
 scorn things and men contemptible enough to him
 
 64 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 too easy a lesson. Yet, as we shall see, he was 
 industrious, studious, and fertile in projects. The 
 early adviser, whose absence he deplored in later 
 life, would have had a difficult or impossible task. 
 It was not well that Lockhart should linger in 
 Glasgow, nor that Edinburgh should be the scene, 
 and wild Edinburgh Tories the associates, of his 
 apprenticeship in literature. But he could not tax 
 his father's resources by going abroad, or to 
 London, and so his fate was fashioned for him, 
 as for other men, by circumstances. His letters, 
 those of a lad of nineteen, do not deserve the 
 praises later given to his correspondence. They 
 illustrate, however, his tastes, his satirical observa- 
 tion, and his mode of life ; moreover they are, at 
 this time, our only source of information. It is, 
 perhaps, an unavoidable reflection that Lockhart's 
 loneliness, and difficult beginnings, may partly 
 account for his tendency to a rather hostile atti- 
 tude, as of one at least on the defensive, and not 
 prone to welcome all things and all comers with 
 a smile. Throughout life we seem to see him, as 
 it were, on guard, observing all approaches with 
 the keen, wary eye of the swordsman. 
 
 The movements of Lockhart, after he gained his 
 First Class in the early summer of 1813, are most 
 easily traced in his letters to Mr. Christie. As a 
 rule, he resided with his family at Glasgow (where 
 he had no society, but plenty of public libraries full 
 of old books), at Innerkip on the Clyde, in Selkirk-
 
 LETTER TO CHRISTIE 65 
 
 shire, or wherever Dr. Lockhart passed his vaca- 
 tion. The following letter, dated Glasgow, June 
 15, 1813, shows that the anxieties of the schools 
 weighed lightly on Lockhart : 
 
 J. G. LOCKHART to J. H. CHRISTIE. 
 
 "GLASGOW, Tuesday, \yhjune (1813). 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, I hope you will acknow- 
 ledge the veniality of my neglect in not writing 
 to you ere I quitted our Athens on two grounds, 
 ist, That I was remarkably hurried during the few 
 days intervening betwixt my examination and my 
 departure ; 2ndly, That, notwithstanding all the 
 hurry, I actually found time to write you a pretty 
 long epistle, which I committed to the fiery flames 
 in contrition for the worthlessness thereof. This 
 second circumstance indeed shows me and my own 
 modesty in such a charming point of view, that I 
 cannot doubt they would procure for me the for- 
 giveness of a heavier offence. I went up to London 
 with Hamilton, and stayed long enough to see new 
 Miss Drury, and Rae in ' Octavian.' This actor 
 is a very fine young man not accurately handsome, 
 perhaps, but having a light, graceful, and energetic 
 figure, with a fine long muscular neck surmounted 
 (to talk a la Riddell) by a noble countenance, 
 shaded with long hair of the most beautiful jet 
 black. Miss Duncan I saw also. She is married 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 66 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 to a damned gamester, one Davison, and repairs 
 from his seat in the Fleet to Drury Lane every 
 evening to get him bread. When she was in 
 Scotland last she refused a respectable laird of 
 ^1300 a year, and asserted that she would have 
 nothing less than a title. In our passage by sea we 
 enjoyed all the luxuries of a smack in perfection. 
 
 " I have had a letter from Williams this morning 
 in which the classification is detailed. However, 
 Jenkyns is, it seems, to write me with all haste, 
 a favour similar to what you have, I suppose, by 
 this time experienced. I have no earthly thing 
 to find fault with in all this affair except our 
 common enemy, your breast complaint, which has, I 
 perceive, been the sole cause of depriving me of a 
 
 double gratification x I hear Traill has forsan 
 
 proairetically scalded his leg by way of escaping the 
 little wrath of our little hero, Jenkyns. Hamilton 
 has spent the last two nights with me here, and 
 went up this morning to his mother's. I cannot 
 write to Oxford till my father comes home, and 
 enables me to discharge some debt contracted before 
 I came off to Traill. He is in Selkirkshire, where 
 I mean shortly to go ; but in the meantime my 
 mother and the bairns, including Mr. John, are 
 going to Ayrshire for sea-bathing. Address for 
 me nevertheless here, and believe me ever, your 
 most affectionate friend, 
 
 " J. G. LOCKHART. 
 
 1 A couple of lines obliterated by the seal.
 
 STORY OF A MINISTER 67 
 
 " P.S. Hamilton has directed me to make Traill 
 send you down several medical books left behind 
 him, which if you have not alreadv received, you 
 may look for in a short time." 
 
 There are not, indeed, many happier resting- 
 places in a literary life than the haven of a First 
 Class, after years of work and anxiety. The bene- 
 volent sensation of repose produced in the human 
 mind by the combination of a First Class and a 
 Fellowship is apt to merge into a state of endless 
 lotus-eating. There was no Fellowship for Lock- 
 hart, but there was the pleasant western indolence of 
 the Clyde, and the humours of a country parish 
 diverted him. On Sept. 8, 1813, he writes from 
 Innerkip. 
 
 " INNERKIP, %th September 1813. 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, In this place of retirement 
 you will easily perceive what a delightful variety 
 the Caledonian Sabbath, observed con amore, must 
 create. The minister of this place owed his pro- 
 motion to a cause no doubt very common, although 
 seldom so barefacedly exposed to the view of 
 mankind. It seems the last minister left a solitary 
 daughter of eighteen. The patron had great com- 
 passion on her light purse, and wrote to her in plain 
 terms, that he referred the appointment of her 
 father's successor entirely to her own judgment. 
 The lady, having caused this munificent offer of the
 
 68 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 laird's to circulate on the face of the earth, was 
 speedily attended by a true Penelopean swarm of 
 suitors each eager, by a display of his various 
 talents, to make his calling and his election sure. 
 Miss S. very wisely gave the preference to him 
 who had the broadest back a very Welshman as 
 to externals toto ccelo discrepant from our friend 
 as to the weightier matters. This sage apostle 
 possesses, however, the rare power of amusing by 
 his sermons. He is so totally ignorant that he 
 professes never to have bought or borrowed a 
 book since he cam' to years o' discretion ! He 
 found an old system of logic in the manse when 
 he was married, and has thought fit to divide his 
 discourses, logice, in consequence. He always sets 
 out with a definition. For instance, he has been 
 lecturing and preaching on the supper at Cana 
 for these nine weeks, and the first thing he did 
 was to define wine and water for the elucida- 
 tion of the metamorphosis performed in his text. 
 ' Wine,' quoth he, ' is a pleasant, exhilarating 
 liquor, taken after dinner and at other times by 
 genteel people in moderation most excellent, but 
 in excess odious. Water is a pure, perspicuous 
 substance, useful in cleansing or purifying of things 
 defiled.' 
 
 " At another time, having occasion to make his 
 masonic audience comprehend what is meant by call- 
 ing Christ the foundation of our faith ' A founda- 
 tion,' said he, 'may thus be defined, "that part
 
 THE CUTTY-STOOL 69 
 
 of a superstructure which the canny artist first 
 endeavoureth to make steadfast." So much for 
 Presbyterian eloquence. We have the repenting 
 stool here in all its glory. The poor man almost 
 went out of his wits last Sunday in rebuking a 
 damsel who appeared for the fifth time, in silk 
 stockings. I suppose Traill is no longer with 
 you. Connell was here lately, for a day or 
 two, and, according to him, Traill's motions have 
 been totally different from his original intentions. 
 Remember me to him and Knight if they are 
 in your neighbourhood. I am sensible that you 
 can find (little) amusement in such letters as these. 
 I hope I shall be able to atone in winter when I get 
 among the luminaries of Auld Reekie. Jeffray (sic] 
 the cool-headed Jeffray was lately, I hear, taken 
 and released by Commodore Rogers on his way 
 to America from the North of Scotland and on 
 what errand ? to marry a niece of John Wilkes, 
 who lives at Charlestown. The Commodore knew 
 Jeffray 's kindred soul, and treated him, it seems, 
 with singular kindness. He got a letter from Rogers 
 to the Mayor of Charlestown, and various friends 
 of Republicanism with whom our ' wee reekit deil ' 
 of a reviewer will, no doubt, participate in many 
 dinners and many toasts from which Metu aut 
 Montibus we are unhappily debarred. Yours ever 
 affectionately, J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 These anecdotes were among the Presbyterian
 
 70 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 humours which Lockhart began to collect, and, as 
 will presently appear, he thought of combining 
 them into a novel after (or rather before] the 
 manner of Gait. 
 
 When winter drives his family back from sea 
 and river to the blackness of darkness of Glasgow, 
 his letters (as of a single civilised Robinson Crusoe 
 in a world of huxtering barbarians) wax mournful, 
 almost elegiac. 
 
 "You and the Welshman are my only true and 
 faithful correspondents," he tells Mr. Christie, "and 
 I don't know how I should do without you, and 
 your letters, of both of you, come to me at certain 
 times with great effect of comfort. They keep me 
 up in my connection with the world, which in many 
 respects would be but in a perishing condition, 
 where I am. 
 
 " I have not yet read through Wordsworth's poem, 
 from lack of opportunity only, you may be sure. 
 I had one evening, however, the opportunity of 
 reading several passages in it, with all of which 
 I was most highly delighted. He strikes me as 
 having more about him of that sort of sober, mild, 
 sunset kind of gentleness, which is so dear to me 
 from the recollections of Euripides, and the tender 
 parts of the Odyssey, than any English poet ever 
 possessed, save Shakespeare, the possessor of all. 
 
 " But then you underrate Lord Byron, I think. 
 1 Lara' I look upon as a wonderful production. It 
 is like Michael Angelo completing the unfinished
 
 BYRON 71 
 
 rock half hewn into a giant, or like Roubillac open- 
 ing the lips of Sir Isaac Newton's statue, having 
 originally represented them closed. 
 
 "Who but Byron would have dared to call such 
 a spirit from the dead as Conrad, or who that could 
 have dared, could have made him speak things 
 so worthy of himself? Upon my honour, I think 
 it shows more depth of insight into human nature 
 to invent such a terrible band of ideas, all so fitted 
 to this gloomy sort of being, than ever poet sur- 
 passed. I delight in all the great poets of our 
 day, and am willing to put Wordsworth and Byron 
 at the top. 1 But I have not yet read ' Roderic.' 
 
 " I rejoice to hear that your ' Thirlestane Leslie ' 
 thrives." 
 
 This was a work begun by Christie : it was to 
 contain "the remains of the late Thirlestane Leslie, 
 Esq., consisting of poems and letters, with a bio- 
 graphical memoir." Leslie was to be "a person of 
 the imaginative cast, with strong logical powers 
 and a dash of poetry, who afterwards went religious 
 and died very young." Mr. Christie asked Lockhart 
 to give him any useful hints about the hero's 
 " unregenerate days " ; he did not care to trust the 
 future malleus h&reticorum, and of the profane 
 Edinburgh Review, with the pieties of Thirlestane 
 Leslie. 
 
 " I hope the child may escape the illnesses common 
 
 1 This, it may be remembered, is also the verdict of Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold
 
 72 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 to his time of life, and yet be one of the Phcebo 
 digna locuti. Have you really brought it to any 
 tangible size and shape? If you have, I would 
 strongly impel you to go on, and finish and publish 
 him with all speed. You may put a few hundreds 
 into your pocket, and you may get a name which 
 will push you on in life. I see plainly there is no 
 other way of getting into notice. In this age one 
 must be an author, and why may not you hit upon 
 a lucky stroke as well as another ? I think the 
 shape you talk of is likely to take very well. 
 Williams has a good many friends among the 
 London booksellers. I would advise you to write 
 to him before you fix anything. Murray is a most 
 gentlemanly fellow, and most liberal. 
 
 " I don't think the novel I have in hand will at 
 all jumble with yours. 1 I mean it chiefly as a re- 
 ceptacle of an immense quantity of anecdotes and 
 observations I have made concerning the state of 
 the Scotch, chiefly their clergy and elders. It is 
 to me wonderful how the Scotch character has 
 been neglected. I suppose the Kirk stood low in 
 Smollett's early days, and he had imbibed a disgust 
 
 1 Lockhart wrote to Constable, the publisher, from Milnburn (Dec. 
 29, 1814), saying that he had been "amusing himself with writing 
 a novel," the scene being in Scotland. Important classes of Scotch 
 society, he thought, had been "left untouched." His hero was one 
 John Todd, a " True Blue," in London during the visit of the Emperor 
 of Russia. The " Romance of the Thistle " was the name he thought 
 of. The tale would, apparently, have been something like Gait's 
 "Ayrshire Legatees." The novel was to be anonymous. See 
 "Archibald Constable," iii. 151-152.
 
 GERMAN STUDIES 73 
 
 
 
 for it. He has given us, you see, only a few little 
 sketches, nothing full or rich, like his seamen. 
 Now I think there is just as great a fund of origin- 
 ality and humour in the Scotch character, modified 
 as it is, in the various ranks of life, as in the English 
 or Spanish, or any of those of which so much has 
 been made. I think I shall have two volumes to 
 show you when we meet, which I doubt will not 
 be till spring. Indeed I have made up my mind 
 to study the Scots Law here with all my might, 
 whatever may be hereafter. I am deep in the 
 early history of England and of this country at 
 present. I find great use in my German, and am 
 making myself acquainted with our Saxon remains. 
 Indeed, I begin to think the antiquities of the 
 Middle Ages are the most rational study a man 
 could devote himself to, were he an idle person ; as 
 it is, an acquaintance with these things is indispen- 
 sable- to a lawyer." 
 
 This letter seems evidence of a sudden intellectual 
 advance in Lockhart. His comments on Byron 
 may no longer be in harmony with the taste of the 
 day ; but, whatever it was that his contemporaries 
 admired in Byron's Conrads and Laras, that quality, 
 now so faded, was then in universal esteem. Christie, 
 who did not care for Byron, among lovers of poetry 
 held a lonely position. Lockhart was always loyal 
 to the verse of Wordsworth, though later, in private 
 life, he smiled at the self-centred prosiness of the 
 poet. It is curious that Lockhart, when he writes
 
 74 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 about the unexplored mine of Scotch character 
 awaiting the novelist, says nothing concerning 
 " Waverley," which, in the autumn of 1814, was 
 the newest novel. We might almost think that he 
 had not yet read Scott's opening romance, to which 
 he refers in the following note of Feb. 28, 1815 : 
 " Have you seen ' The Saxon and the Gael ' ? 
 If not, you will find it a clever enough representation 
 of Edinburgh a few years ago. A number of very 
 capital anecdotes, mostly old here, but new perhaps 
 to you. This much I say from having read half 
 a volume, and from hearsay. There is come out 
 another Highland novel called 'Clan Albin' which 
 I have not seen, but which they say is equal or 
 superior to ' Waverley.' Little doubt is now enter- 
 tained as to the authors of that production. It 
 seems a young friend of W. Scott's sketched the 
 story and outlined everything. Walter Scott in- 
 serted the humour and brushed all up. ' Clan Albin's ' 
 author is not known. Old Johnny Pinkerton, on 
 account of his notorious scurrility and hatred of 
 Edinburgh, is suspected of 'The Saxon and Gael.' 
 What a fecund fellow Wattie is ! a long poem and 
 two novels in the same year, besides reviews, songs, 
 &c., &c., for they say Sir Guy the 1 ( ) is 
 
 ready, or in the press. Most of my novel was 
 written before I read 'Waverley,' but I fear the 
 
 1 " Sir Guy the Searcher " ? Scott liked to quote that person, for 
 he himself was always on the search for his missing papers, &c. 
 More probably "Guy Mannering" is intended.
 
 NOVEL-WRITING 75 
 
 rush upon Scotland consequent to that popular 
 work is such that mine is likely to be crushed among 
 the row. I intend letting it sleep a year or two 
 and making use of it as a drawable for some more 
 extensive thing. Now allow me to hope that I 
 am to hear from you immediately. Remember me 
 to any friends, will you, and believe me ever, most 
 truly yours, J. G. L. 
 
 " P.S. I heard lately both from Hamilton and 
 Traill. They are dancing in Edinburgh." 
 
 In the matter of novel- writing, Lockhart's am- 
 bition, at the age of twenty, was to be what Gait 
 became, the recorder of the Caledonian humours of 
 his own, not of past romantic ages, and of " a ram- 
 pageous antiquity," as Gait's Provost says. What 
 became of Lockhart's John Todd is unknown he 
 may have destroyed his manuscript. "The book 
 is damned," he wrote briefly, years afterwards, to 
 Christie, when his "Valerius" failed, and he never 
 seems to have fretted about the fortunes of his 
 works. His idea of writing national fiction was bold 
 at twenty, and his energetic attack on many new 
 subjects is a proof of his mental vigour. That 
 vigour, that clean rapidity in acquisition and execu- 
 tion, is characteristic of Lockhart. The highest 
 hopes might have been, and were entertained for his 
 future. " Lockhart will blaze'' said Scott later, yet 
 he never " blazed." We naturally ask why he did
 
 76 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 not, and we shall presently find many circumstances, 
 often of his own making, which damped his fire, and 
 thwarted his energies. But, from the first, we observe 
 little promise of creative gifts. Most young men, 
 lovers of poetry, endowed with taste, learning, and 
 fancy, write verses, but if Lockhart did so (as Mr. 
 Christie says he did), he never mentions the fact. 
 That the gods had made him poetical, his rare serious 
 pieces prove. But he perhaps criticised himself too 
 severely, or his diffidence was too great, or, finally, 
 he did not feel an impulse so natural to youth as 
 the impulse to rhyme. Its presence proves nothing, 
 but its absence may be an indication of some lack, 
 of something wanting, which, even if Lockhart's for- 
 tunes had been different, might have deprived him 
 of the highest literary success. His novel, even, 
 was confessedly to be a thing based on observation, 
 a study of character, not a romance, not a story told 
 for the story's sake, such as a very young man, 
 or boy, would be likely to attempt. Ambition, 
 too, appears to have been his motive, a man who 
 would be noticed "must be an author." He was 
 ambitious, but, comparatively early in life, he put 
 ambition by, for, when once he learned to renounce 
 and resign, he resigned things lightly, as one who, 
 after Montaigne's counsel, " made no great marvel 
 of his own fortunes." 
 
 On November 25, 1814, we find him again writ- 
 ing to Christie, from his father's house in Glasgow. 
 He has "heard from Williams, very happy at Win-
 
 THE DRAMA 77 
 
 Chester. I doubt not he will yet rise in the world, 
 by means of his strong head, and inflexible power of 
 nailing himself to any rough piece of timber that 
 comes in his way. You used to be skilled in the 
 Lakish fellows, if I remember. Can you tell me any- 
 thing of Lambe ? (sic) I never read his specimens 
 of the Old Tragedians till the other day, and have 
 been, I need not say, highly delighted with them. 
 Really we may crack our thumbs over the departed 
 play genius of Britain. We have lost, I think, the 
 whole art of delineating the delicate mixtures of 
 human character. We have now no specimens of 
 contradictory beings such as Nature makes ; but to 
 be sure, it is the same in real life, and what can we 
 expect on the stage ? 
 
 " I am very sorry you did not write last year on the 
 English Essay subject " (at Oxford). " Your studies 
 have, if I mistake not, been a good deal among our 
 elder writers and I understand the successful effusion 
 is a mere nothing for I have not seen any of these 
 productions for the last two or three years. I do 
 not know yet what the subjects of this year's essays 
 are ; if you know, be so good as to tell me, for, al- 
 though I am not idle, I may perhaps think of writing, 
 should the theme tempt. Last year I was too 
 sensible of my own defectiveness in Elizabethan 
 learning to think seriously of it, for I well knew that 
 the knowledge one can pick up in a few weeks' read- 
 ing is not at all of the kind necessary for explaining 
 the genius of a set of writers such as these.
 
 78 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 " This place is, for a seat of learning, so ignorant, 
 that I have never yet been able to lay my hands on 
 ' Roderick,' except for a moment, when I read the 
 beginning, which I admire exceedingly. Tell me 
 what sort of whole it is when you write next. . . . 
 It is really a miserable thing to be without friends : 
 out of my own family I have not a soul here I care 
 for. The manners of men who talk perpetually of 
 raw sugar and calicoes, and of chemical-botanical 
 vulgar women, are intolerable to me. I am fain to 
 take all my walks in solitude, which is as much as 
 to say, that I walk very little, and horse I have 
 none. . . . 
 
 " I have got abundant access to books, however, 
 more so than I ever had either at Edinburgh or 
 Oxon, and find, no doubt, great consolation in them, 
 although the novelties are no longer new elsewhere 
 by the time they come here. 
 
 " There is a vacancy at present in our Humanity 
 Chair. I was inclined to be very desirous that 
 Hamilton should stand, but he scorned the idea. 
 For my part, I think he was a fool. I don't well 
 see how they could have refused him on many 
 accounts, although nothing is too base for them ; 
 and I fancy I may count upon your perfect ap- 
 probation for my sentiments respecting the merits 
 of ^"1500 a year an excellent house, library, 
 &c., and six months of vacation besides little 
 more than two hours a day of drudging during 
 the session.
 
 A NOVEL 79 
 
 "But altiora petit and God grant he may get 
 them, but I think if he ever gets high it will be as 
 a writer, and I don't see where he could have had 
 more leisure than here, and the worse the society 
 the more. 
 
 " I think a man may tolerate even Glasgow for 
 half the year, with the prospect of spending the other 
 half in company of his own choice and this is 
 really an opinion of which I may speak with some 
 certainty, as I know not how I should endure it at 
 present myself, unless I had the hope of making up 
 for the deprivations I feel by a free month's view 
 of you all in summer. 
 
 " Traill, I understand, is to be in Edinburgh this 
 winter. I shall be there for a day or two very soon 
 and see. 
 
 " My novel comes on wondrously I mean as to 
 bulk. My fears are many first, of false taste creep- 
 ing in from the want of any censor ; secondly, of 
 too much Scotch from the circumstance of my 
 writing in the midst of the ' low Lanerickshire '- 
 &c., &c., &c. But I think I have written a great 
 many graphical enough scenes, and have really made 
 up my mind to print two volumes of nonsense in the 
 spring. I think of writing to Murray, but I believe 
 I shall put it off till I come up myself. Once again 
 let me ask you for any little odd tags, rags, and 
 bobtails of good incidents, &c., for which you 
 have no immediate use. They may do me great 
 service. In the meantime, write me frequently
 
 8o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 frequentissime, and believe me, ever your most 
 affectionate friend, 
 
 "J. G. LOCKHART. 
 
 " Compliments to your bantling." 
 
 The next letter (January 3, 1815), shows Lock- 
 hart taking such pleasure as Glasgow society could 
 yield to an humorous observer. Dr. Scott, "the 
 Odontist," was destined to appear in his Black- 
 wood articles, as a butt who delighted in that office. 
 Lockhart later composed dozens of burlesque verses, 
 and attributed them to the dentist, nor were they 
 seriously disclaimed. Some of the jests of the Gag 
 club cannot be reproduced. The novel on Astro- 
 logy, referred to as promised by Scott, is " Guy 
 Mannering." Lockhart seems to have had no 
 doubts as to Sir Walter's authorship. 
 
 "Jamtary 3, 1815. 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, I am very much delighted 
 by your letter, for it shows you to be somewhat in 
 better humour with yourself and this world than 
 some of the last did. This I attribute partly to 
 your cold having subsided, but principally to the 
 collision which you have enjoyed with Williams. 
 Not to mention other good qualities, I think his sort 
 of steady spirits render him a most valuable com- 
 panion. What other people effect by politeness
 
 A GLASGOW BALL 81 
 
 and painstaking he does by nature in this matter. 
 He talks of composing Florilegiums, &c. I think 
 it may be a good enough way of making ^50 
 or so rather better than breaking iron-stone on a 
 road in July. I am grieved that W. takes offence 
 at my tolerance for some of the Wordsworth school : 
 I am not sure that I would say so much as I have 
 said after reading the ' Excursion,' at least the 
 Jeffreys (sic) give one a bad scent of it. But from 
 their having omitted to quote any of several divine 
 passages which I have read I doubt not they are 
 unfair. However, you in one of your letters lately 
 mention, among the absurdities of this age's pro- 
 ducing, sentimental braziers and tender-hearted 
 Jews. I daresay Coleridge has by this time added 
 philosophising pedlars to the list. Upon the whole, 
 I doubt we have had bad luck on the lakes this 
 year on both sides the Atlantic. 
 
 " I have never been so solitary all my days as I 
 am now, and have been for some months. I feel 
 no sympathy with the mercantile souls here, and 
 have really no companion whatever. I don't know 
 what I would not have given to spend Christmas 
 with the Welchman and you. I fancy Bristol may 
 be cursedly like this place, for you tant pis. 
 
 "T'other day I went to a Glasgow ball, almost, I 
 may say, for the first time. On entering the room 
 a buzz of 'sugars,' 'cottons,' 'coffee,' 'pullicates,' 
 assailed my ears from the four winds of heaven. 
 Every now and then the gemmen were deserting 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 82 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 their partners, and rushing into the caper course to 
 talk over the samples of the morning. One sedulous 
 dog seemed to insist on another's putting his finger 
 into his waistcoat pocket. The being did so, and 
 forthwith put the tip to his lips, but the countenance 
 was so mealy that I could not tell whether it 
 smacked of sugar or Genseng. 
 
 " There is nobody affords me so much amusement 
 here as a dentist a little, fat, coarse, bandy fellow, 
 who commonly goes by the name of Count Pulltuski. 
 This man carries personal vanity to the most daring 
 height I ever witnessed. It becomes quite mag- 
 nanimous in him. He makes no bones of speaking 
 it out, in a broad and open way, that he considers 
 himself as the greatest man now alive. I won his 
 heart one evening at a punch party. They were 
 roasting him upon the narrow and illiberal branch 
 of the medical trade to which he confines himself. 
 I took up the cudgels for him, and maintained that 
 I thought the circumstance of such a man being a 
 tooth doctor one of the best proofs of the advanced 
 civilisation of this age, and added that I hoped this 
 country would soon learn, like ancient Egypt, to have 
 no physicians who undertake all manner of cures, 
 but restrict every practitioner to some lith or limb 
 of his own. 
 
 " Pulltuski sported me a royal dinner the day 
 after. He had a set of rich, vulgar dogs about 
 him, who all pretend to the title of humorists, 
 or, according to the local phraseology, gaggers.
 
 GAGGERY 83 
 
 N.B. Gaggery, in the Glasgow idiom, means that 
 sort of fun which consists in saying things that stop 
 one's mouth ; and the coarser the gag, they seem 
 to reckon the joke the more exquisite. There is 
 what they call a Gag club. I went to it one night 
 as visitor. . . . They sang ' The pigs they lie,' in 
 chorus, &c. Says the President, ' I was sent for 
 t'other day to Lord Douglass. I took particular 
 care to dress myself in silks, powdered highly, and 
 arrived in my gig about seven in the evening. I 
 was shown into the dining-room dinner just over. 
 Sat next my lady, a whisper through the room, 
 " who's that ? "- " 'tis the great Scott the dentist 
 Pulltuski a remarkably genteel-looking man. . . ." 
 This chiel is President also of the Newtonian 
 Scientific Society of Glasgow, &c., &c. But 'tis 
 all nothing unless one could write his face. I 
 drew him in a box great-coat with nineteen necks 
 and a comforter round his neck. He has got this 
 varnished and put in a two-guinea frame over his 
 mantelpiece. He sent round with his dessert, after 
 dinner, the jaw of a Roman soldier, and a set of 
 teeth from Borodino, which last produced twenty 
 jokes on the high profits of his import trade, &c. 
 He drank his wine out of a glass about a foot 
 high. ... So much for him. 
 
 " Hamilton has lately become a member of the 
 Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh. Traill has 
 passed his civil law trials, as I am told, with eclat, 
 which means without being plucked. Hamilton
 
 84 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 lately made his first attempt at a speech, but immedi- 
 ately lost every ray of recollection, and raved about 
 like a madman for some minutes, and then stuck 
 dumb. What unfortunate nerves for a barrister. 
 He has become a great student of magic, and talks 
 of publishing a history of Daemonology, but I see 
 W. Scott announces a novel on Astrology, and I 
 fancy that will be enough of the black art for us 
 all. Hannay, I hear, is a great dab at the bar for 
 his time, and brought off a sheepstealer at Kirkcud- 
 bright assizes. 
 
 "Will you be in Oxon Easter and Act? I think the 
 
 essay subjects are both d bad, but if I think of 
 
 either it will be the Latin. I read during summer 
 some of the late German histories of philosophy, and 
 think I must make something of it. Yours, 
 
 "J. G. L." 
 
 The following letter (Inverkip, by Greenock, 
 Aug. 3, 1815) describes a brief Highland tour. If 
 Lockhart went after trout, he fished with more 
 enthusiasm for men, for traits of character. His 
 friend to be, John Wilson, would not have left his 
 captures unchronicled : 
 
 " INVERKIP, BY GREENOCK, Aug. yd, 1815. 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, The summer is flying 
 away, and not having heard lately from you, or any- 
 body in the southern parts, I am beginning to be
 
 IN SEARCH OF TROUT 85 
 
 completely Scotchified. I don't know how you go 
 on in the important concerns of medical lore. But 
 the Deity of La Paresse has resumed over me with 
 redoubled vigour her antique sway. The place 
 from which I write is a hamlet on the coast of 
 Renfrewshire, just where that county meets Ayr- 
 shire. The Clyde is here a noble firth of seven 
 miles breadth, running between the fertile hills of 
 Ayr on the one side, and the bleak-black mountains 
 of Morven on the other. The whole country is 
 intersected with long arms of the sea lochs, &c. 
 which render this part of Scotland the most pic- 
 turesque I have seen. 
 
 Not contented with these beauties, the itch of 
 rambling has just been leading me away into the 
 depths of Lochaber. My brother and I fore- 
 gathered with Hamilton on the banks of Loch- 
 lomond, which flows into the Clyde about ten miles 
 above this by means of the water of Leven, and 
 we have just returned from ten days of thorough 
 tramping. We had a horse with us for the con- 
 venience of carrying baggage but contemning the 
 paths of civilised man, we dared the deepest glens 
 in search of trout. There is something abundantly 
 delightful in the naked-heartedness of the Highland 
 people. Bating the article of inquisitiveness, they 
 are as polite as courtiers. The moment we entered 
 a cottage the wife began to bake her cakes and, 
 having portable soup with us, our fare was really 
 excellent. What think you of parritch and cream
 
 86 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 for breakfast ? Trout, pike, and herrings for dinner, 
 ewe-milk cheese and right peat-reek whisky ? and 
 then at night a rushlight illuminating the smoke- 
 dried pages of Matthew Henry's Commentary on the 
 Song of Solomon 'The Crook in the Lot,' 'The 
 Cloud of Witnesses, or The Martyrs' Monument 
 wherein are the speeches and last words of all the 
 Presbyterian saints, burnt, hanged, and drowned for 
 the glory of God. And lastly, but almost univer- 
 sally ' The Light and Supple Whang for the B reeks 
 of Declining Faith.' My brother being a little bit 
 of the wag, gained the affections of all these good 
 folks by his graces, each a quarter of an hour long, 
 wherein he rang the commonplaces of young 
 ravens crying for their food, and of men not living 
 by bread alone. ... I have heard not a word of any 
 of our Oxonian friends. Don't forget in your next to 
 give me any intelligence you possess about our friend 
 Nicoll. Gordon MacCaul was up in Oxford, and 
 took his A.M. just after we left it. He says Miss 
 Ireland has at last loosed her virgin zone under the 
 strength of Evans. Happy, happy, happy pair. 
 What a subject for an Epithalamium. Try your 
 hand. I see you say you are reading a great deal 
 of French. If you can lay your hands upon the 
 works of Gresset, I promise you exquisite pleasure. 
 You will find a beautiful Eloge upon him in the 
 first volume of the ' Discours et Memoires,' by 
 Bailly. 
 
 " There is a famous foreign library at Greenock,
 
 ARISTOTLE THE SECOND 87 
 
 in which I find everything I can want for summer 
 purposes. Compts. to Knight. Yours most affec- 
 tionately, J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 The letter which follows (Sept. 9, 1815, Gourock 
 Bay) contains an early reference to John Wilson. 
 Lockhart thought of making a collection of Oxford 
 faceti&, and hoped for Wilson's help. As usual, 
 Lockhart has a few fresh anecdotes of the Presby- 
 terian simplicity. 
 
 " GOUROCK BAY, GREENOCK, Sept, gtk, 1815. 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, I have been blaming 
 myself all this while for not writing you. I have 
 put it off day after day that I might have it in my 
 power to tell you my agreement with the book- 
 sellers about our little production, and yet even 
 now I cannot do so bless their dilatory souls. My 
 dues being, according to Wardrop, thoroughly re- 
 moved, and ten guineas conveyed from my breeches 
 pocket into his, I left London about a fortnight ago, 
 in company with Aristotle the second, 1 who had 
 been spending three weeks in rummaging a collec- 
 tion of letters (MS.) in the Bodleian, and egging the 
 tutelary angel of that mystic abode to a new flight 
 casa non detta mat in prosa ne in rima a transla- 
 tion of Schneider's Lexicon. The little dumpling of 
 philology" (Nicoll) "agreed, but behold Mr. Elmsley 
 
 1 Sir William Hamilton.
 
 88 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of Cambridge has forestalled him vide the spare 
 sheet at the end of the last Quarterly Review so h<zc 
 tentamina tanta must sleep in prcesenti. Hamilton 
 is full of strange whims and fancies anything but 
 the law of Scotland inter nos< I think it is likely 
 he may publish an ' Essay on the State of Univer- 
 sities, Ideal and Actual,' before long at least his 
 adversaria teem with scraps concerning it, and his 
 talk lies much that way, though this is nothing 
 new. He approves highly of the thing which 
 I meditate disapproves, however, the title of 
 Olio ; he suggests ' the Oxford Picnic,' and by all 
 means recommends saying part the first. Indeed 
 I already smell much matter, and expect that 
 the first hint of the matter to Wilson will engage 
 his assistance. I understood Maudlin did not 
 nourish him for nothing. By-the-bye, Reginald 
 Heber, you may know, printed some years ago a 
 Brazennose satire, the Whippiad, which he has 
 since done his best to suppress. This of course 
 no one would think of meddling with vivo auctore, 
 but I understand he is the author of a number of 
 very good things besides. H. heard Tuckwell re- 
 peat a good many of them. Could you not contrive 
 to get at these ? I am sure you may. Moreover, 
 Jack Ireland is the repository of many old lampoons 
 written at the time of the war between the Balliol 
 exhibitioners and the college. These might surely 
 be worth something at all events, they may be 
 inquired after. I mention these things because
 
 A PUN 89 
 
 you will soon be there, and can use your judgment 
 if you think proper. Jack had so far recovered 
 his shock as to get drunk three or four times in 
 Hamilton's presence while he was in Oxford. 
 
 " ' Pasquillus Oxoniensis' might not be a bad 
 title. But I am not despairing but something more 
 happy than any of these may yet occur. I made 
 a good pun the other day (ut dirty -Dur lice lognar). 
 Hamilton has a law paper to write concerning a 
 Mr. Hume a poor devil who is trying to get 
 the title of Marchmont. I suggested for a motto 
 
 ' tentanda via est qua me quoque possint 
 
 Tollere Humo.- 
 
 " We are here in a beautiful situation in the Firth 
 of Clyde, surrounded with all the mountains of 
 Argyle, and have Benlomond right before us. I 
 enjoy myself very much, when the weather is 
 favourable, in fishing, boating, &c. On Sunday the 
 Antiburghers had their occasion about two miles off. 
 I went into the tent-field towards evening ; the 
 man had just finished preaching at a great rate, 
 but something being whispered into his ear, he said 
 just as I entered, ' Brethren, as they're aye haddin 
 on yet in the kirk, I think we had as weel do away 
 the time a leetle in prayer' The Edinburgh Bible 
 Society Report contains (it is now lying before 
 me) these resolutions on the second page : 
 
 "ii. Resolved, That the thanks of this meeting 
 are due to Sir John Marjoribanks, Bart., for his
 
 90 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 kindness to the institution. 12. Resolved, That the 
 thanks of this meeting are due to Bailie John 
 Waugh for his able conduct in the chair, &c. 13. 
 Resolved, That the fervent acknowledgments of this 
 meeting are most justly due to Almighty Pro- 
 vidence, for its watchfulness over the interests of 
 Christ's Kingdom in general, and the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society in particular. 14. Thanks 
 to Mrs. Maxwell for a present of Gaelic Bibles. 
 Yours ever, 
 
 "J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 In the autumn of 1815, Lockhart left Glasgow 
 for the much more congenial city of Edinburgh, 
 there to read Scots law, and to begin the real 
 business of his life, miscellaneous writing. His 
 comments on Edinburgh, and on some of his new 
 acquaintances, will be found, as usual, in his letters 
 to Mr. Christie.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 EDINBURGH, 1815-1817 
 
 Edinburgh described in " Peter's Letters." Letters to Christie. 
 Description of Wilson. His inconsistency. His charm. Edin- 
 burgh populated by authors. Sir William Hamilton writing 
 on Waterloo. A dinner with Hamilton. Description of De 
 Quincey. Lockhart's Essay on Heraldry. An Edict of Glasgow 
 University. Study of Wordsworth. Parodies of Wordsworth 
 by Lockhart. Sir William Hamilton an elder of the Kirk. 
 Death of Mrs. NicolL Death of a friend. Hamilton's baronetcy. 
 His disadvantages. Kean acting in Edinburgh. Literary pro- 
 jects. Lockhart called to the Bar. His first fee spent in punch. 
 Criticism of " Old Mortality." Needless severity. " Blacky." 
 Lockhart's train of negro servants. Description by the Ettrick 
 Shepherd. German tour. Early transaction with Mr. Blackwood. 
 Problem of Lockhart's attachment to Blackwootfs Magazine. 
 Lockhart on Mr. Blackwood's character. Intellectual defects of 
 Edinburgh society. Whig arrogance and ignorance. Lockhart's 
 mission. Scotland in a state of " facetious and rejoicing ignor- 
 ance." Lockhart's ideas resemble those of Carlyle. His want 
 of earnestness. His opportunity. " Prophesying not to be done 
 on these terms." 
 
 THE Edinburgh to which Lockhart betook himself in 
 November 1815, was, doubtless, already familiar to 
 him, already admired by him in its physical features. 
 " Edinburgh, even were its population as great as 
 that of London, could never be merely a city. 
 Here there must always be present the idea of the 
 comparative littleness of all human works." * The 
 
 1 " Peter's Letters," vol. i. p. 8.
 
 92 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 rocks and mountains dwarf the structures erected 
 on them, yet the builders of the Old Town "appear 
 as if they had made Nature the model of their 
 architecture," "piled deep and massy, close and 
 high," as it is. To Lockhart's eye the view 
 
 "Out over the Forth 
 I look to the North," 
 
 from George Street, where he lodged, must have 
 been a delightful change from anything that Glasgow 
 Green had to show. 
 
 As for society, he had friends and introductions 
 enough, through his family and through Sir William 
 Hamilton. Authors he found as common in Edin- 
 burgh as tobacco or sugar merchants in Glasgow. 
 The book shops which he describes in " Peter's 
 Letters," Blackwood's, Millar's, Laing's, and the rest, 
 consoled him for the total absence of new works, 
 and of reading fellow-creatures in the capital of the 
 West. The time had not yet come when curls of 
 his raven hair were in such demand, that he ex- 
 pressed (to a sister) his fear of premature baldness 
 (1819). But his handsome face (" Landseer tells me 
 I was a good-looking chap twenty or thirty years 
 ago," he wrote long afterwards), probably made 
 friends for him among the maidens and matrons 
 of Edinburgh ; the innumerable scribbling people 
 learned to misdoubt " the laugh about the screwed- 
 up mouth of him, that fules ca'd no canny, for they 
 couldna thole the meanin' o't," and some very
 
 SKETCH OF WILSON 93 
 
 sensitive souls may have dreaded "the bit carica- 
 tures," which he drew in pencil, on every odd scrap 
 of paper. 1 "We have assemblies here, and routs, 
 and balls, and plays, and concerts, and dinners 
 without end or intermission. I find it all very 
 good fun, and am quite contented," Lockhart had 
 written to Christie, a year before, during a flying 
 visit to Edinburgh. He took Horace's advice, and 
 he also took what a young philosopher in Thackeray 
 calls "his whack." He had made a new friend, 
 of the highest importance in his career, John 
 Wilson, who was writing poetry, angling, revelling 
 with Patrick Robertson, " Lord Peter," and not 
 practising at the Bar. I may here quote, out of 
 due season, Lockhart's later remarks (Dec. 5, 1819) 
 to Christie, on the character of Wilson. 
 
 " I fancy you understand him almost as well as I 
 do. He is thirty-five years of age, has six children 
 and a charming wife, and is, I suppose, very easy 
 in his affairs. . . . He is a very warm, enthusiastic 
 man, with most charming conversational talents, 
 full of fiery imaginations, irresistible in eloquence, 
 exquisite in humour when he talks (but too coarse 
 in his humorous writing for the present age) ; he is 
 a most fascinating fellow, and a most kind-hearted, 
 generous friend ; but his fault is a sad one, a total 
 inconsistency in his opinions concerning both men 
 and things. And thus it is that he continually 
 lauds and abuses the same person within the space 
 1 See "Noctes Ambrosianae," November 1826.
 
 94 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of a day, so making neither his praise nor his 
 censure of any avail. . . . He is, I think, afflicted 
 with much despondency as a literary man, having 
 never been able in anything to apply his mind so 
 as to produce satisfaction to his own judgment. 
 But in truth his life in earlier years has been such 
 as to give him a thousand prejudices and sore 
 places of which I know nothing, and I have by no 
 means penetrated his intellectual physiognomy to 
 its roots. 
 
 " This much is certain I have a warm and tender 
 affection for the man, and believe him incapable of 
 deliberately doing anything dishonourable, either in 
 literature or in any other way ; but then it is very 
 possible that I am unlucky in having been linked so 
 much at my outset with such a man as this. . . . " 1 
 
 In the troubles that followed thickly, it has been 
 not unusual to exonerate Professor Wilson at the 
 expense of, or in contrast with, Lockhart. The 
 opposite course cannot be taken, even if it were 
 chivalrous to take it, by the biographer of Lockhart. 
 The young man who wrote the lines just quoted 
 (lines which should be compared with Mr. Carlyle's 
 portrait of Wilson), was clear-sighted enough to take 
 care of himself. But these lines were written (Dec. 
 1819) after two years' close experience of Wilson's 
 literary vagaries and inconsistencies : his abuse of 
 friends and idols, his sudden returns to his old loves. 
 Four years earlier, in 1815, when Lockhart was just 
 
 1 Christie, in London, had heard tales to Wilson's disadvantage.
 
 EDINBURGH AUTHORS 95 
 
 of age, the society of Wilson, wildly fascinating, 
 bruyant, full of what he considered practical jokes, 
 (though unkind persons gave them other names), can 
 hardly have been salutary for a young student of 
 literature and law. There is more to be said on 
 this topic, but we may now offer a letter (Nov. 29, 
 1815) on Edinburgh as Lockhart was seeing it, on 
 his beginnings in miscellaneous literary work, and 
 on a dinner with Wilson and De Quincey. 
 
 (Postmark, Nov. 29, 1815.) 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, You and I are in general 
 such exemplary correspondents that I begin to feel 
 a degree of wonder at the two months' silence which 
 has prevailed betwixt us, greater than a much longer 
 cessation of any other epistolary traffic could have 
 occasioned in me. Since I wrote you last I have 
 spent a few weeks at Gourock, a few weeks (in- 
 cluding the occasion) at Glasgow, and now I have 
 been for a fortnight in this our Athens. Certainly 
 if the name Athens had been derived from the 
 Goddess of Printing not from the Goddess of 
 Wisdom no city in the world could with greater 
 justice lay claim to the appellation. An author 
 elsewhere is a being somewhat at least out of the 
 common run. Here he is truly a week-day man. 
 Every other body you jostle is the father of at least 
 an octavo, or two, and it is odds if you ever sit down 
 to dinner in a company of a dozen, without having 
 to count three or four quarto makers in the circle.
 
 96 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Poets are as plenty as blackberries indeed much 
 more so, unless blackberries mean sloes. And as 
 for travellers good Jehovah ! I think I am safe in 
 saying that there have appeared at least twenty 
 different lucubrations in that way concerning Paris 
 alone within these last eighteen months. Old 
 crambe-recocta stuff out of Horace Walpole and Sir 
 Joshua spouted by one boy of eighteen, who had 
 never seen in his life but one or two Edinburgh 
 exhibitions and profound disquisitions on national 
 character and Napoleon by another, who never had 
 seen the tenth milestone from Auld Reekie, or read 
 anything better than Jeffray and Gobbet's Parlia- 
 mentary debates. I have passed my trials in the 
 Civil Law, which cost me a little fagging, and am 
 now seriously at work on the Scots. 
 
 " Hamilton and I have been amusing ourselves 
 with doing into English ' the Relation ' of the 
 Battle of Waterloo. I have done my half, and 
 H. is sitting by me at his. I have much amuse- 
 ment in seeing his ways primo, he is against 
 all French terms and fought hard for Field- 
 assistant, loco, ( Aide-de-camp.' Secundo, he insists 
 upon having the pages marked with Roman 
 numerals, having lately imbibed a bitter spite 
 against the d d Arabic cipher. Tertio, he has 
 just been reading Longinus, and would fain have 
 an imitation of his manner in a note. We are 
 promised half profits by Laing, and I hope to touch 
 ^25 for my quarter. I have got a few articles in
 
 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON BUYING HOOKS. 
 (Drawn />y J. G. Lockhart.)
 
 DE QUINCEY 97 
 
 the ' Encyclopaedia ' which is going on, and intend 
 reviewing a little being convinced that there is 
 nothing I want more than a habit of writing with 
 ease. The Picnic " (the Oxford Olio] " sleeps for the 
 present, but will assuredly begin to squall in the 
 spring. The Oxonian friends here are all very well, 
 Hannay fighting away in the usury case. Innes in 
 statu quo. Connel ditto. Traill I saw once but I 
 have been confined to my room with a cold since, 
 and have heard no more of him. Tom Traill's wife 
 has brought him a son and heir, whereof Tom is 
 very glorious. Such is an epitome of our status 
 here. I have written it that I may provoke a speedy 
 answer, containing the minutiae of your transactions 
 for these last two months. You are now of course 
 as I left you, grinding Law, and quizzing the 
 Balliolite B.A.'s at the dinner table unless you have 
 changed your gown and your butts forpaullo majora ! 
 The transition is not tremendous from Everett to 
 Dicky. Give my love to Nicoll, and do let me hear 
 from you immediately. Yours most affectionately, 
 
 "J. G. LOCKHART. 
 
 " Hamilton desires his kindest remembrances to 
 you. I dined the other day at his house in company 
 with two violent Lakers Wilson for one, and a 
 friend of his, a most strange creature, for the other. 
 His name is De Quincey ; he was of Worcester. 
 After passing one half of an examination which has 
 never, according to the common report, been equalled, 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 98 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 he took the terror of the schools, and fled for it to 
 the Lakes. There he has formed the closest inti- 
 macy with Wordsworth and all his worthies. After 
 dinner he set down two snuff-boxes on the table ; 
 one, I soon observed, contained opium pills of 
 these he swallowed one every now and then, while 
 we drank our half-bottle apiece. Wilson and he 
 were both as enthusiastic concerning the ' Excursion ' 
 as you could wish. Wilson is just going to publish 
 a dramatic poem subject, ' The Plague in London.' 
 It opens with the conversation of two shopkeepers, 
 a trunk maker and a calender-mill mender, all whose 
 families have caught the infection. It is in eleven 
 (books ?), and includes many lyrics. (The two 
 friends have gone off on a pedestrian tour to 
 Staffa!)" 
 
 Among the articles which Lockhart speaks of 
 contributing to the "Encyclopaedia," the only one 
 known to me as his is that on Heraldry. It is 
 ascribed to Lockhart by Mr. Christie, and bears 
 marks of his style. The passage on the origin 
 of armorial bearings is careful, clear, and rather 
 sarcastic on the learned who make classical or 
 ancient Egyptian peoples the first beginners of the 
 science. Much is now known about the heraldry 
 of savages which, in Lockhart's time, was either 
 unknown or disregarded. Mediaeval blazonry was, 
 with additional points of curiosity and display, very 
 like a systematic development from the usages of
 
 SAVAGE HERALDRY 99 
 
 the North American Indians and other uncivilised 
 races. But there can be found no catena of heraldic 
 blazonries from prehistoric European savagery to 
 the earliest mediaeval tombs on which coats of arms 
 appear. The things more or less analogous to 
 crests, and tinctures, and coat armour among the 
 antiquities of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, are only 
 analogous in a vague one-sided way, with casual 
 resemblances to the mediaeval usage, and essential 
 differences from it. Lockhart elucidates all this, 
 (except the savage side of the topic) with plenty 
 of sense, wide and rare reading, and satirical 
 humour. It was "meat and drink to him to see 
 a fool " who argued in the fantastic manner of 
 Barnabas Moreno de Vargas, who " blazons all the 
 tribes of Israel." On one point, the arms of Jeanne 
 d'Arc, Lockhart is decidedly wrong, but we need 
 not enter into critical details. The essay proves 
 that he had read and that he could write. 
 
 To return to his letters, the judicial faculties of 
 the mind decline to accept as genuine the Latin 
 Edict of the Glasgow Senatus, as given in the 
 following epistle. The approving quotation from 
 Leigh Hunt, and his paper, the Examiner, comes 
 oddly from one of the future assailants of " The 
 Cockney School " : 
 
 " EDINBURGH, 9 GEORGE STREET, 
 January yd, 1816. 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, I would have answered 
 your kind and amusing epistle more in proper
 
 ioo LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 course, but have been spending the holidays at 
 home, which must be my excuse. I found the 
 good folks of Glasgow just recovering from the 
 sensation occasioned by the visit of two Arch- 
 dukes. The Faculty of the College at Glasgow 
 issued a primitive enough edict on the occasion, 
 thus: l ' Q. F. F. Q. S. Senatus Academicus 
 Togatis et non Togatis salutem. Ab Altissimo 
 et Potentissimo Principe Marchione de Douglas 
 
 1 May it be lucky ! The Senatus Academicus salutes the gowned 
 and the gownless. Being informed by the Most High and Puissant 
 Prince, the Marquis of Clydesdale and Douglas, that their Imperial 
 Highnesses, the Archdukes John and Louis of Austria, intend to-day 
 to honour us with a visit, we are pleased to issue the following rules, 
 by which all are to govern themselves, and whosoever fails to observe 
 them shall be most severely punished afterwards : 
 
 1. Their Imperial Highnesses will take a cold collation, in the first 
 Hall, with the Principals and Professors (in their gowns), and some 
 gentlemen of the city and district, about noon, at the expense of the 
 Faculty. 
 
 2. Students who have beards must shave them, and wash, as on 
 Sundays. 
 
 3. All students must put on clean shirts, as when the Duke of 
 Montrose was here. 
 
 4. Students of Theology must be combed, and wear black breeches 
 and coats, and decent gowns, like ministers. 
 
 5. All must be in a state to be seen by the Archdukes and the 
 honourable persons with them, and must decently and quietly form 
 two lines between the first and the common Hall when the procession 
 is walking. The juniors must not laugh, or make faces, when they see 
 the foreigners. 
 
 6. In the common Hall, Professor Jardine, who was formerly in 
 France, will speak in French to them, for Professor Richardson is 
 dead. 
 
 7. One of the Professors of Physics will pronounce an English 
 oration, and Principal Taylor will pray in Latin ; and then dismiss 
 yourselves without making a noise.
 
 AN EDICT ioi 
 
 et Clydesdale certiores facti, quod eorum altitu- 
 dines imperial es Archiduces Johannes et Ludo- 
 vicus de Austria, hodie nos visitatione honorare 
 intendunt nobis placuit hasce regulas generales 
 emittere quomodo omnes se sunt gerere et 
 quicunque eas observare non vult severrime puni- 
 tus erit postea. 
 
 " ' i. Eorum Imperiales Altitudines Archiduces 
 J. et L. de Austria, capient frigidam collationem in 
 aula priore cum Principali et Professoribus (in togis 
 suis), et generosis quibusdam hominibus ex urbe 
 et vicinitate circa horam meridianam impensis 
 Facultatis. 
 
 " ' 2. Studentes qui barbas habent tondeant eas 
 et lavant sese ut in die dominico. 
 
 " ' 3. Studentes omnes nitida indusia induant 
 secuti quum Dux Montis-Rosarum erat hie. 
 
 "'4. Studentes Theologicae omnes pectantur et 
 nigras braccas et vestes induant et pallia decentia 
 quasi Ministri. 
 
 '"5. Omnes in statu sint videri per Archiduces et 
 persones honorabiles qui cum iis sunt et decenter 
 et cum quiete et ordine duas lineas faciant inter 
 aulam Priorem et aulam communem cum Processio 
 ambulat, et juniores ne rideant nee faciant facies 
 cum Peregrines vident. 
 
 " ' 6. In aula communi Professor Jardine qui olim 
 in Gallia fuit Francisce illis locutus erit nam Pro- 
 fessor Richardson est mortuus. 
 
 ' ' 7. Aliquis ex Physicis sermonem anglicam pro-
 
 io 2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHAET 
 
 nunciabit et Principalis Taylor Latine precabitur 
 et sine strepitu dismissi estotis. Per nos, 
 
 " ' DECANUS FACULTATIS, 
 &c., &c.' 
 
 "When Jardine's French speech was over, John 
 observed to Louis, ' Ah ! que c'est une vile langue 
 cet ecossais ' 
 
 " By way of qualifying myself for forming a sane 
 judgment on a subject more than once discussed 
 between us, I have lately read over all Wordsworth 
 prose and verse. The ' Doe ' is certainly wretched, 
 but not quite so bad as ' The Force of Prayer.' 
 The ' Excursion ' I enjoyed deeply particularly the 
 character of the Solitary, and the description of 
 the Churchyard and its inhabitants. One of these 
 sketches pleased me more than anything of this 
 day's poetry I have ever read, unless it be O'Connor's 
 Child and Michael ; it was that of the young man 
 'all hopes Cherished for him who suffered to de- 
 part Like blighted buds ; or clouds that mimicked 
 land Before the sailor's eye ; or Diamond drops 
 That sparkling decked the morning grass, or 
 aught That was attractive, and had ceased to be.' 
 The whole picture is exquisite. The Examiner 
 has well characterised Wordsworth as a poet who, 
 had he written but half of what he has, would have 
 deserved to be immortal. He certainly has more
 
 LEIGH HUNT 103 
 
 prosing and less variety than I thought it possible 
 for a man of genius and learning, such as his. 
 
 " As you don't read the Examiner, I may as well 
 transcribe one of Leigh Hunt's last sonnets 
 
 " ' Were I to name out of the times gone by 
 The poets dearest to me, I should say, 
 Pulci for spirits and a fine free way ; 
 Chaucer for manners and close silent eye, 
 Milton for classic taste and harp strung high, 
 Spenser for luxury and sweet silvan play, 
 Horace for chatting with from day to day, 
 Shakespeare for all, but most society. 
 But which take with me, could I but take one ? 
 Shakespeare, as long as I was unoppressed 
 With the world's weight making sad thoughts intenser. 
 But did I wish out of the common sun 
 To lay a wounded heart in leafy rest, 
 And dream of things far off and pealing Spenser.' 
 
 "Was there ever such a letter as this for quota- 
 tions ? Expect one of a different stamp forthwith. 
 Meantime a good New Year to you, my friend, and 
 farewell, J. G. L. 
 
 "Compliments to Nicoll. 
 
 " P.S. Riddel has just told me he heard from 
 you lately, and that you are spending the vacation 
 in Balliol. What means this ? Is Connor with 
 you ? Write to me, and as soon as the bursar is in 
 College transmit me the ready. 1 
 
 "J. G. L." 
 
 1 " The ready " here is his Snell Exhibition.
 
 io 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 The following fragment (postmark Jan. 6, 1816), 
 contains Wordsworthian sonnets to Wilson, very 
 fair parodies of the austere singer's mode of mixing 
 morals and mountains. If published with W. W.'s 
 initials these noble sonnets would have received 
 much admiration, like one of Miss Fanshawe's 
 imitations, which deceived the Lacustrine elect. 
 
 " J. G. LOCKHART to the REV. J. WILLIAMS, 
 or J. H. CHRISTIE. 
 
 [Postmark, January 6, 1816.] 
 
 " John Wilson walked off to Cumberland, a fort- 
 night ago, in the midst of the storm, in spite of his 
 wife, whereupon Mr. Wordsworth wrote two sonnets 
 which I have seen printed at a private press here. 
 One of them runs thus : 
 
 " ' And could thy gentle spirit endure no more 
 The solemn prating of that ignorant town ? 
 And would'st thou come in spite of frost and frore. 
 And border-torrents leaping furious down, 
 The spirit of the mountains to adore, 
 And human converse hold with thy calm ake ? 
 O Wilson ! I am glad for the world's sake 
 The reign of virtuous impulse is not o'er. 
 
 Domestic duties we must all partake, 
 And wife and children should to man be dear 
 But thou did'st well, my Wilson, to forsake 
 Thy little ones, and bear thy spouse's tear ! 
 (When) holier duties call, these might not shake 
 The (resolute) worshipper of this lone Mere.'
 
 PARODIES OF WORDSWORTH 105 
 
 " Wilson went on the top of the Carlisle coach 
 part of the way ; it overturned, and Wilson's head 
 was broken whence sonnet the second : 
 
 " ' An outside place my Wilson did prefer, 
 
 Tho' warmth and bodily ease within were found, 
 
 So well befits it nature's worshipper ! 
 
 To gaze more widely o'er the snow-clad ground, 
 
 Like the world's joys in barren coldness shining ; 
 
 To list the unseen streamlets' innocent sound 
 
 Beneath the snow a small path undermining. 
 
 Like the poetic eye which moveth slowly, 
 
 And feeds itself in darkness on things holy 
 
 To scatter crumbs, it may be, now and then, 
 
 To the small redbreast and pure-minded wren. 
 
 These things were worthy of thy soul's desire, 
 
 And, if I know thee, spite of scoffing men, 
 
 Who have no part in the celestial fire, 
 
 And spite of this thy bruise, thou wilt seek these again. 
 
 W. W.' " 
 
 The next letter contains matter unknown to 
 Sir William Hamilton's biographer. To see the 
 dark daemonologist take his stand at "the plate," 
 and keep ward over the charitable coppers of the 
 congregation, must have been a thing of high 
 solemnity. 
 
 " EDINBURGH, 9 GEORGE STREET, 
 April 17, 1816. 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, Your expressions are very 
 vague, touching everything that regards yourself. 
 I think you intend me to conclude that you are 
 leaving Connor, and yet neither the date of your
 
 io6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 letter, nor the way in which you talk of returning 
 to Oxford, looks exactly that way. Pray let me 
 know what your plans are. If you have no engage- 
 ment during the summer, I would fain flatter myself 
 with the hopes of your paying us a visit in Scotland, 
 in which case you will know that few can be more 
 anxious for the pleasure of housing you than my- 
 self. I am not to be in Oxford this spring. Old 
 John gave me leave of absence very graciously, 
 and I had reasons for preferring to pay my last 
 official visit next year rather than now. Traill 
 also, as his sister told me the other night, got leave 
 from John ; but as he is at present at Newcastle 
 acting as supercargo to a ship of kelp, she hinted 
 that, should the sale be favourable, he might still 
 make a run to Oxon, where I have no doubt he 
 may easily find a way to dispose of all his sea- 
 weed riches. 
 
 "We go on here pretty much in the old way. 
 Innes has been made elder, and serves in this 
 General Assembly as representative of the borough 
 of Kintore. Hamilton also was made an elder 
 last Sunday at a village near this town at least, 
 the ceremony of his taking the vows was performed, 
 for the legality of the process is still doubtful, a 
 protest having been given in against his nomination 
 by an old farmer in the eldership there, on three 
 grounds: ist, Hamilton having no domiceal within 
 the bounds ; 2nd, His being suspected of Episco- 
 palianism; and 3rd, His having no certificate of moral
 
 FELLOWSHIPS 107 
 
 character, &c. The process of Presbytery, wherein 
 the value of these objections is to be discussed, I 
 shall certainly attend. Hamilton desires to be most 
 affectionately remembered to you. He will write to 
 you soon by his cousin the Freshman, and in the 
 meantime earnestly begs you would write him. By- 
 the-bye, do you not think he might have some 
 chance for a Fellowship ? and in God's name, why 
 don't you stand yourself? There is no open/ama 
 clamosa against your character electing you would 
 not be considered as a sort of premium on idleness, 
 blasphemy, and contempt (as electing some friends 
 of yours might too justly be) ; and on the whole, 
 as you can lose no character, either by competition 
 with the three idiots you mention, or by any de- 
 cision of those who have already lost all pretensions 
 to justice in those matters and as you may gain 
 so much, Hamilton and I both agree that you will 
 act very wrong if, being on the sfiot, you do not 
 try. Taffy, I presume, will no more trouble them 
 with his fat face and his Greek, both of which are 
 too good for them. I met yesterday at dinner with 
 a Cambridge man, Foster, a craniologist, whom I 
 remember your mentioning last summer. He seems 
 totally cracked, but cleverish withal. He is a pro- 
 fessed infidel, but certainly has a well-made fore- 
 head above his ugly face. He is cousin to Dicky 
 Meade, as he says and I believe him. I will 
 send you a copy, by the first private hand, of my 
 Essay on the 'art noble,' which is now in the
 
 io8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 press. If you wish to have any sarcasm against 
 anybody inserted in a note, you are still in time. 
 Yours, my dear Christie, J. G. LOCKHART. 
 
 "P.S. As Hamilton is not without some thoughts 
 of standing for a Fellowship you must not whisper 
 to the wind that he is an elder observe this, and 
 consider the passage as not existing." 
 
 Lockhart occasionally accompanied Hamilton 
 in his hunts after charters connected with his 
 baronetcy. The following letter, after some sadder 
 news, tells of Hamilton's success : 
 
 "BURNBANK, HAMILTON, July 2jth, 1816. 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, Hamilton came here on 
 Friday last and stayed till this morning. He 
 brought me the first news of Nicoll's marriage, and 
 had himself only that morning learned by a very 
 unfeeling paragraph (as he reported it) from the 
 Oxford paper, the sudden calamity which so soon 
 turned all our friend's happiness into misery. In 
 time I have no doubt the usual lenitives of every 
 distress among us must have their due influence in 
 restoring him to himself at present, of course, he 
 must be left entirely to the working of his own 
 feelings. The effect which this news produced in 
 both was, I need not say, such as all Nicoll's friends 
 will easily imagine. For myself I heard, in the
 
 A FRIEND'S DEATH 109 
 
 same breath, both the marriage and the death 
 being saluted by W. H., ' Poor Nicoll's wife's 
 dead,' before I had the least suspicion that Nicoll 
 was married. Hamilton made after some time a 
 lawyer's remark, ' Patrimonially, 'tis as well.' If 
 Nicoll is still in London remember us both to 
 him. Hamilton will write in a few weeks when 
 he thinks his letter may be received with calm- 
 ness. I am sorry your letter did not arrive till 
 after his departure. 
 
 " I have surely dreamed of writing you a long 
 letter about ten days ago, for I remember the very 
 words in which I communicated to you 's 
 death. He died of two days' illness a scarlet- fever, 
 much exacerbated, I am grieved to add, by the life 
 of dissipation which he had been leading. All last 
 winter he gambled and drank to excess he was 
 even tipsy one day beyond decency about three 
 o'clock P.M., when I met him in the street. He used 
 to sit up all night drinking whisky punch with 
 some Aberdeen squires ; he was fortunate at the 
 dice, but it drew him both into bad company and 
 bad habits over and above the thing itself. All this 
 
 entre nous, was at bottom a good, honest soul 
 
 very affectionate in his temper, and deserves to 
 be lamented by all his friends. 
 
 " Hamilton, you may have observed in the 
 papers, has at length served himself heir general 
 to Sir Robert H. of Preston, who commanded the 
 Covenanting army at Bothwell Bridge, and is now
 
 no LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Sir William at your service. Had he followed his 
 original profession this might have much in his 
 favour ; at present I see no great good it can do 
 him to be set at the upper end of tables among 
 dowagers instead of the lower end among misses. 
 However, he makes a most respectable baronet, 
 and may, if he pleases, make additional use of his 
 good leg in a matrimonial way ; but he is not 
 worldly-wise enough for that, to use a true-blue 
 phrase. So you are, at last, nine hours a day at 
 a conveyancer's ! May the tripling aes not be 
 awanting. I beg of you to write again and more 
 at length on a Sunday. My compliments to Traill. 
 Yours ever, J. G. L. 
 
 "Is Connor in town, or have you entirely sepa- 
 rated ? " 
 
 In the following epistle we see something like a 
 germ of BlackwoocCs Magazine. Christie, in early 
 years, would occasionally suggest starting a new 
 serial, but it never came to anything. Lockhart, as 
 in this letter, and often afterwards, would try to 
 make Christie exert himself with his pen. But in 
 law Christie found a better profession than in writing 
 for the papers ; " it's seldom any good comes of it," 
 says Captain Shandon, whom Lockhart knew very 
 well :
 
 KBAN 
 
 in 
 
 J. G. LOCKHART to J. H. CHRISTIE. 
 
 "BURNBANK, Oct. l8, l8l6. 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, I have been tossed about 
 the country a good deal these six weeks past, which 
 is the only excuse I can think of, at this present, for 
 not writing to you sooner. I wrote to Hamilton, how- 
 ever, touching the business of your last letter, so that 
 I think myself, in some sort and manner as it were, 
 almost out of your debt. I have more need to make 
 an apology to Traill, which I beg you will do for me 
 in the meantime, and say I mean to do so shortly 
 myself. Last week I spent in Edinburgh, not that 
 I am a member of the Caledonian Hunt, which then 
 assembled there nor that I am a knowing one on the 
 turf, though the Musselburgh races were held nor a 
 lover of dancing, though there were balls every night 
 but I went in to officiate at the funeral of an aged 
 female single cousin, on which occasion I had the 
 satisfaction of witnessing a facsimile of Mrs. Bertram 
 of Singleside her obsequies, the parallel holding 
 good even as to the legacies. 1 Kean was in Edin- 
 burgh, however, and that part of the gaieties I much 
 enjoyed. Of four characters in which I saw him, 
 Othello was my favourite, but neither Macbeth nor 
 Richard were of the number. Murray, the manager, 
 with whom I am a little acquainted, is a very gentle- 
 manlike person ; and in truth well entitled to be so 
 
 1 In " Guy Mannering."
 
 ii2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 by his birth, as he is grandson to Murray of 
 Broughton, the Chevalier's secretary in '45. 1 He 
 wished to show Kean every attention in his power, 
 but was given to understand that Mr. Kean accepted 
 of no invitation wherein ' his friends ' were not 
 included meaning two of the most despicable of 
 Murray's own candle-snuffers, with whom Kean got 
 drunk every night during his stay. Were I in your 
 shoes I would fain see Kean off the stage, and I 
 daresay you might easily manage it. Hamilton has 
 been ill of a quinzey, and is looking as ghastly as a 
 spectre. 
 
 "In about three weeks I shall be in Edinburgh 
 for good, and I intend passing advocate the first 
 week of the term, Q. F. F. Q. S. You have thrown 
 out two literary hints this summer, neither of which 
 has been neglected by me one concerning review- 
 ing, and the other touching a periodical paper. 
 The latter is a project whereon I have long loved 
 to dwell even since the days of our meditated 
 Western Star, &c., Bristol Mustard Pot, &c. &c. I 
 think there are among my acquaintances several 
 individuals who could contribute richly to such a 
 thing, but it is necessary to have a stock-in-hand 
 before we begin. Let me hear what your notions 
 are at more length. I have a friend in this 
 neighbourhood, by name Hodgson, an extremely 
 accomplished man, and a great dabbler in writing 
 
 1 John Murray of Broughton, the Judas of the Royal cause. See 
 Lockhart's " Scott," i. 242-245.
 
 CALLED TO THE BAR 113 
 
 some years ago, though now the quiet minister 
 of a very small parish, who was applied to by 
 Murray (Albemarle Street) not long ago, with a 
 view to an undertaking of this sort who, though 
 he declined at the time, has been thinking a good 
 deal of it ever since, and is anxious to see such 
 a thing set afoot. The worthy baronet might 
 contribute a few Greekified things Taffy a few 
 Cambrian sketches. You might be 'the young 
 fellow in town' of the club and I myself might 
 depict Scottish men of this day. Oxford is a 
 rich field common to us all and untouched. Yours 
 ever, J. G. L. 
 
 " Direct your next to me at Glasgow 40 Charlotte 
 Street." 
 
 With the end of the year 1816 we find Lockhart, 
 like Allan Fairford in " Redgauntlet," "putting on 
 the gown, and giving a bit chack of dinner to his 
 friends and acquaintances, as is the custom." Like 
 Scott, Lockhart was to find that "we've stood here 
 an hour by Tron, hinny, and deil a ane has speered 
 our price." However, he does not seem to have 
 foreboded this end of his promenades in the Parlia- 
 ment House, when he writes: 
 
 " EDINBURGH, 73 GEORGE STREET, 
 December 22, 1816 (Sunday forenoon). 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, I am most willing to be- 
 lieve that your obstinate silence is owing entirely 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 ii4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 to your hard studies, so, being unconscious of any 
 such excuse, I am resolved to make one more 
 attempt on you. I presume I need not ask you 
 what you are doing. You are no doubt fagging 
 hard at the law all the day, and drinking tea and 
 reading Greek plays with Buchanan all the evening. 
 Now and then you have a tavern shine with some 
 young fellows perhaps with Traill, if he has in good 
 earnest returned unto himself. I, you must know, 
 pursue a more dignified strain of life. I am now 
 an advocate of a week's standing have trod the 
 boards of the Parliament House all that time, with 
 the air of a man wrapped up in Potier and Cujacius, 
 and have pocketed one fee of three guineas, which 
 I spent in punch and tobacco the same evening 
 so far well. I am going west in a few days to culti- 
 vate the procurators of Glasgow. 
 
 "There is a young and itching devil here so 
 God speed the attorneys and damn sentiment. 
 
 " I suppose you have read before this time the new 
 novels, supposed to be, like ' Waverley,' by Walter 
 Scott. The ' Old Mortality ' story was very de- 
 lightful to me, as the scene is admirably laid and pre- 
 served in that part of the country with which I am 
 most familiar ; but I have, unfortunately, read too 
 much of the history of that period to approve of the 
 gross violations of historical truth which he has taken 
 the liberty often, I think, without gaining anything 
 by it to introduce. Burley has long been known 
 by me as a short, in-kneed, squinting, sallow, snarling
 
 "OLD MORTALITY" 115 
 
 viper, 1 and now behold he is uselessly swelled out 
 into a Covenanting giant, with a blue bonnet of 
 the cut of Brobdingnag. He was drowned, on his 
 way from Holland to Scotland, about the date of 
 the Revolution. Claverhouse's original letters I 
 have seen they are vulgar and bloody, without 
 anything of the air of a polished man, far less of 
 a sentimental cavalier in them. 2 These productions, 
 in which true events and real personages are 
 blended in so close a manner with nonentities of 
 all kinds, are only tolerable to us in proportion 
 to our ignorance of the places and period and 
 persons described. The novels in question have 
 so much merit in almost every other point of view, 
 that they naturally attract uncommon attention to 
 those passages of history on which they are, or 
 pretend to be, founded, and so by their very merit 
 work their own destruction. I wish the author had 
 either stuck close to facts in so far as never to 
 invent anything which could be contradicted by 
 history or followed fiction altogether. This last 
 tale is far more offensive than ' Waverley,' inasmuch 
 as Waverley is a person more obscure than Morton, 
 and more likely to have been omitted by the contem- 
 porary writers. At the same time, the general 
 truth of the Covenanting manners exceeds, I should 
 think, anything the author has executed in that 
 
 1 One is reminded of Mrs. Squeers' turned-up-nosed peacock. 
 
 2 Here the biographer utterly dissents from this child of the 
 Remnant.
 
 n6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 way. Defoe's history of that period in Scotland is, 
 however, after all equally picturesque, better kept 
 up, and incomparably better written ; with all the 
 other advantages that truth ever possesses over 
 fiction. There is no doubt of it, that man has the 
 strongest imagination of any prose writer that ever 
 lived. Such is his power 'that he can make plain 
 matter of fact infinitely brighter than all the inven- 
 tions in the world could ever render a fictitious event. 
 This is sad prosing, but we are now so much 
 separated that new books and old friends are the 
 only subjects in which we can reckon on finding 
 each other's attention alive. Sir William Hamilton 
 is very well at the other side of my table, and 
 requests me to hand you his love. Remember us 
 both to Buchanan. I rejoice to hear of his being 
 so happy with you. I dined yesterday with his 
 aunt, and they are all perfectly well. Yours most 
 affectionately, J. G. L. 
 
 "How is Nicoll ? I wish, if you are writing him, 
 you would desire him to send me and Hannay 
 our exhibs. with all speed convenient. Write me 
 quickly, at Glasgow if not for ten days (quod 
 Deus avertat] here again." 
 
 In later life, when he wrote his " Life of Scott," 
 Lockhart took a far more favourable review of that 
 masterpiece, "Old Mortality." His early comments 
 are rather pedantic. A knowledge of the Burley
 
 SIX BLACK RETAINERS 117 
 
 and Claverhouse of history does not spoil for us 
 the Claverhouse and Burley of romance. As for 
 Morton, and the shock caused to an historical mind 
 by his absence from history books, his position, at 
 Bothwell Brig, was very much like that of one of 
 Lockhart's own ancestors, the hero who hid up a 
 tree. Yet that hero needs a good deal of research 
 before we discover him in some obscure Covenanter's 
 narrative. 
 
 There is an unlucky gap in the correspondence 
 between Christie and Mr. Lockhart, in the year 
 1817, while, of domestic correspondence, there is 
 but one letter. This, to Mr. Lawrence Lockhart, 
 contains a reference to " Blacky," a servant, probably 
 the negro of whom Hogg tells a story. Lockhart, 
 at the time we have reached, "was a mischievous 
 Oxford puppy, for whom," says the Shepherd, " I 
 was terrified, dancing after the young ladies, and 
 drawing caricatures of every one who came in con- 
 tact with him. . . . Even his household economy 
 seemed clouded in mystery, and, if I got any ex- 
 planation, it was sure not to be the right thing. It 
 may be guessed how astonished I was one day, on 
 perceiving six black servants waiting at his table 
 upon six white gentlemen. Such a train of blacka- 
 moors being beyond my comprehension, I asked for 
 an explanation, but got none, save that he found 
 them very useful and obliging, poor fellows, and 
 that they did not look for much wages beyond a 
 mouthful of meat."
 
 n8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 The real explanation was simple the coloured 
 gentlemen were friends of Lockhart's gentleman of 
 colour, and aided him on festive occasions. 
 
 Dining out, giving dinners, dancing, drawing 
 caricatures, taking part in the daily babble of the 
 briefless round the stove in the Parliament House, 
 Lockhart passed his time merrily, but not altogether 
 in idleness. He wished to go to Germany in the 
 vacation of 1817, and, though funds were scant, and 
 his exhibition was running out, he managed to pay 
 his way. He had made the acquaintance of Black- 
 wood, the bookseller, and Blackwood paid him ^300, 
 or more, for a work in translation, to be written later. 
 Lockhart selected Schlegel's " Lectures on the 
 History of Literature." Mr. Gleig says, "Though 
 seldom communicative on such subjects, he more 
 than once alluded to the circumstance in after life, 
 and always in the same terms. ' It was a generous 
 act on Ebony's part, and a bold one too ; for he had 
 only my word for it, that I had any acquaintance at 
 all with the German language.' " 1 
 
 Of the German tour scarcely any records remain. 
 In an old notebook, used again twenty years later 
 
 1 Mr. Gleig seems to date the German tour in 1815 or 1816, but I 
 find no mention by Mr. Lockhart himself of any date, except that he 
 had just returned from Germany in October 1817. See, however, 
 Quarterly Review, cxvi., p. 452. According to Professor Veitch, in his 
 "Life of Sir William Hamilton," p. 89, the early autumn of 1817 was 
 the date. Accompanied by Lockhart and a Mr. Hyndman, Hamilton 
 examined, at Leipzig, a library which the Faculty of Advocates wished 
 to purchase.
 
 MR. BLACKWOOD 119 
 
 in composing the " Life of Scott," are a few slight 
 drawings of German students, and a sketch, not 
 caricatured, of Fichte lecturing to his class. We 
 know that Lockhart met, at Weimar, Goethe, 
 whom he describes in " Peter's Letters," and whom 
 he defended against the sneers of the Edinburgh 
 Review. 
 
 More important to him than his brief experience 
 of Germany was his connection with Mr. Black- 
 wood. That gentleman was commencing publisher: 
 the first series of his Magazine had run only a few 
 months : there are traces of Lockhart's hand in it 
 before July 1817. His liberality to the young 
 writer was, indeed, well judged, for Lockhart, with 
 Wilson, gave the Magazine a success of eclat: by 
 no means wholly to their own advantage. 
 
 Gratitude to "Ebony" may, perhaps, partly ex- 
 plain that part of Lockhart's conduct, which perplexes 
 his biographer as much as Scott's attitude to the 
 Ballantynes puzzled Lockhart himself. Why would 
 Lockhart, in spite of the remonstrances of Christie, 
 and of Sir Walter, in spite of universal disapproval, 
 cleave to Blackwood's Magazine ? The mere attrac- 
 
 o 
 
 tion of mischief should soon have worn off, but from 
 Wilson and BlackwoocCs Lockhart seemed unable 
 to tear himself. Christie conceived a distaste for 
 Mr. Blackwood at first sight ; Lockhart sometimes 
 lets fall a petulant word about the complacent 
 proprietor of " Ma Maga" yet he wrote occasionally 
 for Maga to the end. One really begins to think
 
 120 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHABT 
 
 of Maga as of a cankered witch who has spell-bound 
 the young man, and holds him "lost to life, and 
 use, and name, and fame." 
 
 This, of course, is an irrational sentiment, and 
 unjust to the venerated Maga, She did not make 
 Lockhart and Wilson write as they did : it was 
 they who set their mark on her. Lockhart several 
 times thought of breaking with her, now in defer- 
 ence to Christie and Sir Walter ; now, in some 
 temporary displeasure with Mr. Blackwood, in 
 which Wilson shared. But he always "fell to his 
 old love again." He occasionally attributes this 
 to regard for Mr. Blackwood, and, besides, the 
 payment for his articles was highly necessary to 
 him. But he could have employed his pen else- 
 where, though nowhere with such freedom. The 
 love of mischief, as Hay don says, was, no doubt, 
 one cause of his constancy. But a freedom only 
 trammelled by Mr. Blackwood, was very prejudicial 
 to both Wilson and Lockhart. The former is said 
 often to have repented of his articles, when the proofs 
 had just gone beyond recall. The latter assuredly 
 repented, and tried to make amends in his after-life. 
 To love of mischief, of freedom to indulge caprice, 
 to friendship for Wilson, and regard for Mr. Black- 
 wood, one may most plausibly attribute Lockhart's 
 stormy, and often regretted, but never broken con- 
 stancy to Maga. 
 
 Be the explanation what it may, Lockhart was 
 certainly very loyal to Blackwood. In describing
 
 "BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE" 121 
 
 Scott's relations with this bookseller, he styles 
 him "a man of strong talents, and, though without 
 anything that could be called learning, of very 
 respectable information ; . . . acute, earnest, emi- 
 nently zealous in whatever he put his hand to ; 
 upright, honest, sincere, and courageous." 1 We 
 know that, in finding fault (as he well might) with 
 "The Black Dwarf," Mr. Blackwood "did not 
 search about for any glossy periphrase," he was frank 
 enough. In Mrs. Gordon's " Life of Christopher 
 North " we meet Mr. Blackwood suppressing, very 
 properly, some literary ferocities of Professor 
 Wilson's. 2 Why, then Mr. Blackwood deserving 
 Lockhart's deliberate and duly considered praises ; 
 and Lockhart himself being what his letters declare 
 him ; and Christopher North being Christopher 
 North the magazine which they produced should 
 have been so brutal, it is difficult to imagine. 
 These problems, of course, will recur; for the 
 present it suffices to have shown how Lockhart 
 became connected with Mr. Blackwood. 
 
 In the absence of exact information as to the first 
 half of Lockhart's first year as an advocate, we 
 may be certain that, like Allan Fairford and Darsie 
 Latimer, "he swept the boards of the Parliament 
 House with the skirts of his gown ; laughed, and 
 made others laugh, drank claret at Bayle's, For- 
 tune's, and Walker's, and ate oysters in the 
 
 1 "Life of Scott," vol. v. pp. 154-155. 
 
 2 " Christopher North," ii. 63-64.
 
 122 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Covenant Close." Though his letters, so far, 
 have not contained one word on politics, he was 
 probably regarded, being a friend of Wilson's and 
 living in his set, as a Tory. Every barrister had 
 to take a side, and we know, from Lord Cockburn's 
 "Memorials of his Time," that Tories were dull 
 oppressors, while sweetness, light, knowledge, elo- 
 quence, emancipation, wit, wisdom, the Edinburgh 
 Review everything good but office were all on 
 the side of the Whigs. The admirable, overween- 
 ing, unconscious arrogance of party pride in Lord 
 Cockburn's " Memorials " might make a man turn 
 Tory in sheer irritation to-day. While these 
 scarcely human splendours, Jeffrey, Playfair, Henry 
 Erskine, Gillies, Grahame, Macfarlane, Fletcher, 
 -fortisque Gyas,fortisque Cloanthus they, or their 
 successors, were dwelling in the serene air of perfect 
 self-complacency ; while they had at length set going 
 a Liberal newspaper, the Scotsman; while Tories, 
 like Scott, were calling it "a blackguard print," a 
 few young men had grown up who were neither 
 stupid nor Whigs. They saw, Lockhart at least 
 saw very well, that these illustrious Whigs, with all 
 their learned professors, and Reviewers, and political 
 economies, were really keeping Scotland in a state 
 of "facetious and rejoicing ignorance." "In Scot- 
 land they understand, they care about none of the 
 three," namely, the poetry, philosophy, and history 
 of the ancient world. Even Dugald Stewart " has 
 throughout been content to derive his ideas of
 
 WHIG IGNORANCE 123 
 
 Greek philosophy from very secondary sources." 
 As for the common Whigs of the debating societies 
 and the Junior Bar, "all they know, worth being 
 known, upon any subject of general literature, 
 politics, or philosophy, is derived from the Edinburgh 
 Review." The Edinburgh, again, perpetually de- 
 rides Wordsworth, and all the Whigs grin applause. 
 " The same people who despise and are ignorant 
 of Mr. Wordsworth, despise also and are ignorant 
 of all the majestic poets the world has ever produced, 
 with no exceptions beyond two or three great 
 names, acquaintance with which has been forced on 
 them by circumstances entirely out of their control. 
 The fate of Homer, of yEschylus, of Dante, nay, 
 of Milton, is his." * 
 
 These ideas, expressed in " Peter's Letters," and 
 such as these, were in the clear and well-furnished 
 mind of Lockhart, when he looked at the intel- 
 lectual self-complacency of Edinburgh's illustrious 
 Whigs. And he was soon to let these magnates 
 hear the full measure of his opinion. That a cold 
 superiority of ridicule did not become Whig wit- 
 lings when they sat in judgment on the author of 
 " The Excursion " ; that a more exalted patriotism 
 than the patriotism of the author of " Marmion " was 
 not really theirs ; that Goethe and Kant could not 
 be criticised through the medium of French cribs 
 and summaries ; that a facetious and rejoicing 
 ignorance of Greek could not be compensated for 
 
 1 " Peter's Letters," vol. ii. p. 144.
 
 i2 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 by a smattering of geology ; that Christianity was 
 a problem to be faced, not an institution to be 
 scornfully patronised ; these were among the lessons 
 which the briefless new-gowned advocate was about 
 to teach the Olympians of Whiggery. The spirit 
 of mankind, in fact, was awaking in Lockhart, 
 as it later awoke in a sage who had a strong 
 sympathy with him, in Mr. Carlyle. The Whig view 
 of the world, and notably of poetry, did need to be 
 assailed. But Lockhart, seeing almost as clearly as 
 Carlyle the flaws in the ice palace of Edinburgh's 
 intellectual despots, was very young, and was con- 
 stitutionally a mocker. Almost everything that he 
 said in a serious humour, whether as the Baron von 
 Lauerwinkel, or as Dr. Peter Morris, was truly and 
 well said, and the truth has prevailed. But with 
 the same pen, and in the same hour, he was writ- 
 ing humorous ditties as " The Odontist " ; or attacks 
 on men of whom, personally, he knew nothing ; 
 of whose politics he judged by the catch -words 
 and prejudices of his party, and whose characters 
 he detested mainly on the evidence of Tory gossip. 
 Many a "sham," many a "windbag" he exposed, or 
 pricked, but to little or no avail, so strong in him, 
 at that time, was the spirit of levity, and the " Imp 
 of the Perverse." He had great powers, much 
 knowledge, clear ideas, a good opportunity, but 
 the " Imp of the Perverse " had dominion over him. 
 He began to write too young, he enjoyed a latitude 
 far too wide, and he had, in Wilson, an elder
 
 " LOCKHART WILL BLAZE " 125 
 
 associate and friend whose genius was perhaps the 
 most unbalanced in the history of literature. There- 
 fore Lockhart never "blazed" in the serenity of 
 the light which assuredly was within him, but only 
 gave forth flashes of brilliance, when he did not 
 pass wholly under the influence of " tenebriferous 
 stars."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 EDINBURGH, 1817-1818 
 
 "There was a natural demand for libel at this period." 
 
 LORD COCKBURN. 
 
 Blackuuood's Magazine. Account of it in letter to Haydon (1838). 
 Lockhart " helps Blackwood out of a scrape." " Row in 
 Edinburgh." Lockhart made the scapegoat. His regrets. 
 His prospects ruined. " Intolerably grievous fate." Parallel 
 of Theodore Hook. Responsibility for Black-wood's. Wilson 
 and Lockhart not paid Editors. Lockhart not the assailant of 
 the Lake Poets. Errors in " Life of Christopher North." The 
 early numbers of the Magazine. Lockhart's articles on Greek 
 Tragedy. Blackwood quarrels with his original Editors. They 
 take service with Constable. Their new Opposition Magazine. 
 Scott and Pringle. Attack on Coleridge. Wilson, Jeffrey, and 
 Coleridge. Lockhart on literary Whigs of Edinburgh. Attack 
 on the " Cockney School." Keats and Lockhart agree in their 
 views of Leigh Hunt. "Vain, egotistical, and disgusting." His 
 " Tale of Rimini." His enmity to Sir Walter Scott. He and 
 Keats fancy that Scott is their assailant. Persistence of this 
 absurdity. "The Chaldee" Manuscript. Hogg claims the 
 authorship. Burlesque reply. Lockhart's own statement. 
 Analysis of " The Chaldee." " No end of public emotion." 
 
 THE often told story of the early years of Blackwood 's 
 Magazine has next to be repeated. It was an ill day 
 for Lockhart when he first put his pen at the ser- 
 vice of a journal, which for now the term of a 
 long human life, has been eminently reputable and 
 
 admirable. Frequently as the matter has been 
 
 126
 
 "BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE" 127 
 
 discussed, there are points which have never before 
 been clearly stated, while there are others that still 
 remain obscure. Perhaps the best introduction to 
 the subject may be found in a letter written by 
 Lockhart himself, in later days, to Haydon the 
 painter. Haydon had been at first a victim of the 
 Blackwood satirists, merely because he was an 
 associate of their enemy, Leigh Hunt. But, as 
 we shall see, this feud with Haydon was soon 
 settled, and he confesses that his foes treated him 
 with hospitality and good fellowship : aiding him 
 to the best of their power in later life. 
 
 Nevertheless, on the appearance of Lockhart's 
 " Life of Scott," Haydon wrote him a long epistle, 
 complaining of his early cruelties. On Haydon's 
 own showing this conduct was curiously inconsistent, 
 but his unfortunate temperament, and -melancholy 
 end, excuse much in the painter. 
 
 Lockhart replied (July 1 1, 1838) : " I thank you 
 for your two letters, though the second has given 
 me a good deal of pain. Your approbation of the 
 ' Life of Scott ' is valuable, and might console me 
 for all the abuse it has called forth both on him and 
 me." . . . 
 
 (What follows will find more appropriate place 
 later.) 
 
 " But I cannot be indifferent to your severe 
 though generous reflections about my early literary 
 escapades. You are willing to make allowances, 
 but allow me to say, you have not understood the
 
 128 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 facts of the case. They were bad enough, but not 
 so bad as you make them out. In the first place, 
 I was a raw boy, who had never had the least 
 connection either with politics or controversies of 
 any kind, when, arriving in Edinburgh l in October 
 1817, I found my friend John Wilson (ten years my 
 senior) busied in helping Blackwood out of a scrape 
 he had got into with some editors of his Magazine, 
 and on Wilson's asking me to try my hand at some 
 squibberies in his aid, I sat down to do so with as 
 little malice as if the assigned subject had been 
 the Court of Pekin. 2 But the row in Edinburgh, 
 the lordly Whigs having considered persiflage as their 
 own fee-simple, was really so extravagant that when 
 I think of it now, the whole story seems wildly 
 incredible. Wilson and I were singled out to bear 
 the whole burden of sin, though there were abun- 
 dance of other criminals in the concern, and, by- 
 and-by, Wilson passing for being a very eccentric 
 fellow, and I for a cool one, even he was allowed 
 to get off comparatively scot-free, while I, by far 
 the youngest and least experienced of the set, and 
 who alone had no personal grudges against any of 
 Blackwood's victims, remained under such an ac- 
 cumulation of wrath and contumely, as would have 
 crushed me utterly, unless for the buoyancy of 
 
 1 He had just returned from Germany. 
 
 2 A letter of Mr. Blackwood's, to Lockhart in Germany, of August 
 28, 1817, gives him information as to the opposition of Constable, and 
 the determination to begin a new series of the Magazine. Mr. Black- 
 wood says that Wilson has promised several articles.
 
 LOCKHART'S REPENTANCE 129 
 
 extreme youth. 1 I now think with deep sadness 
 of the pain my jibes and jokes inflicted on better 
 men than myself, and I can say that I have omitted 
 in my mature years no opportunity of trying to 
 make reparation where / really had been the 
 offender. But I was not the doer of half the 
 deeds even you seem to set down to my account, 
 nor can I, in the face of much evidence printed 
 and unprinted, believe that, after all, our Ebony 
 (as we used to call the man and his book) had half 
 so much to answer for as the more regular artillery 
 which the old Quarterly played incessantly, in these 
 days, on the same parties. 2 . . . 
 
 "As to yourself, I really don't remember that I 
 ever wrote a line against you in my life. I don't 
 swear that I never mentioned your name in some 
 ludicrous juxtaposition, but even of this I have not 
 the remotest consciousness. I knew nothing then 
 either of London or artists living out of Scotland, 
 and I believe when you came down with the 
 picture of the ' Entry into Jerusalem,' you were 
 received even better by the ' Tory wags ' than by 
 
 1 After Lockhart's death, Miss Martineau took her favourite oppor- 
 tunity of " a newly made grave." " Lockhart's satire had, then and 
 always," she said, " a quality of malice in it, where Wilson's had only 
 fun." It is " only fun " to deride the personal manners, and the poetry, 
 of your benefactor Scott, and your friend Wordsworth the guest who 
 has just left your door. " Noctes Ambrosianas," September 1825, and 
 vol. iii., 89-95, I 34~ 1 3S- I select acknowledged examples of Wilson's 
 innocuous raillery. 
 
 2 The omission contains merely an unexplained reference to a 
 distinguished person, which might be misconstrued. 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 i 3 o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 your fellow-sufferers of the Whig brigade. 1 I 
 believe the only individuals whom Blackwood ever 
 really and essentially injured were myself and 
 Wilson. Our feelings and happiness were disturbed 
 and shattered in consequence of that connection. 
 I was punished cruelly and irremediably in my 
 worldly fortunes, for the outcry cut off all pros- 
 pects of professional advancement from me. I 
 soon saw that the Tory Ministers and law officers 
 never would give me anything in that way. . . . 
 Thus I lost an honourable profession, and had, 
 after a few years of withering hopes, to make up 
 my mind for embracing the precarious, and, in my 
 opinion, intolerably grievous fate of the dependent 
 on literature. It is true that I now regard this too 
 with equanimity, but that is only because I have 
 undergone so many disappointments of every kind, 
 crowned by an irreparable bereavement, that I 
 really have lost the power of feeling acutely on 
 any subject connected with my own worldly posi- 
 
 tion. 
 
 It was thus that Lockhart, under a blow which 
 struck at his heart, the loss of his beloved wife, 
 reviewed his early days of raillery. His pleas of 
 youth, of association with an elder friend who 
 should have set him a different example, and of 
 freedom from personal malice, may be accepted even 
 
 1 Haydon's " Autobiography" leaves no doubt on this point. 
 
 2 The rest of the letter is a vigorous remonstrance with Haydon on 
 his own fortunes and the causes of them.
 
 "JOHN BULL" 131 
 
 by severe judges. What he wrote about Theodore 
 Hook, might be said about himself. " It is fair to 
 recollect, too, that in the case of Theodore Hook, 
 when he was making his paper so formidably 
 famous, there really could not have been any true 
 personal malignity at work. He was fresh from 
 a colonial life, in which few men's passions are ever 
 much disturbed by sympathy with the ups and 
 downs of the great parties at home. He had sus- 
 tained no sort of injury as yet at the hands of either 
 Whigs or Radicals. He knew little, and could 
 have cared nothing, about those who became the 
 objects of his satire. Exquisitely cruel as it often 
 seemed, it was with him a mere skiomachy. Certain 
 men and women were stuck up as types of certain 
 prejudices or delusions ; and he set to knocking 
 them down with no more feeling about them, as 
 individual human creatures, than if they had been 
 nine-pins. In all this there was a culpable reckless- 
 ness a sad want of thought ; but, at the same 
 time, want of reflection is not exactly to be con- 
 founded with deliberation of malice." l 
 
 It is conspicuously apparent, from Lockhart's 
 letters, that he knew nothing of Leigh Hunt, nothing 
 of Hazlitt, for example, and nothing of " Shelly," as 
 he then writes the name. To him they were, vaguely, 
 the enemy, the other side, assailants of his party, 
 and, as far as Hazlitt and Hunt were concerned, 
 "Cockneys." He therefore attacked them with a 
 
 1 "Theodore Hook," p, 51, London, 1853.
 
 132 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 light heart, and with a bitterness which was merely 
 part of the performance. But his very coolness, 
 clearness of head, and logic made his attacks terrible, 
 while his personalities, if not without example, went 
 beyond even the Tory standard of the time. Doubt- 
 less the storm which he at once awoke drove him 
 further than he had dreamed of going, and the 
 whole results were deplorable. Yet literature was 
 surely, more than law, his real province, though 
 his pride appears to have resented his official con- 
 nection with literature, as an editor. 
 
 To return to Blackwood. In a matter where the 
 chief sinners, both publicly and privately, in later 
 years, "took blame to themselves," an apologia can- 
 not now be offered. This is not a case of which 
 we may say, tout comprendre cest tout pardonner r 
 for all the motives could not be understood, as 
 Lockhart frankly admitted, even immediately after 
 the commission of one of the offences. At best 
 we can put ourselves in the position of the culprits, 
 try to see things and men as they must have seen 
 them ; make allowance for prejudice, for the manners 
 of the age, for the vivacities of youth. When all this 
 is done there abides an amount of wrong which is 
 not to be palliated, not to be smiled away. 
 
 As to the weight of responsibility it was partly 
 editorial, partly, in each case, a question of author- 
 ship. About the editorial department there was 
 division of public opinion from the first. Mr. 
 Blackwood, the publisher, and, to all appearance,
 
 EDITORSHIP OF " BLACKWOOD'S " 133 
 
 the director of the Magazine, averred (according 
 to Scott, as cited by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe 
 in a letter to Constable) that an article, the now 
 innocuous "Chaldee Manuscript," had been inserted 
 "against his will." l 
 
 Yet the periodical, if it began as it went on, 
 was under the direction of Mr. Blackwood himself. 
 "Ma Maga" he used to call it, according to Lock- 
 hart. 2 Again, in an unpublished note to Maginn, 
 at the time of Byron's death, Lockhart says that 
 4t Blackwood will not have it," that is, an attack 
 on Byron, proposed by the Irish writer, which 
 Lockhart deprecates himself. Yet Wilson was, 
 from the beginning, supposed by the curious to be 
 actual editor. Thus Scott, in a letter to Sharpe 
 of September 1817, says, "Wilson will be a spirited 
 charioteer, or I mistake him, and take the corner 
 with four starved authors in hand, in great style." 
 Assuredly neither Lockhart nor Wilson would have 
 publicly disassociated himself from any responsi- 
 bility and fixed it upon his friend alone. 
 
 For a certain brief period, in 1818, it appears, 
 from the " Memoir of John Murray," and from Lock- 
 hart's own letters, that he and Wilson were actually 
 in command of the Magazine, though, (according 
 to Lockhart) even then with Mr. Blackwood in 
 power behind them. The arrangement proved un- 
 workable for many reasons : among others, I believe, 
 
 1 " Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents," ii. 349. 
 3 Lockhart to Wilson, 1825. From Manuscript.
 
 134 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 because Mr. Blackwood was not content to be a 
 mere constitutional monarch. The money which 
 Mr. Murray had advanced, as partner in the venture, 
 was returned to him. 1 Both Lockhart and Wilson 
 denied that they had ever received money for con- 
 ducting the periodical. Wilson's denial was written 
 in 1828, after the troublous times were over, to his 
 personal friend the Rev. Mr. Fleming of Rayrig. 
 "Of Blackwood 's Magazine I am not the editor. . . . 
 I am one of the chief writers, perhaps the chief, 
 and have all along been so, but never received one 
 shilling from the proprietor, except for my own com- 
 positions. . . . To you I make the avowal, which 
 is to the letter correct, of Christopher North's ideal 
 character." 2 
 
 It thus appears that the intended editorial arrange- 
 ment, like the connection with Mr. Murray, was re- 
 scinded, or rather, never " implemented," in the Scots 
 Law phrase. A letter of 1 8 1 8 from Sir Walter to 
 Will Laidlaw seems to confirm this theory. 3 As to 
 authorship of articles, on one point I am constrained, 
 in fairness to Lockhart, to differ from an earlier 
 writer. Mrs. Gordon, in her pleasing " Life of 
 Christopher North," her father, writes, like a good 
 daughter, " I cannot say that I have been able to 
 trace to his hand any instance of unmanly attack, or 
 
 1 " Memoir of John Murray," i. 495. 
 
 2 "Christopher North," ii. 123. 
 
 3 The letter is rather too familiar for publication. It more than 
 bears out what Lockhart says as to Scott's grudge, at a certain time, 
 against Mr. Blackwood.
 
 MRS. GORDON'S APOLOGY 135 
 
 one shade of real malignity. There did appear in 
 the Magazine wanton and unjustifiable strictures on 
 persons, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, with 
 whom he was on terms of friendship, and for whom, 
 in its own pages and elsewhere, he professed, as he 
 sincerely felt, the highest esteem. But when it is 
 well understood that he was never in any sense the 
 editor, ... it will appear that he had simply the 
 alternative of ceasing to contribute further to the 
 Magazine, or of continuing to do so under the dis- 
 advantage of seeming to approve what he really 
 condemned. 1 That he adopted the latter course is, I 
 think, no stigma on his character; and, in after days, 
 when his influence in the Magazine had become 
 paramount, he made noble amends for its sins." 
 
 All this is demonstrably erroneous reasoning : 
 the facts, too, are erroneous. Mrs. Gordon had 
 access, she says, to the arcana imperil of the house 
 of Blackwood, only after the date 1826. To the 
 authorship of early articles, I myself have, what 
 Mrs. Gordon had not, the clues of statements in 
 Lockhart's hitherto unpublished letters. There is 
 also internal evidence of style, no two styles being 
 (as a rule) so easily distinguishable as the "swash- 
 ing blow " of Wilson, and the rapier thrust of Lock- 
 hart. Again, in 1817-1819, Lockhart knew not one 
 
 1 " Thus it is possible his desire to review Coleridge favourably in 
 the Edinburgh may have arisen from a wish to do justice to that 
 great man, the opportunity for which was denied in the pages of 
 Ittackwood? (Mrs. Gordon's note.)
 
 136 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of the Lake School ; Wilson knew them all, and all 
 the ins and outs of their little domestic politics and 
 quarrels. Lockhart's deep and earnest admiration 
 of Wordsworth's poems has already been apparent 
 in his letters, nor was Wilson, as a rule, a less 
 ardent advocate. Which of the twain, then, is to 
 blame for personal attacks on men who were the 
 intimates of the elder partner, while they were 
 personally strangers to the junior ? On December 
 5, 1819, Lockhart, in a letter to Christie, disclaims 
 any personal knowledge of any single victim of the 
 Magazine. "With Wilson the case is most different. 
 With Coleridge, Wordsworth, Jeffrey, &c., &c., in 
 short with all that have been attacked, he has lived, 
 at some time or other, on terms of intimacy, and, 
 therefore, they have all in turn complained grievously 
 of him." Whoever attacked Coleridge and Words- 
 worth, Lockhart was not the man, and one assault 
 on Wordsworth is included in Wilson's acknow- 
 ledged works : in " Noctes Ambrosianae," Sep- 
 tember 1825. 
 
 Lockhart, in the letter cited, refers to an extraor- 
 dinary "bam" attempted by Wilson on Wordsworth, 
 and much talked of in London, as having occurred 
 during his own absence in Germany. Wilson's con- 
 duct, in fact, is attributable to his amazing lack of 
 consistency, his want of any "tie-beam," as Mr. 
 Carlyle says. Meanwhile, about Wilson's friends, 
 "the Lakers," Lockhart, at twenty-three, knew 
 nothing personally, except what Wilson told him.
 
 WILSON AND LOCKHART 137 
 
 It is needless to say more. The weight of re- 
 sponsibility for personal unfairness to the Lakers 
 cannot be transferred to the shoulders of Lockhart. 
 That excuse does Wilson injustice. A man of 
 thirty-two would not permit "a green unknowing 
 youth " of twenty-three to revile his personal friends 
 in a magazine where his influence was, at least, very 
 considerable. As Mr. Gleig wrote in a review of 
 Mrs. Gordon's book : " Is it conceivable that a man 
 at the mature age of thirty-two, already known to 
 fame as a poet and a critic, would give himself up, 
 bound hand and foot, to the guidance of a boy ? " 
 It is not conceivable, and the facts were the reverse. 
 No just critic can lay all the fault on the shoulders 
 of the youngest person concerned, who, moreover, 
 as a matter of fact, was innocent of the deed. Yet, 
 young as he was, even in these days Lockhart gave 
 proofs, as will be shown, of such a clear judgment, 
 and sound unbiassed taste, as are not displayed by 
 any of his comrades. His excesses are like those of 
 a sober man who, finding himself in riotous com- 
 pany, conforms himself to their humour. One can 
 imagine that, within himself, he cherished a proud 
 disdain of the frays in which he figured, and of the 
 work to which he lent his hand. I do not know 
 quo numine laeso Mrs. Gordon penned her remarks 
 on her father's constant friend. In matters where 
 both were culpable in their degree, be it far from 
 me to exculpate Lockhart at the expense of his 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, vol. cxiii. (1863, p. 228).
 
 i 3 8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 comrade, except where his own written statements 
 cannot in fairness be overlooked. Mr. Gleig says, 
 as regards Lockhart's letters, published by Mrs. 
 Gordon : "She must need preface them with words 
 of her own," which follow : 
 
 "They" (Lockhart's letters) "are as characteristic 
 of his satirical powers as any of those off-hand cari- 
 catures that shred his best friends to pieces, leaving 
 the most poetical of them as bereft of that beautify- 
 ing property as if they had been born utterly without 
 it." Pictorial caricature, even in the pages of Mr. 
 Punch or elsewhere, is very seldom resented even 
 by the most thin-skinned of mortals, and Mrs. 
 Gordon herself publishes a caricature of her father. 
 Lockhart, who certainly had whatever "beautifying 
 property" a "poetical" aspect may entail, frequently 
 "shred" himself "to pieces," with his pencil. Mrs. 
 Gordon's "Life of Christopher North" has been 
 widely read, as it deserved to be, and has been 
 long in the field in fact, since 1862. This remon- 
 strance is therefore necessary. For too many years 
 Lockhart has been made the solitary scapegoat of 
 Wilson, and of Blackwood in general. 
 
 Lockhart, though he began so young, was, I think, 
 a critic eminently well equipped with learning, and, 
 where he touched on the classics of any language, 
 eminently well endowed with delicacy and breadth 
 of appreciation. But where party prejudice came 
 in, and contemporaries were his themes, he was 
 no better, often, than other literary judges of his
 
 COLERIDGE AND JEFFREY 139 
 
 time. Lest the reader, inexpert in the fugitive 
 productions of that day, should think Lockhart a 
 prodigy of dark critical malevolence, I would ask his 
 attention for the notice of Coleridge's " Christabel " 
 and " Kubla Khan," which appeared, a year before, 
 in the Edinburgh Review (September 1816). Cole- 
 ridge was, of course, a Tory, as Leigh Hunt and 
 Keats were Liberals. He was also a man hardly 
 treated by fortune, and thwarted by much that was 
 now, " humanly speaking," beyond control in his own 
 constitution and character. Moreover, he was very 
 poor, and had sold his fragment, " Christabel," to Mr. 
 Murray for a small sum, which two editions pro- 
 bably did not repay to the publisher. His relations 
 with Jeffrey, the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, 
 I shall take on Jeffrey's own, not on Coleridge's 
 larger estimate. In 1810 they had met at Southey's, 
 and, after a pleasant hour or two of talk, had passed 
 the next day "in the fields," Coleridge dining with 
 Jeffrey at his inn. Jeffrey, who did not care for 
 metaphysics, " exhorted him rather to give us more 
 poetry." " We spoke, too, of ' Christabel,' and I 
 advised him to publish it," knowing nothing of it 
 but four or five lines quoted by Scott, who "spoke 
 favourably of it," and said that to "Christabel" "he 
 was indebted for the metrical method of his ' Lay 
 of the Last Minstrel.'" 1 
 
 "Christabel," with "Kubla Khan," and "The 
 
 1 Jeffrey, in a personal note to the criticism of " Biographia Liter- 
 aria," Edinburgh Review, vol. xxviii., August 1817, pp. 509-510.
 
 1 40 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Pains of Sleep," appeared from Mr. Murray's house 
 in 1816, and was reviewed (by Hazlitt, according to 
 Coleridge), under Jeffrey's editorship, in the Sep- 
 tember number of the Edinburgh, 1816. 
 
 This odious critique is forgotten, perhaps because 
 nobody could say that it " killed " Coleridge. It only 
 killed his hopes of profit and fame (he being poor, 
 ill, and in sad estate) from the most original com- 
 positions in the range of English literature. There 
 is no critical vice which his Whig critic does not 
 exhibit. With the blind eye, the deaf ear, the in- 
 sensible heart, are allied gross and mean personal 
 impudence, frequent imputations of insanity, and the 
 wonted political rancour. An advertisement of the 
 book mentioned that Byron had praised " Chris- 
 tabel" as "a wild and singularly original and 
 beautiful poem." Jeffrey knew that Scott was of 
 the same mind, but the opinions of poets on poetry 
 were nothing to him and his reviewer. " It seems," 
 says his man, "nowadays to be the practice of that 
 once irritable race to laud each other without 
 bounds ; and one can hardly avoid suspecting, that 
 what is thus lavishly advanced may be laid out with 
 a view to being repaid with interest." This is an 
 elegant insinuation against Byron and Scott ! 
 
 " Much of the art of the wild writers consists 
 in sudden transitions, opening eagerly upon some 
 subject, and then flying from it immediately. This 
 indeed is known to the medical men, who not 
 unfrequently have the care of them, as an unerring
 
 THE "EDINBURGH" ON "CHRISTABEL" 141 
 
 symptom." Under Gillman's care, Coleridge may 
 later have reflected on this graceful innuendo. The 
 poem is then burlesqued in a prose summary, and 
 
 the passage, 
 
 " But vainly thou warrest," 
 
 is said to "have been manufactured by shaking 
 words together at random." Coleridge's remarks 
 on his own metre are "a miserable piece of cox- 
 combry and shuffling." Coleridge "was in bad 
 health when he wrote ' Kubla Khan ' the parti- 
 cular disease is not given, but the careful reader 
 will form his own conjectures." " Persons in this 
 poet's unhappy condition generally feel the want 
 of sleep as the worst of their evils." The whole 
 work is " one of the most notable pieces of imper- 
 tinence of which the press has lately been guilty, 
 .... utterly destitute of value .... displays not 
 one ray of genius .... has not one couplet which 
 could be reckoned poetry were it found in the 
 corner of a newspaper." The work is not to be 
 tolerated, "though a brother poet chooses to laud 
 it from courtesy or interest." Then comes the 
 political spleen. "And are such panegyrics," as 
 Byron's, "to be echoed by the mean tools of a 
 political faction, because they relate to one whose 
 daily prose is understood to be dedicated to the 
 support of all that courtiers think should be 
 supported ? " 
 
 All this Jeffrey, as Editor, published, in mature 
 life, in a well-established critical organ, about the
 
 i 4 2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 man of genius who had eaten his salt, and whom he 
 had urged to print the very poem thus, and in this 
 disgraceful manner denounced. Yet nobody throws 
 a stone at Jeffrey. Nobody shakes the respectable 
 head over "that wicked review of poor Coleridge," 
 that dastardly censure of his chief treasure, his most 
 accomplished and unequalled work. 
 
 I have introduced this digression to show the 
 style of reviewing which was current and admired, 
 in the most celebrated critical organ of the time, 
 when Lockhart, almost as a boy, began to review. 
 This was the model set him by the Whig Aris- 
 tarchus, "the first of British critics." And, if 
 Jeffrey, mature, famous, omnipotent, could put his 
 seal on the unspeakable meanness and stupidity, 
 personal insolence, sordid imputations, and political 
 clap-trap of the review of "Christabel," I ask that 
 some lenience may be shown to political partisanship, 
 personalities, bad taste, as displayed by a raw young 
 Tory of twenty-three, in his remarks on poems, 
 which no one can regard as approaching in excel- 
 lence to Coleridge's masterpiece ; poems written by 
 persons whose salt he had never eaten, whose faces 
 he had never seen, whom he judged only by hostile 
 rumour, or on the evidence of their own undeniable 
 affectations. 
 
 To return from this digression : 
 
 The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (not yet 
 nominally Blackwood 's) commenced in April 1817. 
 The Editors were Mr. Thomas Pringle and Mr.
 
 "THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE" 143 
 
 Cleghorn, an authority on Farming. The pro- 
 spectus announced the serial as "a Repository of 
 whatever may be most interesting to general 
 readers." Antiquarianism was to be made a strong 
 point : the articles in other magazines were to be 
 criticised : " The Register " of public events, foreign 
 and domestic, was almost to supersede the "Annual 
 Registers," in one of which, the Edinburgh Annual 
 Register, Scott did much work. Nothing could be 
 more blameless and pacific : the periodical, in brief, 
 was to be an improvement on the old Scots Magazine, 
 then in decay. Whether or not Lockhart was the 
 author of the essays on Greek Tragedy, which 
 began in the first number, his biographer has no 
 documentary means of ascertaining. They are 
 attributed to Lockhart by Mr. Gleig, in his Quarterly 
 Review article, and they have none of Wilson's 
 characteristic diction. They bear the signature 
 " Zeta," later attached to the essays on the Cockney 
 School, but such signatures were used in the early 
 Blackwoods for the purpose of perplexing. 1 The 
 translations from the " Prometheus Bound " are 
 certainly worthy of Lockhart, and do not justify 
 the writer's own remark, that "the inspiration of 
 poetry vanishes at the touch of translation." An 
 example may be offered. Prometheus is describing 
 the state of mankind before he came, the hero of 
 the introduction of the Arts : 
 
 1 As a matter of fact, at least two writers used the signature " Zeta."
 
 i44 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 " Eyes had they, but they saw not ; they had ears, 
 But heard not ; like the shadows of a dream, 
 For ages did they flit upon the earth, 
 Rising and vanishing, and left no trace 
 Of wisdom, or of forethought. Their abodes 
 Were not of wood or stone, nor did the sun 
 Warm them, for then they dwelt in lightless caves. 
 The season's change they knew not, when the spring 
 Should shed its roses, or the summer pour 
 Its golden fruits, or icy winter breathe 
 In barrenness and blackness on the year. 
 
 To heaven I raised their eyes, and bade them mark 
 The time the constellations rose and set, 
 By which their labours they might regulate. 
 I taught them numbers, letters were my gift, 
 By which the poet's genius might preserve 
 The memory of glorious events. 
 
 I was man's saviour, but have now no power 
 From these degrading bonds myself to save." 
 
 In the whole attitude of Prometheus the critic 
 finds "the love of independence and the hatred of 
 tyranny, and the unquenchable daring of a noble 
 mind, that rendered the play the delight of the 
 Athenians. It was the bright reflection of their 
 own souls, and the fair image returned to them again 
 with all the joy of self-exaltation. This was the 
 halo that shone from heaven, and shed over the 
 tragedy a lustre by which it was sanctioned in the 
 eye of freedom." 
 
 Shelley would not have thought otherwise, and 
 in these passages we probably discern the true self
 
 PROFESSOR WILSON'. 
 (Drawn by Daniel Maclitt, R.A)
 
 AN EDITORIAL QUARREL us 
 
 of Lockhart, at ease in the native air of his genius, 
 as i i the cold glade of frosty Caucasus. 
 
 Thus the Magazine went its way, certainly in- 
 structive to the antiquarian, for it contained original 
 documents, and was aided by Dr. M'Crie, author 
 of " Knox's Life," by Wilson, and by Sir David 
 Brewster. But in the sixth number (Sept. 1817) 
 appeared the announcement: "This work is now 
 discontinued." "The bookseller and Pringle quar- 
 relled," says Lockhart briefly, and Mrs. Gordon 
 tells us, as does the author of " Hypocrisy Un- 
 veiled," that the two editors resented Blackwood's 
 interference. Sharpe reports to Scott the same 
 story in August 1817. As this was the ground 
 of quarrel, it is unlikely that Mr. Blackwood in 
 the new series (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 
 begun in October 1817) would allow himself to be 
 interfered with by Wilson or any one else. Mean- 
 while, Mr. Pringle and Mr. Cleghorn betook them- 
 selves to Mr. Constable, "offering their services as 
 editors of a new series of the Scots Magazine, to 
 appear under the title of The Edinburgh Magazine"^ 
 Blackwood remodelled his own serial, and with the 
 October number began the war of political and 
 personal scurrilities, at least on the side of " Ebony." 
 Mr. Pringle does not seem to have been very 
 successful under the banner of Constable, and, as 
 usual, we find Scott trying to help "a (literally) 
 
 1 We find no letters from, and no information about, Mr. Cleghorn 
 and Mr. Pringle in the " Memoir of Archibald Constable." 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 i 4 6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 lame dog over a stile." On September 8, 1819, 
 Mr. Croker writes to Mr. Goulburn, enclosing "a 
 very dull and almost illegible piece of Walter Scott's 
 composition." " One Pringle, a Scotch Tory, born 
 lame . . . sets up a magazine, quarrels with his 
 publisher, is turned off, abused, and ridiculed. Sets 
 up a new magazine in opposition to the former . . . 
 the new publisher (Constable) as bad as the old, 
 another dismissal . . . applies to Walter Scott . . . 
 Walter Scott . . ."as usual does all that man can 
 do for poor Mr. Pringle, who goes to the Cape. 1 
 
 The very first number of the new series con- 
 tained three articles which illustrate at once the 
 motiveless waywardness, the personal violence, and 
 the boisterous humour which were to mark the 
 periodical for years. These articles were the attack 
 on Coleridge, the assault on Leigh Hunt, and the 
 " Chaldee Manuscript." To consider them, and 
 their sequels and consequences, is practically to 
 criticise the early history of Black wood. In October 
 1817 we find Jeffrey trying to enlist Wilson under 
 the Blue and Yellow of the Edinburgh Review. 
 "It would appear," says Mrs. Gordon, "that he 
 (Wilson) had offered to review Coleridge in a 
 friendly manner," for Wilson was of lacustrine 
 habits, and, at Elleray, had known the Lake poets, 
 and all the minute politics of their settlements. 
 
 Jeffrey (October 17, 1817) evaded the review of 
 S. T. C, preferring an article on Byron. These facts 
 
 1 I find an interesting letter of thanks from Mr. Pringle.
 
 COLERIDGE ATTACKED 147 
 
 make it all the more extraordinary and unintelligible, 
 that the October number of Blackwood opened with 
 a most violent personal attack on Coleridge. " This 
 lampoon," says Lockhart in " Peter's Letters," 1819, 
 was "a total departure from the principles of the 
 Magazine . . . the only one of the various sins of 
 this Magazine for which I am at a loss to discover, 
 not an apology, but a motive." He then praises 
 Coleridge with enthusiasm and discrimination, end- 
 ing (as to the article), " I profess myself unable to 
 solve the mystery of the motive. The result is bad, 
 and, in truth, very pitiable." 
 
 Possibly the motive is to be found in the end of 
 the article. Maturin had written a tragedy, which 
 Scott, in a letter to Terry, calls (after certain 
 censures), "grand and powerful, the language most 
 animated and poetical, and the characters sketched 
 with a masterly enthusiasm." This play was 
 "Bertram." Now Coleridge, in a critique (re-pub- 
 lished in his " Biographia Literaria "), had described 
 "Bertram" as "this superfetation of blasphemy upon 
 nonsense, this felo de se and thief captain, this loath- 
 some and leprous confluence of robbery, adultery, 
 murder, and cowardly assassination, whose best 
 deed is the having saved his betters from the 
 degradation of hanging him, by turning Jack Ketch 
 to himself." "Bertram" had superseded Coleridge's 
 "Zapolya," at Covent Garden. 
 
 It was thus that men like Coleridge wrote in the 
 brave days of old ! The assailant of Coleridge, in
 
 i48 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Blackwood, contrasts his conduct with that of Scott, 
 Byron, and Henry Mackenzie, who had all praised 
 and encouraged the unfortunate Maturin. " Let me 
 entreat you," says Scott to Maturin (Feb. 26, 1818), 
 "to view Coleridge's violence as a thing to be con- 
 temned, not retaliated the opinion of a British 
 public may surely be set in honest opposition to 
 that of one disappointed and wayward man. You 
 should also consider, en bon Chretien, that Coleridge 
 has had some room to be spited at the world." J 
 
 This attack on Coleridge in Blackwood is a fair 
 example, not only of the violence, but of the incal- 
 culable waywardness of the Magazine. Wilson, just 
 before the onslaught appeared, was anxious, as we 
 saw, to praise Coleridge ; Lockhart, in a very short 
 space of time, is found applauding the author of 
 " Christabel," and, in later life, liked and admired 
 him greatly. Coleridge was no Whig, no Edin- 
 burgh reviewer. Yet he was set upon and mauled, 
 apparently in revenge for Maturin, who was " no 
 kith or kin " to the Edinburgh Tories. The 
 proceeding, whoever the author may have been, 
 was characteristic. 2 The vagaries of the Magazine 
 were indeed inexplicable. Coleridge was presently 
 taken into favour ; Hay don was insulted till he was 
 known ; contributors themselves were as likely as 
 any one else to be attacked. The chief writers, as 
 
 1 The real motive for the attack on Coleridge was too vague to be 
 traced, and too childish to be revealed here. 
 
 3 The article was not by Lockhart ; he names the author in a letter 
 to Christie.
 
 BEARS INJA CHINA SHOP 149 
 
 Haydon reports a saying of Scott's, were "like 
 bears in a china shop." As [Black wood could cer- 
 tainly assert himself, while Wilson was a man of 
 mature years, with an ambition to instruct youth 
 from a Chair of Moral Philosophy, the recklessness 
 of their periodical is even more astonishing than its 
 violence. 
 
 The chief enemies, while friends were insecure, 
 were of course the Whigs, the Edinburgh Review, 
 the "Cockneys," and the opposition in the persons 
 of Constable, Cleghorn, and Pringle. In " Peter's 
 Letters," written while the Magazine was in the 
 flush of its unamiable youth, Lockhart speaks of 
 the Edinburgh Review as offering "a diet of levity 
 and sarcastic indifference," as discredited in the 
 perpetual croakings of prophecy, with which it 
 certainly laboured to chill the heart of England 
 during the struggle with Napoleon ; and as tedious 
 and odious by virtue of its coldness in criticism. 
 "It never praised even the highest efforts of con- 
 temporary genius in the spirit of true and genuine 
 earnestness. . . . They never spoke out of the 
 fulness of the heart, in praising any of our great 
 living poets. . . . Looking back now after the 
 lapse of several years, to their accounts of many 
 of these poems (such as Mr. Scott's, for example) 
 ... it is quite wonderful to find in what a light 
 and trivial vein the first notices of them had been 
 presented to the public by the Edinburgh Review." 
 Wonderful it is to read Jeffrey on Wordsworth,
 
 i5o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Jeffrey on " Marmion," and to remember that he (as 
 he seems in these articles at least) was taken for 
 Sir Oracle. A generous young man might well 
 resent Jeffrey's carping ; his patronising manner 
 when he praises ; his cheery contented inaccessi- 
 bility to what is noble, and to what is nobly spirited 
 in verse. In "Peter's Letters" Lockhart adds to 
 the sins of the Edinburgh Review, " its occasional 
 religious mockeries." On this matter, unluckily, 
 there is more to be said later. The Edinburgh 
 Review, and the Whigs in general, were fair game, 
 if the game was fairly played. How unfairly played 
 it was will presently be apparent. 
 
 The excesses, to put it mildly, of the new 
 Magazine began with the lampoon on Coleridge 
 in the first number. They were followed, in the 
 same number, by the opening attack on " The 
 Cockney School of Poetry." The head of the 
 Cockney School was Leigh Hunt, then obnoxious 
 to Tories as Editor of the Radical Examiner, the 
 libeller of the Regent, the jaunty babbler about 
 himself, his domesticities, and the young men 
 around him, Keats, Cornelius Webb, Hazlitt, 
 Hay don, and many others. That they should 
 praise Hunt, that Hunt should praise them, that 
 Keats should furnish Hunt with an ivy crown, 
 that they should write and publish sonnets to each 
 other, was not odd in members of a literary 
 "circle." But to persons at a distance, the spec- 
 tacle of such endearments has always been irri-
 
 KEATS ON LEIGH HUNT 151 
 
 tating. A genius like Keats's could not long endure 
 the atmosphere of a coterie. As early as May 10, 
 1817, before ever Blackwood was, we find Keats 
 complaining to Haydon of Hunt's "self-illusions, 
 they are very lamentable." "There is no greater 
 sin than to flatter oneself into the idea of being 
 a great poet." Hunt has spoiled Hampstead, 
 Keats says, by identifying it with himself. " Hunt 
 keeps on in his old way ; I am completely tired of 
 it all. He has lately published a Pocket-Book, 
 called the ' Literary Pocket-Book,' full of the most 
 sickening stuff you can imagine." 2 ..." In reality 
 he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in taste and 
 morals. He understands many a beautiful thing ; 
 but then, instead of giving other minds credit for 
 the same degree of perception as he himself pos- 
 sesses, he begins an explanation in such a curious 
 
 1 "Letters of John Keats," London, 1895, p. 18. 
 
 2 This Pocket-Book was rather kindly received by Blackvuood, 
 December 1819, after the attack on Keats. The Pocket-Book con- 
 tained two sonnets by Keats, signed I. : " The Human Seasons," and 
 "Ailsa Rock." "As we are anxious to bring this young writer into 
 notice, we quote his sonnets." For the first, "we thank Mr. Keats." 
 The sonnet on Ailsa Craig is "portentous folly." It is, indeed, an 
 exquisitely bad sonnet 
 
 " Thou answerest not, for thou art dead asleep ; 
 
 Thy life is but two dead eternities, 
 The last in air, the former in the deep; 
 
 First with the whales, last with the eagle skies 
 Drowned wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, 
 
 Another cannot wake thy giant size." 
 
 " Do not let John Keats think we dislike him, he is a young man of 
 some poetry : " heavy banter about apothecaries follows.
 
 152 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 manner that our taste and self-love is offended 
 continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine 
 things petty, and beautiful things hateful." l Makes 
 beautiful things hateful I Lockhart says, "Perhaps 
 no writer, by half so feeble, ever succeeded in 
 turning so many beautiful things into objects of 
 aversion." 5 This extraordinary verbal coincidence 
 between the testimony of a friend and a foe cannot 
 be merely fortuitous. Leigh Hunt (at that time) 
 pawed over and vulgarised the victims of his 
 admiration : this, with his vanity, his egotistic 
 babble, accounts for the spleen of Lockhart, though 
 it does not excuse his ferocities. Keats's remarks, 
 though they abet those of Blackwood, are also 
 splenetic, and doubtless exaggerated ; he was later 
 reconciled to Hunt. But if a friend thought he 
 had cause to speak thus, we need not wonder at 
 the scorn which Hunt provoked in the hostile 
 conductors of Blackwood. Hunt is there written 
 down vulgar, ignorant (and his education was 
 really most incomplete) ; finally, as Keats says, 
 Hunt is "disgusting in taste and morals." His 
 religion is "a poor tame dilution of the blas- 
 phemies of the Encyclopedia." His dress is 
 ridiculed; "his muse talks indelicately like a tea- 
 sipping milliner girl." His "Tale of Rimini" is 
 full of Cockney vulgarisms, an undeniably true 
 
 1 Keats to George Keats, January 4, 1819. Mr. Forman's edition 
 of " Complete Letters," p. 242. 
 
 2 Quarterly Review, vol. xliv. p. 210.
 
 HUNT AND SCOTT 153 
 
 remark. When Paolo and Francesca kiss, they 
 are "all of a tremble"! 
 
 The criticism is not so strong as Coleridge's 
 censures on " Bertram," but it is more personal. 
 This kind of thing went on, and was continued in 
 a letter to Leigh Hunt, by Zeta, in the January 
 number of 1818. Zeta, withholding his name for 
 the present (the Examiner had called him a liar, 
 and so forth), declares that he attacks the poet, not 
 the man, as immoral. It was of the man, however, 
 that Keats spoke. The " Tale of Rimini " is " a 
 smiling apology for a crime at once horrible in 
 its effects, and easy in its perpetration," which can 
 hardly be denied, if we are to be moral. 
 
 Leigh Hunt appears to have imagined a wonderful 
 cause for all this animosity, which, perhaps, has been 
 sufficiently explained on general grounds. In 1810 
 he had edited an abortive quarterly magazine, The 
 Reflector. In this he imitated Suckling's " Session 
 of Poets," by a piece called " The Feast of Poets" : 
 and hence, he says, came "to the Tory critics of 
 Scotland the first cause of offence." Hunt had 
 "taken a dislike to Walter Scott" for a singular 
 reason. Charles II. was reported to have sent Lord 
 Mulgrave to Tangiers in a leaky ship, along with a 
 son of his own. In Scott's " Life of Dryden," he 
 characterised this not very probable act of the good- 
 natured king as " ungenerous." Hence Leigh Hunt's 
 noble wrath. To avenge Lord Mulgrave, who 
 reached Tangiers in perfect safety, "the future
 
 i54 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 great novelist was introduced to Apollo in ' The 
 Feast of the Poets,' after a very irreverent fashion." l 
 In 1832 Hunt withdrew the "irreverent" passages, 
 stating, however, in his preface, that they "gave 
 rise to some of the most inveterate enmities he had 
 experienced." We learn from Keats, that Hunt 
 believed the inveterate Scott to have been his 
 assailant in Blackwoodl "He was nearly sure that 
 ' The Cockney School ' was written by Scott, so 
 you are right, Tom!" (January 23, 1818.) Scott's 
 desire, as he told Maturin, was ever to have his foes 
 " where the muir-cock was baillie, or, as you would 
 say, upon the sod, but I never let the thing cling to 
 my mind." 
 
 What manner of man at this time was Leigh 
 Hunt, with his belief that Scott could let an imper- 
 tinence " cling to his mind " for seven years, and 
 then avenge it anonymously, the reader may now 
 estimate for himself. But the worst of Hunt's 
 ignorance of a noble nature is, that he probably 
 persuaded Keats to see his assailant in the most 
 generous of men. A trace of the old incredible 
 suspicion shows itself in Mr. Forman's note on 
 Keats's text. "Mr. Dilke stated that it" (the 
 article on "The Cockney School") "was written by 
 Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law." Now, when these 
 articles began, Lockhart had never even met Scott 
 in society. From the first, as the motto from 
 Cornelius Webb shows, and as Keats himself 
 
 1 "The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt," 1860, pp. 215-216.
 
 THE COCKNEY SCHOOL 155 
 
 observes, the writers of " The Cockney School " 
 meant to pillory Keats. 
 
 " Our talk shall be (a theme we never tire on) 
 Of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, 
 (Our England's Dante) Wordsworth, Hunt and Keats, 
 The Muses' son of promise." 
 
 These lines, written when Keats was the unknown 
 author of a small book of poems, not all worthy of 
 him, and when Hunt was no nearer Shakespeare 
 than usual, were irritating to the most lenient 
 observer ; Keats was confused by the Blackwood 
 men with Hunt and Webb ; he knew it, he expected 
 attack, and says that, if insulted, and if he meets 
 his enemy, "he must infallibly call him to an 
 account" (November 5, 1817). 
 
 After the affair of " The Cockney School " (which, 
 unluckily, had sequels), it is almost a pleasure to 
 reach the open buffoonery and ingenuity of " The 
 Chaldee Manuscript." Hogg soon claimed the 
 authorship of "The Chaldee." " I know not what 
 wicked genius put it into my head," says the 
 Shepherd. 1 He adds that Blackwood never thought 
 of publishing it, but "some of the rascals to whom 
 he showed it almost forced him to insert it." 
 " There is a bouncer ! " cries a reviewer of Hogg, 
 apparently Lockhart, or possibly De Quincey, in 
 Blackwood for August 1821, and he goes on 
 
 1 "The Mountain Bard." Third edition. To which is prefixed a 
 Memoir of the Author's Life, p. 65.
 
 156 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 "About the subject of 'The Chaldee,' let me now 
 speak the truth." Christopher North, the writer 
 himself, Blackwood, "and a reverend gentleman of 
 this city, alone know the perpetrator. ... It was 
 the same person who murdered Begbie," the bank 
 porter, whose death is an undiscovered mystery to 
 this hour. " Like Mr. Bowles and AH Pasha, he 
 was a mild man of unassuming manners, a scholar 
 and a gentleman. It is quite a vulgar error to 
 suppose him a ruffian. He was sensibility itself, 
 and would not hurt a fly. But it was a disease 
 with him to excite public emotion. Though he 
 had an amiable wife and a vast family, he never 
 was happy, unless he saw the world staring like 
 a stuck pig. With respect to his murdering Begbie, 
 as it is called, he knew the poor man well, and had 
 frequently given him both small sums of money, 
 and articles of wearing apparel." However he de- 
 cided that, by seeming to slay and rob Begbie, 
 "there would be no end of public emotion, to use 
 his own constant phrase on occasions of this nature. 
 He was always kind to the poor man's widow, who 
 was rather a gainer by her husband's death. I 
 have reason to believe that he ultimately regretted 
 the act, but there can be no doubt that his enjoyment 
 was great for many years. ... He confessed 
 ' The Chaldee,' and the murder, the day before he 
 died, to the reverend gentleman specified, and was 
 sufficiently penitent ; yet, with that inconsistency 
 not unusual in dying men, almost his last words
 
 "THE CHALDEE" 157 
 
 were (indistinctly mumbled to himself,) ' It ought 
 not to have been left out of the other editions.' " 
 
 "After this plain statement Hogg must look 
 extremely foolish. We shall next have him claim- 
 ing the murder likewise, I suppose ; but he is 
 totally incapable of either." 
 
 Professor Ferrier, in his edition of " Noctes 
 Ambrosianae," does not wholly bear out the state- 
 ments either of Hogg or of this writer. Hogg, he 
 says, conceived the idea, and wrote, in addition to 
 unpublished portions, Chapter I. i.-xxxvii., with two 
 or three other verses. " The rest of the production 
 was the workmanship of Wilson and Lockhart." 
 
 As to the authorship of " The Chaldee," habemus 
 confitentem reum. On January 27, 1818, Lockhart 
 wrote from Edinburgh to Christie, " I never cer- 
 tainly have been more troubled in mind than for 
 some two or three months past," apparently since 
 Blackwood appeared on October 20, 1817. "The 
 Chaldee Manuscript" has excited prodigious noise 
 here it was the sole subject of conversation for 
 two months. . . . The history of it is this : Hogg, 
 the Ettrick Shepherd, sent up an attack on Con- 
 stable the bookseller, respecting some private deal- 
 ings of his with Blackwood. Wilson and I liked 
 the idea of introducing the whole panorama of the 
 town in that sort of dialect. We drank punch one 
 night from eight till eight in the morning, Black- 
 wood being by with anecdotes, and the result is 
 before you. ..."
 
 158 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 "The Chaldee" set all Edinburgh in a flame. The 
 Scot is not famed for being able to take a joke, 
 especially a joke aimed at himself. People cried 
 " Blasphemy," because of the Oriental character of 
 the style, which had good Jacobite precedent in 
 " The Chronicle of Charles, the Young Man," 
 published in that year of grace abounding I745- 1 
 The "Chaldean" text was from the "Bibliotheque 
 Royale" (Salle 2, No. 53, B.A.M.M.). 2 Monsieur 
 Silvestre de Sacy (of whom the Shepherd can have 
 known little) was understood to be occupied with an 
 edition of the original. 
 
 It may not be superfluous to give a very brief 
 analysis of "The Chaldee." Blackwood "is a man 
 in plain apparel," has "his name as it had been the 
 colour of Ebony, and his number (17 Princes 
 Street) was the number of a maiden, when the days 
 of her virginity have expired." To him come the 
 Two Beasts (Pringle and Cleghorn, ex-editors), "the 
 joints of their legs like the polished cedars of 
 Lebanon," for, indeed, "they came skipping upon 
 staves," being lame. They brought a book, "but 
 put no words into it." Mr. Blackwood, therefore, 
 called together his friends, while "the man who 
 was crafty in council " received overtures from the 
 Beasts. This word, crafty, annoyed Constable, as 
 the nickname had been given to him, says Lockhart, 
 " by one of his own most eminent Whig supporters." 
 
 1 The respectable Southey had already written a very dull Biblical 
 parody on Jeffrey. Here was precedent ! 
 
 2 Whereby is indicated bam or bite.
 
 THE GREAT MAGICIAN 159 
 
 Blackwood, when Constable accepted the Beasts, 
 said, " I will of myself yield up the book," that is, 
 abandon his magazine. However, he took and 
 snuffed up dust from a gem of curious workmanship, 
 and called in "an aged man," Henry Mackenzie, the 
 Man of Feeling. Mr. Mackenzie later " forbade the 
 magazine his house." l However, in "The Chaldee," 
 Mr. Mackenzie gives an evasive answer to Black- 
 wood, "and all the young men that were there 
 lifted up their voices and said " all manner of kind 
 and respectful things to the venerated sage. 
 
 " The great Magician, who dwelleth in the old 
 fortress hard by the river Jordan" was next 
 appealed to. Sir Walter was tres Normand, and 
 gave identical answers to the man in plain apparel, 
 and to the man crafty in council. "He afterwards 
 confessed," says Lockhart, "that the Chaldsean 
 author had given a sufficiently accurate version of 
 what passed on the occasion." Then came Pro- 
 fessor Jamieson, Sir David Brewster, Tytler the 
 historian, and, alas, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe ! 
 Now Sharpe, at or about this time, was editing 
 Kirkton's contemporary MS. " History of the 
 Covenant," with notes on all the scandals about 
 the Covenanters, for example, about the prowess of 
 the hero of Cherrytrees. Wilson had a leaning to 
 Covenanters, Lockhart's ancestors had been " Whigs 
 frae Bothwell Brig," and their fellow -contributor, 
 
 1 Letter to Constable, October 8, 1818, in "Archibald Constable," 
 339-
 
 160 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Dr. M'Crie, was extremely Presbyterian. Sharpe's 
 love of scandal, and his amusing notes to Kirkton, 
 may have suggested what " The Chaldee " says of 
 his voice, "even like the voice of the unclean bird 
 which buildeth its nest in the corner of the temple " 
 (Kirkton). Sharpe was very angry; he com- 
 plained to Scott, who said that his connection with 
 the magazine was through Will Laidlaw. Laidlaw 
 wrote the historical chronicle of events from month 
 to month. Scott, it seems, had secured for him 
 this appointment, and Laidlaw was his chief link 
 with the magazine. Sharpe sneers at Laidlaw 
 "a person of whom I never heard." Scott added 
 that Blackwood had sent him an apologetic letter, 
 " stating that the offensive article had been inserted 
 against his will," and said that his remonstrances 
 made Blackwood omit the article in later editions. 
 
 In "The Chaldee" a Veiled Man now aids Black- 
 wood with a list of names of contributors, "the 
 beautiful Leopard from the valley of the palm 
 trees" (Wilson), and "from a far country, the 
 Scorpion, who delighteth to sting the faces of 
 men " (Lockhart), " and the great wild Boar from 
 the Forest of Lebanon " (which men call Ettrick 
 Forest); "and the Griffin came with a roll of 
 the names of those whose blood had been shed 
 between his teeth ; and I saw him stand over the 
 body of one that had been buried long in the 
 grave, defending it from all men." The Griffin is 
 the Rev. Dr. Thomas M'Crie, the Biographer of
 
 MANY BEASTS 161 
 
 Knox, and from his part in Blackwood arose con- 
 tendings, and the shedding of much ink. Sir 
 William Hamilton (who abode not long with them) 
 is "the black Eagle of the desert, whose cry is as 
 the sound of an unknown tongue, which flieth over 
 the ancient cities, and hath his dwelling among the 
 tombs of the wise men." Constable now appeals to 
 Jeffrey, "a familiar spirit unto whom he had sold 
 himself. But the spirit was a wicked spirit and a 
 cruel," who helped him not. Leslie (Professor of 
 Mathematics) is appealed to, and next the Rev. 
 Professor Playfair. "He also is of the seed of the 
 prophets, and ministered in the temple while he was 
 yet young ; but he went out, and became one of 
 the scoffers" {Edinburgh Reviewers). These, too, 
 would not aid Constable. Scott answered as he 
 did to Blackwood. Macvey Napier, and a crowd of 
 forgotten folk, rallied to the man crafty in council, 
 including " John, the Brother of James, a man of low 
 stature, who giveth out merry things, and is a lover 
 of fables from his youth up," that is, " Leeing 
 Johnny," John Ballantyne. " And there followed 
 many women which knew not their right hand 
 from their left, also some cattle." 
 
 " The Chaldee " ends 
 
 " And I fled into an inner chamber to hide 
 myself, and I heard a great tumult, but I wist not 
 what it was." A great tumult arose in little Edin- 
 burgh, "no end of public emotion." Legal pro- 
 ceedings were threatened ; private wergild was paid 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 i6a LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 to the Third Beast, Graham Dalyell. Scott made 
 Blackwood withdraw the article ; there were excur- 
 sions and alarms. Being local and personal, " The 
 Chaldee " caused more trouble in Edinburgh than 
 articles much more blameworthy.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 EDINBURGH, 1817-1819 
 
 Blackwood's next scrape. Its origin. Cavalier and Covenanter. 
 Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. His edition of Kirkton. Dr. 
 M'Crie assailed for contributing to Blackwood. Lockhart 
 carries the war into Africa. Attacks clerical contributors to 
 the Edinburgh Review. Writes as Baron von Lauerwinkel. 
 Criticises critics. Shakespeare. The real Lockhart. On 
 Napoleon. On Jeffrey. Jeffrey's real insignificance. His 
 ignorance. His treatment of Goethe. Lockhart's defence of 
 Christianity against the Edinburgh Review. How far justified. 
 
 Examples of religious criticism from the Edinburgh. The 
 sceptical priest. Sydney Smith's flippancies in the Edinburgh. 
 
 " Merriment of Parsons." Evangelicals " nasty vermin." 
 Lockhart on Scottish religion. His reprisals. Personal attack 
 on Playfair. Scott's disapproval. Wilson and Lockhart are 
 attacked anonymously. "Hypocrisy Unveiled." They challenge 
 their opponent. Jeffrey's reply. Mr. Macvey Napier suspected. 
 Denies the charge. Extracts from his unpublished Corre- 
 spondence. Sir John Barrow's letter. Playfair and the Quarterly 
 Review. 
 
 THE next formidable difficulty into which Blackwood 
 picked its way was Lockhart's own. The new feud 
 was really a sequel of the old religious Cavalier and 
 Covenanting struggles, at least it arose in the camp 
 of the suffering yet lovely Remnant. Blackwood, 
 though Tory, was not Cavalier in politics. We have 
 seen how Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was handled 
 in "The Chaldee." In the December number
 
 1 64 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of 1817 appeared a letter to Sharpe, "On his 
 original mode of editing Church History," that of 
 Kirkton. "We have all along the upper part ol 
 the page, the manly narrative of honest Kirkton, 
 speaking of his suffering friends with compassion, 
 but of his enemies as became a man and a Christian. 
 And below that " (in Sharpe's notes) " such a medley 
 of base ribaldry, profane stuff, and blasphemous 
 innuendos, as at one view exhibits the character of 
 both parties." Sharpe, in fact, had done his best to 
 rake up the by no means rare absurdities of the 
 Remnant, and his taste led him to revel in the few 
 scandalous anecdotes about the godly. Whether 
 his new assailant was Lockhart or Dr. M'Crie, the 
 Scorpion or the Griffin, is not known. 1 It looks 
 more like the Griffin's touch. Sharpe himself, in a 
 letter to Scott, calls Dr. M'Crie "a canting rogue," 
 speaks of "the loathsome puddle of Presbyterian- 
 ism," says he is collecting M'Crie' s blunders for 
 the use of Chalmers, and is generally hostile to the 
 reverend Griffin. 
 
 Now in these days arose one Calvinus, who 
 printed " Two Letters to the Rev. Dr. Thomas 
 M'Crie and the Rev. Andrew Thomson, on the 
 parody of Scripture lately published in Blackwood's 
 Edinburgh Magazine " (Fairbairn, Edinburgh, 
 
 1 Mrs. Wilson in a letter attributes it to Hogg, which seems impro- 
 bable. (Christopher North, i. 277.) I have reason to believe that 
 Dr. M'Crie, in fact, did not contribute to the magazine at this time. 
 He refrained, as he disapproved of and censured the personal 
 violences.
 
 CALVINUS 165 
 
 1817). His engaging motto was: "Lest that by 
 any means, when I have preached to others, I my- 
 self should be a castaway." Calvinus warned the 
 Griffin that he was very like to be a castaway, if 
 he did not desert Blackwood. The author of " The 
 Chaldee" "makes indecent jests at his Creator," 
 which are certainly not visible to the common eye. 
 " And you, the historian of Knox and the champion 
 of the Covenanters, are accosted, from the Scorner's 
 chair, with the accents of good fellowship, and 
 described in the record of his impiety as an ally." 
 The Griffin is warned that " the companion of 
 fools shall be destroyed." And what business, 
 it is asked, hath the Griffin dans cette galere, he 
 who " had so powerfully reprobated and chastised, 
 in 'Old Mortality,' profanity not half so gross and 
 odious as this." Dr. M'Crie, in fact, had made a 
 laboured defence of Habakkuk Mucklewrath and 
 Mause Headrig. 1 Dr. M'Crie, minister of the 
 Auld Lichts, seems to have borne this chastisement 
 with humorous indifference. Writing to his fellow- 
 sinner and fellow-sufferer, Dr. Thomson, he says, 
 " Well, and how do you relish the letter of your good 
 friend and great admirer, Calvinus ? Glad you have 
 got off so scratch-free ? Gratified with his equivocal 
 and conditional praise, and determined to merit and 
 secure it by never entering again the virgin-door of 
 Blackwood, and by immediately withdrawing from 
 him your Instructor, as well as your Essay on 
 
 1 This long review will be found in his collected works.
 
 166 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Education, with all the embryo and de futuro pro- 
 ductions of your brain." Neither gentleman " seems 
 to have considered himself called upon to answer the 
 summons of an anonymous writer." 
 
 Calvinus, unhappily, gave the world to know that 
 he would "rather belong to the party that, with a 
 Playfair, shares the honour of possessing no quality 
 that can excite the complacency of so despicable a 
 babbler " as the Chaldsean. This was an unhappy 
 remark, for the Scorpion, dreading doubtless that 
 his friend the Griffin, in fear of becoming a cast- 
 away, would forswear his company, carried the war 
 into Africa. Calvinus (a Mr. Grahame, according to 
 Lockhart) had called on Dr. M'Crie "to remember 
 the fate of that priest who associated himself with the 
 infidel compilers of the ' Encyclopedia.' ' Brewster 
 was threatened in the same style. Lockhart's mis- 
 chief rose to revenge Ebony. In place of wooing 
 the coy Griffin with fair words, he retorted by 
 attacking the clergy who wrote in the Edinburgh, 
 Review, and he specially singled out the Rev. Pro- 
 fessor Playfair, who then held the Chair of Natural 
 Philosophy, and who "had been originally intended 
 for the Church," according to Professor Ferrier. 
 He had been a placed minister. In the attack on 
 Playfair, which justly caused "no end of public 
 emotion," Lockhart called himself the Baron von 
 Lauerwinkel. Under this name, in March 1818, 
 he had written "Remarks on the Periodical Criti- 
 
 1 " Life of Dr. M'Crie," p. 229.
 
 LOCKHART ON THE REVIEWS 167 
 
 cism of England." This admirable essay it is 
 which justifies the opinion that, in the reserved 
 and lofty centre of his genius, Lockhart regarded 
 all the bickerings and feuds of literary people with 
 impartial disdain. " These strange Reviews," says 
 the Baron (much in the tone of Mr. Arnold's 
 Arminius), rule the authors and readers of England 
 with the sway "of a sportive Nero, or a gloomy 
 Tiberius." He speaks as if Goethe had been cen- 
 suring our Reviews, but this is probably part of 
 the manner. In Germany, "a poem, history, or 
 treatise is judged according to its merits by the 
 critic." " On the other hand, an Edinburgh Re- 
 viewer is a smart, clever man of the world, or else 
 a violent political zealot." The author may be 
 alien to politics : " The Reviewer does not mind 
 that ; when he sits down to criticise, his first ques- 
 tion is not, 'Is the book good or bad?' but, 'Is 
 this writer a Ministerialist or an Oppositionist ? ' 
 ' No one knows . . . but if the author has a 
 nephew, or a cousin, or an uncle, who is a member 
 of Parliament and votes, that is quite sufficient," 
 for both Edinburgh and Quarterly. 
 
 What follows is eloquent. 
 
 "You remember what I have said of Shake- 
 speare, that he is an angelic being, a pure spirit, 
 who looks down upon 'the great globe itself, and 
 all which it inhabits,' as if from the elevation of 
 some higher planet. He is like Uriel, the Angel 
 of the Sun, partaker of all the glories of the orb
 
 1 68 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 in which he dwells. Undazzled by the splendour 
 which surrounds himself, he sees everything with 
 the calm eye of intellect. It is true that, at the 
 moment when he views any object, a flood of light 
 and warmth is thrown over it from the passing 
 sun of genius. Still, he sees the world as it is ; 
 and if the beams love to dwell longest on some 
 favoured region, there is none upon which they 
 never shine." 
 
 In the centuries of Shakespeare's praises few are 
 nobler, more severely great, more illuminating than 
 those lines, tossed by Lockhart into the medley of 
 a magazine 
 
 " As rich men give that care not for their gifts." 
 
 Lockhart goes on to say that " if the world shall 
 ever possess a perfect reviewer, like Shakespeare 
 he will be universal, impartial, rational. ... He 
 will have divine intellect and human feeling so 
 blended within him, that he shall sound, with equal 
 facility, the soul of a Hamlet and the heart of a 
 Juliet. What a being would this be ! Compared 
 with him the present critics of England are either 
 satirical buffoons, like Foote and Aristophanes, or 
 they are truculent tragedians, like the author of 
 ' The Revenge.' " x 
 
 Here we listen to the real Lockhart, and are 
 admitted to the region above the polished threshold 
 
 1 According to Lockhart, in " Peter's Letters," this article gave 
 deep offence to the Whigs.
 
 ON GIFFORD 169 
 
 of his disdain. He descends, he moves among the 
 crew of " satirical buffoons," and shares their pranks 
 as if the Lady, in " Comus," had frolicked with the 
 rout of revelling fauns and Sileni. Here we are 
 with that Lockhart whom Scott loved, whom even 
 Carlyle praised, not with the companion of the 
 Leopard and the great Boar from the forest of 
 Lebanon. This is the Lockhart of whom Lady 
 Eastlake wrote : 
 
 " How many kind and good things I remember 
 from his lips how unfailing his tribute to worth 
 and duty, though under the homeliest garb." 
 
 Descending from his height Lockhart compares 
 Whigs and Tories to the Neri and Bianchi of 
 criticism ; Jeffrey and Gifford are the leaders. " The 
 former resembles the gay despot of Rome, the 
 latter the bloody and cruel one of Capreae. Both 
 are men of great talent, and both, I think, are very 
 bad reviewers." 
 
 Lockhart then avers that no man can be a good 
 critic, unless he be more than a mere reviewer. 
 " Aristotle and Lessing remain, but Chamfort and 
 all the wits of the Mercure have perished." This 
 is hardly true of Chamfort, but, compared with 
 Lessing and Aristotle, his is an ineffectual light. In 
 Gifford, with many better things, Lockhart notes 
 "ill-natured abuse and cold rancorous raillery. . . . 
 He is exquisitely formed for the purposes of political 
 objurgation, but not at all for those of gentle and 
 universal criticism." Gentle and universal criticism,
 
 1 70 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHAET 
 
 of the masters of literature, not of contemporaries, 
 for that end Lockhart was formed. But, in the 
 main, he took the world and the press as he found 
 them, and, with a stoical disdain that verged on 
 cynicism, he subdued his hand to that it worked in. 
 
 "We often read the reviews in Gifford's journal 
 with pleasure such are the strength of his language, 
 and the malignity of our nature. . . . How can 
 one who thinks the ' Lauras ' and ' Delia Cruscas ' 
 matters of so great moment, form any rational 
 opinion concerning such men as Scott, Wordsworth, 
 Byron, or Goethe ? " Lockhart then protests against 
 the Quarterly's "truly English" view of Napoleon. 
 " Nations yet to come will look back upon his 
 history as to some grand and supernatural romance. 
 The fiery energy of his youthful career, and the 
 magnificent progress of his irresistible ambition, 
 have invested his character with the mysterious 
 grandeur of some heavenly appearance ; and when 
 all the lesser tumults, and lesser men of our age, 
 shall have passed away into the darkness of oblivion, 
 history will still inscribe one mighty era with the 
 majestic name of Napoleon." 
 
 Jeffrey is ingeniously described, by the German 
 Baron, as "an advocate before the parliament of 
 Edinburgh." " The intellectual timidity of Jeffrey's 
 profession has clung to him in all his pursuits, and 
 prevented him from coming manfully and decidedly 
 to any firm opinion respecting matters of such 
 moment, that it is absolutely impossible to be a
 
 JEFFREY 171 
 
 great critic while the mind remains unsettled in 
 regard to them." He is represented as carrying 
 the popular ways of the legal advocate into the 
 court of the literary judge. "He can very easily 
 persuade the multitude that nothing is worth know- 
 ing but what they can comprehend ; that true philo- 
 sophy is quite attainable without the labour of 
 years " (as in reviewing Kant through the French), 
 "and that whenever we meet with anything new, 
 and at first sight unintelligible, the best rule is to 
 take it for granted that it is something mystical 
 and absurd." He is acute enough to see that, 
 however great his authority "among the genera- 
 tion of indolent and laughing readers to whom he 
 dictates opinion, he has as yet done nothing which 
 will ever induce a man of research, in the next 
 century, to turn over the volumes of his review." 
 On the threshold of the next century we may ask 
 who does read Jeffrey ? Mr. Saintsbury, who reads 
 everything (except " Popol Vuh "), has indeed read 
 Jeffrey, and in a remarkable essay has formed a 
 much more favourable judgment of his criticisms 
 than can be done by a writer who stills resents, 
 like a personal affront, Jeffrey's review of " Mar- 
 mion." "There may be much that Jeffrey does 
 not see," says Mr. Saintsbury ; "there may be some 
 things which he is physically unable to see : but 
 
 1 Jeffrey's letter to Macvey Napier, many years later, on Sir 
 William Hamilton's review of Cousin, shows that Jeffrey remained 
 impenitent.
 
 1 72 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 what he does see, he sees with a clearness, and 
 co-ordinates in its bearings on other things seen 
 with like precision, which are hardly to be matched 
 among the fluctuating and diverse race of critics." 
 Thus Mr. Saintsbury ; but Lockhart writes : "When 
 the great men whom Jeffrey has insulted by his 
 mirth shall have received their due recompense in 
 the admiration of our children, it will appear but an 
 unprofitable task to read his ineffectual and shallow 
 criticisms." In later life Lockhart took an infinitely 
 more favourable view of Jeffrey. 
 
 "When the good and venerable Goethe," writes 
 the Baron, "told the stories of his youth to a people 
 who all look upon him with the affectionate admira- 
 tion of children, this foreigner, who cannot read our 
 language, amused his countrymen, equally ignorant 
 as himself, with an absurd and heartless caricature 
 of the only poet, in modern times, who is entitled 
 to stand in the same class with Dante, Calderon, 
 and Shakespeare." Jeffrey is then said to have 
 given up his original strictly "classical principles" 
 of Pope's and Boileau's school, not as a man 
 converted by reading and reflection, but as a 
 politician who sees what way the cat is jumping 
 " I admire his talents, I lament their misappli- 
 cation, and I prophesy that they will soon be 
 forgotten." 
 
 As to politics, it is enough to quote one sentence. 
 " A great country, in the hour of her conflict, 
 should not hear the voice of despondency from
 
 THE "EDINBURGH" ON RELIGION 173 
 
 her children." That voice Jeffrey uttered, though 
 personally a volunteer in the peril of England. 
 
 The Baron now defends Christianity from the 
 Edinburgh Review. "This journal has never 
 ventured to declare itself openly the champion of 
 infidelity ; but there is no artifice, no petty subter- 
 fuge, no insidious treachery, by which it has not 
 ventured to weaken the influence which the Bible 
 possesses over the minds of a devout and meditative 
 people." 
 
 The Baron exclaims " Does any man dare to 
 speak, with the feelings and the fearlessness of a 
 Christian, concerning God and the destiny of man ? 
 Mr. Jeffrey is sure to ridicule his piety as Methodism, 
 and stoops to court the silly sneers of striplings 
 against a faith which, as he well knows, neither he 
 nor they have ever taken the trouble to under- 
 stand." He must not imagine that, as a public 
 instructor, "he can avoid being either the friend 
 or foe of religion." The Edinburgh advocates 
 Catholic claims, the Quarterly attacks Catholics. 
 But the Edinburgh "befriends Catholicism only 
 because it despises Christianity." 
 
 What element of truth is there in these and 
 even stronger assertions ? Had Lockhart's ob- 
 servations any bottom of fact ? These old feuds 
 are dead enough, but they had the deepest in- 
 fluence on Lockhart's future. It is, therefore, 
 necessary to ask "how far had he any justifica- 
 tion in fact ? " It will be shown that he did
 
 174 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHAET 
 
 denounce that chilly and ignorant scepticism, which 
 Carlyle hated. 
 
 The Edinburgh Review prolonged, one may 
 say, and even carried farther, the principles of the 
 "Moderates" of the last century, the party which 
 secured the alliance of Burns. This Moderation, 
 even among the clergy, was sometimes a thing incon- 
 sistent, not only with the Standards of the Kirk, 
 but even with the dogmatic and doctrinal essence 
 of Christianity. In the earliest number of the 
 Edinburgh some assurance is given to orthodoxy by 
 the remark that "the presumptuous theories and 
 audacious maxims of Rousseau, Mably, Condorcet, 
 &c., had a necessary tendency to do harm." " Sub- 
 mission to lawful authority is indisputably the maxim 
 of Christianity, and they who destroy our faith in 
 that religion take away one security for our sub- 
 mission, and facilitate the subversion of governments. 
 This is a great truth " (Edinburgh Review, i. p. 13). 
 Voltaire and d'Alembert, with other Encyclopaedists, 
 are described as "pernicious writers." The value 
 of morality is insisted upon " We agree with our 
 author in the importance of the doctrines peculiar 
 to Christianity" (iv. 193). 
 
 But "good sense and morality are indispensable 
 requisites " (in a preacher), " and if the preacher gives 
 us these, he may be allowed, in other respects, to 
 follow the dictates of his peculiar genius or fancy." 
 That is, if we read through the spectacles of an 
 orthodox Scot, a Christian pulpit may be occupied
 
 PREACHERS 175 
 
 by a Buddhist, or an Atheist, if only he has sense, 
 morality, and a genius to follow, a fancy to indulge 
 (vi. 105). In an essay on the sermons of Sir 
 Henry Moncreiff, an essay marked by the courtesy 
 of its manner, the writer says "A preacher who 
 studiously keeps Christianity in the background . . . 
 is by no means doing his duty," a lenient censure, 
 yet in contradiction to the opinion about genius 
 and fancy. But, in the next sentence we read 
 " Whether that religion (Christianity) be true or 
 false is another question, but surely no one who 
 thinks it true ought to be ashamed of it." Evan- 
 gelical preaching is handled thus : " Preachers who 
 have not their supernatural evidences" (the power 
 of working miracles is referred to), "must take a 
 lower and more moderate tone " than the Apostles. 
 Preachers must remember that it is "extremely dis- 
 agreeable to be kept in the trammels of mystery." 
 
 " Too great constancy in enforcing Christian doc- 
 trines " is censured in Sir Henry Moncreiff. He laid 
 stress on " those doctrines of revelation which, in the 
 eyes of the world in general, and especially in those 
 of sceptics, have most the appearance of foolishness." 
 Still, as against Moncreiff, " the charge of hypoc- 
 risy would be highly illiberal." These remarks are 
 not, on the whole, reassuring to a defender of the 
 Christianity of the Edinburgh Review. Christianity 
 may be true, or false it is an open question, but 
 a preacher who happens to think it true, should not 
 keep it in the background altogether. Still, he
 
 176 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 must be very careful. He cannot work miracles, so 
 he must not ardently uphold the doctrines of the 
 Apostles, whom he believes to have authenticated 
 their doctrine by their thaumaturgy. Unless he 
 can heal the sick, and blast the apostate, he will do 
 well to avoid expounding these doctrines of reve- 
 lation (whatever they may be) which are most 
 conspicuously absurd in the eyes of the world in 
 general. Perhaps if the preacher, however firm his 
 belief, burks it, and gives us only morality and good 
 sense, his conduct is most judicious. The preacher, 
 in common charity, must remember that, though he 
 has been solemnly called to announce the mysteries in 
 which he has no less solemnly avowed his belief, yet 
 it is " extremely disagreeable to be kept in the 
 trammels of mystery." 
 
 The sceptical priest is an object odious to an 
 honest mind. The journal which writes as the 
 Review wrote on Sir Henry Moncreiff encourages 
 the sceptical priest, and discourages the priest of 
 sincere faith. This much might be said by an 
 observer who was of no faith. Much more might 
 any man, the son and brother of Scottish ministers, 
 if he cherished a sentiment of loyalty to a creed 
 which his reason rejected, assail the tone, so to 
 speak, of the Review. The nature of Lockhart's 
 own attitude to religion will be manifest later. If 
 he chose to say that the Edinburgh Review shuffled, 
 and, without the courage to make open profession of 
 "infidelity," adopted "petty subterfuges" to weaken
 
 SYDNEY SMITH 177 
 
 the influence of the Bible, I do not feel certain 
 that we could blame him. It is not a question 
 of whether the Review was right in regarding "the 
 doctrines of Revelation as ' foolish/ to the world's 
 mind, in various degrees ; but whether a journal 
 which spoke in the tone of the Edinburgh had 
 grounds for resenting the charge of what was then 
 regarded as suppressed ' infidelity.' " 
 
 Again, the flippancies of the Review were in the 
 worst taste. Few people now, it is probable, read 
 Sydney Smith. His Edinburgh articles on Metho- 
 dism and missionaries would not to-day be reckoned 
 decorous. Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists and 
 evangelical clergymen of the Church of England 
 are to his mind "three classes of fanatics," differing 
 only in "the finer shades and nicer discriminations 
 of lunacy." The Scottish clergy, being on the 
 whole " Evangelical," must apparently be inmates 
 of the same asylum, though the reviewer makes 
 exceptions, in the case of truly religious persons. 
 
 The reviewer of Moncreiff would allow preachers 
 of miraculous gifts to preach the doctrine of Peter 
 or of John. But when an evangelical preacher con- 
 verts a man "of scrofulous legs and atheistical 
 principles," and when the man "walks home with 
 the greatest ease," Sydney Smith does not (as in 
 common fairness an Edinburgh Reviewer should) 
 make an exception in favour of Mr. Coles, the 
 miraculously gifted divine in question. The Rev. 
 James Moody is converted by a sermon. " The 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 178 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Lord . . . was about to stop him in his vain career 
 of sin and folly." Stopped he was (which is some- 
 thing), and the Rev. Sydney Smith emphasizes this 
 ludicrous circumstance by the aid of italics. Mr. 
 Roberts was "given to feel that God was waiting to 
 be very gracious to him " what a truly laughable 
 delusion ! Mr. Kestin, on his death-bed, murmured, 
 " Come, Lord Jesus, come," and his degree and 
 discrimination of lunacy is patent to our Edinburgh 
 Reviewer. Mr. John Robinson, an hour before his 
 death, cried, "Ye powers of darkness, begone," and 
 was later at ease. An ejaculation so natural in the 
 mortal strait, on the threshold of the unknown, is 
 exquisitely comic. Miss Louisa Cooke approaches 
 the rapturous condition of St. Francis and St. 
 Theresa, "she often seemed to be dissolved in the 
 love of God her Saviour," a rare jest indeed. 
 
 In brief, the experiences of the most saintly souls 
 on earth, from St. Paul to St. Francis, emotions 
 which have been familiar to the devout from the 
 days of the Apostles to our own, are not, to the 
 Edinburgh Reviewer, an awful mystery of the Soul, 
 nor a topic in scientific psychology or pathology (and 
 either view may be taken), but simply a ludicrous 
 shade in a general lunacy. 
 
 A naval officer is reported to have said that there 
 were Methodists present, and distinguished by their 
 valour and discipline, in Nelson's ship, the Victory, 
 at Trafalgar " These were the only fellows that I 
 ever knew do their duty without swearing." All
 
 MERRIMENT OF PARSONS 179 
 
 lived to do their duty again. This testimony might 
 conciliate a Christian divine, like the Rev. Sydney 
 Smith, even if he had a personal partiality for 
 profane language. But he merely says, " The army 
 and navy appear to be the particular objects of the 
 Methodists' attention." 
 
 "This merriment of parsons is very offensive," 
 said Dr. Johnson. Enough of it has been cited to 
 prove that neither the spiritual consolations which, 
 from the beginning, have been the common privi- 
 lege, or the fortunate illusion of Christians without 
 exception of sect, nor the change from vice to 
 virtue (if occasioned by a sermon), nor valour accom- 
 panied by decency in conduct, if displayed by 
 "fanatics," was anything but a laughing-stock to 
 the Edinburgh Review. Methodists (and Evan- 
 gelical members of the Church of England) are 
 "nasty and numerous vermin." Their protests 
 against ridicule are like the complaints of "lice 
 against the comb." The Review will clear out the 
 vermin as it will also defend Christianity from " the 
 tiger-spring of infidelity." But where is the pro- 
 mised defence ? 
 
 It did not occur to Sydney Smith and the Edin- 
 burgh Review that but for the spiritual conditions 
 at which he mocked, Christianity could never have 
 been founded, the world could never have been con- 
 verted, the Faith could never among persecutions 
 and distresses have been preserved. Assuredly 
 "rational Christians " would neither have originated,
 
 i8o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 nor perpetuated a law and a creed. As in the earth's 
 centre, so in the core of every vital Religion, lives 
 a fire ; on occasion it will break the crust of decent 
 routine, and will excite the terror or the laughter of 
 the " rational." Yet without this fire there could be 
 no spiritual life, and without its volcanic outbursts, 
 there would be none of life's cleansing and renewal. 
 The critic, in fact, mocked (as Lockhart wrote) at 
 what he " had never attempted to understand." 
 
 If Lockhart had confined himself to saying that 
 the Christian faith, in the eyes of his opponents, 
 was a respectable form of opinion, useful in dis- 
 couraging the excesses of the populace, and (if 
 taken in extreme moderation) not unworthy of the 
 patronage of men of taste, Lockhart might have 
 made good his argument. He might have supported 
 it by such quotations as his industry could discover, 
 or his acuteness detect. But he wrote in general 
 terms, and, with occasional reservations, he argued 
 as if the Edinburgh deliberately designed the over- 
 throw of Christianity. He added the element of 
 personality, in a calm and clearly conceived 'ereinte- 
 ment of an individual. His more superficial and 
 discernible motives are plain enough. If Blackwood 
 (to descend to the vulgar facts) was to lose its 
 Griffin because of its irreligion, the war might be 
 carried into Africa with little expense or trouble. 
 
 Lockhart, as a child, though a strange one, of 
 the Covenanters (whose peculiarities were precisely 
 those of the Methodists) ; as the son and the brother
 
 THE HOLY FAIR 181 
 
 of orthodox ministers, "an unmenseful bairn of the 
 Manse"; as an admirer, were it but a sentimental 
 admirer, of the Kirk and her exercises ; as a man of 
 taste above all, when prejudice did not blind him, 
 might well dislike with heartiness the tone of the 
 Edinburgh Review. We may thus account for his 
 attacks on the "infidelity" of the Review, first by a 
 sentiment of loyalty to the ancestral faith. 
 
 We can appeal, on this point, from the Baron 
 von Lauerwinkel, in the flush of his polemical youth, 
 to Lockhart soberly writing the " Life of Burns." 
 He is criticising "The Holy Fair." He asks, "Were 
 'Superstition,' 'Hypocrisy,' and 'Fun' the only 
 influences which Burns might justly have imperso- 
 nated ? It would be hard, I think, to speak so of the 
 old Popish festivals to which a critic of Burns alludes ; 
 it would be hard, surely, to say it of any festival in 
 which, mingled as they may be with sanctimonious 
 pretenders, and surrounded with giddy groups of 
 onlookers, a mighty multitude of devout men are 
 assembled for the worship of God, beneath the open 
 heaven, and above the graves of their ancestors." 
 
 Here we have Lockhart in his serious inward 
 mood, and that mood, distorted and refracted by 
 meaner passions, may have entered into his criticism 
 of the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 Much more patently Lockhart was influenced by 
 the desire to deal to the partisans of the Whig 
 journal, the same measure as Calvinus and others 
 had meted out to the "blasphemous" authors of
 
 i8 2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 "The Chaldee," and to their learned and puritan 
 associate, Dr. M'Crie. Mr. Saintsbury, referring 
 among- other things to the metaphysical creed of 
 the Edinburgh Academy of Physics (to which 
 Jeffrey and several of his staff belonged), says : 
 "Seventy years ago it would have been the ex- 
 ception to find an orthodox metaphysician who did 
 admit it ; and Lockhart, or rather Baron von Lauer- 
 winkel, was perfectly justified in taking the view 
 which ordinary opinion took." 
 
 He may, as we have seen, have been justified 
 in "taking the view," but emphatically (as Scott 
 thought) he was not justified in his manner of 
 urging home his opinions. 
 
 After a letter to Dr. Chalmers on his connection 
 with the Edinburgh a letter attributed to Lockhart 
 by Mrs. Wilson the Baron von Lauerwinkel, 
 in September 1818, addressed another to the 
 " Rev. Professor Laugner," on his writings in the 
 Konigsberg Review. Laugner was meant for the 
 Rev. Professor Playfair. 1 
 
 Mr. Playfair, having begun as a parish minister, 
 ended as a professor. What could be more blame- 
 less? Dr. Chalmers left his Glasgow parish for 
 the Moral Philosophy Chair in St. Andrews, and 
 such translations are common, and often laudable, 
 never blameworthy. And Mr. Playfair wrote in 
 
 1 Minister of Liff and Bervie 1773-1782. In 1805 he accepted the 
 Chair of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh (" Christopher North," i. 
 281, note). He died in 1819.
 
 PROFESSOR PLAYFAIR 183 
 
 the Edinburgh Review, as Chalmers did, as Sir 
 Walter Scott had done. He was now an old 
 man, loved and respected. The Baron, to be brief, 
 treated him as if he had been an apostate priest. 
 He is called the d'Alembert of the Northern 
 Encyclopaedia. " You have manifested every 
 possible eagerness to banish from the view and 
 recollection of the public every trace of your 
 previous habits and situation. You disclaimed 
 every relic of that character, which in spite of, 
 or in ignorance of, the existence of such men as 
 you, the wisdom of the legislature has declared to 
 be indelible." 
 
 The Edinburgh, however, had argued long before 
 this date that "the supposed indelibility of the 
 sacred character is entirely a relic of Popish super- 
 stition," "an imposition practised upon the public 
 by the priests of the dark ages." l How Lockhart's 
 words applied to Mr. Playfair, whether he dressed as 
 a layman and " sunk the minister," it is not now easy, 
 nor is it important, to ascertain. He handled the 
 learned Professor as an apostate, allied with a band 
 of men like those whom St. Augustine calls "the 
 Corruptors." It is not possible here, as in the case 
 of "Peter's Letters," to say that the article "was 
 such as only a very young and thoughtless person 
 would write." Young Lockhart was, but the article, 
 in its calm implacable logic, could only have been 
 written by one who had thought deeply and clearly 
 1 Vol. v., p. 315, note.
 
 i8 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOGKHART 
 
 on the conditions of belief, and on the different 
 lines of conduct open to a reluctant, an amiable, 
 a proselytising, and a malignant sceptic. For 
 "thoughtless," in Lockhart's apology, we must sub- 
 stitute " reckless." Granting the premises namely, 
 that Mr. Play fair's conduct had been that attributed 
 to him, the article is a model of polished vigour. 
 But nobody grants or granted the premises, nobody 
 can palliate what Scott, writing to Lockhart, calls 
 "the personal and severe attack on Playfair, of 
 which I did not approve." (October 29, 1818.) 
 " I agree with you," Scott wrote to Mr. Morritt 
 of Rokeby, "that the conductors of the Magazine 
 have acted inconsiderately and rashly in a personal 
 attack on Playfair. It gives too much occasion 
 to charge them with intolerance, for although Play- 
 fair has never been suspected of orthodoxy, yet 
 I know not that he has on any occasion made 
 any attack upon religion, and consequently the 
 dragging forward a charge of infidelity, which 
 cannot be proved from any overt act, sounds very 
 like personal scandal. ... It seems to me not 
 sufficiently bottomed on specific allegations of 
 assaults committed by him on Christianity." 
 
 Scott was, at this time, a mere senior acquaint- 
 ance of Lockhart's, addressed by him on the follow- 
 ing occasion. 
 
 Wilson and Lockhart had been attacked by the 
 anonymous author of a pamphlet styled " Hypocrisy 
 Unveiled." It is unnecessary to make a garland
 
 CHALLENGES 185 
 
 of the not undeserved amenities contained in this 
 pamphlet. Mr. John Murray, the publisher, is 
 cited as a great denouncer of Lockhart and 
 Wilson, which is interesting, if we remember how 
 long Lockhart and Mr. Murray were to work to- 
 gether. Indeed, according to the pamphleteer, 
 Croker had already reconciled Blackwood and the 
 London publisher. 
 
 The sentence which probably gave most annoy- 
 ance to Blackwood's men was : " The Scorpion has 
 often, in conversation, expressed his disbelief of the 
 Christian religion," while the Leopard makes " ob- 
 scene parodies on the Psalms." Wilson "has 
 praised Coleridge's ' Christabel/ which sins as 
 heinously against purity and decency as it is well 
 possible to imagine." 
 
 The author of " Hypocrisy Unveiled " was clearly 
 of " a nice morality." Finally the Leopard and the 
 Scorpion are advised to hang themselves. 
 
 They did not take that extreme step ; in letters to 
 the author of " Hypocrisy," published in the Scotsman 
 (Oct. 24, 1818) published, of course, without their 
 knowledge they asked for their assailant's name 
 and address. "If you suppose yourself to have any 
 claim to the character of a gentleman, you will take 
 care that I be not long without this knowledge," 
 said Lockhart ("Christopher North," i. 283, note). 
 The author (like Zeta) would not "make a pre- 
 mature avowal of his name." He was sought for 
 so eagerly, "by fair means and foul if any can in
 
 186 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 such a case be foul," says Lockhart to Scott ; l he 
 was in such undeniably anxious request, that he did 
 not write any more pamphlets, and even suppressed 
 one which he had advertised. Some suspicion fell 
 on Mr. Macvey Napier, who disavowed the pam- 
 phlet " on his word of honour." Lockhart prepared 
 Scott for an agitated letter from Wilson. None 
 arrived. Jeffrey broke with Wilson, in a letter 
 which Mrs. Gordon prints, and justly describes as 
 "manly and honourable." "I say then that it is 
 false that it is one of the principal objects, or any 
 object at all of the Edinburgh Review, to discredit 
 religion, or promote the cause of infidelity. ... I 
 declare to you, upon my honour, that nothing of that 
 tendency has ever been inserted without its being 
 followed with sincere regret both on my part, and 
 on that of all who have any permanent connection 
 with the work." " A tone of too great levity in 
 exposing the excesses of bigotry and intolerance " is 
 admitted ; for example, to say (as the Edinburgh 
 said) that all Methodists would gladly "lie for the 
 Tabernacle," may be thought rather a light-hearted 
 statement. " But that anything was ever bespoken 
 or written by the regular supporters of the work, or 
 admitted except by inadvertence, with a view to 
 discredit the truth of religion, I most positively 
 deny, and that it is no part of its object to do so, 
 I think must be felt by every one of its candid 
 readers." ("Christopher North," i. 299.) 
 
 1 Scott's " Familiar Letters," ii. 28.
 
 MACVEY NAPIER 187 
 
 The exact state of the case was well put by Mr. 
 Morehead, an Episcopalian clergyman, in a letter 
 to Wilson. " Nobody of sense supposes, whatever 
 slips the Edinburgh may occasionally have made, 
 that its object and secret view is to pull down 
 Christianity, and particularly no one who knows 
 Mr. Play fair conceives that this is one of his dar- 
 ling contemplations and schemes, whatever may 
 be his opinions on the subject of Revelation, 
 which nobody has any business to rake out." 
 Mr. Morehead implies that Wilson and Lockhart 
 possibly "cannot get the regulation of Blackwood 
 into their own hands," and, if so, advises them 
 to leave it. He gives both friends credit for 
 sincerity, and allows for "the wantonness of youth 
 and conscious power" "this is the best view to 
 take of you." 
 
 Unable to exchange shots with the author of 
 " Hypocrisy Unveiled," Lockhart caricatured him, 
 gowned, in a majestic attitude of conscious virtue, 
 but with a villainously low forehead, protuberant 
 occiput, and snub nose. ("Christopher North," i. 
 284.) He then set about finishing " Peter's Letters 
 to his Friends." 
 
 Mr. Macvey Napier, later the editor of the 
 Edinburgh Review^ was suspected, as we have seen, 
 of being the author of " Hypocrisy Unveiled." He 
 denied the charge, and doubtless with truth. By 
 way of curiosity, however, I add an expression of 
 the feelings of a Tory writer, in a letter to Mr.
 
 1 88 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Napier, copied from his papers now in the British 
 Museum. 1 
 
 Mr. Barrow, afterwards Sir John, a Quarterly 
 Reviewer, though he condemns an attack on Mr. 
 Napier himself, feels for the wrongs of the Quar- 
 terly at Mr. Playfair's hands. 
 
 "ADMIRALTY, \"jth October 1818. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, ... I assure you that your in- 
 formation respecting my aid to Blackwood' s Maga- 
 zine is wholly unfounded. I have not, in fact, once 
 been asked to do so, and from what I have seen 
 of it, little value as I set on anything that proceeds 
 from my pen, I think that I should feel no disposi- 
 tion to enter the lists. . . . To fair and liberal 
 criticism I have not the least objection. If a man 
 chooses to come before the public in print, his 
 doctrines and opinions and his style are all fair game ; 
 but I thoroughly, and from my soul, detest those vile 
 and slanderous personalities which are too much 
 the fashion of the present day ; but are they not 
 peculiarly the vice that besets the gude town of 
 Edinburgh ? Were they not enrolled there ? Did 
 not the Edinburgh Review set the example of 
 personal attack and party rancour ? And have not 
 your own domestic literary squabbles been conducted 
 in that style ever since ? The attack on Professor 
 
 1 (For examining these papers, and for making extracts, I have 
 to thank Miss Violet A. Simpson, who has aided me in other re- 
 searches.)
 
 A QUARTERLY REVIEWER 189 
 
 Playfair I have not seen and never heard of; but I 
 did hear that the Professor, I suppose in some 
 moment of irritation, declared aloud, in a public 
 assembly, that the Quarterly Review was a most 
 contemptible journal, and a disgrace to the literature 
 of the age. Now, if such be the fact, and the young 
 men you speak of who are friendly to the Quarterly 
 should have heard it, Professor Playfair cannot 
 refuse them the fair play (vile pun) of retaliation. 
 But I know nothing of the matter in dispute one 
 way or other, nor do I believe it interests us of the 
 South in the slightest degree. For my own part, I 
 am candid enough to confess that, in spite of the 
 talent put forth in the Edinburgh Review, and the 
 trash which the learned Professor finds in the 
 Quarterly, I am stupid enough to derive more 
 amusement from the latter than the former, and 
 this does not arise, I can assure you, from the 
 slightest prejudice for or against either. . . . 
 
 "Very faithfully yours." 
 
 This letter, from a future victim of Blackwood's, 
 refers to the publication of the challenges not ac- 
 cepted by the author of " Hypocrisy Unveiled." 
 
 "RAITH, -zyh October 1818. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, ... I am glad to see from the 
 Scotsman to-day, that those assassins of Blackwoods 
 have been made to feel some of the pangs which
 
 1 90 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 they have been attempting to inflict on others. 
 This will probably put an end to their plots. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 " JOHN LESLIE." 
 
 Professor Leslie was soon to learn that his hope 
 was unfulfilled. Mr. Macvey Napier's interest in 
 these feuds probably led to the belief that he was 
 the author of " Hypocrisy Unveiled."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 EDINBURGH, 1818-1820 
 
 Lockhart meets Scott. "The Shirra." Invitation to Abbotsford. 
 Lord Melville. Scott discourages the iniquities of Blackwood 's. 
 His chuckle. The attack on Keats. Mr. Colvin's theory. 
 Bailey's story. The story criticised. Common friends of Keats 
 and Lockhart. Christie on Keats. Kindly remark of Lockhart 
 on Keats. Lockhart and the scrape of a friend. Action of 
 Lockhart. His relations with his father. Letter to Christie. 
 His view of Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt. Quarrel with Hamilton. 
 
 I HAVE just mentioned Lockhart's letter to Scott 
 about Wilson's agitation under the lash of " Hypoc- 
 risy Unveiled." It is necessary to retrace a step, 
 and, reverting to Lockhart's private history, to 
 mention the origin of his relations with Scott. 
 This is the more needful, as Scott has been cause- 
 lessly implicated in a new sin of Blackwood, the 
 attack on Keats (August 1818). But it were 
 impertinent, and is superfluous, to re-tell here the 
 story of that first interview with Scott, which Lock- 
 hart has so admirably narrated. ("Life of Scott," 
 vol. v., chapter xli.) Lockhart had doubtless often 
 seen Sir Walter in public, in the Law Courts, 
 in bookseller's shops, even in large gatherings. 
 He first met Scott in private society, apparently
 
 i 9 2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 in June 1818, at a dinner given by Mr. Home 
 Drummond of Blair Drummond. Sir Walter 
 greeted him with his usual cordiality, and, after 
 dinner, while expressing a wish to "have a talk 
 with Goethe about trees," invited Lockhart to visit 
 him at Abbotsford. Lockhart had remarked that, 
 in Weimar, when he was there, Goethe was only 
 known as the Herr Geheimer-Rath von Goethe, 
 not at all as der grosse Dichter. Scott, too, warned 
 Lockhart that, in his own country, he must be asked 
 for as " The Shirra." 
 
 A few days later, Scott, through Ballantyne, 
 offered to hand over to Lockhart his own task of 
 compiling the historical part of the Edinburgh 
 Annual Register. From a letter to Christie we 
 learn that "the job," as Hazlitt would have called 
 it, was worth ^500 a year. Sir Walter was eager 
 enough to play the historian during Napoleon's 
 wars ; he did not love celebrare domestica facta. 
 The elder writer, it is plain, had "taken to" the 
 young one, who, in turn, as Scott avers, "loved 
 him like a son." They often met, over business, 
 or at Scott's table, during the summer ; they often 
 examined together the legendary houses and heraldic 
 blazons of the Old Town ; and Lockhart's pen, in 
 the chapter cited, draws the happiest picture of 
 Sir Walter's domestic life, in Edinburgh, and at 
 Abbotsford. Thither, in the following note the 
 first of the Shirra's to his young friend Lockhart 
 was invited.
 
 LE.ICM HUNT
 
 NOTE FROM SCOTT 193 
 
 "ABBOTSFORD, Sept. 24, 1818. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, You were so good as to give me 
 hopes of seeing you here this Vacation. I am 
 very desirous that, if possible, you would come 
 here with our friend Mr. Wilson on Thursday, 
 8th October, as Lord Melville is to spend a day 
 or two with me, and I should be happy to introduce 
 you to each other. Do not say me nay, but arrange 
 matters so as to be with us by five o'clock, or as 
 much earlier as you please, and to stay a day or 
 two. Believe me, very sincerely yours, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Lockhart and Wilson gladly accepted the invitation. 
 They found Sir Walter in his own grounds, with 
 some friends, and " I trust you have had enough of 
 certain pranks with your friend Ebony," Scott said, 
 as he introduced the Leopard and the Scorpion to 
 Lord Melville, "the great giver of good things in 
 the Parliament House," so he had described that 
 nobleman. 
 
 Now the truth of the matter is, that, far from being 
 an accomplice of Lockhart and Wilson in their Black- 
 woodian iniquities, Sir Walter, from the first, and 
 always, attempted to wean both men from "that 
 mother of mischief," Blackwood, or, at least, from 
 personal satire therein. He began by offering 
 Lockhart more remunerative and reputable work, 
 as we have seen. He repeated his gentle warning 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 i 9 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 while walking in one of his own young woods at 
 Abbotsford. I shall later quote his long-lost and 
 strangely recovered admonition, written when 
 Wilson, partly by his aid for he thought to turn 
 Wilson's great powers into a new channel obtained 
 the Chair of Moral Philosophy. Before Lockhart's 
 marriage, Scott returned to the charge; 1 he repeated 
 his warning and advice, strenuously and for the 
 last time, after the unhappy end of the affair with 
 poor Mr. John Scott of the London Magazine. 
 He would not speak as with authority. But he 
 did keep Lockhart out of the scurrilous Beacon, 
 though Lord Cockburn says that, " instead of pre- 
 venting it" (the Beacon's libels), "he gave it his 
 countenance. ... His was the fault of unreflecting 
 acquiescence." Lockhart himself (" Life of Scott," 
 iv. 65), says that Sir Walter " had no kindness for 
 Blackwood personally, and disapproved (though he 
 chuckled over it) the reckless extravagance of 
 juvenile satire" (v. 2I3). 2 Lord Cockburn kindly 
 adds, " A chuckle from Scott, in the blaze of his 
 reputation, was all that young men needed to 
 instigate them." But Lockhart is probably think- 
 ing of Fergusson's success in breaking down Scott's 
 gravity, and eliciting a chuckle, by a repeated, an 
 insidious, and an innocent quotation about himself, 
 
 1 There is some uncertainty on this point. 
 
 2 A letter of Scott to Laidlaw, of 1818, entirely bears out what 
 Lockhart says about Sir Walter's feelings, at this time, towards Mr. 
 Blackwood.
 
 SCOTT'S CHUCKLE 195 
 
 from "The Chaldee." That chuckle, however re- 
 prehensible, was a year after date, and Scott had 
 never met Lockhart when " The Chaldee " was 
 penned. ("Life of Scott," v. 370.) Had Lord 
 Cockburn read Scott's letters to Lockhart, he could 
 scarcely have pressed his accusation. ("Memorials," 
 pp. 316, 317.) 
 
 It is painful for a biographer to be obliged to 
 confess his hero's inexplicable attachment to "the 
 mother of mischief." But he is well assured that, 
 while Scott did not, indeed, regard the offences of 
 Maga with our modern horror, still he did most 
 earnestly endeavour, on every occasion, to with- 
 draw Lockhart and Wilson from the cup of her 
 inexplicable sorceries. Alas, to each might have 
 been said 
 
 "La laide dame Sans Merci 
 Thee hath in thrall ! " 
 
 Before this meeting at Abbotsford, in October 
 1818, there had appeared, in August, the vulgar 
 reviling of Keats. We have already seen that 
 Leigh Hunt, in the spirit of conceit which offended 
 Keats, suspected Scott of being the author of the 
 attacks on himself and his associates. Leigh Hunt, 
 it is only fair to say, knew no more of Scott per- 
 sonally than Lockhart, in 1818, knew of Keats. 
 To Lockhart, Keats was, at first, an uneducated 
 Cockney adulator of Leigh Hunt ; as, to Leigh 
 Hunt, Scott was a wicked Tory, whom he had tried
 
 i 9 6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 to insult in his " Feast of Poets." Hunt's opinion 
 was absurd, but, in Mr. Sidney Colvin's excellent 
 " Life of Keats," we hear an echo of the old belief. 
 Mr. Colvin has changed his mind, and sung his 
 palinode, but his " Life of Keats " remains an 
 authority. "In the party violence of the time and 
 place Scott himself was drawn into encouraging the 
 savage polemics of his young Edinburgh friends, 
 and that he was in some measure privy to the 
 Cockney School outrages seems certain." 
 
 Why? 
 
 Mr. Colvin's reason is, " Such at least was the 
 impression prevailing at the time," in the bosom 
 of Leigh Hunt and his friends, for example. And 
 again, because Severn " observed both in Scott and 
 his daughter signs of pain and confusion which he 
 could only interpret in the same sense," when he 
 talked to them about "Keats and his detractors" 
 in Rome (1832). Something more is needed than 
 Severn's recollection of his impressions of Scott's 
 apparent "pain and confusion!" I repeat that 
 Keats had been selected for attack, as a Huntian, 
 and he knew it, before Scott and Lockhart ever 
 met. That Anne Scott, who was a lively girl of 
 sixteen when the crime was committed, should 
 have betrayed painful emotion, when the subject 
 was mentioned fourteen years later, is quite in- 
 credible. 
 
 Mr. Colvin adds a tale communicated, long after 
 date, by Keats's friend Bailey, to Lord Houghton.
 
 BAILEY AND KEATS 197 
 
 Bailey had met Lockhart at the house of Mr. Gleig's 
 father, in the summer of 1818. "He took the 
 opportunity of telling Lockhart in a friendly way 
 his (Keats's) circumstances and history, explaining, at 
 the same time, that his attachment to Leigh Hunt 
 was personal, not political, pleading that he should 
 not be made an object of party denunciation, and 
 ending with the request that at any rate what had 
 been thus said in confidence should not be used to 
 his disadvantage. To which Lockhart replied that 
 it certainly should not be so used by him. Within 
 three weeks the article appeared, making use, to all 
 appearance, and to Bailey's great indignation, of the 
 very facts he had thus confidentially communicated. 
 To the end of his life Bailey remained convinced 
 that, whether or not Lockhart himself wrote the 
 piece, he must at any rate have prompted and 
 supplied the materials for it. It seems, in fact, all 
 but certain that he actually wrote it." Mr. Colvin 
 instances the word Sangrado, for "a doctor," as a 
 touch of his style, and I myself could add another 
 possible example. 
 
 Accepting Bailey's account of Lockhart as a 
 traitor, what confidence did he betray ? That 
 Keats's "attachment to Leigh Hunt was personal, 
 not political"? The Reviewer asserts the very 
 reverse : " Keats belongs to the Cockney school 
 of politics, as well as to the Cockney school of 
 poetry." That Keats had no classical education ? 
 Keats himself betrays that mischance in a dozen
 
 198 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 places, as where he rhymes "ear" to "Cytherea," 
 and speaks of "a penetralium" 
 
 The single solitary fact which Lockhart might 
 have betrayed is, that Keats in early life had 
 been "destined to the career of medicine, and 
 bound apprentice to a worthy apothecary in town." 
 Now that fact might have been let slip inad- 
 vertently, or might well have been known through 
 other channels. Where, in the review, are "the 
 very facts which Bailey had confidentially communi- 
 cated " ? One expects to hear about the paternal 
 livery stable, and so forth, but there is no such 
 matter. If Bailey communicated private facts, they 
 were not betrayed. There is not a word of Keats's 
 private affairs, except his medical studies. 
 
 Mr. Colvin does not seem to have remarked, 
 when he wrote the passage cited, that Lockhart 
 had sources of information about Keats, apart from 
 Bailey. 1 On November 22, 1817, Keats wrote to 
 Bailey himself "I should have been here" (at 
 Leatherhead) "a day earlier, but the Reynoldses 
 persuaded me to stay in town to meet your friend 
 Christie. There were Rice and Martin we talked 
 about ghosts." 2 
 
 By a curious freak of chance, Christie, Keats, 
 John Hamilton Reynolds, Gleig, and Bailey were 
 all " in touch," and thus Lockhart might know, 
 
 1 Mr. Colvin's recantation, as far as Scott is concerned, is in a note 
 to p. 60 of his edition of Keats's Letters. 
 8 "Letters of Keats," 1895, p. 55.
 
 LOCKHART ON KEATS 199 
 
 through Christie or Gleig, anything that was to be 
 known about the author of " Lamia." Bailey, then, 
 was not his only source of information. Christie did 
 write to Lockhart about Keats, though his letter 
 is not preserved, unluckily ; for, on January 27, 
 1818, I find Lockhart writing to him, "What you 
 say of Keates (sic) is pleasing, and if you like to 
 write a little review of him, in admonition to leave 
 his ways, &c., and in praise of his natural genius, 
 I shall be greatly obliged to you." 
 
 There is no " malignity " in this private reference 
 by Lockhart to Keats ; Christie, in remonstrances 
 about Blackwood, never refers to the treatment of 
 Keats, whom he obviously liked, and there my 
 information about this unhappy matter ends. I 
 do not know who wrote the article. On September 
 15, 1820, Lockhart wrote to a Mr. Aitken, in Dunbar, 
 " I have already attempted to say something kind 
 about Mr. Keats, in Blackwood 's Magazine, but 
 been thwarted, I know not well how. ... I trust 
 his health will mend, and that he will live to be 
 a merry fellow. ..." 
 
 For the rest, Keats's temper, as to literary 
 reviling, was as manly as Scott's. " My own 
 domestic criticism has given me pain without com- 
 parison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly 
 could possibly inflict." Could Keats have read 
 Shelley's letter to Leigh Hunt, 1 it would have vexed 
 him far more than the stingless insults of an anony- 
 1 "Correspondence of Leigh Hunt," i. 158.
 
 200 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 mous reviewer. It is needless to add the expression 
 of the biographer's extreme regret that Lockhart 
 was, to whatever extent or degree, connected with 
 an unpardonable attack on a great poet and a good 
 and brave man. The blindness of prejudice, the 
 infatuation of political and literary feud, and, more 
 or less, the undeniable weaknesses, and effeminacies, 
 and ignorances of some of Keats's immature poems, 
 account for, though they do not palliate the deed. 
 Yet we must not judge it as if it had been the act 
 of a man who had before him the whole of Keats's 
 poems, or who possessed our knowledge of the 
 fortunes and character of Keats. 
 
 That Lockhart, whatever his literary offences at 
 this period, kept a tender and loyal heart for the 
 service of his friends, appears from letters written 
 to Christie, just before and just after the visit to 
 Abbotsford. A young man's scrape, exaggerated by 
 fancy, had befallen one of the old Oxford set, and was 
 complicated by a misunderstanding with the sufferer's 
 father. "Your letter," writes Lockhart (Edinburgh, 
 October 5, 1818), "has afflicted me beyond all 
 expression. I feel that fruitless sorrow is the only 
 way by which any of us shall have it in our power to 
 express our feeling of our poor friend's worth. I 
 am very sorry that Hamilton is out of town, which 
 deprives me of having any one to speak to about it. 
 
 I have ventured to drop a few lines to under 
 
 cover to his father, and if he be at home they will 
 reach him, if he be not there, they will come back
 
 A SCRAPE 201 
 
 to me. If anything could be done by my going or 
 
 Hamilton's going to , I am sure I can answer 
 
 for his readiness, as well as for my own. But I 
 fear it is too late. After having told me so much, 
 do tell me more. Let me know as much as possible 
 of his state and its causes, and I shall burn your 
 letter five minutes after reading it. This story has 
 unhinged me for everything else." 
 
 As to the nature of the story, as to the cause of 
 the friend's private sorrow, not a glimmer of light 
 escapes the discretion of Lockhart nor did he 
 keep Mr. Christie's letters on the subject. But his 
 benevolence and friendly courage were engaged. 
 On November 14, 1818, he writes from Edinburgh 
 
 " As 's own letter must have reached you 
 
 before you receive this, I need not tell you the step 
 I took in consequence of my knowledge of the 
 
 cause of 's distress. I am apprehensive that 
 
 you may, in one point of view, condemn it. All I 
 can say is, that it was undertaken in consequence 
 of the most sincere conviction, both in Hamilton's 
 mind and my own, that it was a proper one. 
 The intentions of us both I can have no reason 
 to justify, because I am sure you are in no 
 danger of suspecting them. 
 
 " I have now received three or four letters from 
 
 's father, and were it not for the postage I 
 
 would send them, in order that you might see with 
 your own eyes what a pure-minded, feeling, affec- 
 tionate, and estimable man he is, to whom I confided
 
 202 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 so much. The result is sure to be happy in every 
 point of view. It will not only be the means of 
 
 releasing from his immediate cause of distress, 
 
 but, I would trust, of opening a more entire system 
 of confidence between him and his excellent parent, 
 a species of confidence which, alas ! the circum- 
 stances of my own life have, for some years, pre- 
 vented me from entirely and undoubtingly enjoying 
 in regard of my own father, equally good and 
 affectionate as his, but still more averse from 
 knowledge and participation of many feelings and 
 views which, without being in themselves blamable, 
 appear very much so in the eyes of secluded and 
 venerable men. 
 
 " I trust that this is the last occasion on which I 
 shall be put in the distressing situation of thinking 
 myself called upon to do a thing so contrary to 
 the common rules of friendship, and every way so 
 hazardous. It will, however, be a consolation to 
 me to hear from you that you do not seriously dis- 
 approve of what I have done. The affectionate 
 
 manner in which himself writes on the occasion 
 
 has endeared him to me more than ever. The 
 longer I live" (he was twenty-four!) "the more do the 
 ties of two or three old friendships strengthen round 
 me. Living at a distance, and living in a different 
 way, and with different pursuits in some respects, I 
 always think of you as of brothers, and look forward 
 to any prospect of meeting with you as a long absent 
 voyager must do to a return to his home."
 
 FRIENDSHIPS 203 
 
 Such were the friendships of the antique world. 
 In words like these, we catch a glimpse of the true, 
 the inward Lockhart, earnest, simple, affectionate, 
 loyal: daring, in the cause of friendship, and with 
 the most fortunate results, to break "the common 
 rules of friendship." This is all unlike the aspect 
 of "the mischievous Oxford puppy," who, "with 
 his cigar in his mouth, his one leg flung carelessly 
 over the other, and without the symptoms of a smile 
 on his face, or one twinkle of mischief in his dark 
 grey eye," would beguile the good Shepherd with 
 all manner of nonsense. " The callant never tawld 
 me the truth a' his days but aince, an' that was 
 merely by chance, an' without the least intention on 
 his part," said James Hogg, who himself rejoiced 
 greatly in a bam or bite, he being an Ettrick man 
 indeed, in whom was (properly speaking) no guile. 
 
 The deep thoughtfulness and considerate regard 
 for friends which shine in Lockhart's letters are 
 alien to the reckless manner of his literary feuds. 
 To his mind Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Hazlitt 
 were all cockney and conceited conspirators against 
 the constitution, common sense, and the English 
 language. There were two aspects of Leigh Hunt ; 
 he had, so to speak, "a double personality," like 
 Lockhart himself. Keats censured Hunt almost as 
 severely in private as Lockhart did in public, and for 
 the same faults. Concerning that other and admir- 
 able aspect of Hunt which shines, for example, in 
 his regrets for Shelley, and in his letter to Severn
 
 204 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 about the time of Keats's death, Lockhart could 
 know nothing. 1 As to Hazlitt, he never had a 
 better friend, no man ever had a more loyal friend, 
 than Mr. Patmore. Yet, before he met Hazlitt, 
 Mr. Patmore had regarded that critic as " an incar- 
 nate fiend." Lockhart, writing to Christie, only 
 calls Hazlitt "a clever profligate." Keats was 
 taken by Lockhart for a flatterer, imitator, and 
 general camp-follower of Leigh Hunt, though he 
 certainly learned to modify this opinion. A visit 
 to Christie in London might have dispelled many 
 of these mists, but the visit, though meditated, was 
 not then paid. One yet more melancholy reflection 
 occurs. We see that, in November 1818, Lockhart 
 and Hamilton were still on the old terms. There- 
 after I find no mention of Hamilton, and, in the 
 election to the Chair of Moral Philosophy, Lock- 
 hart was strong on Wilson's side. To a heart like 
 his, which in friendship gave itself once and for 
 ever, the mysterious estrangement must have been 
 the first of his lifelong sorrows. But he could 
 not speak of it, he never spoke out, even to 
 Christie. To his brother he was less reticent. 
 He lost the aid and counsel of the most learned, 
 pure, and estimable man among his contempor- 
 aries ; he was divided by distance from the society 
 of Christie, and his chief Edinburgh associates 
 were not likely to keep him out of mischief. In 
 the letter to Christie, of Nov. 14, 1818, he 
 
 1 See Leigh Hunt's Letter in Lord Houghton's " Keats," ii. 95.
 
 QUARREL WITH HAMILTON 205 
 
 mentions his pain at the impression which the 
 author of "Hypocrisy Unveiled" made on "the 
 mind of Wilson, and that of his amiable wife," a 
 lady of whom he ever spoke (and notably in his 
 " Life of Scott " ) with the highest respect and 
 affection, and, after her death, with a tender 
 regret. 1 
 
 1 The Rev. Lawrence Lockhart has left a brief record of the cause of 
 estrangement between Lockhart and Hamilton. It arose, he says (as 
 we have remarked), from a hasty word of Sir William's. But he dates 
 it at the time of " The Chaldee," and though his account is, no doubt, 
 essentially correct, we find that, more than a year after the date of 
 " The Chaldee," Lockhart and Hamilton were on the best terms.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 EDINBURGH, 1819-1820 
 
 " Peter's Letters." Scott's bequest of his baton. Scott's politics. 
 His comments on "Peter's Letters" in Blackwood. On Allan, 
 the painter. Lockhart revisits Abbotsford. Rides with Scott. 
 Scott's illness. Praises " Peter's Letters." Analysis of " Peter's 
 Letters." Mr. Wastle of Wastle. Jeffrey. Goethe. A Burns 
 Dinner. Wilson. The Shepherd. Neglect of Greek. Lock- 
 hart's supposed irony. The Edinburgh Review. Jeffrey as a 
 critic. Lockhart compared with Carlyle. Defence of Coleridge. 
 The booksellers. Mr. Blackwood. Story of Gabriel's Road. 
 John Hamilton Reynolds. Description of Scott at Abbotsford. 
 His woods. The Kirk. Letters to Coleridge. Reynolds 
 suggested as editor of a Tory paper. Popular commotions. 
 Lockhart as a yeoman. Ballads attributed to him. His betrothal 
 to Miss Sophia Scott. Her letters. Prince Gustavus. De- 
 scriptions of Miss Scott. Scott asleep. 
 
 WHILE trailing his gown in the Parliament House, 
 where "nae man speered his price," and "dancing 
 after young ladies " (or one young lady), and scrib- 
 bling comic rhymes for Blackwood, and caricaturing 
 the lieges, Lockhart was busy, at this time, on his 
 singular work, " Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk." : 
 On March 23, 1819, Scott wrote to him from 
 Abbotsford, where cramp held him in torment. 
 
 1 The name, of course, is borrowed from Scott's " Paul's Letters to 
 
 his Kinsfolk." 
 
 206
 
 SCOTT'S BATON 207 
 
 " I thought of you amid all this agony, and of the 
 great game which, with your parts and principles, 
 lies before you in Scotland." For long Scott had 
 been the only Tory man of letters north of Tweed, 
 the sole writer not dazzled by the radiance of 
 "enlightenment." This very solitude might have 
 given Scott pause, but he deemed that he was 
 " at least standing by, if he could not support, the 
 banner of ancient faith and loyalty." In his physical 
 anguish he was mentally bequeathing his baton to 
 Lockhart, he said, and the ladies who attended him 
 were astonished to hear him quote 
 
 " Take thou the vanguard of the Three, 
 And bury me by the bracken bush 
 That grows on yon lily lea." 
 
 Why Scott had Lockhart and the dying Douglas 
 in his mind during his torments, shall be explained 
 later. 
 
 Sir Walter had a habit of uttering these un- 
 expected snatches of old song, which showed his 
 companions where his mind was, often enough in 
 an unlooked-for situation. Thus during his last 
 days in Italy, at a point where the Lake of Avernus, 
 the Lucrine Lake, Misenum, and Baise, and the 
 sea are all in view, Sir William Gell heard him 
 murmur 
 
 "Up the craggy mountain, 
 
 And down the mossy glen, 
 We daurna gang a milking 
 For Charlie and his men."
 
 2 o8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 His mind's eye looked on Moidart, "and he in 
 dreams beheld the Hebrides." 1 
 
 So it was with him when he quoted " The Hunt- 
 ing of Cheviot " in his racking pains, for his heart 
 was with his cause, as he, and he only, conceived 
 of that cause, and the death- words of the Douglas 
 he was applying to Lockhart, as his own successor. 
 
 There could be no such successor. Scott's 
 peculiar Toryism, like that of his own Invernahyle, 
 was a loyalty to the old feudal order which, though 
 now forlorn, had once, in ideal if not in reality, 
 been a reasoned system of life and of society. No 
 other system to be called rational has risen on 
 its ruins. Whiggery is the negation of a system, 
 an inn, not a dwelling. Socialism was, as yet, 
 incoherent. Scott's sympathies were certainly 
 more with some of the tenets of Socialism, with 
 many of its aims at least, than with a Whiggish 
 industrialism. He himself, in his relations with 
 peasants and peers, lived in the light of the ideal 
 of Feudalism ; the friend and protector of all be- 
 neath him, his " men " ; the friend and true " man " 
 of his chiefs. His political creed was a transferred 
 allegiance from the rightful kings, who (in the male 
 line) were no more, to the king whom, by some 
 odd cantrip of logic, he regarded as their legitimate 
 successor. His loyalty so hateful and so incom- 
 prehensible to Hazlitt, for example blossomed like 
 a white rose, among the ruins of what had been 
 1 The explanation occurs later in a letter of Lockhart's from Italy.
 
 THE PLEADERS' PORTRAITS 209 
 
 a stately tower, and above the graves where the 
 royal and exiled dead sleep after their lifelong 
 wanderings. 
 
 This was the creed, these were the politics, of a 
 poet and a dreamer of dreams. That airy baton of 
 his he could bequeath to no man. And Lockhart 
 (though, as I shall show later, his imagination could 
 share and nobly interpret the creed of Scott), must 
 have known the truth very well, and smiled sadly 
 enough at the bequest. Though a free lance of 
 Toryism, he was not essentially a party man, as 
 he discovered before the end came. But it is 
 plain that Lockhart had bewitched his future 
 father-in-law from the first, and that for Rodrigue 
 this Don Diegue had les yeux de Chimene. 
 
 Descending from his characteristic dream, and 
 his snatch of minstrelsy, Scott, in his letter, thanks 
 Lockhart for "the pleaders' portraits," in Black- 
 wood (Nos. xxiii., xxiv.) sketches of Cranstoun, 
 Clerk, and Jeffrey, which later appeared in "Peter's 
 Letters." The articles in Blackwood pretended, but 
 with a most transparent pretence, to offer extracts 
 from " Peter's " first edition, which never existed. 
 In fact the Reviewer says, like Coleridge of his 
 journal, The Friend, "it is as good as MS." The 
 latest extracts were those which so much pleased 
 Scott. 
 
 In his letter of March 23, 1819, he adds remarks 
 (now first published) on a scheme of Lockhart 's for 
 assisting Mr. Allan, the Scotch painter. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 2io LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 " I am delighted with your plan for poor Allan. 
 It would be a shame to us all were we not to make 
 an exertion for so wonderful a little fellow. Pray put 
 me down for three shares. I think I shall get two 
 names D. Buccleugh and Lord Montagu, for two 
 more indeed I am almost sure of the former. 
 Could not something be eked to the plan in the 
 way of engraving so as to make it still further 
 productive? I hope to be so well as to go up to 
 London, and trust I shall get Allan an order to 
 paint Archbishop Sharpe's murder, of which he has 
 made a superb sketch. If my stomach would let 
 me exert my energies as usual, I should hope to 
 be able to treat myself to some of his productions. 
 But at present my nose is held to the grindstone in 
 every way." 
 
 It was, apparently, on April 10, 1819, that Lock- 
 hart rode to Abbotsford with John Ballantyne, and 
 found Sir Walter, his hair bleached by the stress 
 of his malady ("Life," vi. 69; "Letters," ii. 40). In 
 the night the family was aroused by the cries of 
 Scott, in a recurrence of his pains, and Lockhart, 
 naturally, intended to leave early next morning. 
 But the indomitable Sheriff took him on horseback 
 "up Yarrow," as we say at home, past all his dear 
 legendary scenes, doing election business with my 
 grandfather on the way. They rode by Carterhaugh, 
 where the Forest waters meet, 1 and where Janet 
 
 1 Ettrick and Yarrow. Lockhart afterwards gave their names to 
 two Dandle Dinmonts, presented to the Queen.
 
 A DAY'S RIDE 211 
 
 rescued Tamlane from the Fairy Queen. They rode 
 by Philiphaugh, where Leslie broke on Montrose's 
 sleeping men, through the mist ; and they passed 
 over Minchmoor, whereby Montrose galloped to the 
 Tweed ; and Newark ; and Slain Man's Lee, where 
 the Covenanters butchered prisoners taken under 
 promise of quarter. Next day they rode up Ail 
 water, and on Bowden Moor, summoned by a rising 
 wreath of smoke, Scott met a trembling Tory voter, 
 skulking, like a Jacobite, from Whig scrutiny. 
 Then they heard the story of "ancient Riddell's 
 wide domain," now dispeopled of its lords. Next 
 day, from Eildon crest, Lockhart was shown the 
 kingdom of Border romance 
 
 " Mertoun's wood, 
 And Tweed's fair flood, 
 And all down Teviotdale," 
 
 and Smailholme Tower, and the ruined shell of 
 Ercildoune, where the hare kindles on the Rhymer's 
 hearthstone. There Scott repeated the charmed 
 lines of Minstrel Burne 
 
 " For many a place stands in hard case, 
 Where blithe folk kenned nae sorrow, 
 With Homes that dwelt on Leader braes, 
 And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow." 
 
 Times were blithe with Scotts that dwelt on Tweed- 
 side, though too soon the Minstrel's burden was to 
 sing sooth.
 
 212 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Of one charm in Abbotsford, more potent than 
 even the Wizard's spells, Lockhart, of course, says 
 nothing, but we may believe that already his heart 
 was given to her from whom, in life and death, 
 that loyal heart never wandered. 
 
 On the night after the ride to Eildon Hill, Scott 
 suffered from another attack, and Lockhart left him 
 "with dark prognostications" that this visit to 
 Abbotsford was to be his last. 
 
 On July 19, 1819, Scott acknowledged a present 
 of "Peter's Letters." 1 The letter need not be re- 
 printed. " The Epistles of the imaginary Dr. 
 Morris have so often been denounced " (says Lock- 
 hart, after apologising for the book, as that of "a 
 very young and a very thoughtless person ") " as a 
 mere string of libels, that I think it fair to show 
 how much more leniently Scott judged of them at 
 the time. Indeed Sir Walter writes, 'The general 
 turn of the book is perhaps too favourable, both to 
 the state of our public society, and of individual 
 character.' He wished Dr. Morris to revive every 
 half century, 'to record the fleeting manners of 
 the age, and the interesting features of those 
 who will only be known to posterity by their 
 works.' He 'purrs and puts up his back, like 
 his own grey cat,' Hins of Hinsfeldt, 'bribed by 
 the doctor's kind and delicate account of his visit 
 to Abbotsford.'" 
 
 Indeed, had Lockhart never lived to write his 
 
 1 "Life," vol. vi. pp. 100, 103.
 
 WASTLE 213 
 
 famous Biography, Dr. Morris's description of 
 Abbotsford would remain the locus classicus. 
 
 " Peter's Letters," in spite of its ill repute, really 
 contains infinitely more of good than evil. Dr. 
 Morris, a scholar of some twoscore years, is sup- 
 posed to arrive in his shandrydan from Wales. 
 He meets a Mr. Wastle of Wastle, an old Oxford 
 friend, and an impossible, irreconcilable Cavalier 
 Tory. Wastle's "sudden elopement from Oxford, 
 without a degree, after having astonished the 
 examining masters by the splendid commencement 
 of his examination," is a trait adapted from the 
 tradition about De Quincey. The personal descrip- 
 tion is that of Lockhart himself, grown some twenty 
 years older, while Wastle's learned enthusiasm for 
 Old Edinburgh is borrowed from Scott. Lockhart 
 liked the character, and made Wastle responsible 
 for much prose and verse in Blackwood. "This 
 yellow visage of his, with his close, firm lips, and 
 his grey eyes . . . one would less wonder to meet 
 with in Valladolid than in Edinburgh." This is 
 worth quoting, as there is no effort to hide, but 
 rather to proclaim Lockhart, though he is, later, in- 
 troduced briefly in his proper person. Wastle's very 
 passion for heraldry is Lockhart's. The attitude 
 towards the Scotch people, especially as concerns 
 their devotions, is exactly that of Lockhart in his 
 " Life of Burns." He sees them, at the sermon, 
 rejoice when they detect a chink in the armour 
 of the preacher's logic, and "bowed in the dust"
 
 2i 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 before "some solitary gleam of warm affectionate 
 eloquence, the only weapon they have no power 
 to resist." There occur, of course, frequent por- 
 traits of "local celebrities," beginning with Jeffrey. 
 Dr. Morris contrasts Jeffrey's head with Goethe's 
 (whom Lockhart met at Weimar), "the sublime 
 simplicity of his Homeric beauty, the awful pile 
 of forehead, the large deep eyes, with their melan- 
 choly lightnings, the whole countenance, so radiant 
 with divinity." As to Jeffrey's own eyes, "the 
 scintillation of a star is not more fervid." " I think 
 their prevailing language is, after all, rather a 
 melancholy than a merry one ; it is, at least, very 
 full of reflection." There follows a dinner (purely 
 Barmecide) with Jeffrey, Play fair, Leslie, and others. 
 The sages and philosophers are described as prac- 
 tising leaping, a curious and by no means very 
 humorous invention. For this the brilliant and 
 delicate account of Jeffrey's conversational manner 
 might make some amends. Playfair, the victim 
 of Lauerwinkel, "left a feeling of quiet, respect- 
 ful, and affectionate admiration upon my mind." 
 The superiority of the Whigs in law is admitted, 
 and in literature. But where now is their litera- 
 ture ? Aaron's serpent in the Magician's hand, 
 hath swallowed all the serpents of the Edinburgh 
 literary Whiggery of that day. 
 
 Henry Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling, is de- 
 scribed very favourably. In 1823, Lockhart dedi- 
 cated " Reginald Dalton " to this sometime enemy
 
 WILSON DESCRIBED 215 
 
 of Blackwood. At a Burns Dinner, in " Peter's 
 Letters," Jeffrey does not propose the poet's memory, 
 and Dr. Morris censures his critical severity to Burns, 
 making a very fair and unexaggerated appeal for 
 tenderness to the poet's failings. He tells how 
 Mr. Maule of Panmure settled ^50 a year on Mrs. 
 Burns, and how one of the poet's sons, as soon as 
 he obtained a medical practice in India, provided 
 for her so well that she was able to relieve Mr. 
 Maule from the slight burden on his kindness. 
 Many poets were toasted, including Crabbe, Rogers, 
 and Montgomery, but not Wordsworth, Southey, 
 or Coleridge, Tory minstrels. The organisers of 
 the feast were Whigs! If Dr. Morris fables not, 
 this is an odd proof of Whig liberality. Here, 
 and throughout, Wordsworth is praised "with 
 both hands." 
 
 Wilson, of course, was present : "His hair is of the 
 true Sicambrian yellow ; his eyes are of the lightest, 
 and at the same time of the clearest blue, and the 
 blood glows in his cheeks with as firm a fervour as it 
 did, according to the description of Jornandes, in 
 those of the bello gaudentes.praelio ridentes Teutones 
 of Attila. I had never suspected, before I saw 
 him, that such extreme fairness and freshness of 
 complexion could be compatible with so much variety 
 and tenderness, but, above all, with so much depth 
 of expression." The variety, luxury, &s\& feeling of 
 Wilson's eloquence, and " the tremulous music of a 
 voice that is equally at home in the highest and
 
 2i6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 lowest of notes," are sympathetically described. 
 He proposed Hogg's health ; the Shepherd made 
 a brief hearty reply, and Dr. Morris " began to be 
 quite in love with the Ettrick Shepherd." When 
 the doctor sang "Donald Macdonald," the Shepherd, 
 its author, confessed a kindred flame, and toddy 
 set in. The " dreadful tusks " and other features 
 of the "Great Boar" are described in a manner 
 not wholly pleasing to any personal vanity which 
 Hogg may have cherished, but " his towering brow, 
 and eye of genius," atone for all. The evening 
 finished under Mr. Patrick Robertson's (" Lord 
 Peter's ") chairmanship. 
 
 Dr. Morris's view of Scotch education, of the 
 " facetious and rejoicing ignorance " of Greek, has 
 been already cited. It was as in Dr. Johnson's 
 days, " every man has a mouthful of learning, no 
 man has a bellyful." There is a really admirable 
 defence of Greek, and of historical study. It is 
 vain to talk of reading the Greeks in translations. 
 " Wherein does the essence of a nation exist, if not 
 in her mind ? and how is that mind to be penetrated 
 or understood, if we neglect the pure and faithful 
 mirror in which of old it has stamped its likeness, 
 her language ? Men may talk as they please about 
 translations, there is, in brevity and in truth, no 
 such thing as a translation ! " As for the Scotch, 
 as compared with the English Universities, "they 
 have different objects, and they are both excellent 
 in their different ways."
 
 AN ATTORNEY REBUKED 217 
 
 The copious descriptions of leading advocates are 
 incisive, and probably just ; but a barrister, like an 
 actor, has his fame in his lifetime, nor can we now 
 care greatly to read about men who have left only 
 names, and these, except at the Scotch Bar, well- 
 nigh forgotten. 
 
 A very distinguished Scotsman, who remembers, 
 " 'tis sixty years since," a bad inn described by 
 Lockhart as still deserving his description, writes to 
 me : " Lockhart shows a good deal of malice and 
 irony, and does not even spare the chief of his own 
 party witness his account of the President of the 
 Court of Session, Charles Hope, and his address to 
 the corrupt attorney." ( " Letters," third edition, 
 ii. 102-105.) " He manages to make the Presi- 
 dent ridiculous, while exalting his eloquence and 
 solemnity." 
 
 Now I have read the whole passage, a most elo- 
 quent and impressive passage, carefully, and cannot 
 detect a grain of irony, or a shade of ridicule. The 
 piece concludes "As I came away through the 
 crowd, I heard a pale, anxious-looking old man, who, 
 I doubt not, had a cause in Court, whisper to himself, 
 ' God be thanked, there's one true GENTLEMAN at 
 the head of them all.'" 
 
 The passage, in fact, describes the strong, almost 
 overwhelming emotion of pain, with which " a true 
 gentleman," in supreme place, prepares himself for 
 the cruel task of publicly rebuking a fellow-creature, 
 and " the haughtiness of insulted virtue, the scorn
 
 2i 8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of honour, the coldness of disdain, the bitterness of 
 pity," with which the inevitable reprimand is in- 
 flicted. 
 
 Apparently there are, and were, two ways of 
 reading " Peter's Letters," and Lockhart may have 
 been suspected of irony where he was serious, or 
 the sense of irony, in myself as in Scott, may be 
 deficient. I am, of course, inclined to prefer my 
 own interpretation, but it is well to state (what I 
 certainly could never have guessed), that there is 
 another. 
 
 From the lawyers, Dr. Morris turns to the 
 men of letters, and, of course, to Jeffrey and his 
 Review. The learned doctor anticipates Carlyle's 
 line of thought. The Edinburgh Reviewers are 
 " the legitimate offspring of the sceptical philo- 
 sophers of the last age," and their scepticism as 
 to the value, for example, of thought on the great 
 problems of thought, has resulted in petulance 
 and persiflage. In truth, the Reviewers are not 
 "earnest," as Mr. Carlyle would have said. The 
 fact that Sir William Hamilton never contributed 
 to the Review, under Jeffrey, and that when he 
 did, under Macvey Napier, Jeffrey was vexed and 
 puzzled, is an illustration of Lockhart's meaning. 
 " Cousin I pronounce the most unreadable thing that 
 ever appeared in the Review" says Jeffrey about 
 Hamilton's essay on Cousin. 1 Hamilton " affects 
 to understand the worst part of the mysticism " (of 
 
 1 " Correspondence of Macvey Napier," p. 70.
 
 JEFFREY 219 
 
 Cousin), "and to explain it, and to think it very 
 ingenious and respectable, and it is mere gibberish," 
 Jeffrey's famous letter of advice to Carlyle, analysed 
 by Mr. Froude, "England will never admire, nor in- 
 deed endure, your German divinities " (Goethe is in 
 question), supplies another example. The German 
 philosophers are " Dousterswivels," and so forth. 1 
 Of Goethe, Lockhart had an extreme admiration. 
 Himself a mocker on occasion, he was absolutely in 
 earnest about the great works of great minds. He 
 found Jeffrey habitually misunderstanding, or never 
 trying to understand, what was not superficial. He 
 found him applauding vehemently " The Paradise of 
 Coquettes," and beginning a review of Wordsworth 
 with " This will never do ! " He found him minis- 
 tering to the vanity of a nation, " which had become 
 at once very fond of scepticism, and very weary 
 of learning." He saw him "counteracting, by a 
 continued series of sarcastic and merry antidotes, 
 the impression likely to be produced by works 
 appealing to the graver and more mysterious feelings 
 of the human heart." In contemporary literature, 
 the Review was so conducted that " I do not, on my 
 conscience, believe that there is one Whig in Edin- 
 burgh to whom the name of my friend Charles 
 Lamb would convey any distinct or definite idea." 
 As for Wordsworth, "the reading public of Edin- 
 burgh do not criticise Mr. Wordsworth, they think 
 him below their criticism." 
 
 1 " Life of Thomas Carlyle," ii. 38.
 
 220 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHABT 
 
 Nobody can deny the element, the much-needed 
 element, of truth in all this censure. The world is 
 not so clear and comprehensible as the Jeffrey an 
 intellect supposes. Great and ultimate, if finally 
 insoluble problems, "blank misgivings of a creature 
 moving about in worlds not realised," cannot be 
 sneered away. Ernst ist das Leben, whether we 
 like it or not. This is, in essence, what Lockhart 
 had to say this is what Carlyle would have called 
 his "message." His was vox clamantis in eremo, 
 in a wilderness tempered by toddy and punch, port 
 and claret. Carlyle, not to speak profanely, came 
 clad in camel's hair and eating locusts and wild 
 honey. Lockhart, amidst the complexities of his 
 character, had the prophet's message, but not his 
 spirit of martyrdom and renunciation. 
 
 Prophesying cannot be done on these terms, and 
 Dr. Morris wanders off to a disquisition on that 
 very mundane School of the Prophets, Blackwood's 
 Magazine, But even Blackwood is under the 
 Edinburgh spell. In the evil article on Coleridge, 
 which opened the campaign, it is written : "If Mr. 
 Coleridge should make his appearance suddenly 
 among any company of well-educated people on this 
 side the Tweed, he would meet with some difficulty 
 in making them comprehend who he was." " What 
 a fine idea," cries Lockhart, "for a Scottish critic to 
 hug himself upon ! How great is the blessing of a 
 contented disposition ! " 
 
 The talk of Dr. Morris about the bookseller's
 
 BLACKWOOD 221 
 
 shops is now, of course, antiquated. Constable's, 
 in the High Street, was "a low dusky chamber," 
 without the luxuries of Mr. Murray's emporium 
 in Albemarle Street. There was Manner's and 
 Miller's, for a modern lounge ; and Laing's, for 
 lovers of old books and black letter, reminded 
 Lockhart of Parker's, in Oxford. There is a long 
 description of Blackwood's, in Princes Street, but 
 we have had enough of Ebony. Mr. Blackwood 
 is praised for shrewdness, decision, and energy, and 
 it would be "unfair" (one does not see why) to 
 blame him for the excesses of his Magazine. 
 "Well, Dr. Morris," exclaimed the Man in Plain 
 Apparel, "have you seen our last number? Is it 
 not perfectly glorious ? My stars ! doctor, there is 
 nothing equal to it," and so on, the author's natural 
 turn for banter getting the better of him here, at all 
 events. They dine at Ambrose's, the tavern of the 
 " Noctes Ambrosianae," and Lockhart tells, very well, 
 the tragic old story of Gabriel's double murder, 
 wrought here when the road was a dell in a wood. 
 There follows a history of the Magazine, a kind of 
 confession of contrition, a defence of the Cockney 
 articles, an eulogy on Coleridge. Keats's friend, 
 John Hamilton Reynolds, "a very promising writer," 
 is excepted from the general abuse of the Londoners ; 
 partly, perhaps, because Christie knew Reynolds ; 
 partly because his really was "a very gay, humorous 
 pen, capable, too, of charming poetry." 
 
 The painters come next, and Raeburn is pro-
 
 222 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 nounced "in no important particular inferior even 
 to Sir Thomas Lawrence." The end of the volume 
 deals with the visit to Abbotsford, and Scott. 
 " There is no kind of rank which I should suppose 
 it so difficult to bear with perfect ease, as the uni- 
 versally honoured nobility of universally honoured 
 genius ; but all this sits as lightly upon this great 
 man, as ever a plumed casque did upon the head 
 of one of his own graceful knights." Scott quotes 
 a ballad, his face alters, his quick eyes beneath his 
 heavy brows are fixed "with a sober solemn lustre. 
 ... I shall certainly never forget the fine heroic 
 enthusiasm of look with which he spoke the lines, 
 nor the grand melancholy roll of voice, which showed 
 with what a world of thoughts and feelings every 
 fragment of the old legend was associated within 
 his breast." 
 
 One criticism Lockhart makes, which Scott may 
 not have welcomed. His stripling woods were 
 dearer than his poems to the Sheriff. Lockhart 
 speaks of the plantations, and the agriculture which 
 will take advantage of their shelter. "To say the 
 truth, I do not think with much pleasure of the 
 prospect of any such changes. . . . There hovers 
 at present over the most of this district a certain 
 delicious atmosphere of pastoral loneliness, and I 
 think there would be something like sacrilege in 
 disturbing it, even by things that elsewhere would 
 confer interest as well as ornament." 
 
 The Kirk and the General Assembly next en-
 
 THE KIRK 223 
 
 gaged the attention of Dr. Morris. He found the 
 Assembly to be little more than a kind of clerical 
 wappenshaw, so much had Party (as of Moderates 
 and High Flyers) declined in our national Zion. 
 Dr. Morris listened to many sermons, described 
 several ministers, among others the Griffin, visited 
 Glasgow, and dealt with its local habit of " gaggery," 
 reiterated his praises of Wilson, especially as a poet, 
 and gave one of his best chapters to an occasion^ or 
 Holy Fair, as Burns called the open-air administra- 
 tion of the Sacrament. These are pages marked 
 by an almost Wordsworthian sense of the nature of 
 that impressive and singular celebration. 1 They 
 are conceived in the best and most sympathetic 
 sense, and especially deserve the attention of 
 students of Burns's brilliant satire. Lockhart's 
 memory was full of comic anecdotes about rural 
 ministers, but his Dr. Morris repeats none of 
 them. To "a mischievous Oxford puppy," of 
 Scotch birth, the foibles of his countrymen afford 
 a tempting target, but Lockhart, in his assumed 
 character of a Welsh physician, avoids temptation, 
 and scarcely ever shoots at national folly as she 
 waddles by. 
 
 Indeed it is not easy to understand the frame of 
 mind to which " Peter's Letters" appeared "a string 
 of libels." The dinner at Craigcrook, Jeffrey's 
 house, was a fancy sketch, far better omitted ; the 
 "portraits of the pleaders" were portraits of public 
 
 1 These pages are not by Professor Wilson.
 
 224 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 men in their public function, and certainly did not 
 offend Scott. At our distance in time there may 
 be sins which escape us, and others may have been 
 invented or imagined. The introduction of himself, 
 perhaps by the mysterious "other hand," may have 
 been an error, but it was partly warranted, as Lock- 
 hart was already a "lion" of Edinburgh, though 
 such a young one, and was, in fact, stared at as he 
 walked the streets : to this Mr. Lawrence Lockhart 
 bears witness. The disguise, it must be repeated, 
 is designedly flimsy. Lockhart's authorship was 
 the most open of secrets, the very drawings were a 
 signature. 
 
 In the third edition appears a letter to Coleridge 
 from Dr. Morris. The doctor attributes the hubbub 
 to the arrogance of the Scotch Whigs, which is very 
 amusingly described. After reading Lord Cock- 
 burn's " Memorials," with his description of Jeffrey 
 as "the First of British Critics," we feel that exag- 
 geration was impossible. Much of the book is now 
 antiquated, but many admirable passages of living 
 interest might be extracted. The doctor's cranio- 
 logical speculations are obsolete, but it is almost as 
 true to say that a few excisions would present a 
 useful work, as to say that many selections would 
 be valuable. The author insists on his old private 
 opinion, that Scotch intellect is sufficiently repre- 
 sented by Hume and Adam Smith, but that Scotch 
 character is an inexhaustible mine. As for the per- 
 sonalities, the Whigs had welcomed, two or three
 
 TORY NEWSPAPER 225 
 
 years before, a personal volume by a traveller, 
 one Simond, in which Scotch Tories had suffered 
 grievous things. 1 It is only necessary to add that 
 an unlucky description of the Black Bull Inn, as 
 noisy and untidy, led to legal proceedings, and 
 Lockhart had to pay ^400 of damages, without 
 going into court. " Lockhart 's account of the inn 
 is very correct," says a friend already quoted, who 
 remembers "The Black Bull," but toute verite" n'est 
 pas bonne a dire. 
 
 On October 31, 1819, I find Lockhart writing 
 to Scott, from Edinburgh, about his endeavours to 
 obtain an editor for a new Tory newspaper. 2 The 
 Scotsman of the period was probably thought to 
 need an antidote. To abridge a mere letter of 
 business, Lockhart had asked Christie to invite 
 Mr. Murray of the Times to take the vacant post. 
 Mr. Murray was in all respects well qualified, as 
 a political writer, and a man acquainted with the 
 material side of newspaper publication. But 
 Mr. Murray's connection with a well-established 
 and successful London paper made him hesitate, 
 and, finally, decline. Lockhart also consulted 
 Wilson, "who appears to enter into it with all his 
 
 1 Among critics who, like Scott, did not reckon Peter's book a 
 pestilent libel, was that respectable authority, Dr. Jenkyns, Master 
 of Balliol. " ' Peter's Letters ' have been much read in the South," 
 writes the Master, "and with great pleasure, which I felt at the 
 perusal of them. I could not help recognising the connection between 
 Dr. Morris and our portly friend of Ystraed Meirie." (Williams.) The 
 Master then invites Lockhart to stay with him at Balliol. 
 
 2 Scott's " Letters," ii. 97. 
 
 VOL. i. p
 
 226 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 characteristic ardour. When the thing is once set 
 afoot, the only difficulty will be restraining his 
 vehemence : there will certainly be no need of any 
 stimulus, I mean in regard to the tendency and 
 scope of his lucubrations. As to the regularity 
 of their forthcoming there will be a necessity for 
 very serious pressing indeed. I speak, as you 
 know, from abundant experience. Perhaps, if you 
 will pardon me for hinting such a thing, a few lines 
 from yourself, even at this stage of the business, 
 might be of great use in leading him to turn his 
 mind steadfastly to an examination and preparation 
 of his many resources. . . . Believe me, ever 
 faithfully and affectionately yours, 
 
 "J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 In an undated note, Lockhart sends Murray's 
 letter of refusal to Sir Walter, and admits that he can 
 think of no substitute in the chair editorial. Christie, 
 in London, was equally at a loss. He wisely declined, 
 for his own part, to abandon his prospects at the 
 Bar. He could think of nobody eligible, except 
 John Hamilton Reynolds, the friend of Keats ; but 
 Reynolds was " Master T'otherside," as Scott says 
 on another occasion. Reynolds had been a writer 
 in the Champion (to which Keats occasionally 
 refers), but the paper, Christie thought, was waning 
 under the editorship of Mr. John Scott, the first 
 mention of that ill-starred name in this corre- 
 spondence. At the same time Mr. Croker wrote
 
 SCOTT'S EDITORS 227 
 
 his first letter to Lockhart (November 18, 1819), 
 trying to enlist Wilson and him in a paper to be 
 called the Constitution, but, in practice, styled the 
 Guardian. The Tories of these days were poor 
 hands at journalism, and the position of an editor 
 was not deemed worthy of a gentleman. For the 
 inchoate Scotch paper, Scott suggested (i.) James 
 Ballantyne, (2.) Washington Irving ! In the latter 
 case a gentleman, at all events, would have been 
 an editor. He, of course, declined. 1 
 
 In these months an alarm, or panic, about a 
 Radical rising was current, and Scott was very 
 busy with his picturesque Buccleuch Legion. 
 
 Lockhart was a volunteer, with the rest ; even 
 Lord Cockburn was enrolled in some kind of 
 armed force. Lockhart rode about in the various 
 unopposed marches and counter marches, the 
 Raid of Airdrie, the Trot of Kilmarnock, but he 
 does not seem to have taken his military char- 
 acter seriously. " The Songs of the Edinburgh 
 Troop" (published in 1825), are usually attributed 
 to him. 2 
 
 Therein the poet sings : 
 
 " Sometimes the thing will happen, 
 
 The rear rides o'er the front ; 
 Myself, I once came slapping, 
 And fell with such a dunt ! 
 
 1 Scott's " Letters," ii. 57, 61. 
 
 2 Dean Burgon assigns them to Patrick Fraser Tytler.
 
 228 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 I hate the gloom of Borthwick's plume ! 
 
 There's wisdom in my tune, 
 Make your will, ere you drill, 
 
 Each desperate Dragoon." 
 
 Or again 
 
 " 'Twas at Bathgate this war might be said to commence, 
 To the tune, as was fitting, of ' D n the expense.' " 
 
 In later days Lockhart's interest in sterile disputes 
 of party nearly vanished ; it was never very strong, 
 and social questions, "the condition of England," 
 occupied his sympathies. Even in 1819 it is plea- 
 sant to note that his heart was not all set on force 
 as a remedy. His "Clydesdale Yeoman's Return," 
 attributed to his friend " The Odontist," describes 
 a Lanarkshire farmer's view of a Radical meeting, 
 and his readiness to rise and ride as a volunteer. 
 But his good wife is of gentler mood 
 
 "Now, God preserve the King," said Jean, "and bless the 
 Prince, his son, 
 
 And send good trade to weaver-lads, and this work will all 
 be done ; 
 
 For 'tis idle hand makes busy tongue, and troubles all the 
 land 
 
 With noisy fools, that prate of things they do not under- 
 stand. 
 
 But if worse fall out, then up, my man was never holier 
 cause, 
 
 God's blessed Word, King George's crown, and proud old 
 Scotland's laws." 
 
 But Lockhart's comic verse is the topic of a
 
 MISS SCOTT 229 
 
 separate dissertation. So varied were his pursuits, 
 that he had already begun his well-known transla- 
 tions of the Spanish Ballads. The first instalment 
 appeared in Blackwoods for February 1820. In 
 the following month Mr. Wastle began a Literary 
 Diary in the Magazine, praising, incidentally, the 
 author of a review of the Waverley Novels, in a 
 new serial, Baldwins, or The London Magazine. 
 This reviewer was the Editor, John Scott. 
 
 Lockhart had other than literary engagements at 
 this moment. By the middle of February it had 
 been arranged that he should marry Miss Scott. 
 Lockhart always treasured the little notes written 
 to him, at this time, by his future wife. The 
 earliest begins " My dear Sir," and is written 
 "without Papa's knowledge," a thing which must 
 never occur again. Miss Scott had spoken to her 
 father, and Sir Walter had hinted at a little prudent 
 delay. " Do not, for God's sake, be so unhappy," 
 she writes. The unhappiness did not last long. 
 The later notes always begin " Dear Mr. Lock- 
 hart," kind, happy, playful missives, ending "Always 
 affectionately yours." Lockhart accompanied the 
 family on a flying visit to Abbotsford, on a 
 Saturday, of which he has left the chronicle. 1 In 
 a walk from Huntly Burn his future country home 
 was fixed, the cottage of Chiefswood, on a little 
 haugh beside the haunted Bogle burn, which flows 
 through the Rhymer's Glen. An additional gable 
 1 " Life," vi. 187.
 
 2 3 o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 has been built in the cottage, with its tiny rooms, 
 separated only by the burn from an ancient Holy 
 Well. Otherwise the place is unaltered. The 
 bureau where Scott wrote "The Pirate" keeps its 
 old place ; the same venerable trees shade the 
 lawn : the avenue is that which John Ballantyne 
 wanted to mark out by a cross-country ride "on 
 the Sabbath-day." The glen is now haunted, in- 
 deed, by many memories. 
 
 In this February, Scott and Lockhart, with 
 Prince Gustavus, the exiled heir of Sweden, saw 
 George IV. proclaimed, where, in 1745, King 
 James the Eighth had been vainly announced, 
 at the Cross of Edinburgh. The Swedish exile 
 listened, with melancholy interest, to Scott's anec- 
 dotes of that other wanderer, Prince Charles, who, 
 on this very scene, had snatched from Fate one 
 hour of royalty. Scott drew Lockhart to a window 
 apart, " Poor lad, poor lad, God help him ! " he 
 said with a natural emotion. 
 
 On March 15, 1820, Scott announces to Lady 
 Abercorn his daughter's approaching marriage "to 
 a young man of uncommon talents, indeed of as 
 promising a character as I know." All his corre- 
 spondence attests his satisfaction with the match. 1 
 Lockhart's letter, announcing to his father his 
 betrothal, lies before me, but such documents 
 
 1 "Letters," ii. 73. A ludicrous rumour that Scott's letters to 
 Rogers expressed " detestation " of Lockhart is published in the " Life 
 and Letters of Charles Summer," i. 358.
 
 MISS SCOTT 231 
 
 deserve to be respected at any distance of time. 
 It is enough to say, that Miss Scott's charming 
 character, displayed during her father's illness, even 
 more than her personal beauty, is assigned as the 
 cause of his affection. Mr. Christie sent his con- 
 gratulations on March 17. 
 
 "Your letter has given me more pleasure than 
 any I ever received from you. ... I do not ques- 
 tion that you have better reasons to expect happi- 
 ness in your wife than birth can bestow, however 
 exalted, either from title or illustrious character. 
 But surely it must be matter for congratulation 
 to marry the daughter of the most illustrious man 
 of the age. . . . Depend upon it, woman's goodness 
 is greater than the faultiness of our nature can 
 ever permit us to equal." 
 
 Of Scott's eldest daughter and dearest, "the 
 flower and blossom of his house," not much is 
 said, of course, in published memorials. I take a 
 quaint vignette of her, from an unpublished letter to 
 Sir Walter by Mr. Edward Everett. (Cambridge, 
 Massachusetts, March 28, 1820.) 
 
 "Just before I had the happiness of visiting you, 
 a party of ladies and gentlemen, travelling into 
 Scotland, determined to see you, wandered into 
 your enclosure, and surprised you seated before 
 your door, in that condition into which Horace 
 says your great master Homer sometimes fell. 
 This fact I have upon the authority of Miss Sophia, 
 who came out and found them all standing round
 
 232 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 you in a ring, without breaking the quiet of your 
 siesta." 
 
 These were strange gentlemen and ladies, but 
 the little picture of Scott asleep in white hat 
 and green coat, of the gaping tourists who 
 had calmly walked up to his door, and of 
 Miss Scott contemplating the scene, is worth 
 preserving. 
 
 The following page is a sketch of Miss Scott as 
 she was in 1817, extracted from the unpublished 
 journal of a tour by two Miss Penroses, and Miss 
 Trevennen. 1 
 
 The English ladies, being in Melrose, were 
 visited by the Scotts, the Constables, and Miss 
 Russel of Ashestiel. Naturally they were taken 
 to the Abbey. 
 
 "In the chancel Miss Scott, a very charming 
 lively girl of seventeen, pointed out to us ' The 
 Wizard's Grave/ and then the black stone in the 
 form of a coffin, to which the allusion is made in 
 the poem, ' A Scottish monarch sleeps below/ 
 said to be the tomb of Alexander II. ' But I will 
 tell you a secret/ she half-whispered ; ' only don't 
 you tell Johnny Bower' (the cicerone). 'There is 
 no Scottish monarch there at all, nor anybody else, 
 for papa had the stone taken up, not long ago, 
 and no coffin or anything was to be found. And 
 then Johnny came and begged me not to tell 
 
 1 For this I am indebted to the kindness of my friend, Mr. Ernest 
 Hartley Coleridge.
 
 MISS SCOTT 233 
 
 people so. 1 " For what wull I do, Miss Scott, when 
 I show the ruins, if I canna point to this bit, and 
 say, ' A Scottish monarch sleeps below ' ? " As, 
 however, he had the pleasure of saying this to us 
 the evening before, Miss Scott thought we might 
 fairly have her secret. 2 
 
 "We now set out for Dryburgh, about five miles. 
 Mr. Scott placed his daughter in our carriage, that 
 she might point out the different places as we 
 passed them. We could not have had a better 
 director, nor a more lively entertaining companion. 
 Every spot was known to her, and in this fairy land 
 her quick imagination seemed to delight in all the 
 legendary lore she had heard, and could so promptly 
 apply, of the Goblin burn, where still the common 
 people deemed fairy elves and spirits loved to hold 
 their moonlit revels. ... In a short time, at the 
 view of some distant mountains, Miss Scott suddenly 
 exclaimed, ' Look, there are the Cheviots ; are you 
 not glad to see England again ? ' We assured her 
 we were, though we should quit Scotland with 
 so much regret. 'Well,' she said, 'she should 
 not have liked us if we were not glad to return 
 home.' Her father had taken her to London the 
 
 1 See Washington Irving on Johnny Bower, in his " Abbotsford and 
 Newstead Abbey." 
 
 2 Most of the graves of Catholic Scotland have been rifled, for any 
 personal property they might contain. " They howkit up the Papist 
 corpses, and loomed them ower the brae" above the sea, in the present 
 century, at St Andrews.
 
 234 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 year before, and she was delighted to get back 
 again, and to hail the Cheviots on her return. It 
 was plain to see she was her father's darling, and 
 she talked of him with enthusiasm. She has a very 
 natural, unaffected character, with a strong tincture 
 of romantic feeling, which seemed judiciously kept 
 in check by him, as she said he did not allow her 
 to read much poetry, nor had she even read all his 
 own poems, which were never to be found in the 
 way, at their house. She spoke of her sister and 
 her brothers, with a warmth of affection very 
 pleasing, and if we may judge by so short an 
 acquaintance, she seems likely to become a valu- 
 able character. On asking what was become of 
 Camp (the dog drawn in the painting of Mr. 
 Scott), she shook her head, and said he was dead. 
 ' You must never come to Abbotsford when any 
 
 of the dogs die, for there is a sad weeping amongst 
 
 11 ' " 
 us all. 
 
 Miss Scott, as Lockhart says, in his brief and 
 beautiful tribute to her memory, was, of all his 
 children, the one most like Sir Walter. It was she 
 who nearly fainted with emotion, at the discovery 
 of the Scottish Regalia. (February 5, 1818.) "He 
 never spoke all the way home, but every now and 
 then I felt his arm tremble ; and from that time I 
 fancied he began to treat me more like a woman 
 than a child. I thought he liked me better, too, 
 than he had ever done before." 1 She it was who 
 
 1 " Life," v. 283.
 
 LOCKHART'S MARRIAGE 235 
 
 sang the old songs that her father loved ; she was 
 the Duke of Buccleuch's "little Jacobite." Her 
 portrait, by Nicholson, in a kind of peasant costume, 
 with a great hound looking up into her face, has 
 an expression of the sweetest humour and friendly 
 charm. It is barely worth noting, as an argument 
 in the little controversy as to Sir Walter's Presby- 
 terian or Episcopalian leanings, that Miss Scott and 
 her sister Anne were confirmed in April I82O. 1 
 Lockhart and Miss Scott were married at Abbots- 
 ford, in the evening, more Scotico, of April 29, 1820. 
 Among the marriages of men of letters, often far 
 from happy, this, in spite of La Rochefoucauld, 
 was un mariage ddlicieux, uninterrupted in its 
 happiness, save by the misfortunes of Sir Walter, 
 and the ill health, first of the eldest boy, and, later, 
 of Mrs. Lockhart. 
 
 1 "Life," vi. 216. 

 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 EDINBURGH, 1820-1821 
 
 " The mother of mischief." Election to Chair of Moral Philosophy. 
 Hamilton and Wilson. Calumnies against Wilson. Scott's 
 defence. Lockhart's " Testimonium." Scott's letter of remon- 
 strance. Promises of good behaviour. Attacks on Lockhart in 
 Baldwin's Magazine. Mr. John Scott, Editor of Baldwin's. 
 Tims. Christie writes to Lockhart. Lockhart's reply. Demand 
 for an apology. Mr. John Scott's answer. Lockhart in London. 
 A challenge. Curious evidence of Horatio Smith. A pacific 
 second. No fight. An oversight. Christie's statement. John 
 Scott challenges Christie. A moonlight duel. Christie's letter to 
 Lockhart. Flight of Christie and Traill. Distress of Lockhart. 
 Imputations on his courage. Gallant behaviour of Christie. 
 The trial. Acquittal. Reflections. 
 
 IT is with pain that we return to "the mother of 
 mischief," and all the trouble that came of "that 
 daughter of debate," Maga. In the end of March 
 1820, Lockhart wrote to Scott, who was in London, 
 asking him to aid Wilson in his candidature for the 
 Chair of Moral Philosophy in the Town's College 
 of Edinburgh. The University there is essentially 
 " the Town's College," and the electors, at that time, 
 were the Town Council. The electors were them- 
 selves chosen on political grounds, and the Tories 
 had a majority. The only formidable opponent 
 
 was Sir William Hamilton, who, as the most learned 
 
 236
 
 WILSON'S MORAL CHAIR 237 
 
 and blameless Scottish scholar of his day, ought, of 
 course, to have been appointed. Wilson, on the 
 other side, had "great natural powers accidentally 
 directed" towards the subject of the Chair. But 
 any Scot can be professor of anything, and Mr. 
 Carlyle was equally ready for a Chair of Astronomy 
 or of Rhetoric. The best that can be said for a 
 struggle as fierce as any Parliamentary election, 
 is, that it left Hamilton and Wilson on perfectly 
 good terms, as it found them, and that Professor 
 Wilson put all his unrivalled energy into his 
 duties as he conceived them, kept his class 
 thoroughly alive, and was an elder brother to his 
 pupils. 
 
 The incongruity of his candidature, however, could 
 not escape observation. Scott, as a friend and a 
 Tory, and a firm believer in the candidate, took 
 Wilson's part. He had, not unjustly, the highest 
 opinion of his natural powers ; even Carlyle admits 
 that Wilson was " the most gifted of our literary 
 men, either then or still." Scott conceived that 
 the work and responsibility of the Chair would 
 steady and indeed redeem Wilson, which, with 
 time, they managed to effect. "He must leave 
 off sack, purge, and live cleanly as a gentleman 
 ought to do." 1 
 
 The election went on, both parties putting forth 
 all their energies. The Whigs were so ill advised 
 as to charge Wilson with being "a bad husband 
 1 " Life," vi. 218.
 
 238 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 and a bad father." Here he was on perfectly safe 
 ground, and obtained golden opinions to that effect. 
 He was accused of singing " a careless careless tavern 
 catch " at some revel, and Lockhart, in a letter al- 
 ready published in part, assures Scott that the enemy 
 sank so low as to try to worm evidence out of hotel 
 waiters, the minions of Ambrose, perhaps. On 
 July 8, Scott himself wrote a remarkable letter on 
 these heads to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh. 
 ("Christopher North," ii. 313.) To say, however, 
 as he did, that Wilson was "altogether incapable of 
 composing parodies upon Scripture," argued a slight 
 forgetfulness of " The Chaldee ! " The rest of the 
 letter is a model in its kind. As Mrs. Wilson wrote, 
 "the Tories were triumphant," for, in fact, the 
 election was political. Wilson set to work with a 
 devouring energy, and, as we have seen, justified 
 his appointment ; and he had Sir William Hamilton 
 as an enthusiastic auditor of one, at least, of his 
 discourses. 
 
 Lockhart, unluckily, could not but raise a wild 
 war-whoop over Wilson's success. Mr. Cranstoun, 
 the famous advocate, had made a poem with twenty 
 rhymes to " Packwood " (a notoriety of the day). 
 Lockhart, under the name of his Glasgow dentist, 
 or Odontist, Dr. James Scott, indited the " Testi- 
 monium," with some seventy rhymes to Blackwood, 
 in celebration of Wilson's victory. (Blackwood, 
 July 1820.) Now the Scotsman, edited by Mr. 
 M 'Culloch, was a vehement opposer of Wilson, and
 
 A LOST LETTER 239 
 
 Mrs. Gordon, in "Christopher North," prints some 
 of Mr. M'Culloch's amenities. The same paper, as 
 a matter of course, had attacked Dr. Peter Morris. 
 In the " Testimonium," verses xiii. and xiv. are 
 devoted to Mr. M'Culloch, under his nickname of 
 the Stot. This is needful to be known for the 
 understanding of the following letter from Scott to 
 Lockhart, and, practically, to Wilson. 1 The epistle 
 shows how far Scott "encouraged" the excesses of 
 Blackwood. He is replying to a letter of Lockhart's 
 of July 20, 1820. This is partly published (Scott's 
 " Letters," ii. 84). There is reference to the 
 " Testimonium," and to the passions of the hour. 
 There was near being a challenge to the duello 
 between two learned Professors. Lockhart also 
 speaks of beginning his novel, "Valerius." Scott's 
 letter follows : 
 
 " DEAR LOCKHART, I had your kind letter, and 
 congratulate you on your hard -fought battle. 
 Wilson has surmounted difficulties of which he 
 
 was not aware, for the worthy wrote to 
 
 Lord Melville on the subject of his interference, 
 and received a most capital answer. Moreover, all 
 sorts of anonymous letters were directed to little 
 purpose at the same quarter. The victory, how- 
 ever, being gained, it is greatly the opinion of Mr. 
 
 1 Postmark, July 25, 1820. The letter could not be discovered for 
 Scott's Correspondence : I owe it to the kindness of my friend, Mr. 
 C. M. Falconer of Dundee, who found this, and some other papers, 
 by a curious accident.
 
 24 o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Wilson's best wishers, and most especially mine, 
 that the matter may be suffered to rest. His 
 best triumph, and that of his friends, will be in 
 the concentration of his powerful mind upon the 
 great and important task before him, and in utterly 
 contemning the paltry malice of those who have 
 taken such foul means of opposing him. Any 
 attempt on his part, or that of his friends, to 
 retaliate on such a faineant as poor Stookie, or 
 on the Scotsman, is like a gentleman fighting 
 with a chimney sweeper he may lick him, but 
 cannot avoid being smutted in the conflict. For 
 my part, I vow to God I would sooner fight a 
 duel with an actual scavenger than enter into 
 controversy with such fellows. 
 
 " I am sure our friend has been taught the danger 
 of giving way to high spirits in mixed society, where 
 there is some one always ready to laugh at the joke 
 and to put it into his pocket to throw in the jester's 
 face on some future occasion. It is plain Wilson 
 must have walked the course had he been cautious 
 in selecting the friends of his lighter hours, and now, 
 clothed with philosophical dignity, his friends will 
 really expect he should be on his guard in this 
 respect, and add to his talents and amiable dis- 
 position the proper degree of retenue becoming 
 a moral teacher. Try to express all this to him 
 in your own way, and believe that, as I have said 
 it from the best motives, so I would wish it con- 
 veyed in the most delicate terms, as from one
 
 SCOTT'S REMONSTRANCE 241 
 
 who equally honours Wilson's genius and loves 
 his benevolent, ardent, and amiable disposition, 
 but who would willingly see them mingled with 
 the caution which leaves calumny no pin to hang 
 her infamous accusations upon. 
 
 " For the reasons above mentioned I wish you 
 had not published the ' Testimonium.' It is very 
 clever, but descends to too low game. If Jeffrey 
 or Cranstoun, or any of the dignitaries, chose to 
 fight such skirmishes there would be some credit 
 in it; but I do not like to see you turn out as 
 
 a sharp-shooter with . ' What does thou drawn 
 
 among these heartless hinds?' If M'Culloch were 
 to parade you upon the score of Stanza xiii., 
 I do not see how you could decline his meeting, 
 as you make the man your equal (ad hoc, I mean), 
 when you condescend to insult him by name. And 
 the honour of such a rencounter would be small 
 comfort to your friends for the danger which must 
 attend it. I have hitherto avoided saying any- 
 thing on this subject, 1 though some little turn 
 towards personal satire is, I think, the only draw- 
 back to your great and powerful talents, and I 
 think I may have hinted as much to you. But 
 I wished to see how this matter of Wilson's would 
 turn, before making a clean breast upon this sub- 
 ject. It might have so happened that you could 
 
 1 Later Sir Walter says that he remonstrated before Lockhart's 
 marriage. It is impossible to know on which occasion, the present, 
 or a later period, his memory was at fault. 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 242 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 not handsomely or kindly have avoided a share 
 in his defence, if the enemy had prevailed, and 
 where friendship, or country, or any strong call 
 demands the use of satiric talent, I hope I should 
 neither fear risk myself or desire a friend to shun 
 it. But now that he has triumphed I think it 
 would be bad taste to cry out 
 
 ' Strike up our drums pursue the scattered stray.' 
 
 Besides, the natural consequence of his new situation 
 must be his relinquishing his share in these com- 
 positions at least, he will injure himself in the 
 opinion of many friends, and expose himself to a 
 continuation of galling and vexatious disputes to 
 the embittering of his life, should he do otherwise. 
 In that case I really hope you will pause before 
 you undertake to be the Boaz of the Maga; I 
 mean in the personal and satirical department, when 
 the Jachin has seceded. 
 
 " Besides all other objections of personal enemies, 
 personal quarrels, constant obliquy, and all unchari- 
 tableness, such an occupation will fritter away your 
 talents, hurt your reputation both as a lawyer and 
 a literary man, and waste away your time in what at 
 best will be but a monthly wonder. What has been 
 done in this department will be very well as a frolic 
 of young men, but let it suffice, ' the gambol has 
 been shown' the frequent repetition will lose its 
 effect even as pleasantry, for Peter Pindar, the 
 sharpest of personal satirists, wrote himself down,
 
 "REVERE YOURSELF" 243 
 
 and wrote himself out, and is forgotten. The public 
 can be cloyed with this as well as with other high 
 seasoned food. Remember it is to the personal 
 satire I object, and to the horse-play of your raillery, 
 as well as the mean objects on whom it is wasted. 
 Employing your wit and wisdom on general national 
 topics, and bestowing deserved correction on 
 opinions rather than men, or on men only as con- 
 nected with actions and opinions, you cannot but do 
 your country yeoman's service. 
 
 "The magazine, I should think, might be gra- 
 dually restricted in the point of which I complain, 
 and strengthened and enlarged in circulation at 
 the same time. It certainly has done and may 
 do admirable service ; it is the excess I complain 
 of, and particularly as respecting your share in 
 it, for I care not how hard others lay on the 
 Galwegian Stot, only I would not like to have 
 you in that sort of scrape which, if he have a 
 particle of the buffalo in him, might, I think, 
 ensue. Revere yourself, my dear boy, and think 
 you were born to do your country better service 
 than in this species of warfare. I make no apology 
 (I am sure you will require none) for speaking 
 plainly what my anxious affection dictates. As the 
 old warrior says, ' May the name of Mevni be 
 forgotten among the people, and may they only 
 say, Behold the father of Gaul.' I wish you to have 
 the benefit of my experience without purchasing 
 it ; and be assured, that the consciousness of attain-
 
 244 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 ing complete superiority over your calumniators 
 and enemies by the force of your general character, 
 is worth a dozen of triumphs over them by the 
 force of wit and raillery. I am sure Sophia, as 
 much as she can or ought to form any judgment 
 respecting the line of conduct you have to pursue 
 in your new character of a man married and settled, 
 will be of my opinion in this matter, and that you 
 will consider her happiness and your own, together 
 with the respectability of both, by giving what I 
 have said your anxious consideration. 
 
 " I am delighted to hear you get on so soon with 
 the Roman tale. 1 It cannot but be admirable, and is 
 quite new. I would have you anxiously consider the 
 author for a little time. The Abb. gets on ; I hope 
 it will do, and am greatly encouraged by your senti- 
 ments and Erskine's. James Ballantyne, a good 
 specimen of a certain class of readers, likes the second 
 volume better than the first Vogue La galere. 
 
 I have at present a visit from Dr. [name illegible} ; 
 he has stayed with me some days, and I think him 
 intelligent and sensible, under a good deal of high- 
 church and classical bigotry neither indeed is the 
 sort of bigotry which I dislike. If Charles goes 
 eastward ho ! I shall be glad to have compassed 
 his acquaintance . . . 
 
 [This fart torn of.] 
 . . . which would be a beautiful thing if it could be 
 
 1 "Valerius."
 
 FAUST 245 
 
 done, but I doubt it, and I make a point never 
 to do anything over my poor neighbours' necks. 
 Constable proposes ,400 for the Review l this is 
 too little, I think, though fully what the work can 
 afford. Write to James Ballantyne, who thinks it 
 should be ^500, what your own views are, and they 
 will be complied with instantly. Do not let this 
 business slumber, for in these matters one should be 
 a man of business. I have nothing to add but my 
 best affection to Fia, as Charles used to call her 
 when a child, and kind respects to your father and 
 mother. I need not say how happy I will be when 
 your Western Circuit finishes, and you come here to 
 see the rising towers." 
 
 Lockhart's answer is to be read in the published 
 " Letters" of Sir Walter (vol. ii. p. 86). Both he 
 and Wilson promised to be good, but temptation 
 more or less overcame their resolutions. It is only 
 just to add that the writings which led to " the most 
 unfortunate event in Lockhart's life" (as Scott 
 called it), were all prior to this rebuke, and to these 
 vows of amendment. I do not trace Lockhart's 
 hand frequently in Blackwood at this time. The 
 translations from the "Faust" of Goethe, in the 
 June number for 1820, are practically attributed to 
 him, in an Editorial note. They are said to be "not 
 executed by Mr. Gillies, but by another friend, 
 whose contributions in verse and prose, serious and 
 comic, have already very frequently honoured our 
 
 1 The reference here is obscure.
 
 246 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 pages." Many of them display Lockhart's great 
 metrical skill and poetic faculty, but they will be 
 better dealt with in some comments on his verse in 
 general. He also now and then wrote " Wastleiana," 
 in which the remarks on Leigh Hunt might very 
 well have been omitted. He reviewed, with high 
 praise, Mr. Washington Irving's " Knickerbocker's 
 History of New York," imploring him to try his 
 hand at a novel. (July 1820.) He acknowledges 
 "much merit in some of the stanzas of Mr. Keats 's 
 last volume" ("Lamia and Isabella"), but still 
 detects the "Cockney" affectation, and is blind to 
 the Miltonic grandeur of " Hyperion," if he read it. 
 We may remember Shelley's own strange coldness 
 to this wonderful volume, and his opinion that Keats 
 was imitating a greater than he, Leigh Hunt ! 
 Shelley wrote " Keats's new volume has arrived to 
 us, and the fragment called ' Hyperion ' promises 
 for him that he is destined to become one of the 
 first writers of his age. His other things are im- 
 perfect enough, and, what is worse, written in a 
 bad sort of style, which is becoming fashionable 
 among those who think that they are imitating 
 Hunt and Wordsworth. But of all these things, 
 
 nothing is worse than , in spite of Hunt's 
 
 extracting the only good stanzas, with his usual 
 
 good nature." 1 What is ? The Editor, 
 
 in 1862, cast a veil over the name of the piece 
 which, in Shelley's opinion, was the worst even 
 
 1 "Correspondence of Leigh Hunt," i. 158.
 
 KEATS 47 
 
 of Keats's bad poems. Doubtless it was one of 
 his best. 
 
 It is extraordinary to find the author of " Adonais" 
 agreeing, in essentials, though not in tone, with a 
 reviewer to whom Keats was a Cockney, a follower 
 (as Shelley too held) of Leigh Hunt, though withal, 
 says Lockhart, "a fine feeling lad." Shelley offers 
 to teach Keats Greek ; Lockhart asks why, in 
 ignorance of Greek, he writes on the legends of 
 Greece? Lockhart hopes that he will live to 
 despise Leigh Hunt, and be a poet, "after the 
 fashion of the elder men of England." Shelley 
 thinks he promises, in " Hyperion," to be one of 
 the first writers of the age. 
 
 As regards " Hyperion," Mr. Robert Bridges, in 
 what is probably the best criticism of Keats ever 
 written, points out that Keats meant to desert his 
 Miltonic manner. "I have given up ' Hyperion/ 
 there are too many inversions in it, Miltonic verse 
 cannot be written but in an artful, or rather artist's 
 mood. I wish to give myself up to other sensa- 
 tions." 1 It was not in the Miltonic direction, but 
 in his " Ode to Autumn," and " On a Greek Urn," 
 that Keats was to "find himself," and be, without 
 knowing Greek, himself a Greek by "grace of 
 congruity." Shelley's letter to Leigh Hunt, with 
 Lockhart's obiter dicta, prove that poet and critic 
 alike may fail fully to know contemporary genius 
 when they meet it, and may, as in Shelley's prefer- 
 
 1 Keats's Letters, p. 380, 1895.
 
 248 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 ence of Leigh Hunt to Keats, prefer contemporary 
 mediocrity. 
 
 At the close of 1820, a little incident occurred 
 which illustrates an opinion already expressed, that 
 the Blackwoodians would never have waged war on 
 the Cockneys, or at least on some of that camp, if 
 they had known their foemen personally. Hay don 
 had been sneered at as a Cockney Raphael, and 
 the interchanges of published sonnets, and compari- 
 sons with the world's greatest, among Leigh Hunt's 
 set, had exasperated Northern critics, just as they 
 soon began to irritate Keats. Now, in November 
 1820, Haydon, for divers good reasons, left town, 
 and took his picture of "Christ entering Jerusalem" 
 to Edinburgh. He went to see Sir William Allan. 
 "As we were walking, we met Lockhart. I was 
 pleased at meeting him, though he was rather 
 nervous. He had assaulted me as one of the 
 Cockney clique, 1 and he seemed surprised to find that 
 I was human. In Lockhart 's melancholy Spanish 
 head, there was evidence of genius and mischief. 
 I dined with him. His reception was open and 
 frank. He treated me then, and ever since, as if 
 I was a man he had unwittingly injured. The next 
 man I dined with was Sir Walter Scott. . . . Allan 
 was there, and Lockhart and Terry were also of the 
 party, with Miss Scott, Mrs. Lockhart, and Lady 
 Scott. ... I had a letter to Wilson, and he also 
 made up a large party, at which we had a splendid 
 
 1 This Lockhart, in his letter to Haydon, denies.
 
 HAYDON ON HORSEBACK 249 
 
 set to. Wilson looked like a fine Sandwich Islander 
 who had been educated in the Highlands. His 
 light hair, deep sea-blue eye, tall athletic figure, 
 and hearty hand-grip ; his eagerness in debate, his 
 violent passions, great genius, and irregular habits, 
 rendered him a formidable partisan, a furious enemy, 
 and an ardent friend. His hatred of Keats, which 
 could not be concealed, marked him as the author 
 of all these violent assaults on my poor friend in 
 Blackwood"^ 
 
 " The Blackwood set (fine dogs !), not convinced 
 yet of my not being a Cockney, determined to put 
 me to that sure test, a gallop," out of which 
 Haydon thought he came very well. " John 
 Scott predicted I should return victorious and 
 triumphant, and so I did. ... I felt as if for 
 a fortnight I had been sailing with a party of 
 fine fellows up a placid and beautiful river." 
 Haydon's picture was lauded, and he was be- 
 sonneted in Blackwood/ 
 
 The tomahawk was buried. " Lockhart's whole 
 life has since been a struggle to undo the evil he 
 was at the time a party to. Hence his visits to me 
 in prison, his praise in the Quarterly, and his 
 opinions expressed so often, on what he thinks my 
 deserts. This shows a good heart, and a fine heart 
 Lockhart has ; but he is fond of fun and mischief, 
 
 1 This, of course, is only Haydon's inference. I do not know who 
 wrote the Blackwood review of "The Poems" of 1817, and of 
 " Endymion."
 
 25 o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 and does not think of the wreck he has made till he 
 has seen the fragments." 
 
 Nobody but Hay don wrecked Hay don, and 
 Lockhart, a few years later, was at the head of a 
 subscription for this unfortunate man of genius. 
 
 For several months I find nothing of Lockhart's, 
 unless it be reviews of no importance, and versions of 
 Spanish Ballads, in Blackwood, till February 1821. 
 But, on December 28, 1820, Christie writes that he 
 has read an article in Baldwins Magazine which 
 "excites his spleen." "I cannot conceive what [word 
 illegible] possessed John Scott to meddle with you, 
 for, judging by that article, he is but a very ordinary 
 man. I think you must do something more with 
 him than kill the zinc-eating spider." 1 The letter 
 also alludes to the generally censured faults of 
 Blackwood, which provoke imputations even on its 
 harmless portions. Christie much disliked the 
 magazine, and Lockhart's connection with it 
 
 Lockhart answers early in January, but without 
 date : he writes : 
 
 [Postmark, January 6.] 
 
 " I was in the country when the first of Master 
 Baldwin's philippics was published, and, being 
 entirely occupied with running down hares, and 
 sticking salmon, did not hear of it for many weeks. 
 The second distressed me very much, not on ac- 
 count of myself, but of Scott, of whose hitherto 
 
 1 Allusion unintelligible : ink may be referred to.
 
 LOCKHART ATTACKED 251 
 
 unprofaned name such base use was made in it 
 although, if any insult could move a man's rage, 
 without doubt the allusions to my marriage, wife, 
 &c., were well entitled to do so. Now, however I 
 mean in the January number, which has been sent 
 me this morning I find myself charged with distinct- 
 ness in a sort which neither present engagements, or 
 any thought for the future, can induce me, or could 
 induce any man, to overlook. And it is in regard 
 to this that I am now to solicit the aid of your well- 
 tried friendship. ..." 
 
 It is now necessary to say what the charges 
 made against Lockhart in Baldwins Magazine were. 
 As to the motive for their appearance at this 
 particular moment, I know nothing. 1 Maga had 
 spoken of Baldwins Magazine as of a rival who 
 urged her to her best exertions. There had been 
 a little word of banter on a dull number, about 
 the Editor being asleep, and " Tims " driving. 
 Now Tims was a nickname for Mr. Patmore, who 
 himself had contributed to Blackwood an impartial 
 account of his friend Hazlitt's lectures. He had 
 also reviewed Sheridan Knowles's " Virginius." 
 Probably on account of the attacks on Hazlitt, 
 he, at some time, withdrew, and the real wonder 
 is how a young Londoner ever found himself in 
 that galere. As " Tims," an ideal but harmless 
 
 1 In a much later Blackwood, it was asserted that a London con- 
 tributor, in collusion with Mr. John Scott, deliberately tried to provoke 
 a quarrel.
 
 25 2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Cockney, he is often chaffed in the " Noctes Ambro- 
 sianse," and elsewhere. All this was in sufficiently 
 bad taste, but Wilson, in a burlesque called " The 
 Kirk of Shotts," had taken graver liberties with 
 his friend, the Rev. Robert Morehead, who expos- 
 tulated with dignity and success. Thus for Mr. 
 John Scott's series of assaults on Blackwood, no 
 motive but general resentment of that periodical's 
 violences can now, perhaps, be assigned. Nothing 
 in particular was stirring, except that Maginn had 
 fallen foul of Professor Leslie's Hebrew orthodoxy, 
 and literary honesty, a propos of a Latin version 
 of "Chevy Chase." On this matter a lawsuit was 
 pending, and Professor Leslie later received 
 damages to the extent of ^roo. 1 
 
 This being so, in May 1820, Mr. John Scott, 
 in his magazine, attacked Zeta, who had for some 
 time been silent, and who could not, in any case, 
 as Zeta, reply. Something, also, was said of the 
 treatment of the Ettrick Shepherd, which the good 
 Shepherd was able to resent for himself. In 
 November, Mr. Scott brought a charge of "a 
 regular plan of fraud," and " violation of the rules 
 of honourable intercourse in society." 
 
 1 On the question of Leslie's Hebrew I have consulted the Rev. 
 Dr. Birrell, Professor of Hebrew in the University of St. Andrews. 
 He has kindly examined the matter, and informs me that both Maginn 
 and Leslie were right, there being two modes of indicating the 
 higher numerals in Hebrew. But Leslie's argument rather involved 
 his belief that this was not so, owing to "the poverty of the Hebrew 
 language." There were other charges of scientific unfairness.
 
 JOHN SCOTT'S CHARGES 253 
 
 The fraud, in brief, was the invention of pseudony- 
 mous characters, Wastle, Peter Morris, Dr. Olinthus 
 Petre (Maginn), and others. Though Mr. Scott 
 had much right on his side, in general, yet the 
 disguises of Peter and Wastle were sufficiently 
 transparent, and many of Dr. Morris's acts of peni- 
 tence were probably sincere. That Lockhart, in his 
 mystification, intended to deceive that in Wastle 
 he did not draw a physiognomy familiar to all 
 Edinburgh, and to be found on no shoulders but 
 his own does seem clear enough. But Mr. Scott 
 argued that only the few could lift the mask, that 
 only to the few was the mystification a joke, while 
 it was deliberately intended, with all the other 
 mystifications, to pass for truth with the multitude. 
 This deep-laid scheme is the gravamen of his 
 accusation, honestly made, no doubt, but no less, 
 I think, erroneous. Sir Walter was then brought 
 in as countenancing Blackwood. We have already 
 seen his letter on that subject. "It surely is 
 we are sure it ought to be a severe mortifica- 
 tion to the author of ' Paul's Letters to his Kins- 
 folk,' that the book has formed the archetype or 
 exemplar to ' Peter's Letters,' a publication sin- 
 ning, both in its design and execution, against the 
 rules of decency and principles of honour." Peter 
 " gratifies the paltry and nefarious curiosity which 
 hovers round the enclosure of private life." 
 
 We have already seen, and for many years all 
 the world has known, what Sir Walter thought
 
 254 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 about " Peter's Letters." He did not, like Mr. John 
 Scott, think it "a most notorious and profligate 
 example of felon conspiracy against the dignity of 
 literature." 
 
 Sir Walter is next severely blamed for aiding 
 Wilson in the matter of the Chair of Moral Philo- 
 sophy. This one circumstance stamps him as "the 
 zealous espouser of Blackwood's cause." He is 
 probably a contributor. " Sir Walter has himself 
 been lately in London, and we now find a series 
 of papers in Blackwood, in which certain London 
 parties and prayer-meetings, with the names of 
 individuals, are exposed very much in the culpable 
 manner of Peter Morris, but with a more delicate 
 hand." "Surely" Sir Walter cannot have written 
 these sketches? "We forbear to say more on 
 this subject, because we feel that we have great 
 power in our hands." 
 
 Much is made of Blackwood's compounding with 
 Graham Dalyell, and with Hazlitt, who himself had 
 published what Dr. Smiles calls "a cruel and 
 libellous pamphlet" against Gifford (1819), and, 
 according to Southey, "would not run the risk of 
 having me subpoenaed upon a trial." 1 Hazlitt had 
 been personally attacked ; old stories about him 
 had been raked up, and Blackwood had compro- 
 mised the quarrel privately. 
 
 In December and in January appeared, in 
 Baldwins Magazine, the articles on which we left 
 
 1 " Memoirs of John Murray," i. 263, 493.
 
 PETER THE ASSASSIN 255 
 
 Lockhart writing to Christie. The former essay, after 
 repeating, in essence, much of what had already been 
 said, brought in the story about the Black Bull Inn 
 (which Lockhart had incautiously described as noisy 
 and uncomfortable). He is now denounced as 
 Editor of Blackwood, as a forger of Testimonials to 
 his journal, and as, above all, the author of "a 
 most virulent and offensive libel against Mr. Cole- 
 ridge" (October 1817), which, as we have seen, he 
 did not write. 1 A letter from Coleridge to Peter 
 Morris is also said to have been printed without 
 Coleridge's consent. Peter is called an "assassin" 
 for his " Letters." In January the affair of Pro- 
 fessor Leslie is introduced. Maginn's signature, 
 " Dr. Olinthus Petre," is called a deliberate attempt 
 to deceive. The notable discovery, that Trinity 
 College possesses no Olinthus Petre, D.D., is pro- 
 claimed. Mr. John Scott hears that "Mr. John 
 Gibson Lockhart has given it under his hand that 
 he is not the Editor of Blackwood? but, under the 
 assumed name of " Christopher North," he is well 
 known to be so. He is covering "an organised 
 plan of fraud, calumny, and cupidity." Allusions to 
 Abbotsford, and its unworthy guest and dubious 
 lord, were scattered about here and there. 
 
 This brief summary contains, I think, the gist of 
 the essays in Baldwin's Magazine, for May, No- 
 vember, and December 1820, and January 1821. 
 It is apparent that Mr. John Scott thought his 
 
 1 Lockhart's innocence of this article is absolutely certain.
 
 256 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 information was more accurate than it proved to be, 
 and believed that he had hit on a popular vein of 
 writing. His intelligence was, in many points, in- 
 correct. Lockhart was not "Christopher North," 
 nor was he Editor of Blackwood, nor author of the 
 article on Coleridge of three years before. The 
 "Testimonials," which he is accused of "forging," 
 were apparently some parodies, in prose and verse, 
 on Byron, Wordsworth, and the Odontist, composing 
 a " Luctus," or wail for an Irish prize-fighter. 1 If so, 
 they could not have deceived, or been intended to 
 deceive, any mortal. Sir Walter's contributions on 
 London prayer-meetings and breakfast parties I 
 have been unable to discover ! The general charge 
 of a "felonious conspiracy" may be left to readers 
 of " Peter's Letters." Mr. Scott was of Scotch 
 extraction, a schoolfellow of Byron's at Aberdeen, 
 and later (according to Moore), a furious assailant 
 of Byron. Reprehensible as mystifications are, the 
 age was rich in them, and Mr. Scott need not 
 have taken such very high ground about " Peter's 
 Letters." But he was Scotch, and a professed 
 moralist. He named Lockhart, and he accused 
 him of falsehood in setting his hand to a formal state- 
 ment that he was not Editor of Blackwood. 
 
 We now understand the burden of the accusa- 
 tions, on which, early in January, Lockhart was 
 replying to Christie. He says that Christie has 
 already heard from him about the dual control of 
 
 1 Blackwood, May 1820.
 
 LOCKHART'S DEFENCE 257 
 
 the magazine, for a brief time, when Murray and 
 Blackwood were partners in it. We have touched 
 on this, on the repayment of Murray's money, and 
 on Wilson's formal denial that he "had ever re- 
 ceived one shilling except for my own compositions." 
 Lockhart then tells Christie, what we have pre- 
 viously stated, that the contemplated arrangement 
 had in short space been rescinded, and that Mr. 
 Blackwood "had always been chiefly, and since 
 then he has been, so far as I know solely, the 
 manager of his book, and as for myself, you 
 would be surprised if I could show you how few 
 pages have in so many months been supplied from 
 my pen. 
 
 "In this state of things Mr. Leslie brings an action 
 against Mr. Blackwood for certain articles, of the 
 author of which I do not even at this moment know 
 or suspect the name, and which I had never seen 
 except in the magazine. . . . Mr. Leslie, how- 
 ever, claps my name into the summons as author 
 or editor of these articles, and in particular of an 
 article signed Olinthus Petre. It is not agreeable 
 for an advocate to be a party in any case of this 
 sort, so I desired my agent to tell me his opinion. 
 It was (and I acted upon it) that he himself 
 ought to write to Mr. Leslie's agent, stating how 
 the thing stood, and threatening, unless my name 
 was withdrawn, to bring a counter action. The 
 name was withdrawn accordingly, and here is the 
 story which has brought me the honour of being 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 258 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 called by a name not to be repeated, by this 
 Mr. John Scott, or whoever Mr. Baldwin's rascal 
 may be. 
 
 " I have written the above for your satisfaction, 
 not for his. What I expect of you is that you 
 will, without delay, talk over the whole affair with 
 Traill, and one or both of you go to this Mr. Scott 
 (or whoever the editor may be) if not, to the 
 publisher, and ask for the author. 
 
 " If he is not forthcoming, or if Scott himself be 
 the author, you will dictate according to your own 
 discretion, which I can trust better than my own, 
 an apology to be inserted in the front page of his 
 next magazine, and wherever else I please. If 
 there is any difficulty about this, it remains only 
 that you fix a day for the man to meet me at York, 
 or any other place half way between Edinburgh and 
 London. Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 "J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 In a postscript he repeats that he did not attack 
 Coleridge, and is only said to have done so, because 
 he is known to have written eulogies on him. As 
 to Hogg, " his chief pride, and the very breath of 
 his nostrils, are such jokes as this knave makes such 
 a pother about." He adds that he would probably 
 have written thus a month ago, "but to tell you 
 the truth, my wife was then exceedingly ill from a 
 series of cramp attacks, from which she is slowly 
 recovering, and I had enough to think of at
 
 SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 259 
 
 home, besides not being very able even to think 
 of leaving it. . . ." l 
 
 As to the perplexing events which followed, after 
 Christie received Lockhart's letter, we have three 
 sources of evidence. We have printed statements 
 by Mr. Scott and by Lockhart, which were written 
 and circulated at the time of the events. And we 
 also possess the narrative of Mr. Horatio Smith (of 
 the "Rejected Addresses"), who was one of two 
 seconds engaged by Mr. Scott. Usually called 
 "Horace," he is always "Horatio" in the printed 
 statements. Mr. Smith's narrative was published 
 in 1847, in the New Monthly Magazine (No. 81). 
 Thus it appeared twenty-six years after the occur- 
 rences, and, of course, it may be contaminated by 
 illusions of memory. On the other hand, nobody 
 is likely to let his memory beguile him into the 
 belief that he and his friend cut a very poor figure, 
 if they did not really do so. Again, Mr. Smith's 
 narrative colligates the facts, and explains much 
 that is unintelligible in the statement of Mr. Scott 
 much that, at the time, bewildered Lockhart and 
 Christie. Now it can scarcely be by mere accident 
 that illusions of memory, on Mr. Smith's part (if 
 these be alleged), thus fill up and elucidate the 
 whole confused story. I am therefore obliged to 
 give some credence to Mr. Smith, though his tale 
 throws a rather ludicrous light on his own conduct 
 and on that of Mr. Scott. 
 
 1 Mrs. Lockhart was within a few weeks of her confinement.
 
 260 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 That gentleman's printed statement about what 
 occurred after Christie received Lockhart's letter 
 bears no date. It sets forth how Lockhart's friend 
 (Christie) waited on Mr. Scott on January 10, to 
 ask whether he avowed himself responsible for the 
 articles in Baldwin's Magazine? Mr. Scott said 
 that he would answer in a couple of hours, and his 
 written reply, after that interval, was, that "if Mr. 
 Lockhart's motives in putting the inquiry should 
 turn out to be such as gentlemen usually respect, 
 there would be no difficulty experienced about giving 
 it an explicit answer." Of course this seemed to 
 promise " the usual satisfaction." 
 
 Mr. Scott's statement avers that on receiving 
 this note Christie again visited him, assuring him 
 that Lockhart had no legal proceedings in view. 
 He wanted an apology, or satisfaction. Mr. Scott 
 asked if he was in London, and whether he would 
 distinctly declare the nature of his connection with 
 Blackwood. Christie answered that Lockhart was 
 in Edinburgh, and had instructed him, "that no 
 preliminary explanation whatever was to be ex- 
 pected from him." Mr. Scott said he must have 
 a preliminary explanation, before he could consider 
 Lockhart's "motives to be worthy of respect." He 
 promised a definite reply in the evening. In the 
 evening he wrote a note, grumbling at Lockhart's 
 absence, and asking for "an open reference to the 
 ground of complaint." 
 
 This is Mr. Scott's account of what occurred on
 
 NO EXPLANATION 261 
 
 January 10. He is hesitating, it will be observed, 
 about owning his responsibility for his articles, unless 
 Lockhart will oblige him by a preliminary explana- 
 tion. Lockhart's printed statement of what occurred 
 on January 10, gives his reason for making no such 
 explanation, and asserts that the reason was placed 
 before Mr. Scott. In the second conversation of 
 the day, between Mr. Scott and Christie, the latter, 
 says Lockhart, "told Mr. Scott that the author 
 of the offensive articles in the London Magazine 
 had made a great number of false assertions, that 
 he (the author) must therefore be conscious of 
 having trusted either to invention, or to worthless 
 information, and that, to a person who had acted 
 so, Mr. Lockhart would not condescend to offer any 
 preliminary information whatever." 
 
 It will be observed that Mr. Scott's statement 
 omits all this essential passage, though he does 
 mention a general denial of some of his charges, 
 by Christie. The writer in the London Magazine 
 had made false assertions and wide inferences, and 
 for that reason Lockhart, demanding an apology or 
 satisfaction, would not oblige him by any explana- 
 tion. Inferring from Mr. Scott's second note of 
 January 10, that, if he would not avow or disavow 
 the articles in the London Magazine, he would fight, 
 Lockhart came instantly to London. He sent to 
 Mr. Scott, by Christie, a letter, in which he said 
 that Mr. Scott's " refusal to give an answer till you 
 should be assured of my being in London admits of
 
 2 6 2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 one explanation only, and no more," namely, that 
 Mr. Scott would go " on the sod." 
 
 Mr. Scott, to return to his statement, says that 
 he now avowed his responsibility for the offensive 
 articles, but added that, unless Lockhart would 
 make the demanded explanation, "he could not 
 accept his tardy personal appeal, as entitling him 
 to a privilege, which belongs, of right, only to the 
 gentlemen " who deserve it. 
 
 Lockhart merely says, on this point, that Mr. 
 Scott, "in a shuffling conversation," tried to evade 
 the engagement to fight. Mr. Scott himself says 
 that he refused to " name a friend," unless Lockhart 
 made the explanation desired. 
 
 The reader will remark that Mr. Scott's first 
 refusal was to avow responsibility before Lockhart 
 came to town, and informed him as to the exact 
 proportion of truth and falsehood in his articles. 
 He now shifts his refusal, but keeps the same pre- 
 text for it ; he proclaims his responsibility for the 
 articles, but declines to fight, without an explana- 
 tion from Lockhart. And this refusal to fight with- 
 out an explanation he declares that he first made, 
 in a conversation with Christie, on January 18. 
 
 But, in "the evening of January 18" (really, 
 perhaps, in the morning of January 19), Mr. Scott 
 committed to writing, and presently printed his 
 memories of what he had said to Christie. He 
 had insisted on an explanation from Lockhart 
 " before it could be conceded that Mr. Lockhart's
 
 A STRANGE SECOND 263 
 
 motives in applying to Mr. Scott were of a nature 
 such as gentlemen usually respect," a quotation 
 from his own first note of January 10. Lockhart 
 comments thus " Mark the shuffle as to this phrase. 
 Compare its meaning as used here with its plain and 
 obvious sense when used in Mr. Scott's first note," 
 where it seems to mean that Scott would answer 
 " yes or no," if a duel, and not legal proceedings, 
 were in contemplation. 
 
 Mr. Scott's paper of the evening of January 18, 
 or the morning of January 19, ends by saying that, 
 if Lockhart will "disavow having ever been con- 
 cerned in any way in the system of imposition and 
 scandal " of Blackwood, then Mr. Christie is referred 
 to Mr. Horatio Smith, as Mr. Scott's friend, 
 empowered by Mr. Scott to arrange what may be 
 proper under such circumstances. 
 
 And now we come to the astonishing narrative 
 of Mr. Horatio Smith, which (as touching these 
 points), I give in full. Readers may estimate his 
 evidence variously ; it cannot, I fear, be reconciled 
 with his conduct in 1821. 
 
 " At a late hour of the night, my friend Scott, 
 after surprising me by a visit at my then residence 
 in the neighbourhood of London, startled me in- 
 finitely more by its object, when he inquired whether 
 I would become his second should he be implicated 
 in a duel, arising from his articles impugning the 
 conduct and character of Blackwood's Magazine ? 
 I told him that I was one of the very last persons
 
 264 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 to whom he should have preferred such a request : 
 first, because I despised the practice of duelling for 
 its gross folly, while I abhorred it for its wicked- 
 ness ; secondly, because I was utterly ignorant of 
 all the forms, punctilios, and practical details neces- 
 sary for the proper conduct of such affairs. That 
 rival editors, instead of confining themselves to their 
 appropriate battlefield, their respective magazines, 
 should ' change their pens for pistols, ink for blood,' 
 appeared to me, as I frankly confessed, a species of 
 Quixotism totally inconsistent with their calling ; 
 and I reminded my visitant of the general ridicule 
 lavished upon Moore and Jeffrey, when they fought 
 a duel in consequence of an obnoxious article in the 
 Edinburgh Review. ' Your charges,' I continued, 
 'are either false or true. If the former, you must 
 instantly give the satisfaction required by publicly 
 retracting all that you have erroneously asserted, 
 and by making a full, frank, unequivocal apology. 
 If the latter, I ask you whether, as a rational being, 
 you are warranted in incurring the chance of being 
 murdered, or of murdering a fellow-creature, both 
 of you husbands and fathers' (Lockhart was not 
 yet a father), ' because you have spoken the truth, 
 such being at all times your duty, and a duty, more- 
 over, which you have exercised upon the present 
 occasion from a conscientious conviction, that by 
 so doing you were consulting the best interests of 
 society, and endeavouring to purify our literature 
 from a contaminating abuse.'
 
 A WAY OUT OF IT 265 
 
 " ' You appeal to me as a rational being,' was the 
 reply, 'but in affairs of honour, am I not, in that 
 capacity, placed out of court ? ' 
 
 " ' Perhaps so, nay, certainly so, in my opinion ; 
 but if your charges be true, as you doubtless believe, 
 or you would never have advanced them, is not 
 your opponent placed out of court, and deprived of 
 his right of challenge ? ' 
 
 " Scott promised to weigh this question in his mind, 
 as well as all my other objections to his going out ; 
 and, after a long conversation, we parted, though 
 not until I had repeatedly and distinctly expressed 
 my opinions just recorded, and had as often apprised 
 him that / would not be a party, under any circum- 
 stances, to a hostile meeting, though I would eagerly 
 render him my best services as a mediator with 
 a view to an amicable adjustment of the affair. 
 Eventually the challenge was declined, upon grounds 
 fully set forth by Scott, in a statement which, from 
 various notices of it, seemed to receive the sanction 
 of public approbation." 
 
 Public approbation might have been withheld, if 
 the world had known what Mr. Smith tells us. For 
 Mr. Smith here avers that Mr. Scott sought him 
 as a second, that he, himself, declined to have any- 
 thing to do with a fight, that he declared his total 
 ignorance of the laws of the duel. But, knowing 
 all this, Mr. Scott, in a published statement, ex- 
 hibited Mr. Smith to Lockhart and Christie, and 
 to the world, as his second, or temoin in the arbit-
 
 266 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 rament of battle ! Mr. Scott, in fact, told Christie 
 and everybody else that Mr. Horatio Smith (if 
 Lockhart made his explanation) would act as a 
 second, he well knowing that Smith would do 
 nothing of the kind. He might as well have 
 sent Christie to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 or, as Lockhart said, to Aldgate Pump ! 
 
 Once more, by Horatio Smith's account, the pre- 
 text for refusing to fight was not Mr. Scott's idea, 
 but his own ! The second supplies the principal 
 with an excuse for not coming on to the ground, 
 the principal adopts it, puts it forth under his own 
 hand, and provides himself with a second who will 
 not look at a pistol. 
 
 Even to the license of comic fiction could hardly 
 be permitted such reckless burlesque. Mr. Horatio 
 Smith's narrative explains what Lockhart calls the 
 "shuffle" as to the phrase, "of such a nature as 
 gentlemen usually respect." A new interpretation 
 was now to be put on the words in harmony with 
 the ideas of a pacific second. Nor is it possible to 
 argue that Mr. Scott wrote the paper of " Thursday 
 evening, January 18," before arousing Mr. Horatio 
 Smith and hearkening to his counsel, because he 
 could not have named Mr. Smith as his second 
 (as he does in that epistle), without obtaining his 
 permission, such as it was. 
 
 What follows is stranger still. Christie calls on 
 Mr. Smith, and Mr. Smith, in a letter published by 
 Mr. Scott, informs his principal that " I repeatedly
 
 HORATIO'S DILEMMA 267 
 
 told Mr. Christie that, if Mr. Lockhart could make 
 the avowal required, I was authorised by you to 
 offer him satisfaction" Now Mr. Horatio Smith is 
 in an awkward predicament, for, in 1847, he tells 
 us that he invented a reason for not fighting, and 
 warned Mr. Scott that, " I would not be a party, 
 under any circumstances, to a hostile meeting." In 
 1821, he says the very reverse, he says that he is 
 "authorised to offer satisfaction." It is unpleasant, 
 and unnecessary, to draw the obvious inferences from 
 all this. The Mr. Smith of 1821 was inducing the 
 public to believe that " satisfaction " would be given, 
 if a condition were fulfilled which he knew would 
 not be fulfilled. The Mr. Smith of 1847 tells us 
 that he never would have been a party to any such 
 transaction, in any circumstances, and that Mr. 
 Scott knew it. 
 
 Ignorant of all that (according to Mr. Smith) 
 had passed between him and Mr. Scott, Christie 
 called on the latter gentleman, "admitting that 
 it was irregular," for no explanation would be 
 given. And so the debate went on, Lockhart 
 offering "any explanation upon any subject in 
 which Mr. Scott's personal feelings and honour 
 can be concerned." Mr. Scott now demanded 
 that Lockhart should " declare . . . that he has 
 never derived money from any connection, direct 
 or indirect, with the management of Blackwood^ 
 and that he has never stood in any situation 
 giving him, directly or indirectly, pecuniary inte-
 
 268 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 rest in its sale." This note was written late on 
 Saturday night, Mr. Smith was out of the way, 
 and Mr. Patmore ("Tims") became a kind of 
 substituted second, in Mr. Smith's absence. 
 
 To Mr. Scott's demand, in this new form, Lock- 
 hart's friend again answered by a Non possumus. 
 Mr. Scott replied that the affair, as far as he was 
 concerned, was terminated. Part of a letter of 
 Lockhart's was read aloud by Christie, but Mr. 
 Scott declined to hear more than a few words, 
 deeming it "irrelevant to the point." Mr. Lock- 
 hart then "posted" Mr. Scott, and enclosed to 
 him the communication, which was of the usual 
 tenor in such cases. " Mr. Lockhart thought it 
 necessary to inform Mr. Scott that he considered 
 him as a liar and a scoundrel." He added that 
 he was leaving London, after interval enough to 
 give Mr. Scott time to change his mind about 
 fighting. Mr. Scott promptly answered that he 
 considered the note "as coming from the Editor 
 of Blackwood's Magazine" Lockhart then hastily 
 printed his whole statement, closing with this last 
 note of Mr. Scott's, and adding a denial that he was 
 the Editor of Blackwood. The whole paper ended 
 thus: " N.B. The first copy of this statement 
 was sent to Mr. Scott, with a notification that Mr. 
 Lockhart intended leaving London within twenty- 
 four hours after the time of his receiving it." He 
 set forth for Edinburgh on the evening of Sunday. 
 
 Now occurred, on Lockhart's part, an unfor-
 
 AN OVERSIGHT 269 
 
 tunate mistake, such as, in ordinary writing for 
 the press, is very frequent. A man makes an 
 alteration in his manuscript without observing its 
 effect on the general tenor of his argument what- 
 ever it may be, so that some other passage, which 
 requires a corresponding correction, remains as it 
 originally stood, and is obviously erroneous. An 
 oversight of this kind happened. 
 
 On Sunday Lockhart and Christie visited Dr. 
 Stoddart, Editor of the New Times, and showed 
 him the document for publication in his paper. 
 To make the narrative more intelligible, Dr. 
 Stoddart (who was previously unacquainted with 
 Lockhart), suggested (apart from any opinion as to 
 the merits of the quarrel) that Lockhart should 
 add an explicit denial, for the public, that he "de- 
 rived, or ever did derive, any emolument from the 
 management " of Black-wood. Lockhart wrote this, 
 Christie acquiescing, and it was inserted at the head 
 of the statement, and published after Lockhart's 
 return to Scotland. 
 
 Nobody observed, at the moment, that the new 
 paragraph would necessarily be taken as covered 
 by the last sentence in the statement " The first 
 copy of this statement was sent to Mr. Scott, with 
 a notification that Mr. Lockhart intended leaving 
 London within twenty-four hours of the time of 
 his receiving it." Thus Mr. Scott would seem, to 
 readers, to have received an explanation in full, 
 which he did not receive, at the time specified.
 
 2 70 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 The new sentence, added by Dr. Stoddart's advice, 
 demanded, in fact, a correction in the old matter 
 which, by a not unusual inadvertence, it did not 
 receive. This inadvertence escaped Lockhart's 
 notice, but flashed on him after he had arrived in 
 Scotland. 
 
 On receiving Lockhart's printed statement, as 
 sent to him with the disavowal of editorship, but 
 before he saw the statement as generally circulated 
 with the addendum suggested by Stoddart, Mr. 
 Scott printed his second statement. He rebutted 
 all insinuations about shrinking from a meeting ; he 
 had even modified his original demand for an ex- 
 planation, and reduced it to a request for a disavowal 
 of paid management or participation in profits. He 
 repeated his charge of a mendacious denial of the 
 editorship, in Professor Leslie's case. He made in- 
 sinuations about Lockhart's "connections," namely, 
 Sir Walter Scott. He had demanded an explana- 
 tion, in order that his adversary might not clear 
 his character by a duel. He asserted his own 
 courage, and relied on the agreement of Mr. Smith 
 and Mr. Patmore in his view of the case. Naturally 
 enough, he does not contradict, nor in any way 
 allude to, Lockhart's account of the reasons alleged 
 by Christie for refusing to make any kind of prelimi- 
 nary explanation. He declares that the explana- 
 tion was withheld on a "point of mere punctilio" 
 without saying what that point was. Of course the 
 wonderful pacific secondship of Mr. Smith is not
 
 MR. SCOTT'S CONDUCT 271 
 
 described. This document is dated, Wednesday, 
 January 31, but was published in one sheet, with and 
 after another document dated February 2. In this 
 document he takes every advantage of the error 
 made by affixing to the published and circulated 
 form of Lockhart's statement, the explicit disavowal 
 of " emolument " which was not included in the first 
 copy sent to him. No guess that this was the result 
 of an inadvertence presented itself to Mr. Scott. He 
 therefore argues that Lockhart is assuring the public 
 that he sent to him the demanded disavowal which 
 he never did send. 
 
 Of course such a manoeuvre would have been the 
 act of a criminal idiot, "a direct lie," which could 
 attain no end but instant and disgraceful exposure. 
 If one man could be so wicked and foolish as to 
 practise such a helpless ruse, it was not likely that 
 any other would second him in such imbecile base- 
 ness. On February 5, Christie wrote to Lockhart 
 on the subject (Postmark, February 8). He had 
 only that morning " with some difficulty obtained a 
 copy of a second statement by Mr. John. In this 
 he makes the use I expected he would make of the 
 omission of the explicit disavowal in the copy sent 
 to him of your statement. He goes so far as to say 
 that the disavowal would, as a matter of course, 
 have taken him into the field with you. On this I 
 have taken a step of which, no doubt, you will 
 approve. I have despatched a letter to Mr. Smith, 
 of which the following is a copy :
 
 272 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 " SIR, I have this moment seen a copy of Mr. 
 Scott's second statement. It does not appear to me 
 to be necessary, on the present occasion, to explain 
 the reasons which induced Mr. Lockhart to insert 
 the more explicit disavowal contained in the intro- 
 ductory paragraph of his statement, after having 
 sent a copy to Mr. Scott of the statement as he at 
 first intended that it should appear. 
 
 "If Mr. Scott means it to be understood that if 
 that disavowal had been contained in the copy sent 
 to him by Mr. Lockhart, it would have made any 
 difference in his (Mr. Scott's) conduct, then there is 
 no reason why the disavowal should not now have 
 the same effect. In order to obviate all apprehen- 
 sions of disappointment I pledge my word of honour 
 that (however little Mr. Lockhart may be called 
 upon to make such a concession), if Mr. Scott will 
 take the same journey to find Mr. Lockhart that 
 Mr. Lockhart took to find Mr. Scott, Mr. Lockhart 
 will give him a meeting instantly. ..." 
 
 Of course Christie did not know Mr. Smith's 
 peaceful disposition. No doubt Mr. Smith never 
 sent Christie's letter to his principal. 
 
 On February 9, Lockhart replied from Edin- 
 burgh : "I consider the step mentioned in your 
 letter as by far the best that could have been taken, 
 and have to thank you for the true kindness that 
 dictated it. ... The mistake thus seized on was 
 a most unfortunate one, but its consequences never
 
 CHRISTIE'S CONDUCT 273 
 
 occurred to me till after I had come to Edinburgh. 
 . . . Jeffrey, &c. &c., have all along espoused my 
 cause." 
 
 On February 13, when Christie again wrote to 
 Lockhart, no notice had been taken of his letter 
 of February 5 to Mr. Smith. On February 8, 
 Christie published a "further statement." It con- 
 tained Dr. Stoddart's signed account of how he 
 recommended the addition of the explicit dis- 
 avowal, advice given " solely with the view of 
 rendering Mr. Lockhart's narrative more clear and 
 intelligible to the public ; " all this without any 
 expression of opinion as to the merits, in any 
 respect, of the case. Christie added that the dis- 
 avowal " was not made with a view to remove 
 Mr. Scott's scruples," for it did not, in fact, cover 
 the ground included in Mr. Scott's demand. Had 
 Lockhart been sole proprietor of Blackwood he 
 might still have made the disavowal, as it stood. 
 Now Mr. Scott had told Mr. Christie that he 
 would take none but a disavowal, verbatim, in the 
 terms of his own letter. 
 
 Mr. Christie ended thus " If after this statement 
 Mr. Scott can find any persons who believe that 
 there was anything more atrocious than an over- 
 sight in the circumstance of the two statements, 
 Mr. Scott is perfectly welcome to the whole weight 
 of their good opinion." 
 
 On Saturday, February 20, 1821 (Postmark), 
 
 Lockhart received a letter from Christie, which, 
 VOL. i. s
 
 274 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 his friend says, " will surprise and distress you. 
 I have been forced to give Scott a meeting, and 
 he now lies (if I had written an hour ago I should 
 have said mortally, and I must still say most 
 dangerously) wounded. This has been the most 
 heartrending transaction that has happened in 
 my life : a few hours ago I would most willingly 
 have changed places with the man I believed to 
 lie mortally wounded. 
 
 " The circumstances were simply these. I sent 
 a copy of your second statement and of that 
 which I wrote, to Mr. P. (Patmore) on Saturday 
 night. Yesterday he called upon me from Mr. 
 Scott, with a letter demanding an explanation 
 of the last sentence in the narrative which was 
 signed by me, such explanation to express that 
 I meant nothing disrespectful to Mr. Scott ; this 
 to be made public. This appeared to me to be 
 such a complete trick to obtain something like eclat 
 at the conclusion of his affair with you, that I 
 instantly refused to do anything of the sort. Mr. 
 Patmore then produced a challenge from Mr. Scott, 
 which he was to deliver to me in case of a refusal. 
 I entered a protest, in the first instance, that I could 
 only meet Mr. Scott on the ground that I would 
 meet any man who thought himself aggrieved by 
 me, and to whom I refused other satisfaction, and 
 then consented to meet him. 
 
 "We met last night, at nine o'clock, at Chalk Farm. 
 I arranged with my second (Traill) that I would not
 
 THE DUEL 275 
 
 fire at Scott except in self-defence. Accordingly, 
 I fired my first shot in the air. Before we fired 
 again, Traill protested that, as Mr. Scott had taken 
 the usual aim at me, I should not forego that advan- 
 tage again. 1 I felt bound to follow his advice for 
 self-preservation, and my second shot took effect. . . . 
 The surgeon left him on some pretext, and did not 
 return, I presume thinking his case desperate. I 
 cannot and shall not attempt to describe the horror 
 I felt. I instantly ran to the Chalk Farm Inn, and 
 procured a shutter to carry him upon. We carried 
 him there, and put him to bed, and then I made 
 my escape, as I did afterwards (sit), but not till 
 his family had arrived." 
 
 Christie then gives the latest, and less distressing 
 news of the wounded man, and ends ".Pity me, I 
 am most wretched, though I stand acquitted in my 
 own mind of doing more than what, under the cir- 
 cumstances, was inevitable. . . ." 
 
 Christie's account of this melancholy affair is 
 corroborated by the statement made by Mr. Scott 
 to his surgeon. " After the pistols were reloaded, 
 and everything was ready for a second fire, Mr. 
 Traill called out, ' Now, Mr. Christie, take your 
 
 1 Mr. Train's "exact words" were " Gentlemen, before this pro- 
 ceeds, I must insist on one thing. You, Mr. Christie, must give 
 yourself the usual chances, and not again fire in the air, or fire away 
 from Mr. Scott." Letter from Christie (who was with Traill at 
 Boulogne) to Lockhart, March 3, 1821. Mr. Christie, as will later 
 be seen, thinks that Mr. Scott's parallel account was not -verbally 
 accurate.
 
 276 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 aim and do not throw away your advantage, as you 
 did last time.' I " (Mr. Scott) "called out, 'What, 
 did not Mr. Christie fire at me ? ' I was answered 
 by Mr. Patmore, ' You must not speak, you have 
 nothing for it now but firing.' ' 
 
 To this distressing letter announcing the duel, 
 Lockhart answered : 
 
 " MY DEAREST FRIEND, You bid me pity you. 
 Pity me much more, who have to sustain the 
 thought of having brought you, your dear wife and 
 family, into such a situation as this. God grant 
 that this man may live ! 
 
 " All the world must agree that you acted nobly, 
 yet all will think that you did much more than was 
 right. . . . 
 
 " I say nothing as to my feelings in thinking what 
 might have been. That thought indeed deprives 
 
 1 Scott's "Letters," ii. 113. The account \njohn Bull, February 
 1 6, 1821, says that the suggestion of a nocturnal meeting came from 
 Mr. Scott. Horatio Smith confirms this, in an unquoted part of his 
 narrative already cited. At the inquest a carpenter gave evidence 
 that Mr. Scott shook hands with Mr. Christie, as he lay on the 
 shutter which Christie had brought. Dr. Darling, who attended Mr. 
 Scott, said that, according to his account, Mr. Christie, before the 
 first fire, called out, " Mr. Scott, you must not stand there. I see 
 your head above the horizon, you give me an advantage." Mr. Scott 
 described Mr. Christie as " very kind to him after he was wounded." 
 At the inquest, Mr. Pettigrew, the surgeon on the field, said that Mr. 
 Patmore, some days after the event, remarked, " Mr. Christie's friend 
 was bound, after the fire, to have communicated to him the conduct 
 pursued by Mr. Christie (firing in the air), of which he, Mr. Patmore, 
 was entirely ignorant," though Mr. Scott heard Traill's remark, and 
 asked a question on it.
 
 THE DUKE'S VERDICT 277 
 
 me of all composure. Thank God, I am not made 
 utterly wretched for ever." 
 
 Into the distressed house in Edinburgh, John 
 Hugh Lockhart, as " Hugh Littlejohn " familiar to 
 all the world, was born on February I4th, two days 
 before the fatal duel. 
 
 We have now seen the full circumstances of 
 a terrible event. Throughout, want of experience 
 and method were observable. There should be no 
 discussions, above all, no unwitnessed discussions, 
 between a principal and a hostile second. There 
 should be no pacific seconds, who disapprove of 
 duels, know not the rules thereof, privately vow 
 they will never countenance a fight, and yet publicly 
 announce their readiness to go on the ground. On 
 the broad merits of the question, we have Sir 
 Walter's remark, "The Duke of Wellington, whom 
 I take to be the highest military authority in the 
 world, pronounces you can have nothing more to 
 say to Scott." l (" Letters," ii. 1 1 1.) Christie's con- 
 duct was marked by every good quality. The 
 quarrel so unhappily fixed on him was, as Sir 
 Walter says, "a sleeveless quarrel." 2 He literally 
 could not withdraw or qualify, under challenge, 
 
 1 Scott, in an unpublished letter, says that Lady Holland, no friend 
 of Lockhart's, maintained that he had done his best to make Mr. 
 Scott fight. 
 
 2 See also Sir Walter's letters on the subject to Laidlaw, in Dr. 
 Carruthers's " Abbotsford Notanda."
 
 278 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 an observation which was innocent in itself. By 
 firing in the air he testified to his want of malice : 
 he had now done all that man could do, and had 
 left Mr. Scott's character for personal courage stain- 
 less, at the expense of risking his own life. We 
 may attribute to inexperience, and perhaps to the 
 darkness, Mr. Patmore's demand for a second fire, 
 a thing, I understand, almost unheard of where 
 one principal has fired in the air. The unhappy 
 English addiction to the blundering pistol, in place 
 of the sword, has always had much to answer for. 
 Why Mr. Scott pressed his quarrel on Mr. Christie 
 is not very clear. 1 
 
 As to any impugnment on Lockhart's personal 
 courage in this affair, it is enough to point to Sir 
 Walter's letters on the subject. He, who refused 
 to attend the funeral of a brother held guilty of 
 cowardice, would have known how to feel and to 
 display an implacable resentment and indignation, 
 
 1 Mr. Cyrus Redding, in his "Fifty Years' Recollections," 1858, 
 vol. ii. 225, quotes Mr. Horace (or Horatio) Smith's "A Grey- 
 beard's Gossip." " He spoke of his disapproval of Mr. Scott's 
 conduct. . . . Scott, however, seemed determined to show that he 
 was a man of courage, which no one doubted." Mr. Redding then 
 tells a tale, "not evidential," of how Campbell the poet informed 
 him that Hazlitt had been "a means of irritating John Scott to such 
 a degree, that he was one cause of his going out in the duel in which 
 he fell." But Horace Smith thought that Campbell was too prone to 
 believe evil of Hazlitt, and the evidence, as offered, is worthless. Mr. 
 Redding also says that Mr. Smith " prevented a meeting with Lock- 
 hart," that is, apparently, after Christie's letter, pledging his honour 
 that Lockhart would meet Mr. Scott in Scotland, a letter to which 
 Mr. Smith did not reply.
 
 SIR WALTER'S VIEW 279 
 
 had he entertained a shadow of doubt as to the 
 courage of a son-in-law. 1 Twenty years after the 
 death of the unhappy brother, Sir Walter told the 
 story of his own wrath, and of his present contri- 
 tion to Lockhart, and added that the character of 
 Conachar, in " The Fair Maid of Perth," was 
 intended as a kind of expiation. By 1828 sorrow, 
 trouble, and time had softened Sir Walter, and 
 made him lenient to the fault or congenital mis- 
 fortune which of old he had most contemned. But 
 in 1821, and for years after, his temper was what 
 it had always been. 2 
 
 The fatal consequences of Mr. Scott's wound 
 were not long deferred. He died on February 
 27. Sir Walter Scott's letters, enforcing the lesson 
 "not to dally with this mother of mischief any 
 more," are already published. 3 It cannot be said 
 that Lockhart ceased altogether to write for Black- 
 wood, though his time was now much more occupied 
 with other work, " The Spanish Ballads," an edition 
 of Motteux's " Don Quixote," and his four novels. 
 I am not aware that he was ever again implicated 
 in any of the Blackwood troubles, and the affair 
 
 1 " Life," iii. 199. 
 
 2 I think it necessary to insert this passage, because in so excellent 
 a book as Mr. Colvin's "Life of Keats" (1887, pp. 124-125), we read 
 about " John Scott, killed by a friend of Lockhart's in a duel, arising 
 out of these very Blackwood brawls, in which it was thought that 
 Lockhart himself ought to have come forward." This remark appears 
 to be the result of imperfect traditional knowledge. 
 
 3 "Letters," ii. 112-114.
 
 2 8o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 with Leigh Hunt, in 1823, appears to have been 
 Wilson's concern. 1 
 
 On March 3, Christie wrote to Lockhart from 
 Boulogne. The news of Mr. Scott's death had 
 come upon him as a terrible surprise, for the bulletins 
 had been so far from unfavourable as almost to 
 relieve him of anxiety. His only consolation lay in 
 the knowledge, " which, at this moment, nothing on 
 this side heaven could induce me to forego," that he 
 had not provoked the quarrel, "and that I forbore 
 to put him in the slightest peril till I felt that my 
 own life must be the price of further forbearance." 
 He entreats Lockhart, with all the arguments at his 
 command, not to consider himself responsible for 
 what had occurred. He speaks with deep gratitude 
 of Sir Walter's kindness, and says, "Your friend, 
 Mr. Wilson, could not have done more than he has 
 done, if I had been his brother twice over. His 
 first step was to offer his house as an asylum to me, 
 in such terms that I had no hesitation in agreeing 
 to accept the offer." His friends, however, wished 
 him to go abroad. " I have never yet met with a 
 man who was so ready to make an unfortunate 
 case, with which he need have given himself no 
 trouble, entirely his own." Mr. Christie then repeats 
 his consolations to Lockhart, inquires anxiously for 
 Mrs. Lockhart, and mentions, as the thing "nearest 
 to his own heart," Sir Walter's endeavours to be- 
 friend the children of Mr. Scott. In a postscript 
 
 1 "Christopher North," ii. 55.
 
 WHY CHRISTIE FOUGHT 281 
 
 he speaks of the coroner's inquest, and is glad to 
 find that Mr. Scott's deposition, though it did 
 not give Traill's "exact words," yet proved that 
 Mr. Scott heard them, " though he was at a greater 
 distance than his second." 1 
 
 Meanwhile several of Lockhart's letters failed to 
 reach Christie, so that they are not preserved. On 
 March 1 9, Christie writes to Lockhart : he has heard 
 of the verdict of the coroner's inquest, but is cheered 
 by the evidence that Mr. Scott had not been left in 
 ignorance of his firing in the air. " It was no fault 
 of ours, if he did not take the course which one 
 would think he ought to have taken." By his own 
 statement Mr. Scott, being in his second's hands, 
 acted on his second's advice. Christie (like Sir 
 Walter in an unpublished letter) entreats Lockhart 
 not to come to London for the trial. He reiterates 
 his hope that Lockhart's distress will be assuaged by 
 his assurances that Lockhart was not the cause of the 
 quarrel. " I fought for no reason at all, except that 
 I could not, without degrading myself, decline to 
 comply with his demand. If his challenge had been 
 in any way a natural consequence of anything that 
 you had done, calculated to make him challenge me, 
 or if I had fought for the sake of not compromising 
 your honour, or not giving him an indirect advantage 
 over you, then you might have had some uneasiness 
 
 1 Mr. Traill's "exact words," as recollected by himself and Mr. 
 Christie, have already been given, in the account of the affair : they 
 are also cited in a letter to Lockhart from Mr. Traill.
 
 282 LIFE OF J. G.ILOCKHART 
 
 in addition to what you would feel for what gave me 
 uneasiness. But in fact nothing of the sort was the 
 case." He then protests that even the kindnesses 
 of Sir Walter distress him, because they seem to 
 imply that Lockhart is a party concerned. 
 
 On April 14, 1821, Christie announces the 
 acquittal of Traill and himself, and the close of an 
 unhappy affair which clouded many lives. 1 
 
 1 Mr. Patmore did not then surrender himself, probably that his 
 absence might weaken the evidence against the others.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CHIEFSWOOD, 1821-1824 
 
 Life at Chiefswood. Border Scenes. "Valerius." Criticism of the 
 book. Its failure. Letter to Christie. Hogg, Rose, and wild- 
 ducks. Lockhart's love of children. Hugh Littlejohn. Bos- 
 well slain by Dunearn. " Adam Blair." Origin of the tale. 
 Criticism. "Adam Blair" and " Faublas !" George IV. in 
 Edinburgh. Scott's energy. Crabbe. Crabbe on Lockhart. 
 Lockhart on Crabbe. Abbotsford. Lockhart edits " Don 
 Quixote." Begins an edition of Shakespeare. Melrose in July 
 1823. "Leal Tories." " Reginald Dalton." Letters from 
 Christie. Christie on Hunt and Byron. Report of Williams's 
 death. " Quentin Durward" unpopular. 
 
 THE uneventful life of a man of letters is seldom, 
 happily, interrupted by striking personal incidents. 
 Whether in Edinburgh or at Chiefswood, Lock- 
 hart's literary industry must now have been mainly 
 given to reading for, and writing, his Roman novel, 
 "Valerius." These were the days of The Beacon, 
 a Tory Edinburgh paper of violent character and 
 of huddled-up, discreditable end. Concerning this 
 journal, I find a correspondent, Sir Alexander Bos- 
 well, informing Sir Walter that it was " too much of 
 a gentleman's paper!" Lockhart has given his 
 account of Sir Walter's conduct, in what Scott
 
 284 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 himself calls "a blasted business;" Lockhart, 1 for- 
 tunately, was not one of the " young hot-bloods " 
 concerned with the journal. 
 
 The death of John Ballantyne occurred in June, 
 and Lockhart has recorded how he himself attended 
 the funeral, and was told by Scott, " I feel as if 
 there would be less sunshine for me from this day 
 forth." There were summer visits to Chiefswood, 
 where " Sophia is getting stout and pretty, and is 
 one of the wisest and most important little mammas 
 that can be seen anywhere. Her bower is bigged in 
 gude green wood, and we went last Saturday in a 
 body to enjoy it, and to consult about furniture," 
 Scott says to Miss Baillie. 2 Creepers from the 
 old cottage at Abbotsford, were planted by Scott's 
 own hands round the little porch at Chiefswood. 
 Lockhart has described, in a familiar passage, the 
 manner of life in that "bower," and Scott's occa- 
 sional flight thither, on Sibyl Grey, with Mustard 
 and Spice, the dandies, and " his own joyous shout 
 of reveille under our windows." The cottage being 
 so small, they often dined in the open air, on the 
 lawn where the burn murmurs on its way from the 
 Rhymer's Glen to pay its tiny tribute to " the great 
 rise and exchequer" of the Tweed. Among these 
 memories it is that Lockhart, for one moment half 
 forgetful of his cognisance, gives his heart its liberty, 
 and speaks of " the chief ornament and delight at all 
 
 1 " Life," vi. 426, 430. 
 
 2 June 11, 1821. "Life," vi. 337.
 
 CHIEFSWOOD 285 
 
 these simple meetings, she to whose love I owed 
 my own place in them Scott's eldest daughter, the 
 one of all his children who, in countenance, mind, 
 and manners, most resembled himself, and who, 
 indeed, was as like him in all things as a gentle 
 innocent woman can ever be to a great man deeply 
 tried and skilled in the perplexities of active life 
 she, too, is no more (1837). But enough and 
 more than I had intended." 
 
 " The Pirate " was being written, and Scott's 
 dear friend, William Erskine, would read chapters 
 of it aloud, under the great tree on the slope that 
 climbs towards the Rhymer's Glen. Scott was even 
 more than commonly busy ; editing a quaint old 
 angling book by one who thought poorly of our 
 father Izaak as a sportsman, and amusing him- 
 self with the "Private Letters" of the reign of 
 James VI., afterwards abandoned for " Nigel." As 
 for Lockhart's lighter labours, since the names of 
 Wastle and Peter Morris were now abandoned, I 
 renounce the ungrateful and practically impossible 
 task of trying to follow him through the old 
 numbers of Blackwood. 
 
 In summer Mr. Christie's health was so bad that 
 he expected, as he says, "soon to know the great 
 secret," a quotation from a person then very notori- 
 ous. His native air restored him, and in September 
 he accepted an invitation to Chiefswood. Traill 
 also was expected. "We have room enough in a 
 very humble sort," Lockhart wrote, "so I trust you
 
 286 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 will bring your brother along with you also. . . . 
 Sir Walter is always inquiring for you, and desiring 
 to be remembered. It is worth while to travel 
 some miles, I assure you, to see the Minstrel in his 
 glory. . . . My wife has got a donkey-cart, in which 
 she will drive you in great style." Meanwhile, 
 Williams (who was tutor to Charles Scott in Wales) 
 had been married, and was reported to be flourish- 
 ing greatly. Mrs. Lockhart, according to Sir 
 Walter (August 7, 1821), was "ordering old Cock- 
 a-Pistol " (the gardener) about, and directing all 
 things " with the solemn fuss of an old managing 
 dowager." l 
 
 At about this time, Sir Walter returned the proof 
 sheets of "Valerius" to Lockhart. "They are 
 most classical and interesting at the same time, and 
 cannot but produce a very deep sensation. I am 
 quite delighted with the reality of your Romans." 2 
 
 The "sensation" produced by "Valerius" was not 
 wide, whether it was deep or not, and the "reality" 
 of the Romans probably was not in their favour. 
 No novel of classical times, except " Hypatia," has 
 ever been popular, and "Hypatia" (as Mr. Saints- 
 bury observes) " makes its interests and its person- 
 ages daringly modern." 8 
 
 " Valerius," on the other hand, reads like a 
 
 1 Cock-a-Pistol was so called from his cottage, on the site of the 
 last great clan battle of the Border. 
 
 2 " Letters," ii. 125. 
 
 3 "The Last Days of Pompeii" is another exception.
 
 VALERIUS 287 
 
 translation from the Latin, as it purports to be, an 
 admirable translation, but remote in style from all 
 that the novel-reader knows and likes. In Sir 
 Walter's own novels, the historical characters, when 
 they do not speak Scots, or converse in a kind of 
 conventional lingua franca of medievalism, dis- 
 course in the style of Sir Walter's own period. 
 But a mind like Lockhart's was almost certain to 
 aim at a manner not too distant from that of the 
 Latin classics. In fact, as one reads "Valerius," 
 one is always turning it into Latin prose ! 
 
 The story tells how the son of a Roman officer 
 and a British bride leaves the paternal villa in 
 Albion, and visits Rome. He sups with a patri- 
 cian, who says, " You would observe the palm- 
 branches at my door. They were won to-day by a 
 five hours' harangue before the Centumviri." Now 
 the Centumviri (according to the Dictionary) were a 
 bench of judges who decided in civil suits. The 
 novel-reader does not care to pursue his studies in 
 fiction with the aid of a Latin Dictionary. " Local 
 colour" does not excite him, when it is borrowed 
 from Horace, Juvenal, Tacitus, and Petronius Arbiter. 
 A Stoic, who is present at the supper, accidentally 
 strikes the corner of the table with his knee, "which 
 elicited from his stubborn features a sudden con- 
 tortion." It must, indeed, have been pleasant to 
 watch a professional Stoic, when suddenly obliged 
 to recognise that "whatsoever is agreeable to the 
 universe," as a knock on the knee-pan and the
 
 288 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 resulting sensation may be highly disagreeable to 
 a philosophic citizen of the universe. But, in a 
 romance of classic times, the novel-reader is con- 
 stantly thrown out by want of knowledge, Pour 
 entendre il fallait avoir cette lumiere and the more 
 learned the romance the less is the novel-reader 
 entertained. The slave of old Roman comedy, and 
 his amorous young master, reappear in "Valerius," 
 but, if they now enliven only a few readers in 
 Plautus, in a modern work of fiction their chance 
 of success is slight indeed. The pleaders in the 
 Forum may be Jeffreys and Cranstouns in togas, but 
 the long sermon of an Epicurean philosopher in an 
 arbour, has no merit beyond resembling the long 
 sermons of Epicurean and other philosophers. 
 They are fatiguing in Plutarch's essays, and in a 
 novel they fatigue, though they are needed as 
 a contrast to the early Christian views of the 
 heroine. 
 
 Once interested in her, and by the gallant bear- 
 ing of a condemned Christian, the hero has no 
 heart for the gladiatorial sports of the arena, where 
 the ladies eat comfits above the butchery, and the 
 philosophers perorate and quote Greek, and the 
 early Christian dies for his creed, after delivering 
 an address of considerable length. 
 
 The many pictures of Roman life which follow 
 are, in essence, correct, but somewhat cold and 
 far away. Though the book was hardly "damned," 
 as Lockhart briefly expresses it, still, he had not
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 MISS SCOTT (MRS. J. G. LOCKHART). 
 (from u Water-Colour DraviiiK l>.v her husband. >
 
 LETTER TO CHRISTIE 289 
 
 wholly succeeded, where, practically, every one has 
 failed. He does not lend to his hero the psycho- 
 logical interest, so rare and to many minds so win- 
 ning, of Mr. Pater's " Marius the Epicurean." The 
 book is faultlessly written, but to say that of a 
 novel is equivalent to confessing a succes d'estime? 
 
 Lockhart took his literary fortunes lightly. Here 
 is his letter to Christie on " Valerius," and other 
 matters : 
 
 " MY DEAR CHRISTIE, My brother William has 
 just left us after spending a couple of days, and 
 telling us all the grand story of the coronation. 
 He vexed me a great deal by saying that you are 
 still looking but poorishly, but rejoiced me by his 
 confirmation of your intended Scottish trip twice, 
 because I think that will inevitably do you much 
 good, and because I am sure it will do me much 
 good to see you, of which pleasure I hope it is 
 not possible I am to be deprived, if you do turn 
 your nose northwards. Is it quite fixed that Mrs. 
 Christie can't come with you ? Might she not 
 venture in the steamboat at least thus far ? I 
 mean to Edinburgh ? for the journey from thence 
 to this retirement is but a bagatelle. If she and 
 the bairns could, I need not say how happy it 
 would make Sophia and myself. At all events, 
 
 1 Mr. Hayward, in later years, told Lockhart that "Valerius" was 
 used as a handbook at Harvard College in America. A sagacious 
 reviewer described it as " a religious tale by an American." 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 2 90 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 you will come. If you come hither first, I will, I 
 think, contrive some very nice trips for you, and 
 I shan't care how far north I go with you after- 
 wards. Within very easy rides of this are Yarrow, 
 Ettrick, Hermitage Castle, Hume Castle I know 
 not how many fields of battle, clannish and royal. 
 Even my gardener derives his title of ' Cock-a- 
 Pistol ' from having his cottage on the place where 
 a certain knight of Buccleuch, or Cessford, was slain. 
 The field in front of the house is ' Charge-law.' 
 In short, 'tis all haunted or holy ground. Melrose 
 is within half a mile, Dryburgh four miles off, Jed- 
 burgh fourteen. I am sure you could spend days 
 here very tolerably, and sheep's head and whisky 
 toddy would cut short the evenings. Sir Walter 
 says he won't allow me to have you all the while, 
 but we shall not fight about that matter, for he is 
 but two or three miles off. Won't Traill and you 
 come together? William tells me he gave you 
 a copy of ' Valerius ' and abuses me for not having 
 sent one myself. I put one up to be carried (with 
 a letter for you, and a baby's cap from Sophia for 
 Mrs. Christie's last gift) by Robert Buchanan 
 shortly after the book was published. But Buchanan 
 sent back the parcel, being obliged to defer his 
 journey to London till some time after. In the 
 meantime I had gone into the country, and the 
 book had been damned, so you will pardon me for 
 not being very anxious to find another method of 
 conveyance. William says Theodore Hook men-
 
 HOGG AND WILD-DUCKS 291 
 
 tioned my being the writer. This must have been 
 some guess of Croker's, for (unless Blackwood 
 played false) nobody could know but Sir Walter 
 Scott and my brothers. All this is non tanti. I had 
 quite forgot the book, and all that to it pertained, 
 until William revived my recollection. At least, I 
 was trying as much as possible to forget it and 
 the disappointment I had met with, part of which 
 (but this may be the merest vanity) I cannot help 
 attributing to the frigidity of my publisher. 
 
 "Mr. W. S. Rose is at Abbotsford. I am going 
 up the water of Yarrow with him to-morrow to see 
 Hogg and the wild-ducks (for Rose is a great 
 sportsman for a palsied man, to say nothing of a 
 poetaster) ; as for myself, of course I have merely an 
 eye to the hodge-podge and the absurdity of such 
 a juxtaposition as the most sensitive of bels esprit 's, 
 and the roughest of all possible diamonds. If I had 
 thought there was any possibility of seeing the 
 coronation, I would have come up, but without 
 question there will be more of them in our day. 
 The Queen is, I suppose, at Edinburgh by this time. 
 I suppose the Jeffreys will, for Brougham's sake, 
 make a slight attempt, but on the whole I believe 
 this part of the country was never in better humour. 
 Yours, most affectionately, 
 
 "J. G. LOCKHART." 
 
 Young authors are apt to attribute their dis- 
 appointments to "the frigidity of the publisher,"
 
 29 2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 and perhaps Mr. Blackwood was not warmly in 
 love with "Valerius." Lockhart, none the less, 
 appears to have held to his belief in the possibility 
 of the classical novel. 1 
 
 Lockhart had consolations enough, if "Valerius" 
 did not rival the success of his father-in-law's 
 romances. Probably about this time Mr. Christie 
 had an opportunity of observing a taste of his which 
 he shared with that Prince whose memory he drank 
 to at Oxford on St. Andrew's Day. " The love 
 of children," says Mr. Christie, " was stronger in 
 Lockhart than I have ever known it in any other 
 man, it was womanly love. He delighted to 
 dandle and play with an infant in arms," like his 
 own Hugh Littlejohn. "It was an early character- 
 istic of his, and he never lost it. A little girl of 
 four or five years of age, the child of one of the 
 college servants, used to be his companion in his 
 rooms for hours at a time. ... I never saw so 
 happy a father as he was, while dancing his first- 
 born child in his arms. His first sorrow in life 
 was the breaking of the health and ultimate death 
 of this child." 2 
 
 Indeed he had known other sorrows, the estrange- 
 ment with Sir William Hamilton, the poignant 
 distress of a few months before. But through the 
 ill-health and the deaths of those nearest to him 
 came "that expression of deep melancholy which 
 
 1 See the Quarterly Review, Ixvii. p. 352. 
 3 Quarterly Review, vol. cxvi.
 
 HUGH LITTLEJOHN 293 
 
 not unfrequently overspread his face, and in his 
 later years habitually settled there." l 
 
 The days, however, had not yet come when he 
 should say, " There is no pleasure in them." There 
 was coursing, and the Abbotsford Hunt, and leister- 
 ing of salmon by torchlight (a picturesque pastime 
 not then illegal) ; and he writes to his brother 
 Lawrence, " I have been making myself something 
 of a woodman, earning my dinner by the axe." 
 Nor did he despise the dinner when earned, bidding 
 his brother "put his hand in the best binn," at 
 Germiestoun. He adds some practical lessons in 
 woodcraft, learned from Sir Walter, who had great 
 pleasure in forestry. 
 
 These years (1821-1825) were presumably 
 happy, for they have scarce any history. Lock- 
 hart's letters at this date are not many, or few 
 have been preserved. We hear that the baby is 
 " twice the weight he was," and other items of 
 domestic intelligence, not more surprising. Letters 
 to Lockhart's parents contain only reports of his 
 family's health, expressions of affection, and re- 
 peated invitations to Chiefswood. Like all Scottish 
 homes, it was very elastic, and could hold a sur- 
 prising number of guests. About Hugh Littlejohn 
 we hear that he is already a distinguished creeper, 
 but that his ambition has not soared to walking. 
 He is content to go on all fours, imitating the dogs, 
 of which there are so many about the place. 
 
 1 Mr. Christie, in the Quarterly Review, vol. cxvi. p. 448.
 
 294 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 On February 13, 1822, Lockhart writes to a 
 relation who was aiming at some appointment un- 
 named. Sir Walter would do nothing, some appli- 
 cation of a similar sort lately made by him had been 
 unsuccessful. " I wish you were as independent of 
 favours as I make myself, but cheer up and hope 
 the best," says Lockhart. It may be gathered from 
 his letter that attempts had lately been made in his 
 own favour, and not with fortunate results. The 
 reason given for not gratifying him with a legal 
 appointment was, that he rarely appeared in the 
 courts. He had not the gift of speaking in public, 
 and till he distinguished himself professionally, 
 professional rewards could not come in his way. 
 Such, at least, was the verdict of the givers of 
 patronage. 
 
 In the waste places of the innumerable letters to 
 Sir Walter, letters from English folk and foreign, 
 from poetasters, peers, beggars, and bores of every 
 species known to science, the bore who wants 
 information, the bore who sends information that is 
 not wanted, the bore who encloses poetry, the bore 
 who "will be frank, and tell his private history" 
 there is, in 1822, but one letter from Lockhart. It 
 speaks of the death of Sir Alexander Boswell, in a 
 duel with Mr. Stuart of Dunearn. This arose from 
 some ballads written by Sir Alexander in a Glasgow 
 Tory paper, the Sentinel. He had dined at Scott's 
 in Castle Street; "the evening was, I think, the 
 gayest I ever spent there," Charles Matthews and
 
 ADAM BLAIR 295 
 
 Bos well being full of jest and song. "It turned 
 out that he had joined the party whom he thus 
 delighted, immediately after completing the last 
 arrangements for his duel." Several of the circum- 
 stances of the combat are "exactly reproduced in 
 the duel scene in 'St. Ronan's Well." Lockhart's 
 letter (dealing solely with matters no longer of 
 interest) ends by thanks for Scott's counsel, which 
 had kept him and Wilson out of these newspaper 
 wars. Scott says as much in a letter of September 
 30, 1821, to Archibald Constable. " I expect daily 
 to hear that some one is killed. The Scotsman and 
 Review have much to answer for. I have kept 
 Lockhart out of the scrape, in which some of the 
 young men are knee-deep." The sins of the Tory 
 papers are remembered, those of the Whig journals, 
 (if Scott is right) are forgotten. 
 
 In February 1822, we get the first hint of Lock- 
 hart's best novel, "Adam Blair," in a note to his 
 brother Lawrence. " By-the-bye, you must know 
 that I have since I was with you converted a story 
 the doctor told us after dinner one day, into a very 
 elegant little volume, under the name of ' Some 
 Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair.' You will 
 receive a copy one of these days. I am afraid the 
 doctor may disapprove of some things : so take care 
 you warn him to hold his tongue, i.e., in case he 
 suspects me (which he will do). I took it to Ebony 
 when it was done, and he thought so highly of it 
 that he offered me .300 at present, and ^200 more
 
 296 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 on the second edition for the copyright. This I 
 accepted modestly." 
 
 " Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, 
 Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle " (in the 
 middle ward of Lanarkshire), is certainly by far the 
 best of Lockhart's four novels. Unlike " Valerius," 
 which demands an effort, it may still be read with 
 pleasure, and even with that excited curiosity which 
 only a good story can arouse. It has been said, 
 by a friendly critic, that Lockhart had all the gifts 
 necessary for a novelist, except the gift of novel- 
 writing. The verdict on this point must, of course, 
 vary pro captu lectoris. To myself the characters 
 appear to be living, and powerfully drawn, while 
 the incidents more than once, even amidst a certain 
 exaggeration, prove a real genius for romance. 
 The Edinburgh Review (October 1824) criticised 
 "Valerius," and "Adam Blair," with six of Gait's 
 works, and two of Wilson's, as " Secondary Scottish 
 Novels." The Edinburgh had no reason to love 
 books published by the Blackwoodians, and its notice 
 was not enthusiastic. " They are pathetic, for the 
 most part, by the common recipes, which will enable 
 any one almost to draw tears who will condescend 
 to employ them." Lockhart, of all men and writers, 
 is perhaps least liable to the charge of " wallowing 
 naked in the pathetic," as a great novelist freely 
 expresses himself. " They are mighty religious, 
 too, but . . . their devotional orthodoxies seem to 
 tend, now and then, a little towards cant." This
 
 ADAM BLAIR 297 
 
 accusation, again, does not strike Lockhart. In 
 all his works, from "Peter's Letters" to the "Life 
 of Burns," and thence to his Quarterly articles, 
 and his great Biography, Lockhart shows how 
 unaffectedly he was impressed by the high, bare, 
 austere, and heartfelt devotion of the old Scottish 
 type. As Scott arranged a grassy walk and rural 
 seat that he might be within hearing of " Pate's 
 evening hymn," so, by all the traditions of early 
 training and family legend, Lockhart was earnestly 
 attached to a religion which makes little appeal to 
 taste, and rejects every allurement of art. 
 
 In Lockhart, as a man of letters, nothing is more 
 remarkable than his universal ability. Except his 
 treintements of contemporaries (and for these I 
 confess the utmost antipathy), he did nothing which 
 he did not do well. His criticism of classical 
 writers in any language is warm with sympathy, 
 acute with appreciation, and excellent, at times 
 nobly eloquent, in style. His verse is, on occasion, 
 nothing less than masterly, and of Biography, on 
 any scale, he is a confessed master. It may, there- 
 fore, be worth while to point out that, in fiction too, 
 his gifts were far indeed from commonplace, far 
 from imitative : that he could feel with passion, and 
 communicate what he felt with power. 
 
 The story of Adam Blair opens with the waning 
 happiness of his married life. He has already lost 
 several children, one little girl only surviving, and 
 he loses his wife. His emotion, in the chamber of
 
 298 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 death, the contrast of the beautiful and cheerful 
 scene viewed from the windows, and his one 
 violent struggle in the lonely wood by midnight, 
 where, as it were, he meets Apollyon, and fights 
 for the very life of his faith, all these things 
 are described with astonishing force and delicacy. 
 The author's purpose is to show, beneath the black 
 coat and Geneva bands, and the subsequent self- 
 mastery of Adam Blair, a nature capable of sudden, 
 violent, and overwhelming passion. The funeral, 
 its cold naked formalities, the affection of the old 
 elder, John Maxwell, the sympathy of that truly 
 Scottish character, the dry, sarcastic, tender-hearted 
 Dr. Muir, the silent kindness of the parishioners, 
 form excellent foils to the night of spiritual con- 
 flict, and are remote from exaggeration of effect. 
 The bereaved and desolate life of the young 
 minister, and the gradual re-entrance into it of 
 ordinary things and social pleasures beneath the 
 hospitable roof of Semplehaugh, are depicted with 
 a perfect naturalness. 
 
 One sentence is sadly prophetic. " From time to 
 time, indeed, Mr. Blair betrayed in his manner 
 something of that abstraction of thought with which 
 those who have ever had misery seated at the root 
 of their heart are acquainted, and the appearance of 
 which furnishes at times so much amusement to the 
 thoughtless people of the world." 
 
 These words do but anticipate Mr. Christie's 
 description of the "deep melancholy" which, in
 
 ADAM BLAIR 299 
 
 later years, was wont to steal over their author's 
 face. 
 
 Nothing can be better, in its way, than the 
 portrait of the kind Mrs. Semple of Semplehaugh, 
 with her truly Scottish hospitality. When she 
 leaves the country for Edinburgh, the cloud falls 
 again on the minister, and is broken by a visit 
 thrust on the recluse by a lady who had once been 
 ready enough to fall in love with him, and who had 
 been the most intimate friend of his wife. Lock- 
 hart draws a "woman with a history," she has 
 made a foolish marriage, has been deserted, has 
 got (like Hazlitt) an easy Scottish divorce, has 
 married "one of that numerous division of the 
 human species which may be shortly and accurately 
 described as answering to the name of Captain 
 Campbell." This typical Captain leaves the Dutch 
 service, buys a lonely chateau on Loch Fyne, 
 wearies of it, returns to Holland, and his wife, as 
 a "grass widow," settles herself in the manse of 
 Cross- Meikle. 
 
 A woman sinned against, and, probably, sinning, 
 Charlotte Campbell is affectionate, winning, passion- 
 ate, and beautiful, a brebis tgaree to be reclaimed, 
 and Mr. Blair reclaims her. The process has its 
 perils, and, indeed, it seems unlikely that, about 
 1770, any parochial society would have permitted 
 the situation, the fair lady dwelling with the widowed 
 minister. But even Mrs. Semple, who wishes the 
 minister to marry the pretty daughter of Dr. Muir,
 
 300 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 makes no objection to the very unconventional 
 arrangement, nor does the Edinburgh Reviewer 
 mark the blot. 
 
 After a not quite plausible scene, in which Char- 
 lotte rescues the minister and his child from the 
 river at Semplehaugh, and he, half unconsciously, 
 kisses both of them, the pair, " quite safe, but very 
 wet," have to dress in clothes from the Semple- 
 haugh wardrobes. The minister, a handsome 
 figure, is brave in brown kerseymere, with a very 
 slight edging of silver, and a rich lace cravat, in- 
 stead of a linen stock, while the lady seems another 
 woman, " in pale green satin, wrought over with 
 silken fleurs de Us of the same colour," and with 
 a veil of lace over her wet black hair. So attired 
 they are driven home, after dinner, where they sit 
 in the warm evening, beneath an old thorn tree 
 on the lawn, heavy with fragrance of the blossom. 
 Thus each looks on the other, in their changed 
 aspect, and after their hour of violent emotion, with 
 new eyes, and in this scene there is, undoubtedly, 
 the essence of what we call romance. Next morning 
 an emissary from Captain Campbell carries away 
 Charlotte to the chateau of Uigness. The minister 
 leaves home, apparently with the purpose of seeing 
 this emissary, a brutal person, in Edinburgh, and 
 rebutting his calumnies. But "a spirit in his feet" 
 leads him straight to the mouth of Clyde ; he char- 
 ters a boat for Loch Fyne, and is landed at Uigness, 
 Captain Campbell's castle. In this second con-
 
 CONTRAST WITH SCOTT 301 
 
 flict of a wildly passionate nature, Apollyon pre- 
 vails. The minister is only too kindly welcomed : 
 awakes to a frenzy of remorse, is smitten with a 
 fever, and when aroused to life, hears a lament 
 played on the pipes. Charlotte, who has died of 
 the same fever, caught in nursing him, is being 
 borne down to the loch to her rest in a Holy 
 Isle. 
 
 The rest of the story, except for the conduct of 
 Captain Campbell (unexpectedly honourable) deals 
 with the minister's confession, repentance, and final 
 restoration to his parish, a man untimely old and 
 white-haired. 1 
 
 Such, in rude outline, is the story of "Adam 
 Blair." It has a faint analogy with Hawthorne's 
 "Scarlet Letter" (of course a later work), but is 
 distinctly uninfluenced, in any degree, by the 
 Waverley Novels. A brief tale, of times practically 
 modern, with a moral and psychological situation 
 for its pivot, with no happy humour, with no 
 chivalrous deeds, is as unlike Sir Walter's glowing 
 romances as any work can be. The characters 
 of Adam and Charlotte, of Dr. Muir and John 
 Maxwell, and the rough, yet finally forgiving and 
 equitable Captain Campbell, are all excellent and 
 veracious. The passion and the pity of this "true 
 story," and the clear fervent language, give an 
 interest which changes of taste and manner have 
 
 1 An objection was taken to this restoration as impossible, but a 
 precedent of 1748 was produced !
 
 302 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 not yet had power to destroy. In truth, far from 
 relying on Scott and the past, the spirit and sense 
 of "Adam Blair" tend onwards into the future, 
 and to more modern developments of the art of 
 fiction. 
 
 On March 20, 1822, Lockhart writes to Christie 
 (the last letter preserved, except a few very many 
 years later), asking him to Chiefswood. " Would to 
 God we could see Mrs. Christie and the bairns here 
 with you." He himself, having legal business at 
 Inverary, means to ride thither "for health's sake." 
 Traill is reported to be flourishing at York. 
 
 "'Adam Blair,' which I am glad you liked, and 
 which I wish had been more worthy your liking, has 
 created a good deal of rumpus, and some of the low 
 cattle here * are saying, and printing, that it is fit for 
 the same shelf with 'Faublas,'" and another book 
 unmentionable. " If it be immoral I did not write it 
 with an immoral intention, or in a culpable spirit, but 
 quite the reverse. The story is a true, and, I think, 
 a tragic and moral one, and old Henry Mackenzie, 
 on one side, and Sir Harry Moncreiff on the other, 
 laud it highly. The former has sent Ebony a 
 review of it, which I hope he will insert. . . . 
 No new romance or drama can escape the old boy. 
 I wish you were in Edinburgh, that I might have 
 the pleasure of showing you the Ultimus Roman- 
 orum. He is, in conversation, very unlike what 
 his books would lead one to expect, a most brilliant 
 
 1 Probably the Stot is alluded to.
 
 GEORGE IV. 303 
 
 story-teller keen, sarcastic, witty, anything but a 
 sentimentalist. I am sorry to add, his health begins 
 to droop of late. Scott is at Abbotsford. My wife 
 and boy go thither when I go to the West country 
 for a few weeks." 
 
 That "Adam Blair" should have been ranked 
 with "Faublas" shows the length to which party 
 spirit was ready to go. But, as the proverb saith, 
 " people who play at bowls must look for rubs," and 
 Lockhart had indulged -freely in that pastime. He 
 does not seem to have valued at a plack the abuse 
 of his critics ; indeed, his own indifference to such 
 attacks was an element in his readiness to assail 
 others. 
 
 In July and August 1822, Lockhart was a spec- 
 tator, obviously an amused and critical spectator, of 
 the visit paid by George IV. to Edinburgh. "The 
 King is coming to Scotland at the end of next 
 month," he writes, in an undated note about buying 
 horses, to his brother Lawrence, "and the Minstrel's 
 aid is wanted to arrange things for his reception, 
 and I suppose everything will be done to make 
 Holyrood as splendid as possible." He calls these 
 splendours "a grand terry fication of the Holyrood 
 chapters in 'Waverley;' George IV., anno cetatis 
 LX., being well content to enact Prince Charlie, with 
 the Great Unknown for his Baron Bradwardine." 
 But, though he cannot restrain a smile at the stout 
 Hanoverian masquerading with Sir William Curtis 
 in the Stuart tartans, while Sir Walter appeared in
 
 3 o 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 the sombre Campbell colours (his great-grandmother 
 having been a Campbell), in no part of his work 
 does Lockhart show a more loyal admiration of 
 Scott, and of his powers in managing men. He 
 had to compose the differences of the Highland 
 chiefs, which, at least in Glengarry, were as keen 
 and bellicose as ever. He had to direct and 
 organise everything, and to pass, from feasts and 
 revels, to the deathbed of William Erskine, Lord 
 Kinnedder, who was dying of a cruel and undeserved 
 wound to his personal honour. Meanwhile Mr. 
 Crabbe, the poet, had arrived in Castle Street, and 
 was much discomposed in a levy of bucklers and 
 tempest of plaids. Lockhart seems to have been 
 attached to Crabbe's suit and service, when he was 
 not obliged to play his own part, in a review of 
 yeomanry. Lockhart could not " live in fantasy " 
 like Scott, who seems to have been able to believe 
 that the "auld Stuarts were come again." He 
 could not chant 
 
 "To see King George at Edinburgh Cross, 
 With fifty thousand foot and horse, 
 And the right restored where the right should be 
 Oh ! that's the thing that would wanton me ! " 
 
 But he watched, with pride and affection, Sir 
 Walter's immense unconscious energy, his mastery 
 over men. "I do not think that he had much 
 in common with the statesmen and diplomats of 
 his own age and country ; but I am mistaken
 
 CRABBE 305 
 
 if Scott could not have played in other days either 
 the Cecil or the Gondomar ; and I believe no man, 
 after long and intimate knowledge of any other 
 great poet, has ever ventured to say, that he could 
 have conceived the possibility of any such parts 
 being adequately filled on the active stage of the 
 world, by a person in whom the powers of fancy 
 and imagination had such predominant sway, as 
 to make him in fact live three or four lives habitu- 
 ally in place of one. . . . Compared to him, all 
 the rest of the poet species that I have chanced 
 to observe nearly with but one glorious excep- 
 tion have seemed to me to do little more than 
 sleep through their lives, and at best to fill the 
 sum with dreams ; " and he is persuaded that Scott's 
 peers can only be found " in the roll of great 
 sovereigns and great captains, rather than in that 
 of literary genius." 
 
 Unluckily Crabbe and Scott had but one quiet 
 walk together with Lockhart, whose charge was 
 "the excellent old Crabbe." 1 They visited Mus- 
 chat's Cairn, renowned in "The Heart of Mid- 
 lothian." " The hour in which the fine old man 
 gave us some most touching anecdotes of his early 
 struggles, was a truly delightful contrast to the 
 bustle and worry of miscellaneous society, which 
 consumed so many of his few days in Scotland." 
 
 Crabbe himself, after praising Sir Walter, writes, 
 11 1 am disposed to think highly of his son-in-law, 
 1 " Letters," ii. 147. 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 3 o6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Mr. Lockhart of his heart, his understanding will 
 not be disputed by any one." To Lockhart's heart, 
 that organ whose very existence has been doubted, 
 his letter to Crabbe's son (December 26, 1833), 
 bears ample evidence. As far as I have observed, 
 Lockhart's kind respect for the aged equalled his 
 affection for children. He speaks in the most 
 pleasant and genial terms of a gentleman whom 
 Mr. Blackwood and Wilson less humanely styled 
 "The Old Driveller." Of Crabbe he writes that, 
 while his recollection of the Edinburgh " mum- 
 meries" is vague, "the image of your father, then 
 first seen, but long before admired and revered 
 in his works, remains as fresh as if the years 
 that have passed were but so many days. His 
 noble forehead, his bright beaming eye, without 
 anything of old age about it though he was then, 
 I presume, above seventy his sweet, and, I would 
 say, innocent smile, and the calm mellow tones 
 of his voice all are reproduced the moment I 
 open any page of his poetry ; and how much better 
 have I understood and enjoyed his poetry, since I 
 was able thus to connect it with the living presence 
 of the man." 1 
 
 Whoever, like Lockhart, has these tender and 
 reverent feelings for childhood and age, for babies, 
 and for "venerable and secluded men," should be 
 free from the imputation of want of heart. 
 
 In the autumn Chiefswood and Abbotsford re- 
 
 1 "Crabbe's Works," vol. i. pp. 275-279, 1834.
 
 ABBOTSFORD 307 
 
 ceived the weary entertainers of the King, the poet, 
 and "a' the wild M 'Craws." They dined with the 
 weavers at Galashiels, and the " Tividale poet," 
 Thomson, really a fluent writer of Scots verse. 
 The "plenishing" of Abbotsford was the great 
 affair of these months, and Lockhart records his 
 suspicion that, consequent on Scott's fatigues, he 
 had endured and concealed "a slight attack of 
 apoplectic nature." 
 
 In this year was finished and published a work 
 on which Lockhart had been engaged in 1821, a 
 new edition of " Don Quixote," with notes, and 
 translations of the Spanish Ballads alluded to in the 
 romance. Sir Walter himself had begun this book, 
 "but Lockhart, being a much better Spaniard, and 
 I having never been, I gave him my materials." 1 
 Constable expressed his readiness to publish Lock- 
 hart's " Don Quixote," which appeared as " Printed 
 for Hurst, Robinson & Co., London, and Archibald 
 Constable & Co., Edinburgh, 1822." On February 
 1 6 of this year, Scott writes about the book to 
 Constable " The notes are most curious, and I 
 think it cannot but supersede every other ; besides, 
 Lockhart will blaze one day ; of that, if God spare 
 him, there can be little doubt. It is good to have 
 an early interest in a rising author." 
 
 Lockhart (who did not put his name on the title- 
 page) added a Life of Cervantes. He made but 
 
 1 Scott to Constable, September 30, 1821. "Archibald Con- 
 stable," iii. 1 58.
 
 308 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 few literary criticisms. " I refer to the Editor of 
 the Spanish Academy's Edition all those who are 
 unwilling to admire anything without knowing 
 why they admire it." The Don " is the symbol 
 of Imagination, continually struggling and con- 
 trasting with Reality he represents the eternal 
 war between Enthusiasm and Necessity the 
 eternal discrepancy between the aspirations and 
 the occupations of man, the omnipotence and the 
 vanity of human dreams." Cervantes wrote, not 
 to ridicule "the old and stately prose romances 
 of chivalry, which are among the most interest- 
 ing relics of the rich, fanciful, and lofty genius of 
 the Middle Ages, but to extirpate the race of 
 slavish imitators. ..." 
 
 Lockhart incidentally remarks, that " nobody has 
 ever written successful novels when young, but 
 Smollett," forgetting, among others, Miss Burney, 
 and not informed, perhaps, about Miss Austen. 
 He adopts Motteux's translation as " the most 
 spirited," for the modern reader might shrink 
 from " the obsolete turns of phraseology " of 
 Shelton. The notes are very copious, but, neces- 
 sarily, in part superseded by modern knowledge 
 of ancient Celtic sources, and of the Chansons 
 de Geste. 
 
 I fancy that this edition met with scant success, 
 and a Shakespeare, to be edited by Scott, aided by 
 Lockhart, is said to have been sold (at least the 
 three printed volumes) for waste paper, after the
 
 SHAKESPEARE 309 
 
 commercial ruin of 1826.! Scott speaks of having 
 "my son Lockhart's assistance for the fag," and 
 Lockhart, in a later letter, mentions his pleasure 
 in his task. But I have never been able to find 
 any trace of the three wasted volumes. The notes 
 were to be by Lockhart (who highly approved of 
 Constable's plan), the introductory volume was the 
 charge of Sir Walter. 2 The enterprise was one 
 for which Lockhart, with his admiration of Shake- 
 speare, and his knowledge, was well adapted, and, 
 when all failed, he might have said, with the 
 Man who was Crafty, " Verily my fine gold hath 
 perished." 
 
 The year 1823 has left no records of events in 
 Lockhart's life, beyond those which he casually 
 introduces into his Biography of Scott, and the 
 appearance of his own novel " Reginald Dalton," 
 and his volume of Spanish Ballads. He has told us 
 how Will Laidlaw suggested to Scott a novel on 
 " Melrose in July 1823," as the three rode along the 
 crest of Eildon, above the little town. He has 
 chronicled the happy days spent during Miss Edge- 
 worth's visit to Abbotsford, and reported how he, with 
 Scott, explored the ruined castles of upper Tweed, 
 and upper Clyde, and how the Ettrick Shepherd, 
 though verging on sixty, distinguished himself at 
 the St. Ronan's Games. "We were a' leal Tories 
 then," said the Galashiels poet, nor would leal 
 
 "Archibald Constable," iii. 241. I am not persuaded that this 
 statement is correct. : Ibid., iii. 246, 247.
 
 3 io LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Tories ever have been scarce, if there had been 
 many lairds like Scott. What Lockhart does not 
 tell us, Sir Walter does " The Lockharts are now 
 living on the smiles and babble of their single hope, 
 which sometimes gives me uneasiness, for a failure, 
 where a failure is so easy and probable, will make 
 them too miserable." l Hogg and Lockhart were 
 at this time on very good terms, Lockhart bringing 
 the Shepherd to stay at Abbotsford. Hogg had, 
 probably, a good deal to forgive, in the possible 
 author of " O Sus, quando te aspiciam!" and other 
 pleasantries : if so, he forgave freely. Lockhart 
 was constant in efforts to befriend him. 
 
 Little incidents such as these alone remain out 
 of four or five years of happiness. As to work, 
 " Reginald Dalton " is not a success in the same 
 sort as " Adam Blair." Though still current at 
 railway bookstalls, it is, on the whole, a conven- 
 tional novel. The descriptions of Oxford have 
 been already cited ; for the rest, the career of 
 Reginald, whether as a " fast," or as a reading 
 man, whether engaged in a duel, or adopting, in 
 debt and repentance, a servitor's gown, is, no doubt, 
 exaggerated. The Scottish characters are not at 
 all worthy of Lockhart's skill, and the complicated 
 intrigue is a thing which lay outside his province. 
 He had little gift of invention, but, given a 
 powerful moral situation, he could do it justice. 
 In " Reginald Dalton " the piety of the relations 
 
 1 " Letters," ii. 164.
 
 BYRON AND HUNT 311 
 
 between a wild lad and a father is perhaps the 
 feature in which Lockhart's genius may most 
 clearly be recognised. The book had some success, 
 and possesses more vitality than most of the novels 
 of its day. Lockhart received i ooo for the book 
 from Mr. Black wood. 
 
 A few side lights on Lockhart's thoughts and 
 works at this time (1823), may be gleaned from 
 Mr. Christie's letters to him. These have been 
 more successfully preserved than Lockhart's letters 
 to Christie. On January 24, 1823, he writes from 
 Limoges, "Among your virtues that of being a 
 regular correspondent is not the least." A friend- 
 ship can, indeed, be kept up without frequent cor- 
 respondence, but no doubt letters are rain about 
 its roots. Christie assures Lockhart that he will 
 "get something" by way of a legal appointment. 
 We have seen, however, that the Scottish bestowers 
 of loaves and fishes thought him an idle apprentice. 
 At this moment, none the less, Christie congratu- 
 lates him on "getting some business in the courts," 
 where, at best, he was not more successful than Sir 
 Walter had been in his day. He moralises on the 
 outrages committed by The Beacon, and remarks 
 on the unsuccessful alliance of Byron and Leigh 
 Hunt in The Liberal, which they were trying to 
 conduct from Italy. " Byron's talents, his rank, 
 and that spirit of accusing, not complaining, will 
 save him. . . . Leigh Hunt and he must make a 
 strange couple, Byron as proud as H , Hunt
 
 3 i2 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 as vain as a peacock : Byron perpetually doing or 
 saying something to wound Leigh Hunt's self- 
 love. . . ." And then Christie prophesies, with 
 much clairvoyance, the end of the connection. The 
 men quarrelled, and Leigh Hunt, after Byron's 
 death, wrote the history of their alliance. 
 
 Postage and news were then very vague. Christie 
 heard in France of "the great stir made by 'Reginald 
 Dalton,' " but to get the book was past hope ; and 
 he was distressed by false news of Williams's death. 
 " I cannot believe the thing, he was made to live 
 eighty years, and be the first Radical Bishop." At 
 last, in July 1824, Christie does obtain " Reginald 
 Dalton," and thinks it " the most interesting novel 
 he has read for years," probably with a mental 
 reservation in favour of "Quentin Durward," which 
 people abuse, he says, much to his, and indeed 
 to our amazement. " Quentin Durward " was only 
 revived by its success in France.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 EDINBURGH, 1817-1824 
 
 Lockhart's Poems. Spanish Ballads. Sources. Weak lines. Song 
 of the Galley. The Wandering Knight. Serenade. " The Mad 
 Banker." Verses on Jeffrey. On Holyrood. On the Stuarts. 
 Queen Mary. Scott's reference to these verses. "Take thou 
 the Vanguard of the Three." Criticism of Lockhart's verse. 
 His reserve. Reasons why he wrote little. His comic verse. 
 " Captain Patten." The Odontist. Trooper lyrics. His skill in 
 caricature. Examples. Fenella. A wet day. Charles Scott. 
 Miss Violet Lockhart. A Presbytery. A cock-fighter. 
 Analogy with Thackeray in verse and caricature. Lockhart 
 almost abandons the Art. 
 
 THE work which probably made Lockhart's name 
 best and most widely known to the world of readers 
 at that day, was published in 1823, his "Ancient 
 Spanish Ballads." 1 His other writings had all 
 been anonymous, and his novels were confused with 
 those of Gait and Wilson. 2 The Ballads were 
 acknowledged, and obtained a wide success, above 
 all with the young. The printed collection of old 
 Spanish " Lieder," mainly used by Lockhart, was 
 that of Depping, published at Leipzig in 1817. 
 
 1 Blackwood's. 
 
 2 On the title-page of a copy of "Adam Blair" (1822), I find the 
 blank for author's name filled up, in an old hand, with the words " By 
 Professor Wilson"! 
 
 313
 
 314 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 He also examined, I think, the early printed 
 volumes, as the " Cancionero," of Ferdinand de 
 Castillo (1510), containing pieces reckoned antiguos 
 at that date, after which the Spaniards frequently 
 published specimens of their mediaeval verse. The 
 natives of the Peninsula were certainly either richer 
 in ballads than their neighbours, or preserved more 
 freshly their interest in their popular or semi-popular 
 lays. Like the other peoples, French, English, and 
 so on, the Spaniards were well contented in their 
 folk-songs with assonance (the similarity of terminal 
 vowel sounds), without rhyme. Following " the 
 distinguished German antiquary, Mr. Grimm," 
 Lockhart treated each stanza of four short lines as a 
 verse of two long lines, which Grimm supposed to 
 have been the original form. His preface is an 
 excellent account of the development of the Spanish 
 language, people, and character, and he especially 
 insists on the chivalrous and honourable character 
 of the hostility between the Moors and the native 
 race. The collection is divided into historical ballads, 
 Moorish ballads, and romantic ballads. I shall not 
 attempt, for lack of the necessary qualifications, to 
 decide on the literal accuracy of Lockhart's versions, 
 being content with the favourable verdict of a judge 
 so competent as my friend Mr. David Hannay. It 
 was my own misfortune never to see the book when 
 I was young, and, on the other hand, to be very 
 fond of " Bon Gaultier," so that " Don Fernando 
 Gomersalez " and the lay of Silas Fixings come
 
 SPANISH BALLADS 315 
 
 between me and Lockhart's poems. Therefore I 
 am peculiarly ill-fitted to defend such lines as these, 
 in the first piece 
 
 " It was a sight of pity to look on Roderick, 
 For, sore athirst and hungry, he stagger'd faint and sick." 
 
 The sword of the hero, " hack'd into a saw " 
 suggests, by no fault of Lockhart's, a weapon in the 
 same serrated condition, described by Mr. W. S. 
 Gilbert (I quote from memory) 
 
 " And all the people noticed that the engine of the law 
 Was not half so like a hatchet as a dissipated saw." 
 
 On the other hand, many passages have a knightly 
 speed and spirit, in fact this is their general charac- 
 teristic. The movement of the verse is almost too 
 catching and facile, though this comes from a strict 
 following of the original, and Scott himself, in one 
 of his letters, drops into a parody. Much more 
 agreeable is the versification of some ballads written 
 in other measures, such as the following : 
 
 THE SONG OF THE GALLEY. 1 
 
 " Ye mariners of Spain, 
 
 Bend strongly on your oars, 
 And bring my love again, 
 For he lies among the Moors. 
 
 (This is from a song in the Cancionero of Valencia, 1511. 
 " Galeristas de Espana 
 Parad los remos," &c.)
 
 3i6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 n. 
 
 " Ye galleys fairly built, 
 
 Like castles on the sea, 
 O great will be your guilt, 
 If ye bring him not to me. 
 
 in. 
 
 " The wind is blowing strong, 
 
 The breeze will aid your oars ; 
 O swiftly fly along, 
 
 For he lies among the Moors. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " The sweet breeze of the sea, 
 
 Cools every cheek but mine ; 
 Hot is its breath to me, 
 As I gaze upon the brine. 
 
 v. 
 
 " Lift up, lift up your sail, 
 
 And bend upon your oars ; 
 O lose not the fair gale, 
 
 For he lies among the Moors. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " It is a narrow strait, 
 
 I see the blue hills over ; 
 Your coming I'll await, 
 
 And thank you for my lover. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " To Mary I will pray, 
 
 While you bend upon your oars j 
 'Twill be a blessed day, 
 
 If ye fetch him from the Moors."
 
 THE WANDERING KNIGHT 317 
 
 Here we have a genuine lyrical note, the words 
 sing themselves with a strange yearning accent. 
 In this metre, in all metres of short lines, Lock- 
 hart most excelled. The pearl of the volume, a 
 flawless thing, worthy of Coleridge or Poe in its 
 music, is 
 
 THE WANDERING KNIGHT'S SONG. 1 
 
 " My ornaments are arms, 
 
 My pastime is in war, 
 My bed is cold upon the wold, 
 
 My lamp yon star : 
 
 ii. 
 
 " My journeyings are long, 
 
 My slumbers short and broken ; 
 From hill to hill I wander still, 
 
 Kissing thy token. 
 
 HI. 
 
 " I ride from land to land, 
 
 I sail from sea to sea ; 
 Some day more kind I fate may find, 
 Some night kiss thee." 
 
 The following serenade also cannot well be 
 omitted ; like the others, it has a natural singing 
 quality very rare in modern poetry 
 
 1 (In the Cancionero of Antwerp, 1555. 
 
 Mis arreos son las armas 
 Mi descanso el pelear.)
 
 3 i8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHAKT 
 
 SERENADE. 1 
 
 " While my lady sleepeth, 
 
 The dark blue heaven is bright, 
 Soft the moonbeam creepeth 
 
 Round her bower all night. 
 Thou gentle, gentle breeze, 
 
 While my lady slumbers, 
 Waft lightly through the trees 
 
 Echoes of my numbers, 
 Her dreaming ear to please. 
 
 ii. 
 
 " Should ye, breathing numbers 
 
 That for her I weave, 
 Should ye break her slumbers 
 
 All my soul would grieve. 
 Rise on the gentle breeze, 
 
 And gain her lattice height 
 O'er yon poplar trees, 
 
 But be your echoes light 
 As hum of distant bees. 
 
 in. 
 
 " All the stars are glowing 
 
 In the gorgeous sky, 
 In the stream scarce flowing 
 
 Mimic lustres lie : 
 Blow, gentle, gentle breeze, 
 
 But bring no cloud to hide 
 Their dear resplendencies ; 
 
 Nor chase from Zara's side 
 Dreams bright and pure as these." 
 
 1 (From the Romancero General of 1604. Mientras duerme mi 
 nzna, c.).
 
 WASTLE'S CASTLE 319 
 
 The poem is not unworthy in lightness and finish 
 of Th^ophile Gautier. 
 
 The Ballads were cited in the Edinburgh Review, 
 and, of course, praised in Blackwood, where the critic 
 bade Lockhart attempt original poetry. " Some of 
 the translations I have got by heart," Gifford wrote 
 to Scott, on February 13, 1823. "Where to look 
 for a review of the book I hardly know," he adds. 
 " Southey declines poetry and has from the first ; 
 Reginald (Heber) the Rector would have been 
 instantly in my thoughts, but Reginald the Bishop 
 is out of the question." 1 
 
 The "Spanish Ballads," like his comic pieces, prove 
 Lockhart's command of the vehicle of verse. His 
 very nature forbade him to be a lyrist, to express 
 himself, his own emotions in poetry, the ancestral 
 fetterlock was on his heart, and to this rule I know 
 but one beautiful exception. His self-criticism, again, 
 prohibited him from rushing in where, during his 
 youth, so many poets, so much greater than he, were 
 on their own enchanted ground. From a rambling 
 set of rhymes written for Blackwood, in the ottava 
 rima of "Beppo" and "Whistlecraft," called "The 
 Mad Banker of Amsterdam," I extract a few stanzas. 
 He is describing the castle of Mr. Wastle 
 
 " No skies have we of that unmingled blue, 
 
 In whose rich light Italian meadows beam : 
 But skies far dearer to a Scottish view, 
 
 Where thin fleet clouds for ever rack and stream. 
 
 1 Abbotsford MSS.
 
 320 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 While here and there, the wavering mantle through 
 
 Small spots of azure tremulously gleam, 
 Grey windy skies o'ercanopying well 
 The dark pine wood, the linn, the loch, the fell/' 
 
 Later he says, showing his own opinion of his 
 own poetry 
 
 "To speak the truth, I neither wish nor pray 
 
 For fame poetic. Once upon a time 
 Perchance so high might young ambition stray, 
 My reason's mended now, if not my rhyme." 
 
 This was a true statement, and Lockhart's letters, 
 even in boyhood, show no trace of aspirations which, 
 at twenty- four, he thus renounces (February 1819). 
 He turns to Jeffrey, who really occupied his mind, 
 against his will, exactly as Sir Walter, to be praised 
 warmly or attacked bitterly, but never to be exor- 
 cised, haunted the mind of Hazlitt 
 
 " Alas for Jeffrey ! if my fancy dreams, 
 
 Let not that dream's delusion pass away, 
 
 For still 'midst all his poverty it seems 
 As if a spark of some ethereal ray, 
 
 Some fragment of the true Promethean beams, 
 Had been commingled with his infant clay, 
 
 As if for better things he had been born 
 
 Than transient flatteries and eternal scorn. 
 
 " Alas for Jeffrey ! for he might have clomb 
 
 To some high niche in glory's marble fane ; 
 But he, vain man, preferred a lowlier home, 
 An easier triumph and a paltrier reign.
 
 EDINBURGH 321 
 
 Therefore his book is blotted from the tome 
 Of Fame's enduring record, and his gain 
 
 Hath in his life been given him, and the wreath 
 That his youth won scarce waits the wintry breath 
 
 " Of the destroyer, to shed all its bloom 
 
 And dissipate its fragrance in the air. . . ." 
 
 There is Tory prejudice here, but there is a 
 measure of truth. Jeffrey's laurels withered with 
 his life. 
 
 The following stanza, on Edinburgh, is not un- 
 worthy of Byron : 
 
 " For lo I even in the shadow of the hills 
 
 Our fathers have their deep foundations laid, 
 And their old city, like a lioness, fills 
 
 The shade that gives her shelter, and that shade 
 Is proud of her whose low voice wakes and thrills 
 
 Her echoes, whose majestic couch is made 
 Where all things round free nature's power express, 
 
 The sea, the mountains, and the wilderness." 
 
 What follows, on Holyrood, is not less admirable. 1 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Ay here where narrowest is her valley's case, 
 And highest is the mountain of her shade 
 
 Here stands the mansion of that reverend race, 
 Like them forgotten, and like them decayed ; 
 
 Their memory is departed, and the place 
 
 Knows them no longer, where their power displayed 
 
 Wise splendour where the monarch's pious pride 
 
 Adorned a shrine a palace sanctified." 
 
 1 From Blackivood) vol. iv. p. 730. 
 VOL. I. X
 
 322 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 It would be unfair in any attempt to disengage 
 the charm of Lockhart's poetry, to omit his stanzas 
 on that hapless Royal race, of which we may say, 
 like Monsieur Coppee of its latest, most charming, 
 and most unhappy scion, UEcosse ne peut pas te 
 juger, elle t'aime. 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Alas ! shall ne'er your glory be renewed, 
 Ye palaces of antique splendour, where 
 
 Were cradled the young shoots of that high brood 
 Linlithgow, thou the pleasant Falkland fair 
 
 Snawdon, high throned above thy peerless flood 
 Of winding glittering waters ? O shall ne'er 
 
 St. Peter's shrine restore that Druid stone J 
 
 To its old haunted hermitage of Scone ? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " Royal in all things ! O what kingly grace 
 
 Sat pale upon their features, what sad brows 
 
 O'erhung the mild eyes of the pensive race, 
 O well did Nature teach them to espouse 
 
 Dejected majesty in that high place ; 
 O wise and well that coming fate allows 
 
 Dim forethought of her sorrows ; wisely she 
 
 Paints in the fruit the ruin of the tree. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " And so, even he, the merriest of them all, 2 
 
 Whose blythe wit charmed the haughty Lewis' ear, 
 He, the glad reveller in bower and hall, 
 
 Gay, gallant, courteous, all without a peer 
 
 1 The Coronation stone, now in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 2 James IV.
 
 HOLYROOD 323 
 
 Even he, amidst his brightest festival, 
 Elate his royal visage scan ye near 
 Those bodily lineaments, and mark ye not 
 The dim hereditary boding blot, 
 
 xv. 
 
 " Of misery musing over evils gone 
 
 And evils coming, in that dark deep eye ! 
 
 That forehead high and proud it is the throne 
 Of other thoughts than pride, though it be high ; 
 
 A pining gloom sits half unseen thereon, 
 
 That speaks of treasons past and Flodden nigh ; 
 
 And blends faint memory of the bloody heart 
 
 Of rebel Douglas, with the visioned dart, 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " Piercing his lion on the Howard's shield 
 
 Even 'mid the softest, most elysian notes 
 Which Heron's harp's luxurious strings may yield, 
 
 A small still voice of mingling sadness floats 
 Surrey's far cry upon the blasted field 
 
 The savage murmurings of mailed throats, 
 The rush of bloody waters and the gloom 
 Of the wild wind above a nameless tomb. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Pass over one he died before his time l 
 And look on her whose beauty hath become 
 
 A bye-word to all nations in the prime 
 
 And flush o' her days the rose of Christendom, 2 
 
 Shedding such lustre over this cold clime 
 
 As never southern knew she struck men dumb 
 
 With the sun-like dazzle of her regal charms, 
 
 And stooped a goddess to young Darnley's arms. 
 
 1 James V. 2 Queen Mary.
 
 3 2 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " Fairer than eye may see or tongue express ; 
 The sweep of centuries hath not ta'en off 
 
 The freshness of her famous loveliness, 
 The savage scowl of party hate the scoff 
 
 Of black-souled bigots have not made her less 
 Than when she first was taught the queen to doff, 
 
 And beamed, all woman, on these halls antique, 
 
 Love's liquid eye, and mantling maddening cheek. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " No not all woman woman, and yet queen 
 Amidst the very faintness of her sighs 
 
 Wearing her majesty as it had been 
 
 A thing she fain would quit, but in her eyes 
 
 Enthroned immoveable, sublime, serene, 
 Woven in her essence by her destinies, 
 
 Awing her lover even in the soft hour 
 
 Of heart-dissolving passion's prime and power. 
 
 xx. 
 
 " It makes man giddy but to think upon 
 
 Such pride of beauty in a queen's caresses ; 
 
 Yet deem not Mary's eye untroubled shone 
 Beneath yon glorious canopy of tresses ; 
 
 Ah no ! the household fiend his curse hadjblown 
 Upon her radiance, and those old distresses 
 
 Had dropt their shadow on her fairest day 
 
 Thy spectre-presage, woeful Fotheringay ! 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " Alas, on cold and heartless days she fell, 
 
 When men threw charity from faith away ; 
 And even her heavenly face possest no spell, 
 The demon of their bigot rage to lay ;
 
 QUEEN MARY 325 
 
 And she was left to one who loved full well l 
 
 And practised all the privilege of sway 
 And erred, perchance, as much as Mary did, 
 Albeit her better craft her errors hid. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 "And rivalry of charms, and love, T and fame 
 
 Kindled such wrath in thatjproud woman's soul, 
 
 That, when the spark had found a vent to flame, 
 Nor policy nor mercy might controul 
 
 Its furious bursting, and she felt no shame 
 The smouldering torrent of her ire to roll 
 
 Full on the Lord's anointed, and begun 
 
 That work of sacrilege which hath undone 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Old honour which hath given men heart to ope 
 The sacred sluice of the rich blood of kings, 
 
 When uninspired prophets nurse mad hope 
 Which from impatient ignorance outsprings : 
 
 And popular phrenzy's shroud doth envelope 
 Man's quiet light of soul ; and baser things 
 
 Are lifted higher by the pluckers down, 
 
 Irreverent of crosier and of crown. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 " Oh ! noble is the death from noble foe 
 
 In the free field received, when the broad star 
 
 Of day is high in heaven yet more when slow 
 The golden West receives his sinking car 
 
 For then those mild majestic beams bestow 
 Their softest splendours on the bed of war 
 
 And soldiers close their eyelids on the scene, 
 
 Even like the sun, sad, solemn, and serene. 
 
 1 Elizabeth.
 
 326 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 " But there is meekness lodged within thy heart, 
 Most lovely Mary (fervid tho' thou be), 
 
 Which, when the agony cometh, shall impart 
 A more than evening of tranquillity 
 
 Tho' gloomy walls shut heaven from where thou art, 
 And inward only the last light to thee, 
 
 With smiles amidst those lordlings shalt thou go, 
 
 Who come to see the blood of monarchs flow. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 " High in her hand the silver cross she rears, 
 The Lord of life is imaged there in dying 
 
 Well pitied He another Mary's tears 
 Upon His grace, be sure, is she relying ; 
 
 Stilled every tumult vanquished all her fears 
 With what repose she all around is eyeing ; 
 
 O see, amidst her maidens' sobs and shrieks, 
 
 O see, the blood deserts not her calm cheeks. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 " A Woman, and a Christian, and a Queen 
 
 What could she more or less ? she did not bare 
 
 Her neck unto the axe with the high mien 
 Of pride, which mantles dying man's despair ; 
 
 Nor on her upward eyelids was there seen 
 
 That radiant light of faith that scorn of care 
 
 That joy of love which virgin saints display, 
 
 When rude men take their spotless lives away. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 " She was nor glad, nor sorrowing, proud nor cold ; 
 
 Yet did her sex, her station, and her creed 
 A mingled mild serenity unfold 
 
 Upon her forehead, when she knelt to bleed,
 
 "TAKE THOU THE VANGUARD" 327 
 
 Such as became her nobly ; less than bold 
 And yet in nothing seemed she terrified 
 As were her life not much to be laid down, 
 Being already stripped of her fair crown." 
 
 I cannot doubt that these gallant stanzas won the 
 heart of Scott, whose Toryism is firmly and fully 
 rendered in this lament. 
 
 " But what avails to waste a world of sighs 
 
 Upon the ruins of a royal pile ? 
 What but perchance to tempt new blasphemies 
 
 From men who wear one cold eternal smile 
 For all beyond their vulgar ken that lies 
 
 For all the ancient honours of our isle 
 For all that sanctified in the old day 
 The high resolves of men more pure than they ? " 
 
 These lines, of course, strike at the Whigs, who, 
 in the Edinburgh Review, were eternally taunting 
 the unhappy and, one might have thought, sacred 
 memory of Marie Antoinette with pitiless derision 
 and "cold eternal smile." To them her sorrows, 
 literally "too great for tears," were matter for jibe 
 and scandal. Lockhart's verses, just cited, appeared 
 in Blackwood on March 20, 1819. In a note to the 
 poem he quoted 
 
 " My wound is deep, I fain would sleep, 
 Take thou the vanguard of the three, 
 And hide me by the bracken bush 
 That grows on yonder lily lee." 
 
 Scott's letter to Lockhart, written in tormentis, 
 wherein he bequeathes to him the banner and baton
 
 3 z8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 " of ancient faith and loyalty," and quotes those very 
 words of Douglas from the old ballad, is dated March 
 23, 1819. Doubtless the rich, melancholy music of 
 the stanzas on Mary Stuart and Holyrood, with 
 the ballad burden, " Take thou the vanguard of the 
 three," had reached Sir Walter, and haunted him 
 in his almost mortal agonies : hence the cry which 
 " made the women think I was growing light-headed, 
 as they heard me repeat a rhyme apparently so little 
 connected with my situation." In such a state of 
 body and mind, anguished and exalted, he did 
 not, of course, reflect that Lockhart's verses were 
 dramatic ; that they were attributed to an imaginary 
 character, Wastle, the last of the Cavalier Tories, 
 whose politics and learned love of things old are 
 borrowed from Scott himself, while his bodily aspect 
 is that of Lockhart "come to forty year." It was 
 enough that the poetic imagination of Lockhart 
 could interpret and body forth (as certainly no 
 other living man could have done), one of the several 
 lives of fantasy in which Sir Walter, as Lockhart 
 tells us, habitually lived. On a later day of dark 
 heat and brooding storm, Scott when old, and near 
 his death, was again to quote to Lockhart, " My 
 wound is deep, I fain would sleep." 
 
 Why, it may be asked, did Lockhart contemp- 
 tuously throw away his admirable stanzas, in a 
 fantastic, irregular, planless contribution to a maga- 
 zine, in place of writing, for example, " Holyrood, 
 A Poem " ? I suppose that, first, the sentiments of
 
 WILSON ON LOCKHART 329 
 
 Wastle were really dramatic, not fully his own ; next, 
 that his criticism of his own powers was too lucid and 
 severe ; and, finally, that he had no mind to be a fol- 
 lower of Byron, as he might at least have seemed 
 to be, from his use of the ottava rima, afterwards 
 employed for serious purposes by Keats in his 
 ' ' I sabella. " The poet, if he would make people believe 
 in him, must take himself with a seriousness which, 
 to do him justice, he usually finds no difficulty in as- 
 suming. But this implies the lack of that diffidence 
 which Scott, no bad judge of men, remarked in Lock- 
 hart. Not unfrequently it also implies an absence of 
 humour, which was not one of Lockhart's defects. 
 This is illustrated by Mrs. Gordon's story of a stanza 
 on Wilson in "The Mad Banker." "It is said," 
 remarks Mrs. Gordon, "that my father chanced 
 to see the proof-sheet by accident before it went 
 to the press, and instantly dashed in not a little 
 to the chagrin of the author the following im- 
 promptu lines : 
 
 " ' Then touched I off friend Lockhart (Gibson John), 
 So fond of jabbering about Tieck and Schlegel, 
 Klopstock and Wieland, Kant and Mendelssohn, 
 All high Dutch quacks, like Spurzheim and Feinagle. 
 Him the Chaldee yclept The Scorpion, 
 The claws but not the pinions of the Eagle 
 Are Jack's ; but though I do not mean to flatter, 
 Undoubtedly he has strong powers of satire.' " 
 
 Mr. Gleig says, " We cannot tell by whom this may 
 have been (said), but we know that it is entirely
 
 330 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 untrue. The poem was read by Lockhart to Wilson 
 before it went to press, in a lodging which the 
 former then occupied in the west of Atholl Crescent, 
 of which we have forgotten the name." (It was in 
 Maitland Street that Lockhart then lived.) "Wilson 
 laughed heartily at the stanza devoted to himself, 
 and wrote on the instant, and read to Lockhart, 
 both laughing all the while, his counter-portraiture 
 of the individual who is assumed by Mrs. Gordon 
 to have aimed a secret blow at his friend, and to 
 have been very much chagrined at the exposure of 
 his malignity." l 
 
 Lockhart contributed to an article by Gillies, 
 some fragments of translation from Goethe's 
 " Faust." Here is the Song of the Spirit of the 
 Earth, from the opening scene of the play : 
 
 " In the currents of Life, in the tempests of motion, 
 
 Hither and thither, 
 
 Over and under, 
 
 Wend I and wander, 
 
 Birth and the grave, 
 
 A limitless ocean 
 
 Where the restless wave 
 
 Undulates ever, 
 
 Under and over 
 
 In the toiling strife 
 
 I mingle and hover, 
 
 The spirit of life ; 
 
 And hear the murmuring wheel of time, unawed, 
 As I weave the living mantle of God ! " 
 
 1 " Christopher North," i. 275, 276. Quar/erfy Review^ vol. cxiii. 
 p. 229.
 
 CAPTAIN PATON 331 
 
 The volkslied of Margaret at the wheel is also 
 very well rendered, and the blank verse throughout 
 is worthy of the lyrics. 
 
 Of Lockhart's comic verse the most popular and 
 best known at the time cannot well be omitted ; it is 
 the Odontist's wail for a fine old half-pay officer 
 in Glasgow. 
 
 CAPTAIN BATON'S LAMENT. 
 By JAMES SCOTT, Esq. 
 
 " Touch once more a sober measure, and let punch and tears be 
 
 shed, 
 
 For a prince of good old fellows, that, alack-a-day ! is dead ; 
 For a prince of worthy fellows, and a pretty man also, 
 That has left the Saltmarket in sorrow, grief, and wo. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo ! 
 
 n. 
 
 "His waistcoat, coat, and breeches were all cut off the same 
 
 web, 
 
 Of a beautiful snuff-colour, or a modest genty drab ; 
 The blue stripe in his stocking round his neat slim leg did go, 
 And his ruffles of the cambric fine they were whiter than the 
 
 snow. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo ! 
 
 in. 
 
 " His hair was curled in order, at the rising of the sun, 
 In comely rows and buckles smart that about his ears did run ; 
 And before there was a toupee that some inches up did grow, 
 And behind there was a long queue that did o'er his shoulders 
 
 flow. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo 1
 
 332 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 IV. 
 
 "And whenever we foregathered, he took off his wee three- 
 
 cockit ; 
 And he proffered you his snuff-box, which he drew from his 
 
 side-pocket ; 
 
 And on Burdett or Bonaparte, he would make a remark or so, 
 And then along the plainstones like a provost he would go. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo. 
 
 v. 
 
 " In dirty days he picked well his footsteps with his rattan, 
 Oh ! you ne'er could see the least speck on the shoes of 
 
 Captain Paton ; 
 
 And on entering the coffee-room about two, all men did know, 
 They would see him with his Courier in the middle of the row. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " Now and then upon a Sunday he invited me to dine, 
 On a herring and a mutton chop which his maid dressed very 
 
 fine; 
 
 There was also a little Malmsey, and a bottle of Bourdeaux, 
 Which between me and the Captain passed nimbly to and fro. 
 Oh ! I ne'er shall take the pot-luck with Captain Paton 
 no mo ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Or if a bowl was mentioned, the Captain he would ring, 
 And bid Nelly run to the West Port and a stoup of water bring; 
 Then he would mix the genuine stuff, as they made it long ago, 
 With limes that on his property in Trinidad did grow. 
 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall taste the like of Captain Paton's punch 
 no mo! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 "And then all the time he would discourse so sensible and 
 
 courteous, 
 Perhaps talking of last sermon he had heard from Dr. Porteous,
 
 THE LAMENT 333 
 
 Or some little bit of scandal about Mrs. So and so, 
 
 Which he scarce could credit, having heard the con but not 
 
 the pro. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall hear the like of Captain Paton no mo ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 " Or when the candles were brought forth and the night was fairly 
 
 setting in, 
 He would tell some fine old stories about Minden-field or 
 
 Dettingen 
 How he fought with a French major, and despatched him at a 
 
 blow, 
 
 While his blood ran out like water, on the soft grass below. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall hear the like of Captain Paton no mo ! 
 
 x. 
 
 " But at last the Captain sickened, and grew worse from day to day, 
 And all missed him in the coffee-room from which now he 
 
 stayed away ; 
 
 On Sabbaths, too, the Wee Kirk made a melancholy show, 
 All for wanting of the presence of our venerable beau. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo ! 
 
 XI. 
 
 " And in spite of all that Cleghorn and Corkindale could do, 
 It was plain, from twenty symptoms, that death was in his view; 
 So the Captain made his test'ment, and submitted to his foe, 
 And we layed him by the Rams-horn-kirk 'tis the way we all 
 
 must go. 
 Oh ! we ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo ! 
 
 XII. 
 
 " Join all in chorus, jolly boys, and let punch and tears be shed, 
 For this prince of good old fellows, that, alack a-day ! is dead ; 
 For this prince of worthy fellows, and a pretty man also, 
 That has left the Saltmarket in sorrow, grief, and wo ! 
 For it ne'er shall see the like of Captain Paton no mo 1 "
 
 334 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 It was my intention to quote some lively pieces 
 from "Songs of the Edinburgh Troop" (1821-1825). 
 But Dean Burgon has attributed them to Mr. Patrick 
 Fraser Tytler, and the doubt makes it wise to 
 abstain. 
 
 A singular addition to Lockhart's efforts in verse 
 is an incomplete translation of the Iliad into English 
 hexameters. In one of the last of his Quarterly 
 Review articles, a criticism of Colonel Mure's 
 "History of Greek Literature," he says: "We are 
 sorry to say that we have never been able to lay 
 our hands upon Wolf's specimen of a translation of 
 Homer, which remains buried in some old maga- 
 zine. ... In this tour de force, we are told, Wolf 
 not only renders line for line and word for word, 
 which Voss gives us, but he gives foot for foot, 
 dactyle for dactyle, and above all, caesura for caesura 
 things Voss never dreams of attempting, and 
 yet in life, spirit, and poetry, is conspicuously above 
 his able and industrious rival." 1 
 
 Now in March 1843, a contributor, signing himself 
 N. N. T., published in Blackwood a version, in Eng- 
 lish hexameters, of the twenty-fourth book of the 
 Iliad. That contributor was Lockhart. He mentions 
 Wolf's specimen, which he has never been able to 
 procure ; nor had he Voss's own translation when he 
 made his attempt. He had not heard of the small 
 specimen in Guest's " History of English Rhythms." 
 Lockhart ends thus : " Should this experiment be 
 
 1 Quarterly Re-view, vol. Ixxxvii. p. 443.
 
 VERSION OF HOMER 335 
 
 received with any favour, the writer has in his port- 
 folio a good deal of Homer, long since translated 
 in the same manner, and he would not be reluctant 
 to attempt the completion of an Iliad in English 
 hexameters, such as he can make them." 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, when composing his 
 " Lectures on Homeric Translation," was mani- 
 festly unaware that he had been anticipated by 
 Lockhart in his theory that the English hexameter 
 is the proper vehicle. That opinion, or heresy, 
 does not commend itself to me ; indeed I despair, 
 and say with Lockhart in " Peter's Letters," 
 "properly speaking, there are no such things as 
 translations." Verse in quantity is at least as much 
 opposed to the genius of the English, as verse in 
 rhyme to the genius of the Greek language. We 
 have no fixed quantity, and our clashing consonants 
 lack the dactylic fluidity. Mr. Matthew Arnold's 
 own specimens gave one word (fire ), now as a dis- 
 syllable, now as a monosyllable, and his hexameters 
 were harsh : 
 
 " These lame hexameters, the strong-winged music of Homer ! 
 Never did frog coarser croak upon our Helicon ! " 
 
 In the following example from Lockhart, the first 
 syllable of " Never " is short, and is long in the 
 same line. It is the dirge of Helen for Hector : 
 
 " Hector, dearest to me above all in the house of my husband ! 
 Husband, alas ! that I name him, oh better that death had be- 
 fallen !
 
 336 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Summer and winter have flown, and the twentieth year is 
 
 accomplished 
 
 Since the calamity came, and I fled from the land of my fathers ; 
 Yet never word of complaint have I heard from thee, never of 
 
 hardness, 
 
 But if another reproached, were it brother or sister of Paris, 
 Yea, or his mother (for mild evermore as a father was Priam), 
 Them didst thou check in their scorn and the bitterness yielded 
 
 before thee, 
 Touched by thy kindness of soul and the words of thy gentle 
 
 persuasion. 
 Therefore I weep, both for thee and myself, to all misery 
 
 destined, 
 
 For there remains to me now in the war-swept wideness of Troia, 
 None either courteous or kind, but in all that behold me is 
 
 horror." 
 
 It is a beautiful rendering of the words of the fairest 
 of women. The English hexameter, as Longfellow's 
 "Evangeline" proves, is not distasteful itself to 
 the popular mass of readers. But how it "runs in 
 the head ! " The last line here is an unwitting 
 hexameter 
 
 " Not distasteful itself to the popular mass of readers I" 
 
 James Macpherson, Ossian Macpherson, writes a 
 hexameter by accident in his prose version of 
 Helen's dirge. 
 
 Doubtless to the Greeks, certainly to the Roman 
 writers, hexameters sometimes occurred involun- 
 tarily, as in Tacitus 
 
 " Urbem Romam a principio Reges habuere" 
 I have confessed to a dislike, perhaps pedantic, of
 
 HEXAMETERS 337 
 
 the English hexameter, yet in what translation 
 Pope's, Cowper's, Lord Derby's could we find 
 Helen's lament rendered at once so literally, and 
 with such spirit and poetry, as in Lockhart's speci- 
 men ? Or take these lines on Niobe, after the 
 slaying of her children by Artemis and Apollo 
 
 "Yet still, far among rocks, in some wilderness lone of the 
 
 mountains, 
 Sipylus holds her, they say, where the nymphs in the desert 
 
 repose them, 
 
 They that in beauty divine lead dances beside Achelous, 
 There still, stone though she be, doth she brood on her harm 
 
 from the godheads." 
 
 On a close comparison of Lockhart's version with 
 the original, one finds, as must always be the case, 
 passages where one would prefer an altered phrase, 
 and, occasionally, a needless embellishment of the 
 original, as (in Helen's lament), " The war-swept 
 wideness of Troia." 
 
 Homer has only 
 
 "/ wide Troia." 
 
 But Lockhart's phrases are the phrases of a poet. 
 He is remarkably skilled in transferring the Greek 
 into the English idiom. Except, perhaps, Charles 
 Kingsley in lines like 
 
 " As when an osprey aloft, dark-eyebrowed, royally crested," 
 
 I know no English poet who writes English hexa- 
 meters more dulcet, and more rapid. Had Lock- 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 338 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 hart finished and published his task, and refined it 
 into perfect accordance with scholarly requirements, 
 certainly Mr. Arnold, at least, need have looked no 
 further for his ideal Homer in English. Quod peiis 
 hie est. We cannot perhaps expect a great poet 
 to desert original work for translation. Even if he 
 does, his version of an author will necessarily con- 
 tain too much of himself. Lord Tennyson, in his 
 blank verse, made Homer Tennysonian. Pope 
 made him Popeian, and only shone in the rhetorical 
 parts, as the speech of Achilles in book ix. Lock- 
 hart had precisely the due qualifications for a trans- 
 lator, in sympathy, poetic feeling, and severe yet 
 genial taste. He would have left a name for a 
 popular yet close and spirited version of the Iliad. 
 But he stole out a specimen or two, anonymously 
 and unrecognised, and there left the matter, yield- 
 ing to that diffidence of his which Scott had 
 observed. 1 
 
 These examples of Lockhart's muse may prove 
 that he had much more of the poetic gift than many 
 men who, in all literary periods, "commence poet," 
 and win some few laurels. These men always 
 take themselves, their work, and their claims with 
 extreme seriousness. Lockhart never could do 
 
 1 "Delta," the late accomplished Dr. Moir, quotes, with high 
 praise, a poem of Lockhart's, " Napoleon," which, to speak the truth, 
 does not rise above the vein of Mrs. Hemans. See " Poetical 
 Literature of the Last Half Century," p. 299. Edinburgh, third 
 edition, 1856. Lockhart refers to this "bookie" of Delta's in a 
 letter to Wilson, in 1851.
 
 CARICATURES 339 
 
 this, and of poetry he had a very high conception 
 and ideal. With no lofty opinion of himself and 
 his merits, with a rarely high notion of what 
 poetry and the poet are and should be, he could 
 not present himself as a candidate for true poetical 
 distinction. He rhymed for his pleasure, and only 
 once he expressed his soul in verse. When we 
 look round on the press of pushing poets, so con- 
 cerned about themselves and their place, so avid 
 of praise and recognition, we may admire the not 
 untempted moderation and reserve of a better poet 
 than most of them. 
 
 Concerning Lockhart as a caricaturist, I have 
 scarcely the materials necessary for a judgment. 
 To one large collection of his drawings I have 
 been denied access. From this portfolio were 
 taken some of the designs in Mrs. Gordon's " Life 
 of Christopher North." It was the property of 
 Lockhart's life-long friend, Mr. Cay. In a little 
 old note-book of 1817, Lockhart has scrawled a 
 few sketches in pen and ink of German students 
 and of " meerschaumed Professors." At this time he 
 either could not draw hands, or did not take the 
 trouble. The stolid transcendental complacency of 
 a Teutonic scholar, with pipe and beer, is happily 
 rendered. Another is smoking in his night-shirt, 
 standing, and off his balance, a fault also in Lock- 
 hart's hasty sketch of Tom Purdie, Scott's forester. 
 The same volume contains notes for Scott's Life, 
 and notes of law cases in which Lockhart was
 
 340 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 engaged at Inverary, Highland hamesucken and 
 violent assaults and batteries. 
 
 At Abbotsford there is a little collection of his 
 drawings, made on wet days, to amuse the family. 
 Some are in colour, for example, Fenella meeting 
 Charles II. in St. James's Park; the extremely 
 artificial figurante bounds dancing in air at an im- 
 possible height ; the courtiers and the cheerful 
 monarch look on. One is reminded, by Fenella, 
 of Thackeray's Flore et Zephyre, indeed Lockhart's 
 powers in verse, and with the pencil, are related to 
 his genius in general much as Thackeray's poems 
 and caricatures stand related to his literary work. 
 They are pleasant parerga. Thackeray had tried 
 far harder than Lockhart to learn to draw, but 
 Lockhart (as in his illustrations to "Peter's Letters") 
 was wont to take more pains over the execution of 
 a portrait. Thackeray dealt more in general fantasy, 
 Lockhart in personal caricature. Each was fond 
 of caricaturing himself: Thackeray often drew the 
 flat-nosed, melancholy humourist ; Lockhart, the 
 sour, close - lipped Spanish scholar or hidalgo. 
 Thackeray sketched beautiful faces, or, at least, 
 one beautiful face, easily recognised. One has seen 
 it again and again, in the collection at Clevedon 
 Court, and in " Vanity Fair." From Lockhart's 
 pencil (having had little luck in recovering his 
 drawings), I only know two sketches of a woman, 
 first, Miss Scott playing on the harp, a rather 
 timidly executed but interesting piece in pencil,
 
 DRAWINGS 341 
 
 heightened with white, on brown paper. In a col- 
 lection given by Tom Hamilton to Lady Brewster, 
 there is a charming design of Lockhart's sister, 
 Scott's "pretty Violet," executed in sepia with the 
 brush. In the same portfolio are the Odontist, in 
 colour on a dark ground ; a brilliantly tinted group 
 of Dons reading the Edinburgh Review; a laugh- 
 able drawing of a frequenter of the Oxford Cock- 
 pit ; several caricatures of Sir William Hamilton 
 (in one, he is overloading a porter with books), and 
 a large view of the Glasgow Presbytery, denouncing 
 a Catholic Chapel. Among them not burlesqued 
 is the strong, handsome profile of Dr. Lockhart. 1 
 In the Abbotsford set, there is also a large rough 
 drawing in colour, of Lockhart, Scott (apparently), 
 and another, riding in a dark rainy day, within three 
 miles of Selkirk, as a road-post indicates. There is 
 also a sketch of Charles Scott, as a lad, on brown 
 paper; a little colour is used, there is a likeness to Sir 
 Walter. Two comic old-fashioned figures of men, 
 rather elaborately coloured, a still more finished 
 head of a barrister in wig and gown, and a few 
 scraps, make up the little Abbotsford collection. 
 Lockhart had a good deal of faculty and skill in 
 catching a likeness : there is a drawing by him of 
 Wilson much inspired by punch, which is said to be 
 curious, but I have not seen it, nor have I seen any 
 caricatures of his that any but a very dull and pre- 
 
 1 This fine collection is now the property of Mr. Brewster Mac- 
 pherson, to whom I owe a view of it.
 
 342 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHAET 
 
 judiced person could call ill-natured. As Mr. Christie 
 informs us, he gave up the practice of caricature 
 altogether about the time when he went to London. 
 Perhaps he knew that "fules," as the Shepherd says, 
 dreaded his "keelavine pen," and so abstained from 
 a source of offence. But the Dean of Salisbury says 
 that he went on drawing, and remembers a sketch 
 of Lady Eastlake at a party. A reference of his 
 own to his powers of portraiture will be found in a 
 letter to Wilson, of 1851. It is a pity that he did 
 not leave a larger collection of his drawings of the 
 family at Abbotsford. His colour is always very 
 vivid and clever : reproductions in black and white 
 do him no justice.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 CHIEFSWOpD, 1821-1825 
 
 Life on the Border. Birth and death of a daughter. Hugh Little- 
 john. Letter to Dr. Lockhart. "Matthew Wald." Lockhart 
 in London. Coleridge. Canning. Brontesque novel. A false 
 quantity. Lockhart at a fire. Yule at Abbotsford. The muffled 
 drum. Scott to Marchioness of Stafford. Sutherland Sheriff- 
 ship. Constable's scheme. Cheap literature. Lockhart's sug- 
 gestions. Irish tour with Scott. Meeting with Wilson, Canning, 
 and Wordsworth. Tired of Blackwood. Work at Shakespeare. 
 Asked to edit Murray's paper. Young Mr. Disraeli. Pro- 
 posals as to the Quarterly Review. Mr. Wright's suggestion. 
 Scott not author of the plot. Lockhart in town. Mr. 
 John T. Coleridge, Southey, and the Quarterly. Later diffi- 
 culties. Lockhart becomes Editor. Southey's chagrin. Lock- 
 hart's " bonspiel." He leaves Chiefswood for London. 
 Reflections. 
 
 WE have broken the continuous record of a time 
 still uneventful, to speak of Lockhart's prowess 
 with the pencil, and of his qualities as a writer of 
 verse. There is, indeed, nothing of note to be 
 said about the movements "from the blue bed to 
 the brown," from Edinburgh to Chiefswood, where 
 the nature of the pleasant life, with its guests, its 
 rides, its visits to local shrines and friendly country 
 houses, has been sufficiently described. Lockhart 
 thought nothing, he says in a letter, of riding after 
 
 343
 
 344 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHAET 
 
 dinner from Chiefswood to Edinburgh, if business 
 or pleasure called him. 
 
 In that always dear and then still unspoiled land 
 of many streams, where the day's ride led up stately 
 Tweed, or Ettrick, or Yarrow, or to the lochs 
 whence Yarrow flows, or by brown Ail water, or 
 broadening Teviot, life indeed "for ever flowed 
 like a river." But already there were sounds 
 ominous of the coming straits and falls, and of the 
 parting of the waters and the ways. In the course 
 of the following chapter, we shall find Scott and 
 Lockhart sundered, and the old happy time for ever 
 ended. 
 
 In January 1824, a daughter was born to the 
 Lockharts, and it seemed that their affections would 
 no longer be settled on a single hope. On February 
 9, as Lockhart was obliged to go to Edinburgh, 
 Scott talks of taking Mrs. Lockhart to Abbotsford. 
 " Betwixt indolence of her own and Lockhart's 
 extreme anxiety and indulgence, she has foregone 
 the custom of her exercise, to which, please God, 
 we will bring her back by degrees." * On March 4, 
 writing to Lady Abercorn, Scott mentions his 
 uneasiness about Hugh Littlejohn, who " came to 
 this world rather too early, and, though a pretty, 
 clever, and very engaging infant, alarms me a little 
 from the slenderness of his frame, and a sort of 
 delicacy of health sometimes connected with pre- 
 mature development of intellect. Sophia was again 
 1 " Life," vii. 232.
 
 A CHILD'S DEATH 345 
 
 confined about two months ago, but lost her infant, 
 and has had but a slow and precarious recovery, 
 which, indeed, is yet far from complete. Her face," 
 Sir Walter says, "will soon attain its natural and 
 most extensive circumference of half-a-crown." 1 
 He also attributes little Johnnie's precocity to 
 " being much with grown-up people ; . . . yet an 
 only child is like a blot at backgammon, and fate is 
 apt to hit it." 
 
 Lockhart himself writes, about the loss of the 
 little girl 
 
 " MY DEAREST FATHER, It has pleased God to 
 take our infant from us. The doctors despaired 
 yesterday, but were not so kind as to say so. 
 She died, without apparently any pain, at six this 
 morning. 
 
 " Sophia bears this affliction with her usual firm- 
 ness and gentleness, sensible that, had it been 
 deferred, every hour would have made it greater, 
 and thankful for what is left. Her calmness is 
 such that we do not fear any ill effect upon her 
 own state. 
 
 "Some of us will write to-morrow again. My 
 dear mother, Violet, and Johnny are all well. Yours 
 most affectionately, 
 
 "J. G. L. 
 " NORTHUMBERLAND STREET." 8 
 
 1 To Miss Baillie, " Life," vii. 234. 
 8 No date.
 
 346 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 At this time Lockhart must have been seeing 
 his fourth novel, " Matthew Wald," through the 
 press, for Sir Walter writes to Lady Abercorn " I 
 cannot say I like it, it is full of power, but disagree- 
 able, and ends vilely ill. . . . Lockhart is just now 
 in London," whence we find him writing to Wilson 
 at Elleray, and settling the question (about which 
 Scott professes ignorance), as to whether he is con- 
 tributing to Blackwood, or not. He "spent three 
 very pleasant days with Christie," and met, among 
 other lions, Hook, Canning, Rogers, Maginn, Gifford, 
 Irving (the popular preacher), Wilkie, and Coleridge. 
 "The last is worth all the rest, and five hundred 
 more such into the bargain." Irving he calls "a 
 pure humbug," and Sir Walter himself was not 
 favourably impressed by that famous friend of Car- 
 lyle's. Lockhart criticises Maga as if he had little 
 part in it, and he threatens to "puff" "Matthew 
 Wald" himself, if no one else will. 1 He also 
 promises a " Noctes," for they never spoke of a 
 " Nox Ambrosiana." 2 The original ends "burn or 
 forget," but the recipient of such a monition usually 
 forgets to burn. The letter contains political sur- 
 mises to be " forgotten " now much out of date, and 
 by none remembered. 
 
 1 I know not if this threat was serious. Southey, writing to Messrs. 
 Longmans, proposes to edit a reprint of an old book, " accompanying 
 it with preface and notes, and I would take care of it afterwards in 
 the Quarterly Review? (" Selections from the Letters of Robert 
 Southey," iii. 441. London, 1856.) 
 
 2 "Christopher North," ii. 71, 74.
 
 "MATTHEW WALD" 347 
 
 It seems possible that this expedition to London 
 was important in a manner not expected by Lock- 
 hart. He met Canning, as we saw ; he met him 
 again in the Lake country, in August 1825, and the 
 old writer in the Antijacobin may have been attracted 
 to the young man of letters. Hence, Scott thought, 
 might have come the suggestion of appointing 
 Lockhart to the Quarterly Review. But Lockhart 
 for the moment was concerned with his legal pros- 
 pects and his novel. A novel like " Matthew 
 Wald," as described by Scott, " full of power, but 
 disagreeable, and ending vilely," was an obvious 
 foreshadowing of the kind of romance which has 
 pleased the last freak of fashion, or the last but 
 one. 1 The hero, who tells his own tale, is a violent, 
 and, so to say, Brontesque person. His passionate 
 behaviour ends in a madness, from which he re- 
 covers, nor is anything of his secret suspected, it 
 seems, till his Memoir is found, after his death. 
 Quotations from Wordsworth on the title-page, and 
 elsewhere, suggest that, to Lockhart's mind, he had 
 found a Wordsworthian situation, the black tem- 
 pestuous day of Matthew Wald closing in to a 
 quiet and cheerful evening. The idea may be 
 poetical, the execution, however, is inadequate. 
 There are some good pictures of Scottish characters, 
 especially the sketch of an old Lord of Session at 
 his country house. But the construction is defective 
 and straggling, there are far too many side issues 
 
 1 1896.
 
 348 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 and digressions for so short a story. Perhaps no 
 novel of that date is so modern in its disagreeable- 
 ness, and the unpleasant quality which was already 
 called "power." If Lockhart ever again wrote an 
 anonymous work of fiction (Scott suspected him of 
 Gait's "The Omen"), the secret has never been 
 discovered. Scott, writing to Lady Abercorn (June 
 4, 1824), says that "Reginald Dalton" "had great 
 success," and that " Matthew Wald " " is misery 
 from the title-page to the finis." 
 
 For the rest, in the absence of letters, the other 
 events of Lockhart's traceable history, in 1824, are 
 but two. He was guilty of the false quantity, ad 
 januam doming in the inscription for Maida's effigy: 
 and, in a three days' fire, which devastated the Old 
 Town of Edinburgh, he was " on duty, wet to the 
 skin and elegant, with a naked sword in his hand, 
 the very picture of a distressed hero in a strolling 
 party's tragedy." The Yeomanry had been called 
 out, "by torch and trumpet fast arrayed." 1 
 
 Thus a vivid light falls for a moment on Lock- 
 hart in the aspect of a hero of Gautier or of 
 Scarron, in " Le Capitaine Fracasse," or " Le 
 Roman Comique." 
 
 The Yule of 1824 had been peculiarly brilliant 
 at Abbotsford. Captain Basil Hall's Journal, kept 
 there during the festivals before the marriage of 
 Scott's eldest son, was published by Lockhart in 
 
 1 " Life," vii. 275-281, with Sir Walter's poem on the false quantity. 
 " Letters," ii. 226.
 
 SCOTT TO LADY STAFFORD 349 
 
 the " Life": of course he cut out all references to 
 himself, and we know, by a letter of Basil Hall's, 
 that such references existed. The original manu- 
 script cannot now be recovered, but, after Captain 
 Hall's " flourish of trumpets," and " scene of un- 
 clouded prosperity and splendour, the muffled drum 
 is in prospect." 
 
 At this time, in the spring of 1825, Scott was 
 trying to procure for Lockhart the not very remu- 
 nerative post of Sheriff of Sutherland. His letters 
 to the Marchioness of Stafford (from Sir William 
 Frazer's "Book of Sutherland") are very charac- 
 teristic, and explain the situation : 
 
 " ABBOTSFORD, 2 April 1 1, 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAR LADY STAFFORD, Allow me to express 
 my sincere and most grateful thanks for the kind 
 manner in which your ladyship has condescended 
 to Lockhart's concern. I have heard nothing of 
 the matter myself for several weeks and months. 
 My friend, the advocate, was so intolerably wise 
 and mysterious on the subject, the last time it was 
 mentioned, that I vow that to be made Sheriff of 
 all Scotland, either in a friend's person or my own, 
 I could not have attempted again to penetrate the 
 deep and awful gloom. The game to be played is 
 a sort of gambit at chess. First, old Mr. Ferriar is 
 
 1 " Life/' vii. 343. 
 
 2 From the "Sutherland Book," by Sir William Frazer, K.C.B., 
 vol. ii. pp. 325, 326.
 
 350 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 to be permitted to resign his office of Clerk of 
 Session on some superannuation, the poor gentle- 
 man being upwards of eighty years old, and having 
 wasted eyes, years, and understanding to the last 
 dregs in writing the judgments of the Court of 
 Session for thirty or forty (years). This old horse 
 released from the carriage, James Fergusson, who 
 vacates a place called a commissaryship, where he 
 judges of all the iniquities of marrying and not 
 marrying, and marrying once too often, and getting 
 unmarried again altogether, is to be conferred on 
 your present Sheriff, Charles Ross. Et puis Charles 
 Ross having succeeded to all these functions of 
 marrying and putting asunder, I have been led to 
 entertain hopes that Lockhart may succeed in his 
 place. I should be delighted in it, for it is always 
 getting pignon sur la vie, and I think Lord Stafford 
 and your ladyship would be gratified with his 
 acquaintance, as he is perfectly a gentleman, and 
 with a very uncommon share of talent and informa- 
 tion. When this happy consummation will take 
 place, or whether it is likely to take place at all, I 
 really do not know. Like the old beggar with the 
 blue cloak and the pikestaff, I can submit to make 
 one bow, and hold my hat out once, for what is not 
 worth asking is not worth having. But I am too 
 old and stiff to gird up my loins and run after folks' 
 chariot wheels till they give to importunity. But 
 after all, this is only a petted way of taking the 
 little diplomatic secrecy which great folks observe
 
 "SHERIFFDOMS" 35 ' 
 
 on great occasions, such as bestowing Sheriffdoms ; 
 and I dare say I am complaining without reason. 
 Only I cannot forget that I went expressly on 
 purpose to Dalkeith when the Lord Advocate 
 wished to be Sheriff of Edinburgh, which he got 
 entirely by my interest with the late Duke of 
 Buccleuch, and I never kept him a moment in 
 suspense about the matter." 
 
 " EDINBURGH, zydjune I825. 1 
 
 " MY DEAR LADY MARCHIONESS, If you give a 
 dog a bone, he will follow you through half-a-dozen 
 streets ; and so it is with obligations bestowed on 
 the human race, they are no sooner conferred 
 than they are made the pretence of further 
 teasing. But your ladyship's great kindness en- 
 courages this species of persecution, and your 
 flattering inquiries about Lockhart's probable suc- 
 cess as to Sutherland makes it incumbent on me 
 to mention any little progress that has been 
 made with respect to that Sheriffdom. ... I own 
 I should be much better pleased with his having 
 Sutherland rather than Caithness for his own sake, 
 and being of a good presence, and certainly clever 
 enough, he would become the halls of Dunrobin 
 better than a thing disagreeable to the eye and 
 very tiresome to the ear. But the whole arrange- 
 
 1 From the "Sutherland Book," by Sir William Frazer, K.C.B., 
 vol. ii. pp. 327, 328.
 
 352 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 ment about Sutherland must lie over until James 
 Ferriar retires from the clerk's table, to make 
 way for James Fergusson, who vacates a com- 
 missariat to make way for Charles Ross, who 
 leaves Sutherland to give place, I would fain hope, 
 to Lockhart upon the old principle of the cat to 
 the rat, the rat to the halter, the halter to the 
 butcher, the butcher to the ox, and so forth. . . . 
 My informer seems to have a superstitious fear of 
 all this valuable information transpiring, so it is only 
 designed for your ladyship's private ear. ..." 
 
 In May 1825, Lockhart, as he says in the " Life," 
 was present at a consultation, in Abbotsford, over 
 Mr. Constable's great scheme, " the cleverest thing 
 that ever came into that cleverest of bibliopolic 
 heads," as Scott remarked, "that magnificent con- 
 ception," to quote Lockhart, of cheap literature. 
 The manner of Constable seems to have been more 
 excited than was in harmony with his skill in 
 making a curious accumulation of pregnant facts. 
 The description of the scene in the "Life" is 
 undeniably vivid, though Mr. Thomas Constable, 
 in his Memoir of his father, not unnaturally finds it 
 "distasteful to his filial reverence," and believes, 
 (as did his father) that the publisher, not the author, 
 suggested the " Life of Napoleon." Lockhart's 
 memory was good, but Constable spoke nearer the 
 time of the events. Possibly both views may be
 
 "EDUCATE THE DEVIL" 353 
 
 correct, and Scott may have anticipated a part of 
 the scheme already present to the mind of Con- 
 stable. Lockhart was to write, as he did later, a 
 "Life of Burns," and he suggested "a readable 
 abridgment of M'Crie's ' Life of Knox,' leaving 
 out all the controversial stuff, and much of the 
 angry feeling," and giving "the mere personal 
 history of a good and great man, whose name can 
 never cease to be interesting in Scotland." * Lock- 
 hart also suggested a " Poor Man's Law Book." 
 "You will agree with me that they are at present 
 curious in regard to such subjects, that they ought 
 to be so, and that it is a shame they have not the 
 means of reading what concerns them all in an 
 intelligible form." 
 
 There is a tradition that when some one once 
 spoke of "educating the people," Lockhart said, 
 " Educate the devil ! " His suggestions do not 
 read as if that was his mature opinion. Neither 
 Constable, nor any one else, seems to have reflected 
 that, if the rich did not spend ten pounds a year 
 on books (which was admitted), the poor were not 
 likely to spend ten shillings. 2 
 
 Meanwhile " Taffey," that is, the Rev. Mr. 
 Williams, had been appointed the first Head 
 Master of the new Edinburgh Academy, and had 
 
 1 Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson has written very freely on the 
 readableness of M'Crie's " Knox." 
 
 2 "Life," vii. 382. "Archibald Constable," iii. 309. Southey, as 
 early as 1820, was proposing this idea of good books (his own) at 
 a cheap rate. 
 
 VOL. 1. z
 
 354 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 suggested, "by his lively and instructive conver- 
 sation on Welsh history and antiquities," the idea 
 of " The Betrothed." In the introduction, Scott 
 made merry over "a Joint Stock Company for 
 writing and publishing the Class of Works called 
 the Waverley Novels." In the same spirit he had, 
 in an unpublished note, recommended Lockhart to 
 make a company for the repair of the dam and 
 dyke of the little burn at Chiefswood. The sorrows 
 of Joint Stock Companies were gathering, but were 
 not yet foreseen. 
 
 On July 8, Scott, Miss Anne Scott, and Lockhart 
 sailed for Ireland, and the narrative of the tour 
 exists in his published letters to his wife. 1 To have 
 been anticipated with these bright and humorous 
 epistles is a sorrow to a biographer. On the re- 
 turn of the party they visited Wilson at Elleray, 2 
 whence Lockhart wrote a description of the ladies of 
 Llangollen, and " their great romance, alias absurd 
 innocence." " I shall never see the spirit of blue- 
 stockingism again in such perfect incarnation." 8 
 
 1 " Letters of Scott," ii. 296-343. 
 
 2 Wilson was an extraordinary being ! Immediately after the 
 meeting with Scott and Wordsworth in the Lake country, he viciously 
 attacked Wordsworth's Poems, and personal manner, in the " Noctes 
 Ambrosianae " for September 1825. The "Nox" is in the collected 
 edition of these papers. At this time, too (autumn of 1825), he used 
 the most awful and unprofessorial language, in a letter to Lockhart, 
 about Mr. Blackwood. The "Nox" may have been written before 
 the meeting with Wordsworth, and I understand that Wilson re- 
 gretted it. But, for some reason, he disliked "the Stamp- Master," as 
 we shall see. 
 
 " Life," viii. 48-50.
 
 WORDSWORTH 355 
 
 When the "Life" was published, some "tabbies" 
 objected to this sketch. "Was I not," wrote 
 Lockhart to Mrs. Hughes, "to give one sketch of 
 blue-stockingism in the life of a man who suffered 
 so much under it ? " l Canning was at Storrs, near 
 Elleray, and Wordsworth "evidently thinks Can- 
 ning and Scott together not worth his thumb," 
 which does not exaggerate the poet's self-estimate ! 
 "Wordsworth told Wilson yesterday he thought 
 Canning seemed to have no mind at all," for the 
 statesman evinced little interest "in these humbugs, 
 the principles of poetry," nor had Wordsworth any 
 other topic. They met Quillinan, Wordsworth's 
 son-in-law, who had once contemplated challenging 
 Lockhart for a review of his Poems, which Lockhart 
 had not written. "Wordsworth knew all about 
 his history in Scotland, and spoke gaily thereof." 
 Wordsworth and Scott quoted Wordsworth's 
 Poems all day, but the great Laker never by one 
 syllable implied that Scott had written a line either 
 of verse or prose. Whether these foibles amused 
 Scott or Lockhart most, in the secret of their hearts, 
 it would not be easy to guess. Southey "was very 
 civil." (August 25, 1829.) 
 
 Lockhart was wearying for Chiefswood, and the 
 privilege of "kissing Johnny red and blue" per- 
 sonally, not by deputy. This he enjoyed on 
 September i. 
 
 On arriving at Chiefswood, Lockhart returned 
 
 1 Letter quoted in Quarterly Review, vol. cxvi. p. 472.
 
 356 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHABT 
 
 to literary work with even unusual industry. He 
 was weary of Blackwood. Maginn was imploring 
 him to write songs in John Bull. " I shall take 
 care to keep you out of scrapes." Lockhart can 
 hardly have cared for " Bardolph's security." " You 
 will have perceived that I have done very little 
 this summer," he writes to Wilson. " How could 
 I ? I am totally sick of all that sort of con- 
 cern. . . ." 
 
 He was occupied with worthier things, a pro- 
 posed edition of Shakespeare by Scott and himself. 
 " I have spent five or six hours on Shakespeare 
 regularly." He had also conceived a scheme of 
 much less promise than his ideas for literary enter- 
 prises usually were. This was the composition, 
 by himself and Wilson, with a little aid from Miss 
 Edgeworth, of " Janus." Now " Janus," to be 
 frank, might be described as a volume of magazine 
 padding. The tome was intended to be the first 
 of a series of Books of Sense, as it were, in opposi- 
 tion to " Books of Beauty." Having no seductive 
 embellishments, it was a failure, as far as the pub- 
 lishers (Messrs. Oliver & Boyd) were concerned. 1 
 Lockhart's industry, at least, is attested by the large 
 amount of his contributions, which have now no 
 particular interest. A curious essay on the Ordeal 
 
 1 Mrs. Gordon (" Christopher North," ii. 88) attributes the original 
 idea of " Janus," and its publication by Oliver & Boyd, to Lockhart's 
 impatience with Mr. Blackwood. Probably Mrs. Gordon had not 
 read her father's letters to Lockhart. Christopher North's remarks 
 on Mr. Blackwood in 1825 are of the most florid eloquence.
 
 ANXIETIES 357 
 
 by Fire has most merit, unless we prefer an article 
 on Universities. Though neither in good health 
 nor in good spirits, Lockhart " found repose in 
 being busy," as was ever his way, and amusement 
 in the society of Abbotsford. 
 
 There, alas ! things were altering. Still the flag 
 flew that called the countryside to " the burning 
 of the water," the salmon leistering, still the 
 guests came and went " admiring, and sometimes' 
 admired." But, in the study at Abbotsford, the 
 " white head erect, with the smile of inspiration on 
 the lips," was no more to be seen, and Lockhart 
 beheld, with regret, Sir Walter "stooping and 
 poring with his spectacles, amidst piles of authorities, 
 a little note-book ready in the left hand that had 
 always been used to be at liberty for patting 
 Maida." Maida was dead, and dead was old Hins of 
 Hinsfeldt. Meanwhile Lockhart, as he says, had 
 to consult Sir Walter on literary projects, involving 
 the abandonment of Chiefswood and Edinburgh. 
 " There were then about me, indeed, cares and 
 anxieties of various sorts, that might have thrown 
 a shade even over a brighter vision of his interior. 
 For the circumstance that finally determined me, 
 and reconciled him as to the proposed alteration 
 in my views of life, was the failing health of an 
 infant equally dear to us both. It was, in a word, 
 the opinion of our medical friends, that the short- 
 lived child of many and high hopes, whose name 
 will go down to posterity with one of Sir Walter's
 
 358 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 most precious works, could hardly survive another 
 northern winter ; and we all flattered ourselves with 
 the anticipation that my removal to London, at the 
 close of 1825, might pave the way for a happy 
 resumption of the cottage at Chiefs wood in the 
 ensuing summer. Dis aliter msum." x 
 
 Another domestic sorrow, of the kind which can- 
 not but be anticipated, but may, none the less, be 
 bitter, was approaching. His grandmother, to whom 
 his earliest extant letter was written, lay at the 
 point of death. Not to interrupt the story of his 
 appointment to the Quarterly Review, his letter 
 on the news of her decease may be given here : 
 
 " MY DEAR FATHER, Being called up to town 
 on some business, about which I cannot, just at 
 present, write (but which has nothing disagreeable 
 in it), I have received here to-day" (in London), "by 
 a letter from Sophia, my first accounts of my dear 
 grandmother's death. Before my letter reaches you 
 the grave has closed over her remains, and I have 
 been deprived even of the painful pleasure of par- 
 taking in the last service. I know all reason and 
 sense are against it, but I can't tell you, nevertheless, 
 how much I feel saddened. You, no doubt, have 
 still more deeply the same natural impression to 
 struggle against. Whatever consolation the memory 
 of kindness, excellence, and piety can give us, we 
 surely have. I shall not write any more at present. 
 
 1 " Life," viii. 64.
 
 IN TOWN 359 
 
 I hope to be in Scotland again in the course of a 
 week, and shall certainly come to Germistoun im- 
 mediately unless there should be a prospect of your 
 coming to us. I beg my warmest love to my dear 
 mother and the family. Your affectionate and duti- 
 ful son, J. G. LOCKHART. 
 
 " 6 STONE BUILDINGS, LINCOLN'S INN, 
 Friday, October 14, 1825." 
 
 Lockhart's business in town was to see Mr. 
 Murray, the publisher, who, at first, wished him to 
 be, not the Editor, but the general adviser as to a 
 newspaper, and who also offered him the Editorship 
 of the Quarterly Review. The Quarterly was, and 
 had for two or three years, been in an unsettled 
 condition. Gifford's health had been very bad, and 
 he now spoke of retiring, now struggled on, "and 
 oft said farewell, yet seemed loth to depart." He 
 was so reduced that he had actually printed an article 
 of Southey's "without mutilation," a melancholy and 
 menacing symptom of decay. As early as October 
 1 8, 1822, Southey revealed a scheme to Grosvenor 
 Bedford. If Gifford died, or resigned, it was in- 
 tended (unless the malcontents approved of his 
 successor) to start a rival Quarterly. Terms were 
 offered to Southey, if he would desert Murray, and 
 act as Editor of the new periodical. "This has 
 been communicated to me by John Coleridge. My 
 wish is that he should be Gifford's successor. . . . 
 Should that arrangement take place, this scheme
 
 360 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 falls to the ground at once, otherwise ... it is 
 very probable that it will be tried," though Southey 
 does not think it likely that he himself will go to 
 town as Editor. " Murray's conduct has not been 
 such as to make me feel bound to him in the 
 slightest degree ; and no future Editor shall ever 
 treat my papers as Gifford has done." l 
 
 The essence of the scheme then was, Mr. John 
 Taylor Coleridge for Editor of the Quarterly Review, 
 or a rival Review " an excellent plot, good friends." 
 Mr. Murray was, perhaps, not aware of this result of 
 the ingenuity of Mr. Coleridge. Had he known about 
 it, he might not have wished Mr. Coleridge to assist 
 Gifford in his editorial duties during 1822. In May 
 1823, Mr. Murray, to prevent any disappointment, 
 informed Mr. Coleridge that Gifford was very well. 
 " During his life no change is likely to be made, and 
 when any change is necessary it will not, as I always 
 stated, depend on me. The subject should not, 
 therefore, be allowed to influence in the slightest 
 degree your other views and arrangements." On 
 December 9, 1824, Mr. Murray offered Mr. Coleridge 
 the appointment which, since the inception of his 
 plan of 1822, he seems to have desired. 2 " Murray 
 may thank me," wrote Southey to Rickman, " for 
 having provided him with an Editor, for he knew 
 not where to find one." In accepting the offer Mr. 
 Coleridge made some allusions to the recent increase 
 
 1 " Selected Letters of Southey," iii. 337. 
 
 2 " Memoir of John Murray," ii. 164.
 
 MR. COLERIDGE 361 
 
 in his practice at the Bar, which was becoming 
 considerable. 
 
 Behold, then, Mr. Coleridge in the editorial chair 
 of the Quarterly, in December 1824, to the joy of 
 Southey. Yet, on October 20, 1825, the sceptre had 
 passed from Southey's friend, and Lockhart had been 
 appointed in his place. How did this sudden change 
 come about ? On this point it is necessary to quote 
 a letter of Southey to Rickman, of December 4, 
 1825. " I do not know for what reason Murray has 
 thought proper to change his Editor. His own story 
 to John Coleridge has been plumply contradicted to 
 me by the only person who can contradict it (Sir 
 W. Scott), and he is so well aware that I shall not 
 like the change, that he has not yet written to me 
 on the subject." 1 
 
 Now, what was " Murray's story to John Cole- 
 ridge " ? That Southey does not tell us, but we 
 do know what Sir Walter " contradicted." He con- 
 tradicted the idea (which he thought might arise 
 in Southey's mind) that he had taken any part 
 in suggesting Lockhart as a supplanter of Mr. 
 Coleridge. "A letter from Lockhart from London" 
 (about October 12-15) "was the first intimation 
 that I had of the subject. . . . 2 And in the end of 
 October " (in fact on October 20) " the transaction 
 was regularly concluded. I mention these par- 
 
 1 "Selected Letters of Southey," iii. 514. 
 
 2 Journal, i. 27. " First a hint from Wright," says Scott. The hint 
 was of October 3.
 
 362 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 ticulars, because you might think it odd that when 
 we spoke together at Keswick on the subject of the 
 Quarterly, \ never hinted at this transaction, in 
 which I was so nearly connected ; still less would 
 I like you to entertain an idea that either Lockhart 
 or I had thought of soliciting or manoeuvring for 
 such a situation while it was in the hands of another 
 and most respectable gentleman." 
 
 It may be said that this letter of Scott's should 
 have been written earlier. But it was written partly 
 because a month after the conclusion of the formal 
 treaty of October 20, 1825, Mr. Murray was per- 
 turbed by the objections, based on the old Blackwood 
 brawls, of many friends of the Quarterly. Scott, 
 therefore, wrote to Southey on that topic (without 
 producing much effect on the Laureate's mind), and 
 at the same time he protested against the notion 
 that he had suggested Lockhart's appointment. As 
 Scott writes in his Journal { November 27, 1825), "I 
 never was more surprised than when this proposal 
 came upon us." Again (November 29), " It was no 
 plot of my making, I am sure ; yet men will say and 
 believe that it was, though 1 never heard a word 
 of the matter, till first a hint from Wright, and 
 then the formal proposal of Murray to Lockhart 
 announced (sic]. I believe Canning and Charles 
 Ellis were the prime movers. I'll puzzle my brains 
 no more about it." 
 
 If any one is so unhappily constituted as to 
 suppose that Sir Walter equivocated on this point
 
 NOT SCOTT'S PLOT 363 
 
 to Southey, in a letter, and to posterity, in his 
 Journal, the critic may be referred to a letter of 
 Scott to Murray (November 17, 1825) "The plan 
 (I need not remind you) of calling Lockhart to this 
 distinguished position, far from being favoured by 
 me, or in any respect advanced or furthered by such 
 interest as I might have urged, was not communi- 
 cated to me until it was formed. ..." 
 
 Now it is absolutely impossible that if the 
 scheme had originally come from Sir Walter, he 
 should have "reminded" Murray that he had 
 nothing to do with the matter. 1 If these facts 
 leave any one in the opinion which Scott himself 
 expected men to entertain, we reserve for him 
 something more. 
 
 The appointment of Lockhart, though obviously 
 not solicited by Scott, is still, in some respects, as 
 great a puzzle as Sir Walter found it. Mr. Cole- 
 ridge was, it seems, advancing rapidly in his pro- 
 fession, and no wise barrister would prefer an 
 editorship to such prospects of success as now lay 
 before him. Whatever the exact facts about his 
 demission of the Quarterly may have been, both 
 Scott and Lockhart, in published and unpublished 
 letters, agree in praising the magnanimity of Mr. 
 Coleridge's behaviour. 
 
 As far as can be guessed, the choice of Lockhart 
 for Mr. Coleridge's successor found occasion in a 
 scheme of Mr. Benjamin Disraeli's, at that time a 
 
 1 " Memoir of John Murray," ii. 184.
 
 364 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 handsome, imaginative, and persuasive lad of twenty. 
 There was then a fever of commercial speculation pre- 
 luding to the " crash " of 1826. Young Disraeli had 
 connected himself with, and had written pamphlets 
 for, "at least one financing firm in the City, that of 
 Messrs. Powles." l Next, he, by his magical tongue, 
 actually induced Mr. Murray to join these eminent 
 capitalists, Mr. Powles and Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, 
 in starting a magnificent new daily paper (Aug. 3, 
 1825). 2 An editor, or at least an adviser, being 
 wanted, Mr. Disraeli was sent to Scotland to con- 
 sult Sir Walter, and to secure Lockhart if possible. 3 
 Mr. Disraeli's advent, and descent on Chiefswood, 
 were heralded or accompanied by a letter from Mr. 
 Wright. In this letter of September 12, Wright, 
 by Murray's wish, suggests the place of superinten- 
 dent of the new paper. He believes that Canning 
 wishes Lockhart to accept. He thanks Lockhart 
 and Scott for kindness to himself in Edinburgh. 
 He introduces " Mr. Disraeli," not Mr. Benjamin 
 Disraeli. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli went to Scotland, and arranged 
 with Murray a code of counterfeit names, and so 
 forth, as if a Jameson conspiracy was toward ! Of 
 course, in his letters all these veils are neglected or 
 withdrawn. Lockhart, so far, was, as he himself 
 says in a note to Disraeli, "perfectly in the dark" 
 
 1 " Memoir of John Murray," ii. 185. 2 Ibid, ii. 186. 
 
 3 William Wright to J. G. Lockhart, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's 
 Inn ; September 12, 1825.
 
 "DIZZY" 365 
 
 as to the purpose of his visit ; l indeed he supposed 
 that Isaac D'Israeli, the well-known author, the 
 father of Benjamin, was to be his guest. His 
 natural reserve, as D'Israeli tells Murray, was not 
 diminished by his surprise at beholding a fair young 
 Hebrew boy. However, they soon " understood 
 each other " (which perhaps they did not) ; Lockhart 
 objecting, none the less, first, to leave Edinburgh 
 without "ostensible purpose" ; next, "to the loss of 
 caste in society by so doing" that is, I presume, 
 by editing a newspaper. Scott took the same 
 view, and Dizzy talked about Lockhart's not being 
 a newspaper editor, but " Director General of an 
 immense organ." " With regard to other plans of 
 ours we should find him invaluable. I have a most 
 singular and secret history on this subject when we 
 meet." Mystery ! 
 
 If any one hazards the conjecture (which I have 
 heard whispered), that by this reference to "other 
 plans," and " secret history," Mr. Disraeli meant 
 a suggestion by Scott that Lockhart should sup- 
 plant Mr. Coleridge in the Quarterly, it may be 
 answered that neither Lockhart nor Sir Walter, 
 in their letters to Mr. Murray of October 7 and 
 October 12, mention the Quarterly scheme at all. 
 Both merely protest against what Lockhart calls 
 " the impossibility of my ever entering into the 
 career of London in the capacity of a newspaper 
 editor. ... If such a game ought to be played, 
 
 1 " Memoir of John Murray," ii. 190. * Ibid., ii. 192.
 
 366 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 I am neither young enough nor poor enough to 
 be the man that takes the hazard." On October 
 12, Sir Walter wrote to Mr. Murray about "the 
 plan which you have had the kindness to submit 
 to Lockhart. ... I cannot conceive it advisable 
 that he should leave Scotland on the speculation 
 of becoming editor of a newspaper." He then 
 speaks of Lockhart's "views" in Scotland as 
 " moderate but certain," and adds that Lockhart 
 " meets your wishes by going up to town." 
 
 Not a word about the Quarterly. The Quar- 
 terly is first heard of, and then only by way of 
 the past history of a project of Mr. Wright's, in 
 a letter from that gentleman : x 
 
 " I saw Murray soon after my return from 
 Edinburgh. We conversed on the subject of 
 the Quarterly Review. He disapproved of his 
 Editor, and I recommended, and he approved of 
 you, and I was desired to write on the subject ; 
 but afterwards I was desired to suspend for a 
 while my communication. For the newspaper 
 business I did not recommend you as fit ; but on 
 being asked as to your fitness and inclinations, 
 I stated my belief in your fitness, accompanied 
 with strong observations as to its unsuitableness 
 to your rank and feelings, and I believe Mr. 
 Canning, on being spoken to by Mr. Ellice, said 
 
 1 William Wright to J. G. Lockhart, 6 Stone Buildings, Lincoln's 
 Inn ; October 3, 1825.
 
 WRIGHT'S LETTER 367 
 
 you could come as Editor of the Quarterly, but 
 not as editor of a newspaper, or at least as known 
 and reputed editor. I told Disraeli before he 
 left he had a very delicate mission, and that 
 though my rank in life was different to your 
 own, having no relations whose feelings could 
 be wounded by my accepting any honest employ- 
 ment, I should not receive an offer of the editor- 
 ship of a newspaper as a compliment to my feelings 
 as a barrister and a gentleman, however compli- 
 mentary it might be as to my talents. In short, 
 I enter entirely into your feelings on this head, 
 and we think alike, for, whatever our friend 
 Disraeli may say or flourish on this subject, your 
 accepting of the editorship of a newspaper would 
 be infra dig., and a losing of caste ; but not so, 
 as I think, the accepting of the editorship of the 
 Quarterly Review. . . . Murray will in his letter, 
 I presume, offer you the Quarterly, but as to 
 bargaining, and making your contract certain and 
 available, when you have agreed on general prin- 
 ciples, you may, I think, trust that to me ; and 
 though I should like you for a neighbour, weigh 
 all things well, and let not haste cause you 
 to overrun your discretion and so bar judgment. 
 An editor of a Review like the Quarterly is 
 the office of a scholar and a gentleman ; but that 
 of a newspaper is not, for a newspaper is merely 
 stock-in-trade, to be used as it can be turned to 
 most profit. And there is something in it (when
 
 368 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Disraeli has gilded and adorned it with his new 
 notions as much as he can) that is repugnant to 
 the feelings of a gentleman. ... If you think of 
 accepting Murray's proposals in any shape, leave 
 all particulars to discussion and arrangement after 
 you come to London, and let us talk the matter 
 over first for a few hours ourselves. 1 
 
 " Disraeli, who is with you, I have not seen much 
 of, but I believe he is a sensible, clever young 
 fellow. His judgment, however, wants settling down. 
 He has never had to struggle with a single diffi- 
 culty, nor been called on to act in any affairs in 
 which his mind has been necessarily forced to decide 
 and choose in difficult situations. At present his 
 chief exertions as to matters of decision have been 
 with regard to the selection of his food, his enjoy- 
 ment, and his clothing, and though he is honest, 
 and, I take it, wiser than his father, he is inexperi- 
 enced and untried in the world, and of course 
 though you may, I believe, safely trust to his 
 integrity, you cannot prudently trust much to his 
 judgment. 
 
 " Sir Walter was so good as to promise me a little 
 dog. Has he such a thing for me ? If so, our 
 friend Constable promised to take care of it for 
 me. I believe you were thought of for the news- 
 paper from what had passed as to the Review, and 
 the conversations about you were between Ellice 
 
 1 The lines omitted contain a criticism of Mr. Murray, conjectural, 
 and probably baseless.
 
 THE "QUARTERLY" 369 
 
 and Canning, and, I think, not between Murray 
 and Canning directly. I am, dear Lockhart, yours 
 most truly, WILLIAM WRIGHT." 
 
 Here then, in the letter from Mr. Wright, which 
 first hinted (as Scott says in \\\sjournal) at the pos- 
 sibility of Lockhart's appointment to the Quarterly, 
 we have all that is known to the compiler as to the 
 origin of that appointment. Mr. Murray " dis- 
 approved" of his Editor, Mr. Coleridge, which 
 probably means that he did not regard so success- 
 ful a barrister as likely to be permanent successor 
 to Gifford. Mr. Wright suggested Lockhart's 
 name, and Murray liked the idea. For reasons 
 which will become apparent later, it is improbable 
 that Canning had any concern in the matter. Lock- 
 hart went up to town, and on October 13 Mr. 
 Murray wrote to Scott, that, "to obviate any diffi- 
 culties which have been urged, I have proposed to 
 Mr. Lockhart to come to London as the Editor of 
 the Quarterly, also as adviser about the newspaper, 
 and about literary undertakings in general." 1 
 
 The deeds between Mr. Murray and Lockhart as 
 to the Quarterly and the newspaper, were signed 
 and sealed on October 20, 1825. 
 
 All now seemed to be settled ; but apparently 
 about November 15-17, young Disraeli was sent 
 down again to tell Sir Walter that objections to 
 Lockhart were raised, by some of the Quarterly 
 
 1 "Memoir of John Murray," ii. 199. 
 VOL. I. 2 A
 
 370 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 writers, on the old Blackwood score. Scott replied 
 to Murray at length, on November 17, 1825; and 
 on November 21, Mr. Disraeli, who had returned 
 to town, wrote to Lockhart. Murray " has spoken 
 to Coleridge " (that is, John Taylor Coleridge, 
 Editor of the Quarterly), " and nothing could 
 go off better. It is perfectly settled." But poor 
 Mr. Disraeli himself is in great disgrace. He 
 ought, it seems, to have mentioned the matter of 
 the objections, not to Lockhart, but only to Sir 
 Walter. However, in a couple of days Mr. 
 Disraeli congratulates himself and Lockhart that 
 all is well, and that "while Mr. Murray has cash in 
 his pockets and blood in his veins, he stands by 
 John Gibson Lockhart even unto the death." x 
 Nothing can be more eloquent! Mr. Murray, 
 writing on November 23, was equally explicit, but 
 less ornate ; or not so much less ornate after all. 
 " Heaven and earth may pass away, but it (sic) 
 cannot shake my opinion." 2 By December 2, Mr. 
 Murray wrote about Lockhart's arrangements as 
 to coming permanently to London. Lockhart had 
 written to him, on November 19, as to the objec- 
 tions urged against him. 3 Thus, after being firmly 
 fixed by the deed of October 20, 1825, the appoint- 
 ment had been, as far as such a covenant could be, 
 imperilled by the opposition of several old Quarterly 
 
 1 Scott's " Letters," il 414. * Ibid., ii. 415. 
 
 8 The letters are in " Memoir of John Murray," ii. 219, 230, and in 
 the Appendix to Scott's " Letters."
 
 LOCKHART MADE EDITOR 371 
 
 Reviewers, such as Rose, Barrow, apparently Croker, 
 and the junta in the Admiralty, whom Murray does 
 not seem to have consulted. Few things could 
 be more unsatisfactory. At length, in December, 
 everything was settled. 
 
 The circumstances of Lockhart's accession to the 
 Quarterly chair were, according to Scott, unem- 
 barrassed by any doubt as to Mr. Coleridge's 
 position. "He put the question as to whether Mr. 
 Coleridge's retiring was a thing determined on, and 
 he received a positive answer in the affirmative. . . . 
 I have only to add that Mr. Coleridge has most 
 handsomely offered to continue his support to the 
 Review, by the contribution of articles, a circum- 
 stance which is valuable of itself, and will be most 
 grateful to Lockhart's feelings." Sir Walter also 
 thanks Southey for his own promise, in spite of his 
 dissatisfaction, to continue his support by way of 
 articles. He was a contributor till 1839. 
 
 Of Mr. Coleridge, so suddenly superseded in his 
 editorial position, it must be repeated that he dis- 
 played the perfection of conduct in a very trying 
 situation. 
 
 How, or why, or by whom Lockhart was selected 
 as Editor of the Quarterly, unless it was by Mr. 
 Murray's mere motion on Wright's suggestion, I 
 am unable to say. The Blackwood stories were 
 against him ; he had done nothing serious in 
 political writing ; he was known, in letters, merely 
 
 1 To Southey, November 28. ** Letters," ii. 377.
 
 372 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 as a scholar, a translator, an editor of " Don 
 Quixote," and as a novelist. Moreover, the original 
 idea was to make him a kind of general adviser, 
 and occasional writer of political essays, in the 
 magnificent organ projected by that young capitalist 
 Mr. Benjamin Disraeli. Being at once eager about 
 his newspaper, and uneasy about his Editor's (Mr. 
 Coleridge's) professional work at the Bar, Mr. 
 Murray was probably taken by what he saw of 
 Lockhart, and it is obvious enough that he did not 
 consult Southey, or Barrow, or Rose, or others of 
 his usual associates, till he had signed and sealed 
 the deed appointing Lockhart to the Review. 
 
 The nature of Lockhart's new duties is set forth 
 in two legal documents of October 20. He is to edit 
 the Quarterly, " and otherwise assist in the publish- 
 ing business." For this he was to receive (for three 
 years) ^250 a quarter, or, if five numbers of the 
 Review were published, ^1250 per annum. William 
 Wright and B. Disraeli witnessed the deed. 
 
 The second deed stipulated that for " hints and 
 advice," and occasional articles in the contemplated 
 newspaper, Mr. Murray should pay Lockhart ^1500 
 a year. In case Lockhart prefers to exchange this 
 salary for a share in the paper, that transaction is 
 regulated by certain stipulations. Mr. Murray seals 
 with a griffin, rampant ; Lockhart's seal is not his 
 crest or coat armour, but a profile of Byron, pro- 
 bably a seal lent by Mr. Murray. Byron, in his 
 letters, says that this work of art makes him look
 
 DOUBTS OF CONSTABLE 373 
 
 like a negro. Lockhart's functions were obviously 
 vague ; a newspaper editor he was not, nor was he 
 qualified for that truly arduous and thankless life of 
 laborious days and sleepless nights. 
 
 When all was finally settled, or even before, Sir 
 Walter advised Lockhart to "take devilish good 
 care of your start in society in London." Especially 
 he was counselled not "to haunt Theodore Hook 
 much. . . . He is raffish, entre nous." Again, 
 "You will have great temptation to drop into the 
 gown and slipper garb of life," which Sir Walter 
 hated with a righteous hatred, "and live with funny, 
 easy companions," such as Theodore Hook and 
 Maginn. It is one of the contradictions in Lock- 
 hart's character that, with a great deal of apparent 
 "Hidalgo airs," he did take pleasure in "funny, 
 easy companions." But society in general went far 
 beyond him in a passion for the company of Theo- 
 dore Hook by all reports, a fellow of infinite fancy, 
 whereof the sparkle is dead long ago. 
 
 Commercial affairs now looked ominous in London. 
 Lockhart heard, in mid November, disquieting 
 rumours, which he communicated to Scott, who 
 replied in a long letter, setting forth his grounds 
 of confidence in Constable's house. 1 
 
 On Lockhart's return to Chiefswood, Mr. Wright 
 (who witnessed the deeds of October 20) informed 
 him, by letter, of a report (unfounded in fact) that 
 "Constable's banker had thrown up his book." 
 
 1 Lockhart refers to this in the " Life," viii. 83.
 
 374 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Lockhart rode over to Abbotsford with the news. 
 Scott made light of it, but next morning Lockhart 
 found Scott's carriage at his door, and Sir Walter 
 feeding the ducklings, with little Johnnie. He had 
 driven to Polton, seen Constable, been reassured, 
 and had driven back again. Then for the first time 
 Lockhart suspected that Scott was deeply concerned 
 in the fortunes of Constable. " The night journey 
 suggested serious alarm," the more as the rumour 
 sent previously by Lockhart from London had been 
 of a very grave nature. Yet both reports were " such 
 refraction of events as often rises ere they rise," and, 
 in actual fact, baseless. 
 
 It is at this time that Scott (Nov. 23) " bespeaks " 
 Mrs. Hughes' "affection for Lockhart," an affection 
 which never failed him. " I know you will love and 
 understand him, but he is not easy to be known or 
 to be appreciated as he so well deserves, at first; 
 he shrinks at a first touch ; but take a good hard 
 hammer (it need not be a sledge one), break the 
 shell, and the kernel will repay you. Under a cold 
 exterior Lockhart conceals the warmest affections, 
 and where he once professes regard he never 
 changes. ..." He never did change loyal him- 
 self where he loved, and a centre of loyalty in 
 others. 
 
 So Scott wrote November 23, but apparently did 
 not post his letter at once. On December 5 he told 
 his son Walter about the Bonspiel, or farewell dinner 
 to Lockhart. " About fifty people were present
 
 THE SHEPHERD 375 
 
 Solicitor-General, preses ; Dundas of Arniston, 
 croupier ; and much wine shed. Many songs and 
 speeches to the honour and glory of the said Don 
 Giovanni, who fell asleep in his chair, about one in 
 the morning, to the sound of his own praises. ..." 
 
 Scott, on the same 5th of December, finished his 
 letter of November 23 to Mrs. Hughes, expressing 
 his fear of spine-complaint in little Johnnie, a 
 forecast verified too soon. On December 5 the 
 Lockharts left Abbotsford for London, "without 
 any formal adieus, for which I thank them. They 
 were off before daybreak." Scott then recommends 
 Mrs. Lockhart to the maternal kindness of Mrs. 
 Hughes, who gave all her affection, as Sir Walter 
 had hoped. The family occupied a house in Pall 
 Mall, though Mr. Murray had offered his hospitality. 
 Probably they did not care to bring an ailing child 
 under Mr. Murray's roof. 
 
 A little needful cheer is given to the exiles by 
 a letter from Scott on Hogg, in which I make a 
 few omissions. The story has been told before, but 
 here is the original version. 
 
 " Hogg of the mountains made a descent this 
 morning, perhaps in order to make a Bardic conven- 
 tion 'of huz Tividale poets,' and brought with him 
 Thompson the song-making, not 'psalm-singing, 
 weaver' of Galashiels. This was rather cool on 
 the said Hogg's part, but Thompson is a good enough 
 fellow, so it all went off well. Talking of Moore, or 
 according to his mode of accentuation Muir, Hogg
 
 376 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 said his songs were ' written wi' ower muckle melody 
 they gied him,' he said, 'a staw^ of sweetness.' 
 'Aye,' said Thompson, 'his notes are ower sweetly 
 strung.' ' Na, na,' said the partner, 'ma ain notes 
 are just right strung, and it's his that are clean ower 
 artificial.' Don't you think you hear this ? I thought 
 Lady Anne would have spoken, but, thank God, she 
 gave a gulp and was silent. After all, Hogg is 
 kindly, very grateful to you." 
 
 By a rather high-handed act of editorial authority, 
 though under strong temptation, Lockhart had en- 
 gaged Sir Walter to write on Mr. Pepys' Journals, 
 then newly published. Mr. Hughes, by Mr. Cole- 
 ridge's desire, had already begun a review. 2 Sir 
 Walter's, however, occupies the first place in Lock- 
 hart's first number. The last article in the number 
 was on Moore's and other books about Sheridan. 
 Sir Walter writes : 
 
 "EDINBURGH, loth December 1825. 
 
 " MY DEAR LOCKHART, I had your letter this 
 morning, and observe with great pleasure that you 
 are settled, or in the act of being so. It is better 
 you have got a good house, for there is scarce 
 anything in London so necessary to comfort and 
 credit. . . . 
 
 1 Satiety. 
 
 2 Mr. Murray, however, writes, " Mr. Croker has given up the 
 4 Pepys' Papers,' and Mr. Bankes, the Member for Cambridge, wrote 
 to undertake them a few days ago. Of course you will induce Sir 
 Walter to persist in his kind intentions." November 23, " Scott's 
 Letters," ii. 415.
 
 MOORE'S "SHERIDAN" 377 
 
 " I observe, with very great interest, what you say 
 concerning Tom Moore and Sheridan. It will be one 
 of the most noble opportunities for an opening and 
 leading article which you could have had. You will, 
 I know, give Tom his full merits, and treat him with 
 that sort of liberality which may show that the cen- 
 sure which you bestow comes out of no narrow party 
 feeling, but is called forth by the occasion. I would 
 have you take an opportunity to consider briefly his 
 poetical rank. He may be considered as reformed 
 in the point of his Erotiques, and I would not rake 
 up old sins. There is one especial reason for can- 
 dour in respect to his merits, because in order to 
 blame him (which there is every reason for doing) 
 for lending himself to circulate calumnies respecting 
 the King, you must show that you are neither an 
 enemy of genius, nor the tool of a party. I am 
 aware that high-flying Tories will not be pleased 
 with this. Nevertheless, fair pleading is the real 
 way to serve a good cause. If a critic were to 
 begin by treating Moore as a passing singing poet 
 of the boudoir, whose works were to be considered 
 as trifles or worse, and then to bring a charge of 
 calumny against him, it would be blending falsehood 
 with truth in such a manner that your argument 
 would lose the benefit of the one, without gaining 
 any credit from the other. Everybody will be 
 sensible that the frivolity is not proved because the 
 critic cries trifler, and will therefore argue that the 
 calumny is as little proved when he cries slander.
 
 378 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 ' A critic was of old a glorious name, 
 Whose sanction handed merit up to fame ; 
 Beauties as well as faults he brought to view ; 
 His judgment great, and great his candour too.' 
 
 "Constable goes up to town in next week to 
 launch his ' Miscellany,' by which I have no doubt 
 he will make a great deal of money. . . . 
 
 " When I read your letter, I missed an important 
 fact, videlicet, that the article on Tom Moore is not 
 to be yours. I am very, very sorry for it. I do 
 not like Croker's style in such things in the least ; 
 he is a smart skirmisher, but wants altogether the 
 depth of thought and nobleness of mind where the 
 character of a sovereign is to be treated. If you 
 can get it into your own hands, or can modify this 
 article your own way, I shall be much better pleased. 
 He blunders about his facts too, and indeed will 
 never be more than a very clever confused sort of 
 genius. Yours always, WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " The more I think of Moore's article the more I 
 wish you would do it yourself. At any rate, let no 
 condescension to Croker or any one else prevent 
 you from shaping it your own way. I foresee from 
 your natural modesty of nature you will have diffi- 
 culty in ruling your contributors, but you must in 
 some cases be absolute." 
 
 About Lockhart's management of the Quarterly 
 Review as a political organ, I have little to say.
 
 EDITORIAL SORROWS 379 
 
 I do not enjoy access to the archives of Albemarle 
 Street, and any occasional information about the 
 political conduct of the Quarterly which may be 
 found in private letters, belongs rather to the 
 history of Mr. Murray's house than to that of 
 Lockhart. It is, therefore, a subject on which I 
 do not intend to trespass. As to Lockhart's rela- 
 tions with Mr. Murray during nearly thirty years, 
 it must be said, once for all, that they were not 
 invariably smooth, as it was hardly probable that 
 they could be. Mr. Murray himself, of course, 
 took a very lively interest in his own periodical, so 
 did Mr. Croker, and many other old contributors, 
 and official persons. Hence it came that Lockhart, 
 on occasion, expressed dissatisfaction with "inter- 
 ferences." I offer an example, as it is already 
 published, and violates no confidences. One or two 
 other cases occur later. Southey reviewed what 
 he calls " Hallam's essence of Whig vinegar," his 
 "Constitutional History," published by Mr. Murray. 
 On reading the critique, Mr. Hallam wrote to Mr. 
 Murray (June 27, 1828), "protesting against the 
 pique of Southey and the hostility of the Editor " 
 Lockhart. Murray answered, with spirit, that 
 books published by himself should be reviewed with 
 fairness. "I do not mean to offer the slightest 
 apology for the appearance of the article, because 
 I am conscious that I have nothing personally to 
 do with it. . . ."' 
 
 1 "Memoir of John Murray," ii. 264.
 
 3 8o LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Turn we to Southey's correspondences (February 
 23, 1828): "There is a large interpolation in my 
 reviewal of Hallam's book, all that relates to 
 Cromwell, the Whigs of Charles II.'s reign, and 
 William III. Some friend of Murray's (Edwards, 
 I believe, is the name) is the author, and some 
 tender consideration of Murray for Hallam, extra- 
 ordinary as it may seem, gave rise to the insertion. 
 It was sent to me in slips . . . for my sanction, 
 with a letter from Murray, and another from 
 Lockhart, who, I believe, was a good deal annoyed 
 by Murray's qualms on the occasion. . . ." 
 
 This is a very fair example of an editor's fracas- 
 series. His publisher puts out a book ; Southey 
 reviews it, more suo; Lockhart (according to 
 Southey), approves ; Murray has a huge essential 
 interpolation made in Hallam's interest, and, after 
 all, the author of the book, Mr. Hallam, complains ! 
 
 Thus it may be guessed that many circumstances, 
 many interests, trammelled and troubled Lockhart 
 in his new office. On the whole, it seems very 
 desirable that the proprietor of a serial should 
 either be his own editor, as Mr. Blackwood was, 
 with irresponsible assistants ; or that he and his 
 friends should leave a responsible editor entirely 
 alone. The former set of conditions is the more 
 readily secured. In neither set did Lockhart find 
 himself. He was not, as Editor, entirely his own 
 master. 
 
 Though it is not easy to say what precise situa-
 
 LOCKHART AND MURRAY 381 
 
 tion in life would have been best fitted for Lockhart, 
 and would have most potently disengaged the full 
 force of his faculties, I cannot think that the 
 Editorship of the Quarterly was that situation. 
 It bound him to a task, and to a task much 
 thwarted by many influences from without. To 
 edit a Review now, may be, for all that one can 
 guess, a light occupation of elegant leisure. In 
 Lockhart's days it demanded incessant intercourse 
 with people in power, and perhaps a good deal 
 of what is called "lobbying." Croker would bring 
 "the whisper from the throne," and be tedious 
 about "his Royal friend." Enormous importance 
 was attached to the affairs of the Edinburgh 
 and the Quarterly, when newspapers were small, 
 not numerous, and not "respectable." The deed 
 of appointment speaks of Lockhart's "labours," 
 and the word was then appropriate. There were 
 endless consultations, correspondence, suggestions, 
 people to be satisfied or conciliated. Lockhart 
 also acted, occasionally, as a literary adviser to 
 Mr. Murray. 
 
 To a very proud man I do not think that the 
 whole position could be agreeable. Personally he and 
 Mr. Murray, and Mr. Murray's son and successor, 
 remained, throughout life, on the best of terms. 
 I find, in his correspondence, none of Southey's 
 incessant mutineering and ddnigrement of Murray ; 
 and financially, I understand that Lockhart was 
 treated with perhaps unexampled liberality. Still,
 
 382 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 as people talked of "Bacon's man" and "Bun- 
 gay's man " (in " Pendennis "), I doubt not that 
 they spoke of Lockhart as " Murray's man," and 
 the situation could never have been wholly con- 
 genial. It had great advantages ; society, literary 
 or political or "society" simply was open to 
 Lockhart. His occupation was with letters, which 
 he loved. Power he had, if not absolute power. 
 Leisure enough he possessed for the writing of his 
 great biography, his own monument as well as Sir 
 Walter's. In all this there was much to envy, and 
 much that was envied by many. But in London 
 Lockhart was transplanted from the scenes and the 
 friends most dear to him, though he now had the 
 company of Christie. For social intercourse on a 
 great scale he never, perhaps, cared much, though 
 he played his part in it, and, finally, he ceased to 
 concern himself with crowds. My impression, de- 
 rived from his letter to Hay don, is that he did not 
 always feel sufficiently independent, enough "his 
 own man." But this sentiment may have come 
 upon him in his later years of bereavement and 
 regret. He soon gave up his hopes of political 
 patronage, as we shall see ; he soon resigned himself 
 to the neglect of his party, and devoted himself to 
 editing, reading proofs, reading manuscripts, steering 
 the Quarterly among the passions of contributors, a 
 fierce generation. Lockhart's one great work, his 
 biography of Scott, was dictated (like his toilsome 
 editorship of Scott's works) by a sense of duty ; the
 
 LOCKHARTS POSITION 383 
 
 profits went towards the extinction of Sir Walter's 
 debts. 1 Other ambitions he ceased to cherish. I 
 would not represent him as dissatisfied and dis- 
 contented : rather he was resigned. In the interests 
 of his family and its fortunes he had obtained 
 probably the most desirable of literary positions. 
 He was not a recluse, like Southey or Wordsworth. 
 But there was more in him, more of genius and 
 power, than ever found full and free expression ; he 
 never realised all his energies, and not to do so is 
 not to be happy, even as far as happiness is meant 
 for mortals. Yet I know not with what occupation 
 he could have been better fitted. It was not Lock- 
 hart who lamented his destiny ; but a student of his 
 life feels that, in his case, there was " something in 
 the world amiss." For Lockhart leaves, on a mind 
 long and closely occupied with him, an impression 
 as of thwarted force, of a genius that never com- 
 pletely found its proper path. In life, and in 
 literary history, such foiled energies are not un- 
 common. That Lockhart was expected by Scott 
 to do very great things is certain ; on him the living 
 personality made that impression to which, here 
 and there, a reader may still be sensitive. But his 
 greatest work by far Lockhart was to lay, where all 
 of him that was mortal, by his own desire, was laid, 
 "at the feet of Sir Walter Scott." 
 
 1 I gather, from a letter of Mr. Cadell's.'that Lockhart received a 
 considerable fee from the trustees.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LONDON, 1826 
 
 Sorrows of 1826. Failure of Murray's newspaper. Scott's ruin. 
 Illness of Hugh Littlejohn. Illness of Mrs. Lockhart. Illness 
 of Lady Scott. Constable in London. " Dear me, Archy ! " 
 "A mad proposal." Cadell preferred to Constable. Constable 
 abandons hope. Mr. Thomas Constable's criticism. Its futility. 
 Lockhart on Scott's trading enterprises. Sir Walter on James 
 Ballantyne. Defence of Lockhart against Constable's biographer. 
 Ruin always inevitable. Scott's resolve. " Firm as Eildon 
 Hill." Letters to Lockhart. Malagrowther. Political predic- 
 tions. Illness and death of Lady Scott. Letters from Sir 
 Walter. Reviews for the Quarterly. Disappointments. Scott 
 in London. A year of misery. Lockhart on novels. 
 
 To Lockhart's ultimate frame of mind content 
 with his daily task, and patience under the impla- 
 cable assaults of fortune the events of the year 
 on which we now enter, namely, 1826, probably 
 contributed their full share. At this period, and 
 indeed generally, while Sir Walter lived, Lockhart's 
 career cannot well be contemplated or chronicled 
 apart from that of his father-in-law. For this 
 reason, and because Lockhart's own letters at this 
 date are so scarce, I must ask permission to insert 
 in this chapter some unpublished letters of Scott's. 
 These often indicate, better than any other acces- 
 sible materials, what was passing under Lockhart's 
 
 384
 
 SORROWS 385 
 
 roof. That he was editing the Quarterly, of course 
 we know, and need not perpetually refer to his 
 business in detail. In a later chapter ample evi- 
 dence will be given as to Lockhart's genial and 
 humorous correspondence with a contributor after 
 his own heart. At present we are to consider 
 his private anxieties and regrets. 
 
 The year 1826 was laden with misfortunes for 
 Lockhart and those dearest to him. First, and 
 to him least important, came the total failure from 
 its very beginning of the " organ " whence he had 
 expected to draw a great part of his income. 
 Then arrived, about January 17, the news of Sir 
 Walter's financial ruin, and shortly after came 
 the opinion of the physicians, that poor Master 
 Hugh Littlejohn really had a disease of the spine, 
 and must be removed to Brighton. Anxiety was 
 increased by the condition of Mrs. Lockhart, who, 
 somewhat prematurely, gave birth in spring to a 
 son, christened Walter. Meanwhile, in Scotland, 
 the health of Lady Scott was undermined, and 
 the worst was feared. Even the Shakespeare on 
 which Lockhart had laboured, went down and 
 practically vanished in the wreck of Constable's 
 house. Thus ill tidings pressed hard upon ill 
 tidings, and a new career, in a new society, could 
 not have been more inauspiciously begun. The 
 bad omens, moreover, were fulfilled, for few years 
 henceforth ran their course without bringing to 
 Lockhart a stab or a blow from destiny. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 B
 
 386 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 About Mr. Murray's newspaper, christened by 
 Mr. Disraeli the Representative, the story has been 
 told in the " Memoir of John Murray," and needs 
 but brief summary. As soon as things came to 
 the point, these ardent capitalists, Mr. Benjamin 
 Disraeli and Mr. Powles, were no longer seen or 
 heard of in this enterprise. Mr. Murray had 
 already spent much money, and made many 
 arrangements, but he had no editor ! Practically, 
 he never had an editor. Mr. S. C. Hall has left 
 a few anecdotes of the forlorn, bewildered journal, 
 staggering about "in worlds not realised," now 
 perhaps decorated with an "academic" political 
 essay by Lockhart, now discredited by what Scott 
 called some "genteel-blackguard, touch and go" 
 effusion of Maginn's. That Irish wit, after writing 
 much in Blackwood, under the names of "O'Doherty," 
 and "Olinthus Petre," and so forth, joined the 
 Representative as Paris correspondent, and after- 
 wards was attached to the editorial staff (if the 
 words "staff" and "editorial" are appropriate) in 
 London. "Had there been no other morning 
 paper, the Representative might have succeeded," 
 says Dr. Smiles ; but really, even if no rival had 
 existed, its chances appear to have been very 
 dubious. On February 7, 1826, Lockhart wrote 
 to condole with Mr. Murray on the melancholy 
 estate of the " organ " : " That I should have been 
 in any measure accessory to bringing you into the 
 present situation weighs, I assure you, more heavily
 
 CONSTABLE'S FAILURE 387 
 
 on my spirits than even the mass of domestic 
 melancholy by which I am surrounded. ... I 
 hope you have never for a moment supposed it 
 possible that I should add to your embarrass- 
 ments by being willing to touch unearned gold. 
 The Quarterly Review, I think, promises well. 
 Let us hope for better days. . . . M1 
 
 We need not follow the Representative to its 
 grave. The child of Mr. Disraeli's boyish fancy, it 
 was never duly organised, never edited by a prac- 
 tical man : the Tories, in these times, seem to have 
 been incapable of finding or buying an editor. The 
 "organ" expired on July 29, 1826, entailing, if not 
 ''dishonour," certainly "infinite loss." Mr. Murray 
 " returned," as he said, "to reason and the shop." 
 
 In Edinburgh the cloud which had begun to 
 gather in mid- November was, in January, already 
 darkening all the sky. Constable left Edinburgh 
 for London on January 13. It is no longer of im- 
 portance to ask whether he should have started 
 a fortnight earlier, whether he was delayed by his 
 health, whether he could have availed to stave off 
 ruin if he had come to town with the New Year, 
 and so on. Constable's purpose, of course, was to 
 raise money, by selling copyrights or otherwise, so 
 as to meet the demands on his allies, Hurst and 
 Robinson. Lockhart was made " privy to all " by 
 Constable. These few words, and a similar passage 
 written by Constable " under harassed feelings," 
 
 1 " Memoir of John Murray," ii. 212.
 
 3 88 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 on January 18, 1826, represent from his side the 
 strange scenes and proposals described by Lock- 
 hart. 1 "It was then," says Lockhart, "that I, for 
 the first time, saw full swing given to the tyrannical 
 temper of 'the Czar.' ... I will not repeat his 
 haughty ravings of scorn and wrath. I listened to 
 them with wonder and commiseration. . . ." 2 In 
 Mr. Constable's Memoir, by his son Thomas, we 
 are informed that " though passionate and irritable, 
 if any one who understood his nature had patted him 
 gently on the shoulder, and said, ' Dear me, Archy, 
 what is all this about ? ' you would see the usual 
 kind and benignant smile return in an instant." 3 
 Perhaps, indeed certainly, Lockhart did not suffi- 
 ciently understand Constable's nature, for he ab- 
 stained from patting him gently on the shoulder, 
 and saying, " Dear me, Archy ! " 
 
 Concerning the excited manner of the publisher, 
 on occasion, at this distressing moment in his 
 fortunes, unpublished letters of Sir Walter to Lock- 
 hart entirely corroborate Lockhart's own statements. 
 As Lockhart says, and as Constable's letter of 
 January 18, 1826, agrees, the publisher wished 
 Scott " to join, as additional cover, to the amount 
 of .20,000." * Lockhart had already left Con- 
 
 1 "Archibald Constable," iii. 418. " Life of Scott," viii. 174-178. 
 
 2 Constable, January 17, describes himself as "nearly unfitted for 
 business." 
 
 3 " Archibald Constable," iii. 464. 
 
 4 Ibid., iii. 418. The date of the letter, by an error of the press, 
 is given as January 18, 1825.
 
 CONSTABLE'S STRUGGLES 3 9 
 
 stable once "in stern indignation" after declining 
 to take a wild financial step in a matter where he 
 had no right and no power to interfere. There 
 was "another scene," when Constable wished 
 Lockhart " to back his application to Sir Walter to 
 borrow ,20,000 in Edinburgh, and transmit it to 
 him in London. I promised nothing but to acquaint 
 Scott immediately with his request, and him with 
 Scott's answer. Sir Walter had, ere the message 
 reached him, been made aware that his advances 
 had already been continued in the absence of all 
 ground for rational hope." 
 
 Lockhart 's opinion as to this " mad proposal " of 
 Constable's is unconcealed. When Constable and 
 his partner, Cadell, separated, Sir Walter held by 
 Cadell, because he had lost confidence in Constable. 
 " And he had lost confidence," says Lockhart, 
 "especially because of the invitations to borrow 
 large sums of money for his support after all chance 
 of recovery was over." By acting as Constable 
 desired, in a mood and moment of great excitement, 
 Sir Walter would have thrown good money &s 
 alienum too after bad. 
 
 This was Lockhart 's opinion, and this, to myself, 
 seems plain on Constable's own account, written on 
 January 19, 1826. "Hurst, Robinson & Co. have 
 not succeeded" (in raising money) "to the extent 
 necessary r , and therefore the plan is at an end ; they 
 could have got to one half of the amount, which 
 would not be at all what would have done the
 
 390 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 deed." 1 Now we know the amount for which Hurst 
 and Robinson failed, dragging down Constable with 
 them. And we know that if Scott had borrowed 
 ,20,000, as he was asked to do by Constable, the 
 sum would not "have done the deed" and saved 
 the two firms. The biographer of Mr. Constable, 
 however, writes : " Had Sir Walter Scott agreed to 
 the guarantee suggested by my father, his " (Scott's) 
 " creditors would not indeed have received more than 
 the twenty shillings in the pound which he honour- 
 ably paid them ; but those of Constable & Co. 
 might have had good cause to differ from Mr. 
 Lockhart as to the insanity or soundness of the 
 suggestion." 1 How this could have happened, if 
 the ; 20,000 demanded by Constable from Sir 
 Walter was totally insufficient "to do the deed," 
 I am unable to conceive. 
 
 Constable's proposal, that Sir Walter should raise 
 .20,000, being written in London on January 17, 
 could not reach Mr. Cadell in Edinburgh till the 
 evening of January 19. By that time Mr. Con- 
 stable had abandoned hope of raising the money, 
 and was leaving town. He reached his home on 
 January 22, and had thrown up the game before 
 Sir Walter could have accepted the "mad proposal," 
 had he wished to do so. Obviously nothing that 
 Scott might have done, could have saved Constable, 
 and Constable recognised the fact. 
 
 This proposal of Constable's may, among other 
 
 1 "Archibald Constable," iii. 421. 2 Ibid., iii. 430.
 
 LOCKH ART'S SURPRISE 391 
 
 causes, have induced Lockhart, in his " Life of 
 Scott," to adopt a tone towards the publisher which 
 cannot always be defended, which must be regretted. 
 But that is a matter apart from the soundness of 
 Constable's suggestion about Scott's raising more 
 money, and from the wisdom of the hypothesis, 
 that had Scott agreed to the plan the firm might 
 have been saved ! These two ideas appear to be 
 absolutely untenable. 1 
 
 Throughout this dark month of January, Lockhart 
 was in frequent communication with Scott, apprising 
 him, for example, of Constable's designs and de- 
 mands. " I was so very unwise," Lockhart writes, 
 "as to express surprise at the nature of Sir Walter's 
 commercial engagements." He prints Sir Walter's 
 answer, so gentle in terms, yet so far from being 
 really satisfactory as an explanation. It came to 
 this, "with my little capital I was too glad to make 
 commercially the means of supporting my family." 
 In this letter occur the sentences, " I have been 
 
 1 Mr. Thomas Constable occasionally complains that Lockhart does 
 not quote Scott's Journal in full. Here is an example against which 
 he takes no exception : 
 
 " EDINBURGH, January 16. Came through cold roads to as cold 
 news. Hurst & Robinson have suffered a bill to come back upon 
 Constable, which, I suppose, infers the ruin of both houses. We shall 
 soon see." So Lockhart, in "Life," viii. 197. He does not quote the 
 passage in full. It runs on : "Constable, it seems, who was to have 
 set off in the last week of December, dawdled here till, in all human 
 probability, his going or staying became a matter of mighty little con- 
 sequence. He could not be there till Monday night, and his resources 
 must have come too late." These remarks of Scott are omitted by 
 Lockhart : to be sure, Scott repeats the ideas elsewhere.
 
 392 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 far from suffering by James Ballantyne ; I owe it 
 to him to say that his difficulties, as well as his 
 advantages, are owing to me. I trusted too much 
 to Constable's assurances of his own and his corre- 
 spondents' stability, but yet I believe he was only 
 sanguine. The upshot is just what Hurst & Co., 
 and Constable, may be able to pay me : if fifteen 
 shillings in the pound, I shall not complain of my 
 loss, for I have gained many thousands in my 
 day." 1 
 
 These manly words of Sir Walter's are quoted 
 here, because they ought, I think, to have been the 
 keynote of Lockhart's comments, in the " Life," 
 on Constable and the Ballantynes. Lockhart did 
 not, it must be confessed, maintain the tone. Yet 
 we must remember how Scott himself said about 
 Constable, to his own friend Skene of Rubislaw, 
 "He paid well and promptly, but, devil take him, it 
 was all spectral together. Moonshine and no merri- 
 ment. He sowed my field with one hand, and as 
 liberally scattered the tares with the other." 2 It is 
 also not to be forgotten that when Scott wrote the 
 letter just cited (Jan. 20, 1826) he still hoped that 
 Hurst & Robinson would pay fifteen shillings in 
 the pound. They and Constable really paid about 
 ten per cent. 8 Lockhart himself, as he toiled at 
 
 1 " Life," viii. 232. 
 
 2 Mr. Skene's " Reminiscences." Scott's Journal, i. 95. 
 
 3 Scott's Journal, i. 99. Notes. As to the sanguine temperament of 
 Constable, see the accounts of his relations with Mr. Murray's house, 
 in 1806-1808, given in Murray's " Memoir," i. 80-84, and in "Archibald
 
 CONSTABLE'S BILLS 393 
 
 his great biography, was prolonging the task which 
 killed Sir Walter : he was writing not to reap the 
 fruits of his labour, but to pay off the debt of Scott 
 and the Ballantyne firm. He was not without excuse 
 for acrimony, and one point must here be defended. 
 At the close of his Memoir of his father, Mr. 
 Thomas Constable prints a letter from Sir James 
 Gibson Craig. In this letter (November 25, 1848) 
 Sir James says that, in 1813, Sir Walter, by 
 Constable s advice, applied to the Duke of Buccleuch 
 for a loan of ^4000. At the same time, and " on 
 the faith " of this loan, Sir James says that Constable 
 gave Sir Walter bills "to a very considerable 
 amount," a beginning of bills from Constable to 
 Sir Walter, and from Sir Walter, by way of counter- 
 security, to Constable. Later, Constable, says Sir 
 James, grew uneasy, and was obliged to meet his 
 engagements for Sir Walter by discounting his 
 bills. And all this " could not fail to produce, and 
 did produce, the ruin of both parties." 1 
 
 Constable," i. 380-382. In April 1807 "Constable began to draw 
 heavily on Murray, and the promissory notes went on accumulating 
 until they constituted a mighty mass of paper money. . . . But repeated 
 expostulation was of no use against the impetuous needs of Constable 
 and Co." " The bill transactions with Constable had become enormous : 
 they amounted to no less than jio,ooo. . . . Murray found it necessary 
 peremptorily to put an end to it." " Memoirs of John Murray," 
 i. 81-83. Mr. Thomas Constable's version of these affairs, loc. cit. 
 i. 382, is not quite so explicit (he may not have known the facts), and 
 is only to be understood in the light of Murray's " Memoir." All this 
 was long before the year 1813, when, it is stated, the transactions of 
 Constable and Scott first became so sadly entangled. 
 1 " Archibald Constable," iii. 457.
 
 394 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 As a matter of fact, in 1813 Constable did sug- 
 gest that Scott should ask aid from a friend, and 
 Scott himself selected the Duke of Buccleuch. 1 
 And Lockhart remarks that any success which fell 
 to Scott's measures was due to Constable, "who 
 did a great deal more than prudence would have 
 warranted." 2 There is, in fact, on essential matters, 
 no difference between Lockhart's account, here, and 
 Sir James Gibson Craig's. By a common logical 
 artifice, or unconscious fallacy, an impression is 
 given that Sir James Gibson Craig corrects, whereas 
 he really corroborates, Lockhart's statement as to 
 the origin of the dealing in bills and counter-bills. 
 It is when Lockhart describes Constable's reckless 
 use of Scott's bills (viii. 95-101) that, I suppose, 
 his opinion is attacked. What I know about the 
 matter will be stated later. But I have shown that, 
 as early as 1807-8 (long before the affair of Scott's 
 distress and Constable's aid in 1813), Constable 
 was already dealing with bills, and paper money of 
 the brain, in a manner which Murray found intoler- 
 able, and declined to endure. When we remember, 
 in addition to the sanguine temperaments of Con- 
 stable and of Sir Walter, Scott's own pathetic 
 remark to Ballantyne, " I can't follow details which 
 would be quite obvious to a man of business," 8 ruin 
 seems to have been bound to arrive by pre-estab- 
 lished harmony. 
 
 The letters of Sir Walter to Lockhart at this 
 
 1 "Life," iv. 99-102. a Ibid., iv. 120. 3 Ibid., iv. 102.
 
 SCOTT'S ATTITUDE 39 s 
 
 time, when so many anxieties pressed hard on both 
 of them, mainly repeat reflections already published 
 in the " Life," or in the complete edition of Scott's 
 Journal. A little extract may be made from a 
 letter of January 26, 1826. Scott mentions his 
 design of taking lodgings, or rooms in a Club. 
 "What a relief it would have been to have had one 
 of your attics, and to have seen affectionate faces at 
 your daily meal, which must now be solitary enough. 
 . . . As for myself, I look with perfect firmness 
 and calmness on the life before me, and though I 
 have no delight in the circumstances which have 
 led me to adopt it, yet in respect of the life itself 
 I like it well. 
 
 " I shall have Abbotsford to walk about in, Tom 
 to lead me, and a pony to carry me. We will keep 
 Pete " (the coachman) "and the old horses, if by any 
 sacrifice it is possible ; and study must be at once 
 my amusement and my business, as indeed it has 
 always been. For I never knew the day that I 
 would have given up literature for ten times my late 
 income. 
 
 " I am afraid you will suffer about the Shakespeare ; 
 but surely you will have retention on the book so 
 far as it has gone, for recompense of your labour. 
 
 " I am, with kindest compliments to Sophia and 
 good and kind wishes to poor Johnnie, very truly and 
 affectionately yours, WALTER SCOTT. 
 
 " Do not let Johnnie forget poor old Ha papa.
 
 396 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Talking of the Review, can you help me to the place 
 where is found the curious passage about the pickling 
 the quarters of criminals, tempore Caroli secundi, and 
 the blow-out which the hangman gave on the occa- 
 sion ? It was the Retrospective Review, perhaps. 
 
 " I am sorry to send away an unsatisfactory letter ; 
 but I think you would be glad to know that I feel 
 as firm as the Eildon hill, though a little cloudy 
 about the head now and then, like him. My mind 
 tells me I will get above these things in two or 
 three years." 
 
 The Shakespeare, on which Lockhart had ex- 
 pended much labour, is occasionally spoken of, as in 
 the letter just cited, and its fate remains a literary 
 mystery. One would have expected to find copies 
 of the three volumes finished, at Abbotsford. It 
 was much later abandoned by Lockhart, Mr. Cadell 
 distrusting its success. 
 
 In January (no date), Scott says, "We relished 
 the Representative very much," but the "relish" 
 was short-lived. On February 25, Sir Walter 
 refers to Lockhart's severe indisposition, and he 
 encloses his Malachi Malagrowther pamphlets on 
 the English interference with that palladium of 
 Scottish liberties, the One Pound Note. " I think 
 the sooner Murray gets rid of his paper the better. 
 It is, as I feared it might be from the beginning, 
 heavy ; wants the touch-and-go blackguard-genteel 
 which distinguishes the real writer for the press.
 
 THE OMEN 397 
 
 " Am I wrong in detecting you in ' The Omen,' 
 a very beautifully written but melancholy tale just 
 published here ? I had not read two pages when I 
 said to Anne, ' Look, Erasmus aut Diabolus? or some- 
 thing equivalent. She told me it had (been) adver- 
 tised as by Wilson, but we all thought it much 
 more like you more elegant and simple than he is 
 when he sets about sentiment. First proved hand 
 I will send you 'Napoleon,' and 'Woodstock,' so 
 far as they are done." 
 
 " The Omen " was a tale by Gait, with whose 
 novels those of Lockhart were apt to be confused. 
 Some remarks on Constable show an increase of 
 asperity. 
 
 The next letter deals with Lockhart's domestic 
 cares : and adds a reminiscence of Sir Walter's own 
 
 childhood : 
 
 "yd March. 
 
 " MY DEAR LOCKHART, I had Sophia's letter 
 yesterday, and your kind note to-night. I rejoice 
 to hear of Johnnie's health and his grand flip towards 
 instruction. I hope Mrs. Mactavish, whom I like 
 not the worse, you may be sure, for her name, will 
 be mild in her rule, and let him listen to reading 
 a good deal without cramming the alphabet and 
 grammar down the poor child's throat. I cannot at 
 this moment tell how or when I learned to read, but 
 it was by fits and snatches, as one aunt or another in 
 the old rumble-tumble farm-houses could give me a 
 lesson, and I am sure it increased my love and habit
 
 398 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of reading more than the austerities of a school 
 could have done. I gave trouble, I believe, in 
 wishing to be taught, and in self-defence gradually 
 acquired the mystery myself. Johnnie is infirm a little, 
 though not so much so as I was, and often he has 
 brought back to my recollection the days of my own 
 childhood. I hope he will be twice any good that 
 was in me, with less carelessness." 
 
 He now speaks of his patriotic and very dis- 
 interested efforts in the " Malagrowther " Letters. 
 
 " Old Gardiner, when wounded at Prestonpans, 
 almost dying, himself rode up to the infantry when 
 the cavalry were broken, and saying, ' These poor lads 
 will be destroyed without a leader,' called out, ' Fire 
 away, my lads, and fear nothing ; ' a wiser man would 
 have galloped off. But my heart will not brook 
 ' fall back or fall edge ' to leave the cause of my 
 country, as I do sincerely conceive it to be, in a state 
 so precarious, without doing whatever one poor 
 voice can to sound the alarm. If my power had 
 been answerable to my will, I would, like old Hardy- 
 knute, have 
 
 'blown a blast so shrill, 
 
 The trees in greenwood shook thereat, 
 Sae loud rang ilka hill.' 
 
 It is pretty well as it is, though for you never saw 
 braid Scotland in such a humour." 
 
 It was now Sir Walter's turn to be the recipient
 
 HUGH LITTLEJOHN 399 
 
 of bad news, as to his beloved little grandson. He 
 
 writes : 
 
 "ABBOTSFORD, ijth March 1826. 
 
 " MY DEAR LOCKHART, I am almost stunned with 
 the melancholy intelligence I have this morning 
 received. It appears to be God's pleasure that 
 this year shall be a most melancholy one, but 
 other considerations were trifles compared to the 
 anxiety communicated by your intelligence. Most 
 unhappily, Morritt is, I understand, just leaving 
 Brighton " (whither Hugh Littlejohn had been sent 
 by the physicians). " I own I have had always a 
 deep-rooted anxiety on account of that poor dear 
 infant, and have sometimes thought there was too 
 much mind for the corporeal strength. I can scarce 
 conceive a situation more melancholy than yours 
 thinking and feeling as you do. Even Sophia is 
 easier, because she is at least constantly present 
 where her anxiety is most anxiously fixed. What 
 can I form for you but vain wishes ? or what argu- 
 ments can I use that will not occur to yourself, 
 and when they have thus occurred, be of very little 
 avail ? We would send up Anne with pleasure if 
 her presence could be useful. 
 
 "As for the political part of your letter, Scotland 
 will, in twenty years, perhaps much sooner, be 
 revolutionised from head to foot ; and then let 
 England look to herself, for she may have some 
 reason to resume her own old proverb, ' All 
 ill comes from the North.' The present time
 
 400 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 reminds me strongly of 1638-9, when useless and 
 uncalled-for changes unsettled the minds and irri- 
 tated the temper of the Scotch, who were not long 
 in communicating the infection to England. Then 
 the opinions were religious, now they are political, 
 but the effect may indeed, I think, will prove 
 the same. 
 
 " Within these twenty years, nay, within these ten 
 years, there have been so many alterations made, 
 that law seems to be treated like religion, according 
 to Hudibras 
 
 ' as if intended 
 
 For nothing else but to be mended.' 
 
 In the meantime the Burghers have been assembled 
 into popular meeting of Commissioners and so forth, 
 and have most effectually modelled themselves in 
 such a manner as will make it impossible long to 
 refuse them the popular representation they demand. 
 They will probably send up clever men, for the 
 time is so near, and the prospect so tempting, that 
 some of our clever friends in the Parliament House 
 will never quit so pleasing a harvest. Bold, specu- 
 lative, able men, long-headed, too, beyond the length 
 of the Southron noddle, they will propose and carry 
 through more general measures of alteration, all 
 leaning to the popular side of the question. These 
 will be given way to as concerning Scotland. Fiercer 
 innovators will arise behind in the usual course of 
 such events England will catch fire in her turn
 
 MALAGROWTHER 401 
 
 and all this from encouraging a spirit of innova- 
 tion in the most quiet and peaceful country in 
 Europe. . . . 
 
 "As for myself, what reason on earth can I have 
 to affront all my friends in power" (by his " Mala- 
 growther" Letters), "but the deep consciousness 
 that there is a duty to be discharged ? If they can 
 argue me out of the world, as they say, and into 
 Liddesdale, I have not the least objections. 
 
 " I have written more than I intended, but I am 
 not sorry that any of our private friends should 
 know why I do not answer my friend " (Croker) 
 "at the Admiralty. Mr. Canning is mistaken if 
 he supposes I appealed to the populace. On the 
 contrary, I resisted every proposal to put the 
 ' Letters ' into a shape for general circulation. I f 
 ever there should be an occasion to address the 
 people, I fancy I might have a guess how to set 
 about it. But it should not be against the present 
 men, although I am so unfortunate as to disapprove 
 of the present measures. 
 
 " My heart sinks at writing all this stuff on a 
 subject so different from that which at present 
 occupies us both. It is what, however, we would 
 likely have talked about, to divert for a moment 
 our thoughts from that which must be uppermost. 
 I am alone at Abbotsford, and have spent one 
 pleasant day here, but that which follows is after 
 the manner of Sezed with a witness. Pray write 
 often. Yours truly, W. SCOTT." 
 
 VOL. I. 2 C
 
 402 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 This letter, in which the political prophecies are 
 only a relief from private sorrow, was written on 
 March 17. In Scott's Journal for the same day 
 Lockhart, long afterwards, read the lament for " the 
 child almost too good for this world ; beautiful 
 in features, . . . having one of the sweetest 
 tempers, as well as the quickest intellect I ever 
 saw ; a sense of humour quite extraordinary in a 
 child," with all that follows. " The poor dear love 
 had so often a slow fever, that when I pressed 
 its little lips to mine, I always foreboded to my 
 own heart what all, I fear, are now aware of." 
 
 Next in the series of calamities comes the fatal 
 illness of Lady Scott ; Sir Walter writes at first in 
 good hope. 
 
 "ABBOTSFORD, MELROSE, 
 22nd March 1826. 
 
 " MY DEAR LOCKHART, The return of mama and 
 Anne to this place gave us yesterday a pleasant 
 reunion, the more so as Lady Scott was much 
 better than I had ventured to expect. The medicine 
 which she is taking (digitalis or foxglove) seems to 
 agree with her and do her much service, and I trust 
 with care her health may be in a great measure re- 
 stored. She is so well, and in such a good way, 
 that she and I have a serious plan to send her up 
 to be with Sophia during her illness." 
 
 Far worse intelligence rapidly follows :
 
 LADY SCOTT 403 
 
 "ABBOTSFORD, 27/A March 1826. 
 
 41 1 grieve to say, my dear Lockhart, that we have 
 but bad news to send up from this country in 
 answer to your deplorable intelligence of my dear 
 Johnnie's health. Lady Scott is far from well ; the 
 asthmatical complaint has assumed the character 
 of hydropsy, and Dr. Abercrombie, who has been 
 consulted, looks very grave on the subject. They 
 work by some new medicine, but I own I am not 
 very hopeful of the result, at least as to perfect 
 cure." 
 
 The Lockharts , were now at Brighton, whence, 
 on April 16, the birth of a little boy was announced. 
 "He is a very little one," writes Lockhart to his 
 mother, " for he comes three weeks ere his time." 
 The child was to be that Walter Scott Lockhart 
 Scott, the young laird of Abbotsford, whose in- 
 considerate youth and early death clouded his 
 father's latest years. On April 18, after "a day 
 of some anxiety about the baby," Lockhart writes 
 to his mother : " Sophia, even although she knew 
 our fears in the early part of the day, is quite as 
 well as any one could wish her to be cool, calm, 
 entirely placid in spirit, and easy in frame." He 
 writes hopefully, too, about Hugh Littlejohn. 
 
 Just before the coming of the new baby, appeared 
 another bantling, the first number of the Quarterly, 
 edited by Lockhart. In \\isjournalfor April 9, Scott
 
 4 o 4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 says that he does not like Lockhart's article "on 
 Sheridan's Life. There is no breadth in it, no 
 general views, the whole flung away in smart but 
 party criticism. Now, no man can take more general 
 and liberal views of literature than J. G. L," How- 
 ever, Scott's chagrin as to the treatment of his friend 
 Moore is not expressed in his letters to Lockhart. 
 He sends thanks, as regards his own article on 
 Pepys, for " Mr. Murray's generosity, but frankly 
 the half was more than it" (the article) "is worth, 
 and I make it a condition of future labours that I 
 have no more than an adequate compensation for 
 my time ; and the present is extravagant. I will do 
 'Cranbourne Chase' with pleasure." 
 
 On April 22, Scott was obliged to send to 
 Lockhart the worst news of Lady Scott's condition. 
 For the Quarterly he undertook the long article 
 on theatrical matters ("Life of John Philip 
 Kemble "), which appeared in the June number. 
 Lockhart himself reviewed some translations from 
 Goethe, including those in Shelley's " Posthumous 
 Poems." All that Lockhart says about Goethe is 
 excellent ; as regards Shelley, he touches only on 
 the translations. "He wanted little to be a dis- 
 tinguished original poet but distinctness of con- 
 ception and regulation of taste." The Quarterly 
 was too much hampered by the politics of Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold's "beautiful ineffectual angel." 
 
 As an editor having authority, Lockhart ventured 
 on some "criticisms of style," which, indeed, Sir
 
 THE SHEEPSKIN CURE 405 
 
 Walter's article about Mr. Pepys (written when 
 under the influence of doctor's drugs) rather clamo- 
 rously demanded. Scott replies that he "literally 
 never learned to read, far less has studied com- 
 position. . . . You will unceremoniously point out 
 whatever you object to, which will be a great 
 favour, and I hope you will not confine it to style 
 alone." 
 
 The health of Lady Scott failed day by day, but 
 better hopes were entertained at Brighton, as 
 appears from this letter of Sir Walter's : 
 
 " May 1826. 
 
 "My DEAR LOCKHART, Your truly acceptable 
 news gave me as much pleasure as circumstances 
 make me at present capable of receiving. I am 
 happy to think Sophia and the baby are doing well ; 
 and for dear Johnnie, as I remember myself on my 
 back, and shrouded in a new sheepskin, taken hot 
 from the back of the animal to communicate some 
 genial warmth to the wearer, I have strong hopes 
 that his present confinement may not prevent his 
 enjoying robust health at a future period of life, and 
 his lively temper and disposition to collect informa- 
 tion will make the necessary confinement less irk- 
 some than one would guess. I who recollect much 
 of a sickly infancy and childhood can judge well of 
 this. 
 
 " I have no good news to send you in return none 
 and you must take your own time and manner
 
 406 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of communicating to Sophia that mama's state of 
 health admits of little hope. 
 
 " I send enclosed the greater part of the dramatic 
 article ; you will readily excuse the lateness and the 
 quality when you read what is gone before ; but I 
 think it is unmanly to sit down to fold one's hands 
 in helpless regret, when exertion may do good to 
 yourself and others. My philosophy, if it can be 
 called such, is that of the porch " (stoicism). 
 
 "If Charles chooses to fall back on the Church, of 
 course I may be of use to him ; but it is entre nous a 
 sneaking line unless the adoption of it is dictated by 
 a strong feeling of principle, and one which, with 
 good prospects in that career, I renounced. 1 I would 
 not go to the altar for a bit of bread unless I could 
 do so with a strong conviction that I could adopt, in 
 the fullest extent, the doctrines which I was to teach. 
 
 " I will put off Chaffin (Cranbourne Chase) to 
 another occasion, unless you want it much. 2 I 
 cannot write anything about the author unless I 
 know it can hurt no one alive, and your well- 
 intended offer would not mend the matter, because 
 it is not that I care for the consequences of such a 
 thing personally, but because I do not think it right. 
 What I consider right to do I am not anxious to 
 conceal from any one, and what is not right should 
 not be done at all." 
 
 1 This seems not to be generally known. 
 
 * From delicacy towards the possible feelings of Mr. Chamn's 
 surviving relatives, Scott never wrote this article.
 
 DEATH OF LADY SCOTT 407 
 
 These letters display a good man in accumulated 
 misfortune, an example already needed by Lockhart. 
 Unlike Southey, Scott exclaims, " Use the scissors 
 as freely as you like," that is, on his contributions 
 to the Quarterly. On May 15 he announces the 
 death of Lady Scott. Lockhart was unable to 
 leave his wife and attend the funeral. Sir Walter 
 writes : 
 
 "ABBOTSFORD, iyd May 1826. 
 
 " My DEAR LOCKHART, Anne has suffered, and 
 still suffers, much from weakness. She is, contrary 
 to her manner under trifling vexations, extremely 
 quiet and patient, but every now and then Nature 
 gives way, and she has swoons which last perhaps 
 ten minutes. 
 
 " For me I must bear my loss as I can ; at any 
 rate, I have no want of comforters, for both old 
 Botherby and Sir John Sinclair have volunteered 
 to play Eliphaz and Bildad on the occasion such 
 is some folks' delicacy. A better comfort is the 
 regret expressed by great and small for the good 
 qualities of the deceased. My poor labouring 
 people affected me much by insisting on supplying 
 a night guard in Dry burgh Abbey till such pre- 
 caution should be totally unnecessary. There was 
 something very delicate in this peculiar expression 
 of attachment. 
 
 " I beg my best love and affection to Sophia. Tell 
 her not to be in the least anxious about me. I am
 
 4 o8 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 of that age and temper which endure misfortunes 
 the more patiently that they have ceased to look 
 on the world with the same evident sensations of 
 pleasure and pain which it presents to those who 
 enter it. Kiss little Johnnie for me, and also little 
 Walter. My best love attends Violet. I am always, 
 dear Lockhart, most faithfully yours, 
 
 "WALTER SCOTT." 
 
 Lockhart himself communicated the ill news to 
 his wife, then at Brighton : 
 
 "LONDON, May 16, 1826. 
 
 " I know you too well to hesitate about letting you 
 see exactly how matters stand ; and you know me well 
 enough to be sure that it is a great misery to me 
 to have to write instead of speaking such tidings. 
 You must exert yourself and be, as poor Anne 
 seems to be, satisfied that prolongation of life 
 under such circumstances is a cruel prayer. Your 
 father also writes to me, and much in the same 
 tone ; but he still preserves all his firmness, and in 
 the midst of his sorrow has found time to give me 
 an admirable review of ' John Kemble's Life,' telling 
 all his old stories about the man and his manners 
 in the best style." 
 
 On May 26 he adds, "Your father writes with 
 all his old composure. . . . What a blessing to have 
 such a regulated manliness of heart and mind ! The 
 possession is even more enviable than his genius."
 
 "TROUBLE WITH MURRAY" 409 
 
 On May 30, Scott writes, " My love to little 
 Walter, and especially to poor Johnnie ; ... he 
 was one of the last persons mentioned by his poor 
 grandmama, which will always make him the dearer 
 to me. 
 
 "What do you about Shakespeare? Constable's 
 creditors seem desirous to carry it on. Certainly 
 their bankruptcy breaks the contract. For me 
 c'est tgal: I have nothing !to do with the emolu- 
 ments, and I can with very little difficulty discharge 
 my part of the matter, which is the Prolegomena, 
 and Life and Times. 
 
 " So speak your wishes, speak your will, 
 Swift obedience meets them still." 
 
 On June 30, Scott wishes Lockhart joy of the 
 Review, " which is not only unexceptionable, but 
 commands general praise. I am sorry you have 
 trouble with Murray, but it was foreseen, and you 
 must just be steady with him." A letter of July 
 20, shows that Scott's remonstrance against being 
 overpaid for his Quarterly articles was successful. 
 The " rapacity " lamented by Macaulay was not 
 really a marked feature of Sir Walter's character. 
 
 On July 6, Lockhart wrote to his brother Law- 
 rence, from 1 6 Bedford Square, Brighton : 
 
 " MY DEAR LAWRENCE, Here we are now settled 
 for three months more, certain for the doctors 
 all united that, as Johnnie was so much improved
 
 4 io LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 by the air and bathing, it would be madness to 
 remove him from the coast before October. We 
 shall pass October and November in London, and 
 the winter months in some of the villages near it, 
 for the doctors say that it would kill the poor boy 
 to be in town during the dark and foggy season. 
 Our present plans are to be at Chiefswood in the 
 beginning of June, for the whole summer of 1827. 
 But who can speak boldly about so distant a 
 period ? 
 
 " We have met with many sore disappointments 
 since I saw you last. But there is no use in re- 
 pining ; we must e'en take the world as we find it ; 
 and I would fain hope for better days hereafter, 
 though I have thoroughly ceased to have any very 
 sanguine dreams. My wife's even and firm temper 
 accommodates itself wonderfully to changes and 
 chances, and if Johnnie recovers, and the baby 
 continues to thrive as it is doing, we ought to be 
 satisfied at home. . . . 
 
 " Violet will soon be at home now. 1 I fear my 
 dearest mother has a poor dull life when she is 
 away, and I have felt for her extremely, leaving 
 Germiston at the very bloom of the season. . . ." : 
 
 Writing on the same day to his brother William, 
 Lockhart says, " I do not wish to write about my 
 
 1 Miss Lockhart had been with Mrs. Lockhart since the settlement 
 at Brighton. 
 
 z The rest of the letter deals with purely domestic affairs of Mr. 
 Lawrence Lockhart's.
 
 DISAPPOINTMENTS 411 
 
 own concerns. The change of situation has taken 
 place under circumstances of unlooked-for difficulty 
 and disadvantage, and things have turned out poorly 
 indeed compared to what I had been led to expect. 
 ... I see no help, nor prospect of it, except in 
 time, labour, and patience." 
 
 Writing to his father, on July 10, Lockhart ex- 
 presses his anxiety to hear about his brother Dick, 
 who had gone to India, with a letter from Sir 
 Walter to a Mr. Swinton. "He wrote in a very 
 particular manner, of which, having seen the letter, 
 I can safely say it was beyond what we could have 
 hoped, or even wished, almost." 
 
 A very short time had passed before Dick was 
 drowned in India, so resolutely did misfortune 
 pursue Lockhart and his family. He ends by a 
 description of the noise, heat, and glare of Brighton. 
 " But the air is certainly most healthful, and the 
 children are all day long on the beach, which is 
 everything for them, and therefore for us." 
 
 There exists a letter, written a few months later, 
 by "Hugh Littlejohn," to his "Aunt Violet," as 
 Scott says he used to call her. The handwriting 
 is wonderfully good for a child not yet six years 
 old:- 
 
 " MY DEAR AUNT Vi, You left me in your letter 
 five shillings, and I am very much obliged to you 
 
 1 Lockhart refers to the failure of the Representative, and of his 
 hopes in that quarter.
 
 412 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 for them. I have still fourpence left. Walter is 
 growing a fine boy, and baby is a little beauty. I 
 have got a great many new books since you were 
 here last time. I hope Grandpapa and Grandmama 
 are quite well, and my Aunt Louisa, also my uncles 
 and cousins. Give my love to them. I am to go 
 to Scotland next year, and I shall have the pleasure 
 of seeing you. Your affectionate nephew, 
 
 "JOHN HUGH LOCKHART." 
 
 On October 7, Sir Walter announced his in- 
 tended visit to London and Paris, in search of 
 materials for his " Life of Napoleon." From his 
 Journal (October 17, 1826), we hear of this April 
 weather meeting with his daughter and Lockhart. 
 " Too much grief in our first meeting to be joy- 
 ful ; too much pleasure to be distressing. ... I 
 am childish with seeing them all well and happy 
 here," though poor Hugh Littlejohn "was kept, 
 as much as possible, in a recumbent position." 
 With the Lockharts Sir Walter inspected Windsor 
 Castle ; they dined with Terry, the actor ; and an 
 hour was passed in teaching Johnnie the history 
 of his namesake, John Gilpin. They dined with 
 Dr. and Mrs. Hughes, and their son, the disin- 
 herited of Pepys. Mr. Pringle, the Lamb of " The 
 Chaldee," of all people, paid a visit, the Lamb 
 who, with the Bear, came skipping on staves. x 
 
 1 Lockhart later did what he could for a book by his old victim, 
 reviewing it in the Quarterly.
 
 MAGNIFICOES 413 
 
 On Scott's return from Paris in November, Croker 
 and Theodore Hook came to breakfast, and "we 
 had, as Gil Bias says, a delicious morning, spent in 
 abusing our neighbours." They dined at Croker's 
 "with five Cabinet Ministers, Canning, Huskisson, 
 Melville, Peel, and Wellington," such a party as 
 more modern times could not bring together. Sir 
 Walter thought that "the presence of too many 
 men of distinguished rank and power always freezes 
 the conversation." " I wish I could turn my popu- 
 larity amongst these magnificoes to Lockhart's 
 advantage, who cannot bustle for himself. He is 
 out of spirits just now, and views things au noir ; 
 I fear Johnnie's precarious state is the cause." 
 
 Lockhart persisted in not being able to " bustle " 
 and push his fortune with magnificoes. One task 
 for which he was eminently fitted nearly came to 
 him ; he was overlooked, and, as we shall see, the 
 work which he could have done admirably has not 
 been done even until this day. 
 
 In brief, the year 1826 did much to break the 
 spring of hope and to destroy ambition in Lockhart. 
 His industry remained unimpaired, but was seldom 
 set to tasks that elicited his highest powers. 
 
 Lockhart at this time did not allow his troubles 
 to interfere with his work. To his first number of 
 the Quarterly (No. LXVI.) he contributed the 
 Sheridan article, justly disliked by Scott, and a 
 "cold-blooded" plea for reflection and discrimina- 
 tion in dealing with slavery and the West Indies.
 
 4 i4 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART 
 
 Many a bright popular delusion, many a vulgar 
 but moving error was exposed here, of course to 
 very little purpose. In the next number he only 
 wrote the article on translations from Goethe, al- 
 ready mentioned. To No. LXVIII. he contributed 
 an interesting and reflective essay on the art of 
 fiction, taking for his topic Scott's " Lives of the 
 Novelists," then pirated by Galignani, who ingeni- 
 ously abstracted Sir Walter's introductions from 
 " Ballantyne's Novelists' Library." 
 
 Lockhart argues that the novel is the only form, 
 or genre, of literature which modern times have 
 invented. Materials and genius were not wanting 
 in Greece and Rome. " Who, to take an example, 
 can read Horace, and doubt that Horace might 
 have written a novel ? " he asks. We are un- 
 convinced : might Pope have written a novel ? 
 "Why," he asks, "did Froissart's age produce no 
 novel ? " Why, it did; Froissart wrote an immense 
 historical romance, lately discovered among the 
 MSS. of the " Bibliotheque Nationale." Among 
 the illiterate peasants of Domremy, one woman 
 (giving her evidence at the Rehabilitation of Jeanne 
 d'Arc) declared that she had learned some facts 
 about the Fairy Tree from hearing them read 
 aloud in uno romano, dans un roman. Lockhart, 
 unobservant of these circumstances, argues that 
 tragedy, comedy, satire, lyric and epic verse could 
 exist where readers were few, but that novels can 
 only flourish in a reading public. But the Rome of
 
 LOCKHART ON NOVELS 415 
 
 Horace's days read much, and romances, as a 
 matter of fact, were extremely common in the 
 Middle Ages. Froissart, as a young man, borrowed 
 novels from, and lent them to, a young lady whom 
 he admired, in the most modern way. 1 Probably 
 Lockhart is thinking of our contemporary novel of 
 manners ; but, even so, Apuleius, and Longus, and 
 many late Greeks practised the art of fiction in 
 prose. 
 
 Among Sir Walter's followers, Lockhart selects 
 Cooper as the best, because " he has employed a style 
 of delineation which he could never have invented, 
 upon a fresh field, and, which is of still more import- 
 ance, on a field of manners and feelings familiar to 
 his own observation." Scott's English successors, 
 on the other hand, "trust to reading and imagination 
 for the best part of their materials, and being in- 
 ferior beyond measure to their master, both in the 
 accomplishment and the faculty, they have pro- 
 duced, at the best, the mere corpus exsangue of 
 the historical romance." Yet there is a general 
 improvement, a higher common level has been 
 reached. " One genius, in a word, has made many 
 clever artists," but "the imitating romancer shrinks 
 at once into his proper dimensions when we ask 
 what new character has he given us ? " 2 
 
 In this number Lockhart also bantered, in brief 
 space, Monsieur Parseval, who carried on the tradi- 
 
 1 See " Froissart," by Madame Darmesteter. 
 
 * Dumas, of course, had not begun to write romances.
 
 4 i6 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHABT 
 
 tion of Chapelain in " Philippe Auguste, Poeme 
 HeYoique"; and he reviewed "The Subaltern," by 
 his friend Mr. Gleig, with some other " Military 
 Memoirs." Mr. Gleig had left Balliol to fight in 
 Spain, in 1813, when Lockhart also was eager to 
 take up arms for Iberian liberty, as we have seen 
 in an early chapter. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 Edinburgh, and London
 
 REC'B LO-U 
 DEC 17 19