Scott. Irregular health and study impaired his strength, and he endeavoured by a winter in Italy to renovate his shattered constitution. He returned to Scotland somewhat invigorated, but he felt acutely that premature old age had set in. He had intended never again to visit Abbotsford after Scott's death; but in the desolation of his last days, when his spirit was broken and health had utterly fled, he turned to it once more. There, on the 25th of November, 1854, having just completed his sixtieth year, he breathed his last in the arms of his daughter, the sole survivor of the line of Scott, in the second generation. His parting spirit was soothed by the attentions of filial duty and tenderness, amid those scenes immortalized by genius, which had witnessed his youthful ambition and happiness.

The "London Times," in noticing the death of Mr. Lockhart, spoke of his character in terms which are not inappropriate to be reproduced at the close of this biographical sketch. The following extracts are from that paper of the date December 9, 1854

It is not in the first few days of regret for Mr. Lockhart's loss that the extent of it can be best defined. Long will it be before those who knew him can admit his life and his death into the same thought; for, much as he had suffered, mind and body, and precarious as had been his state, there had been no decline of that which constituted Lockhart the acuteness, the vigour, the marvellous memory, the flashing wit, swift to sever truth

ers.

from falsehood the stores of knowledge, ever ready and bright, never displayed. Although his reputation. has been confined to literature, and although, by earlyamassed knowledge and long-sharpened thought, he had reared himself into a pillar of literary strength, yet the leading qualities of his mind would have fitted him for any post where far-sighted sagacity, iron self-control, and rapid instinctive judgment mark the born leader of othNor did he care for literary triumphs, or trials of strength, but rather avoided them with shrinking reserve. Far from seeking, he could never be induced to take the place which his reputation and his talents assigned him ; he entered society rather to unbend his powers than to exert them. Playful raillery, inimitable in ease and brilliancy, with old friend, simple child, or with the gentlest or humblest present, was the relaxation he most cared to indulge, and if that were denied him, and especially if expected to stand forward and shine, he would shut himself up altogether.

Reserve, indeed too often misunderstood in its origin, ascribed to coldness and pride when its only source was the rarest modesty and hatred of exhibition - with shyness both personal and national, was his strong external characteristic. Those whose acquaintance he was expressly invited to make would find no access allowed them to his mind, and go disappointed away, knowing only that they had seen one of the most interesting, most mysterious, but most chilling of men, for their very deference. had made him retire further from them. Most happy was Lockhart when he could literally take the lowest place, and there complacently listen to the strife of conversers, till some dilemma in the chain of recollection or argument arose, and then the

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ready memory drew forth the missing link, and the keen sagacity fitted it home to its place, and what all wanted and no one else could supply was murmured out in choice, precise, but most unstudied words. And there were occasions also, when the expression of the listener was not so complacent · when the point at issue was not one of memory or of fact, but of the subtle shades of right and wrong; and then the scorn on the lip, and the cloud on the brow were but the prelude to some strong, wiry sentence, withering in its sarcasm and unanswerable in its sense, which scattered all sophistry to the winds before it.

Far remote was he from the usual conditions of genius-its simplicity, its foibles, and its follies. Lockhart had fought the whole battle of life, both within and without, and borne more than its share of sorrow. So acute, satirical, and unsparing was his intellect, that, had Lockhart been endowed with that alone, he would have been the most brilliant, but the most dangerous of men ; but so strong, upright, and true were his moral qualities also, that, had he been a dunce in attainments, or a fool in wit, he must still have been recognized as an extraordinary man. We will not call it unfortunate, for it was the necessary consequence of the very conditions of his life and nature, that while his intellect was known to all, his heart could be known comparatively to few. All knew how unsparing he was to morbid and sickly sentiment, but few could tell how tender he was to genuine feeling. All could see how he despised every species of vanity, pretension, and cant; but few had the opportunity of witnessing his unfailing homage to the humblest or even stupidest worth. Many will believe what caustic he was to a false grief; few could credit what balm

to a real one. His indomitable reserve never prevented his intellect from having fair play, but it greatly impeded the justice due to his nobler part.

It was characteristic of Lockhart's peculiar individuality, that, wherever he was at all known, whether by man or woman, by poet, man of business, or man of the world, he touched the hidden chord of romance in all. No man less affected the poetical, the mysterious, or the sentimental; no man less affected anything; yet, as he stole stiffly away from the knot which, if he had not enlivened, he had hushed, there was not one who did not confess that a being had passed before them who stirred all the pulses of the imagination, and realized what is generally only ideal in the portrait of a man. To this impression there is no doubt that his personal appearance greatly contributed, though too entirely the exponent of his mind to be considered as a separate cause. Endowed with the very highest order of manly beauty, both of feature and expression, he retained the brilliancy of youth and a stately strength of person comparatively unimpaired in ripened life; and then, though sorrow and sickness suddenly brought on a premature old age, which none could witness unmoved, yet the beauty of the head and of the bearing so far gained in melancholy loftiness of expression what they lost in animation, that the last phase, whether to the eye of painter or of anxious friend, seemed always the finest.

As in social intercourse, so in literature, Lockhart was guilty of injustice to his own surpassing powers. With all his passion for letters, with all the ambition for literary fame which burnt in his youthful mind, there was still his shyness, fastidiousness, reserve. No doubt he might have taken a higher place as a poet than by the

Spanish Ballads, as a writer of fiction than by his novels. These seem to have been thrown off by a sudden uncontrollable impulse to relieve the mind of its fulness, rather than as works of finished art or mature study. The Ballads first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine; the novels without his name. They were the flashes of a genius which would not be suppressed; no one esteemed them more humbly than Lockhart, or, having once cast them on the world, thought less of their fame. So, too, of his other writings of that period. The ice once broken, the waters went dashing out with irresistible force; his exuberant spirits, his joyous humour, his satiric vigour, his vehement fun, when the curb was once loosened, ran away with him, he himself could hardly see whither. These outbursts over, he retired again within himself. Except in two short, but excellent pieces of biography, written each for a special purpose, and as by command the Life of Burns, yet unsurpassed, and that of Napoleon - no book appeared under the name of Lockhart till the Life of Scott. This was a work of duty as of love.

Lockhart was designated at once, for no one else could be, the biographer of Scott. His best papers in the Quarterly Review were full and rapid condensations of wide-spun volumes on the lives or works of authors or statesmen. But while his relation and singular qualifications gave him unrivalled advantages for this work, they involved him in no less serious and peculiar difficulties. The history must tell not only the brilliant joyous dawn and zenith of the poet's fame, but also the dark sad decline and close. It was not only that Lockhart, as the husband of his daughter as living in humble and happy Chiefswood with his charming wife (in some re