son. The particular form of apparent more 80 as the Whigs were rabid
heartlessness Lockhart is frequently against him, but with intimacy his re-
accused of, was his demeanor in gen- serve wore off, and I declare that
eral society. In the circle of his in- amongst my friends I never knew one
timate friends he was, says Sir more lively, amusing and confiding in
Archibald Alison (and we know it well dual converse, nor one whose loss I
enough from other sources), "joyous more sincerely mourued. If he was a
and expansive ; " but his own son-in-good hater, he was assuredly a warm
law mentions the "almost fierce re- friend." The memoirs of three
serve " under which he so often hid Americans - Tickuor, Prescott, and
in daily life the genuine "depth and Sumner - give much interesting gossip
tenderness" of his feeling; and the about the English literary world in the
Hon. Charles Sumner, with singular in- first half of the century. Sumner's
ability to appreciate a character against opinion of Lockhart we have seen
which he had conceived a prejudice, already, and he seems to have been
speaks thus of him after a description gullible enough to swallow all the
of the brilliant conversational powers of lying stories to his discredit, even the
Jeffrey "What a different man is astounding one of Rogers that Scott
Lockhart! He is w
is without words, con- had written to him expressing the
versation, heart, or a disposition to greatest detestation for Lockhart as his
please, throwing nothing into the stock future son-in-law ! 1
Mr. Smiles, in his "Life of Murray,'
of social intercourse, and keeping him-
self aloof from all the hearty currents quotes Ticknor's account of his meet-
of life." No better description of this ings with Lockhart, when he tried what
feature of Lockhart's character can be Sir Walter calls the sledge-hammer
given than that in a letter from Scott method, and evidently found the ker-
to Mrs. Hughes, for Scott analyzed and nel sound, if not altogether to his taste.
appreciated his character as thoroughly He goes so far, in his "Life of Pres-
as Lockhart did that of his father-in-cott," as to call Lockhart a cynic, but
law: "He is not easy to be known or this is not the opinion of Prescott him-
to be appreciated, as he so well de-
serves, at first; he shrinks at a first
touch, but take a good hard hammer (it
need not be a sledge onc), break the
shell, and the kernel will repay you.
Under a cold exterior Lockhart con-
ceals the warmest affections, and where
he once professes regard he never
changes, at least he will not change
with you, and I will burn my books if
you are not good friends very shortly."
The books remained unburnt, and Mrs.
Hughes became one of Lockhart's best
friends, an honor which he shared
with Barham, who, like him, received
tokens of the good lady's bounty in the
shape of pig's face and similar deli-
cacies, and who equalled him in his
letters of witty thanks therefor.

The genial and eccentric Murchison, who knew him well, records in the same strain as Scott as follows: "When Lockhart came to London every one was afraid of the author of Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' the

self, whose remarks show more sympathy and consequently more insight, for it was well said of Lockhart that the best proof of his worth was that those who knew him best loved him best.

In 1850 Prescott writes: "Lockhart

devoting his talents wholly to the service of ridicule. The letter to Mrs. Hughes goes on to say:

1 Of course Scott was averse to his son-in-law

"I have not the least fear of his getting on well,

as he has passed the age when his superior talents for satire might have led him a little too far; and elsewhere: "His satirical propensities make him enemies which his good-nature does not de

serve."

Scott had stipulated that, in his new dignity as family-man, Lockhart should drop all serious political controversy; he had kept him out of the wretched "Beacon" affair, and hence the humorous note

"Irrecoverable sinner,

Work what Whigs you please till dinner, etc., sent round after detecting him (as the "Life" informs us)" writing some nonsense" for the "Noctes." A long and remarkable letter to Murray on Lockhart's removal to London, and the entries in the journal of the same date (not given in the "Life") contain Scott's summing-up of the whole matter."

is a fascinating sort of person whom I should fear to have meddle with me either in the way of praise or blame. I suspect he laughs in his sleeve at more than one of the articles which come out with his imprimatur. I had two or three merry meetings in which he, Ford, and Stirling were met in decent conviviality." In 1855 he says "I liked Lockhart, what little I saw of him, and a vein of melancholy tinged with the sarcastic gave an interesting piquancy to his conversation. I don't know that it made his criticism more agreeable to those who were the sub-jects of it."

The darling of my manhood; and alas ! Now the most blessed memory of mine age, had evidently gone straight to his heart.

It must be a stumbling-block to some that Lockhart could write as he does to Murray of Croker, Murchison, and Lockhart is not often thought of in other friends, apparently laughing at personal relationship with Carlyle, and them in his sleeve, as Prescott says. when he is, the reference is not If any one thinks so, let him read in usually to Carlyle's final opinion of the Quarterly the review of Sir Eger- him, as given in a note to Mrs. Carton Brydge's" Autobiography," a book lyle's "Memorials." The praise may in which Lockhart is named as having seem small, but not if we remember contributed largely, by his valuable the kind of thing meted out to most of friendship, to the author's intellectual those with whom Carlyle came in conhappiness, and is classed with Words- tact. "Lockhart was,' " he says, 66 a worth and Southey as "a few of the best in genius, intellect, learning, and worth," who were, "indeed, a host to him."

hard, proud, but thoroughly honest, singularly intelligent, and also affectionate man, whom in the distance I esteemed more than perhaps he ever The article is much the same in sub- knew. Seldom did I speak to him, stance with a review in Blackwood ten | but hardly ever without learning and years previously, evidently by Lock- gaining something." They had nearly hart, on Sir Egerton's earlier account been brought into very close partnerof himself, and friendship has only ship in 1825, when negotiations for added point to the remonstrances establishing a paper with Lockhart, against the absurd jealousies and mor- Carlyle, and Sir David Brewster as cobidities of a man who had so much editors, had gone to some length, but good work to look back upon, and who finally fell through, and it is curious to saw things clearly enough and might be note how they gravitated towards each as happy as he chose, if he laid aside other afterwards to a position of mutual the distorting spectacles through which confidence described in fit words by he too often viewed the world. Such a Mr. Froude. criticism was the best kindness one could do such a man, and friendship never blinded Lockhart's eyes to the faults of others, when to tolerate them would have been the greater injury. The fear which Prescott expresses of Lockhart's caprice in criticism, and which Moore in his reflections on the ways of editors embodies in the couplet:

Enough may seem to have been written about the connection of the "Heroes of the Noctes," and I can only beg leave to recall some facts that have dropped out of sight, but deserve to have some little attention paid them. The "Life of Wilson" was reviewed in volume cxiii. of the Quarterly by G. R. Gleig, who also wrote the article on Lockhart later, and some correc

tions which he was able to make would | that were not of our own seeking, that
doubtless have been adopted in later we had both work to do aud must do
editions of the "Life," if doing so had it, that it was neither manly nor Chris-
not seemed to imply that Mrs. Gordon tian to mourn as he was mourning."
confessed her critic's charge of having
"Had
your remonstrances any ef-
conceived all her remarks on Lockhart fect?" 66
Yes, I think they had. He

"in the same spirit of detraction," pressed my hand, looked up for a mo-
which was not the case, the fault atment into my face, and said: 'It is
most being the slightly patronizing, all true; I know it, but I have no
or rather matronizing, tone adopted. strength.' However, his strength
Thus, why is the absurd story retained came back faster than we both ex-
of Lockhart's mortification at finding pected, and now he is pretty much
Wilson's ludicrous stauzas on himself,
after his own on Wilson, inserted be-
tween proof and press in one of the
cantos of the extravaganza, "The Mad
Bauker of Amsterdam," when Gleig,
who was present, says that the two
stauzas were written at the same time,
in the same room, amid shouts of
laughter from both parties?

Again, Mrs. Gordon should have seen that the large gaps in the correspondence of the two friends did not argue any loss of interest of one in the other. The wonder is that any correspondence at all of such a careless being as Wilson should have survived. He wrote irregularly himself, and he lost the letters of others, and it does not seem as if his daughter had taken the trouble to request of Lockhart's relatives such letters of her father's as he might have preserved.

what he ever was." Gleig died only a few years ago, aud if his papers have more scraps of conversation like this, surely some selection of them should yet see the light.

We see from a letter of Lockhart's to Scott about the "Hypocrisy Unveiled" pamphlet, how he, though Wilson's junior, had been something of an elder brother to him, and there is enough in the "Life of Wilsou" to call for the reviewer's censure: "If Mrs. Gordon be unaware of the tender regard which to the last days of his life John Gibsou Lockhart entertained for her father, she is, we should imagine, the only person known both to Wilson and to Lockhart from whom that fact is hid." Christie (of John Scott fame) in a memorandum contributed to the late Professor Veitch's "Life of Hamilton," says that he does not believe The following extract from the re- Lockhart ever lost a friend except view is too interesting to be lost sight Hamilton, and a letter therein quoted of "Has Mrs. Gordou never even shows how even to him, when ill and read her father's letters to Lockhart in distress, Lockhart's heart still beat soon after her mother's death? Has warmly. This makes it more strange she never come across Lockhart's let-that Professor Veitch should have lent ters to her father when both were his authority to the outcry of Hogg's mourners? Or has she forgotten to daughter about the "attack" inquire whether Lockhart visited his friend at the season of his deepest auguish, and with what effect?" The writer goes on to supply the omission from his private notes. "I found him utterly prostrated," said Lockhart, describing his visit to Wilson, "unable, or, as he said, determined never to take any interest in the affairs of life again." "Well, what passed ?" "Not much worth repeating. I reasoned with him, and tried to show him that neither he nor I had any right to succumb to evils

ou the

worthy Shepherd in the "Life of Scott." This delusion has been summarily disposed of by Mr. Saintsbury in his essay on Hogg; and again I can ouly offer some subsidiary remarks, more curious perhaps than important. There is every proof that, until Hogg published his "Domestic Manners," Lockhart, although a warm friend, had always treated him as the subject of good-humored banter, Carlyle notes that he was "fond of quizzing, yet not very maliciously," and Hogg himself

confessed that it was impossible to be | defenders, as being incapable of settleangry with him. ment one way or the other.

A capital example of this style of It is a bad thing for a man when his audacious persiflage is the review of face is against him, and some would Hogg's autobiography in an early vol- have us condemn Lockhart for what ume of Blackwood. When the "Do- they would call his sarcastic, sneering mestic Manners" appeared, it was expression. Such criticism may be set reviewed in Fraser's, pretty certainly against a remark of Sir Walter's that by Lockhart (there is some discussion Lockhart had the opposite of what Sir of this in the coxcomb Willis's account Henry Wotton recommended Milton to of his interview with Christopher keep in Italy: "pensieri stretti ed il North, wherein Christopher's analysis viso sciolto (thoughts close, counteof Lockhart's character would be more nance open)." interesting, if it had not been Mr. There are three portraits of Lockhart Willis's own invention). The reviewer at different periods of his life, which, quoted the entire sketch, accompanying from their resemblance to each other, it with a commentary, which, to put must be considered as good copies of it mildly, exalted Hogg's imagination the original. There is first that by R. considerably at the expense of his Scott Lander, prefixed to the most memory, but in which the running fire recent edition of the "Noctes," showof jokes and puns should have pre-ing him in what Mr. Sidney Colvin vented him from taking the punish- calls, and many would endorse, "the ment more seriously than was intended, heyday of his brilliant and bitter though that was quite serious enough. youth," but to others presenting a This attitude of mind Lockhart pre-likeness in which sweetness and served in his references to Hogg in the strength are singularly combined. "Life of Scott," and even the last The twinkle in the eye has not become stern words with which he is dismissed the fire, nor has the slight smile playare more in sorrow than in anger, sim- ing about the mouth quite the setness, ply amounting to the sincere wish that, of the Pickersgill portrait, the second for his own sake, Hogg had never put and best known of the three above pen to paper upon the subject at all. mentioned. The other, by Grant One or two things in the review of (reproduced in the Scott Centenary the "Domestic Manners" are worth Catalogue, where the date given is noting. To Hogg's extraordinary as- surely ten or more years too early), is sertion that "whatever Lockhart may that of a man from whom "youthful pretend, I knew Sir Walter a thousand hope has fled" for some time. The times better than he did," there is sim- hair has fallen away from the temples, ply added the syllable [poh !]. With revealing a very gracefully formed forereference to Scott's refusal to contrib-head, and the expression is one of ute to Hogg's "Poetic Mirror," it is melancholy attentiveness, a frame of stated that he did so, knowing well mind which finds charming expression enough that Hogg meant to forge con- in passages of his letters to Wilson tributions for those who might decline about this time. to send anything; moreover, that, when the scheme was changed, all the best pieces were the work of Professor Wilson. Great doubt is also thrown on Hogg's boast of having received letters from Byron and other celebrities, and on his complaint of having had them stolen from him, a doubt which is repeated more than once in the "Life of Scott," and which, I should suppose, must have specially exasperated Hogg's

In none of these portraits is there what Miss Martineau calls “a lowering or sardonic expression" (poor Harriet Martineau had been caricatured by Maclise in the Fraser Gallery, which was got up, she says, to flatter the Tory leaders), nor anything to justify what some one informed Lord Lytton (as he says in his father's " Life"): that "the lurking sneer might be detected in Lockhart's singularly hand

nance."

some, refined, and intellectual counte- to be published by his "Czarish Maj-
Perhaps these remarks apply
to a portrait by Allen, which, for some
reason or other, was engraved for the
one-volume "Life of Scott," but which,
from its difference from the others, one
would call a bad likeness. We can see
the points wherein it tries to resemble
them and fails, which is sufficient evi-
dence to justify its rejection.

esty." Did the success of the man whose handwriting on the wall he saw about this time, and has described so picturesquely, lead to his giving up the idea, and accepting Blackwood's generous offer? In the same book some account is given of the preparation of a "Scott" Shakespeare, in which Sir Walter was to be assisted by Lockhart (one of whose letters says that, whether Gifford's proposed edition come out or not, "it will scarcely match our prolegomena "), but the commercial crisis put an end to it, and the three volumes that were ready were disposed of as waste paper!

A goodly list of queries concerning
the uncollected writings of Lockhart
could be drawn up. Where are those
brilliant songs for the Midlothian Yeo-
manry written by him and by Patrick
Fraser Tytler, in which, says Sir
Archibald Alison's autobiography, no
slight indication of their author's gen- By the way, in 1854, Croker was
ius will be found when their lives come urged by Murray to undertake a Shake-
to be written, and of which a capital speare, "perhaps in conjunction with
specimen is given in Dean Burgon's Mr. Lockhart," but death rendered this
"Life of Tytler"? What is Lock-project also fruitless.

hart's share in the volume containing Thomas Constable, in his eagerness
essays of his and of Sir Archibald's to show how Lockhart, by leaving out
"other candid critics in the Quar- passages in the "Journal," had repre-
terly," over whose solitary volume he sented the cordiality of the relation-
rather crows, having one or more de-ship between Scott and his father to
voted to himself? What are the con- be less than it was, makes an ab-
tents of the "Janus" book, mostly surd mistake. Following the words
written by Wilson and Lockhart, and "Bade Constable and Cadell farewell,
what is the nature of the latter's and had a brisk walk home," he says
contributions to Allan Cunningham's the words "with them" are to be
"Anniversary 99 ? What was the found in the "Journal," whereas they
"Sketches of the Late War" assigned are not in the complete edition of the
to him in the "Dictionary of National "Journal," and even if omitted pur-
Biography," and on what authority is posely from it, were rightly omitted,
it there stated that his contributions to for they are unmeaning.
Blackwood began with the seventh
number and included the review of
Coleridge, when Gleig puts down as
his the articles on Greek Drama in
the previous numbers, and when the
author of "Peter's Letters " was at
a loss to discover for the "pitiable "ing paragraph.
Coleridge review "not an apology, but
a motive"? The house of Blackwood
should have its history told as well as
the brother houses of Constable and
Murray, wherein all unnecessary mys-
tery about authorship of articles and
the like should be cleared up, if pos-
sible.
In

Constable and his Literary Correspondents " we find Lockhart, about 1814, proposing to write a novel,

These remarks might be continued indefinitely, in a style of "bald disjointed chat," that may seem more the product of a full note-book than of a full head, but they are only intended to give force to the petition in the follow

"he

In a letter to Constable, Scott recommends him to obtain an interest in Lockhart's works, "for," he says, will blaze some day; of that, if God spare him, there can be little doubt.” Lockhart's name did come to shine with a light, not so wide-spreading and all-beneficent as Scott's, yet reaching over a wide area, and better sustained to its close, and it ought not to be said that he, who so nobly chronicled the