536
As an author Mr. Lockhart is entitled to very
considerable praise. His memoirs concerning the
affairs of Scotland, and his commentaries, though
neither so clear nor so impartial as could be wished,
are yet valuable materials for history, and throw
very considerable light both upon the individual
characters and transactions of those times. And his
register of letters is still more interesting, as giving
us not only an account of the proceedings, but the
acts themselves, of the Jacobites of the period. His
memoirs were surreptitiously published during his
lifetime, by a friend to whom he had lent them, and a
key to the names (given in the published volume in
initials) was afterwards circulated. He left his papers
carefully concealed, with instructions to his heir to
abstain from publishing them till the year 1750; but
the connection of his grandson with the rebellion of
1745 rendering their appearance even then inexpe-
dient, they lay unnoticed, until, at the request of
Count Lockhart, they were edited by Mr. Anthony
Anfrere in 1817.
We have only to add, that in private life his char-
acter seems to have been exceedingly amiable, and
he enjoyed in a high degree the respect and affec-
tion, notwithstanding the contrariety of their political
principles, of the best and wisest public man of his
age—Duncan Forbes of Culloden.
LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON. This distinguished
miscellaneous writer, who occupied so high a station
in the tribunal of literary criticism, was born at Glas-
gow, and, as is generally supposed, in the year 1793.
His father, the Rev. Dr. John Lockhart, who for
nearly fifty years was minister of the College or
Blackfriars' Church, Glasgow, will not soon be for-
got by the denizens of that good city, not only on
account of his piety and worth, but also his remarkable
wit and extreme absence of mind—two qualities
which are seldom found united in the same character.
The stories with which Glasgow is still rife of the
worthy doctor's occasional obliviousness, and the
amusing mistakes and blunders it occasioned, are
even richer than those of Dominie Samson; for, when
he awoke from his dream, he could either laugh with
the laughers, or turn the laugh against them if neces-
sary. But his remarkable powers of sarcasm, as
well as his creative talents in embellishing an amus-
ing story, were so strictly under the control of reli-
gious principle and amiable feeling, that he would
often stop short when sensitiveness was likely to be
wounded, or the strictness of truth violated. It
would have been well if the same powers which
were so conspicuous in his talented son had been
always kept under the same coercion.
Of this amiable divine John Gibson Lockhart was
the second son, and the eldest by a second marriage,
his mother having been a daughter of the Rev. Dr.
Gibson, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. At an
early age he prosecuted his studies at the university of
Glasgow, and with such success, that he received one
of its richest tokens of approval in a Snell exhibition
to Baliol College, Oxford. Here he could prosecute,
with increased facilities, those classical studies to
which he was most addicted; and in a short time he
took a high station as an accomplished linguist, even
among the students of Oxford. His studies at Baliol
College, which were directed to the profession of the
law, were followed by a continental tour; and, on
returning to Scotland, he was called to the Scottish
bar in 1816. It was soon evident, however, that he
was not likely to win fame or fortune by the profes-
sion of an advocate. He lacked, indeed, that power
without which all legal attainments are useless to a
barrister—he could not make a speech. Accordingly,
when he rose to speak on a case, his first sentence
was only a plunge into the mud; while all that fol-
lowed was but a struggle to get out of it. Had the
matter depended upon writing, we can judge how it
would have gone otherwise; had it even depended
on pictorial pleading, he would have been the most
persuasive of silent orators, for, during the course of
a trial, his pen was usually employed, not in taking
notes, but sketching caricatures of the proceedings,
the drollery of which would have overcome both
judge and jury. As it was, he became a briefless
barrister, and paced the boards of Parliament House
discussing with his equally luckless brethren the
passing questions of politics and literary criticism.
He made a happy allusion to this strange professional
infirmity at a dinner which was given by his friends
in Edinburgh, on his departure to assume the charge
of the Quarterly Review. He attempted to address
them, and broke down as usual, but covered his
retreat with, "Gentlemen, you know that if I could
speak we would not have been here."
In Mr. Lockhart's case it was the less to be re-
gretted that he was not likely to win his way to the
honours of a silk gown, as he had already found a
more agreeable and equally distinguishing sphere of
action. He devoted himself to literature, and litera-
ture adopted him for her own. He had already
made attempts in periodical writing, and the favour
with which his contributions were regarded en-
couraged his choice and confirmed him in authorship.
A more settled course of exertion was opened up for
him in 1817, the year after he had passed as advocate,
by the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine. Of
this distinguished periodical he became, with John
Wilson, the principal contributor; and now it was
that the whole torrent of thought, which the bar
may have kept in check, burst forth in full profusion.
Eloquence, and wit, and learning distinguished his
numerous articles, and imparted a prevailing character
to the work which it long after retained; but unfor-
tunately with these attractive qualities there was
often mingled a causticity of sarcasm and fierceness
of censure that engendered hatred and strife, and at
last led to bloodshed. But into this painful topic we
have no wish to enter; and the unhappy termination
of his quarrel with the author of Paris Visited and
Paris Revisited, may as well be allowed to sleep in
oblivion. It is more pleasing to turn to his Peter's
Letters to his Kinsfolk, a wonderful series of eloquent,
vigorous, and truthful sketches, embodying the dis-
tinguished men, in almost every department, by whom
Scotland was at that period distinguished above
every other nation. Not a few, at the appearance of
this his first separate work, were loud in their outcry
against the author, not only as a partial delineator,
but an invader of the privacies of life and character;
but now that years have elapsed, and that the living
men whom he so minutely depicted have passed
away from the world, the condemnation has been
reversed, and the resentment been superseded by
gratitude. How could we otherwise have possessed
such a valuable picture-gallery of the great of the
past generation? All this Sir Walter Scott fully
appreciated when he thus wrote to the author of
Peter's Letters in 1819:—"What an acquisition it
would have been to our general information to have
had such a work written, I do not say fifty, but even
five-and-twenty years ago; and how much of grave
and gay might then have been preserved, as it were,
in amber, which have now mouldered away ! When
I think that, at an age not much younger than yours,
I knew Black, Ferguson, Robertson, Erskine, Adam
Smith, John Home, &c. &c., and at last saw Burns,
I can appreciate better than any one the value of a