537
work which, like this, would have handed them
down to posterity in their living colours."
It was in May, 1818, that Lockhart first formed
that acquaintanceship with Sir Walter Scott which
so materially influenced the course of his after-life.
The introduction to the "Great Unknown" took
place in Edinburgh, at the house of Mr. Home
Drummond of Blair-Drummond, where a small but
select party was assembled; and Scott, who under-
stood that Mr. Lockhart had but lately returned
from a tour in Germany, held with him an amusing
conversation on Goethe and German literature. This
introduction soon ripened into an intimacy, in which
Miss Scott became a principal personage, as a mar-
riage treaty, with the concurrence of all parties, was
settled so early as the February of 1820. On the
20th of April the marriage took place at Edinburgh,
and Sir Walter, who was the worshipper as well as
recorder of good old Scottish fashions, caused the
wedding to be held in the evening, and "gave a
jolly supper afterwards to all the friends and con-
nections of the young couple." Mr. Lockhart and
his bride took up their abode at the little cottage of
Chiefswood, about two miles from Abbotsford, which
became their usual summer residence—and thither
Sir Walter, when inundated by sight-seers and hero-
worshippers, was occasionally glad to escape, that
he might breathe in a tranquil atmosphere, and write
a chapter or two of the novel that might be on hand,
to despatch to the craving press in Edinburgh.
These were happy visits, that spoke of no coming
cloud; "the clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the yelp-
ing of Mustard and Spice, and his own joyous shout
of reveillee under our windows, were the signal that
he had burst his toils, and meant for that day to
'take his ease in his inn.' On descending he was to
be found seated with all his dogs and ours about
him, under a spreading ash that overshadowed half
the bank between the cottage and the brook, point-
ing the edge of his woodman's axe for himself, and
listening to Tom Purdie's lecture touching the plan-
tation that most needed thinning." By the year 1837
how completely all this had terminated! In the
last volume of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Lockhart
thus closes the description: "Death has laid a heavy
hand upon that circle—as happy a circle, I believe,
as ever met. Bright eyes now closed in dust, gay
voices for ever silenced, seem to haunt me as I write.
She whom I may now sadly record as,
next to Sir Walter himself, the chief ornament and
delight at all those 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 counten-
ance, mind, and manners most resembled himself,
and who indeed was as like in all things as a gentle
innocent woman can ever be to a great man, deeply
tried and skilled in the struggles and perplexities of
active life—she, too, is no more." In December,
1831, John Hugh Lockhart, the Master Hugh Little-
john of the Tales of a Grandfather, died, and in 1853
Lockhart's only surviving son, Walter Scott Lock-
hart Scott, leaving no remains of the family except
a daughter, Charlotte, married in August, 1847, to
James Robert Hope-Stuart, who succeeded to the
estate of Abbotsford. In this way the represen-
tatives of both Sir Walter Scott and John Lock-
hart have terminated in Monica, the only surviving
child of Hope-Scott of Abbotsford.
Leaving this domestic narrative, so full of happi-
ness, disappointment, and sorrow, we gladly turn to
the literary life of John Gibson Lockhart. After the
publication of Peter's Letters, his pen was in con-
stant operation; and notwithstanding the large circle
of acquaintance to which his marriage introduced
him, and the engagements it entailed upon him, he
not only continued his regular supplies to Black-
wood's Magazine, but produced several separate
works, with a fertility that seemed to have caught its
inspiration from the example of his father-in-law.
The first of these was Valeriits, one of the most
classical tales descriptive of ancient Rome, and the
manners of its people, which the English language
has as yet embodied. After this came Adam Blair,
a tale which, in spite of its impossible termination,
so opposed to all Scottish canon-law, abounds with
the deepest touches of genuine feeling as well as
descriptive power. The next was Reginald Dalton,
a three-volumed novel, in which he largely brought
forward his reminiscences of student life at Oxford,
and the town-and-gown affrays with which it was
enlivened. The last of this series of novels was
Matthew. Wald, which fully sustained the high char-
acter of its predecessors. It will always happen in
the literary world, that when a critical censor and
sharp reviewer puts forth a separate work of his own,
it will fare like the tub thrown overboard to the
tender mercies of the whale: the enemies he has
raised, and the wrath he has provoked, have now
found their legitimate object, and the stinging cen-
sures he has bestowed upon the works of others are
sure to recoil with tenfold severity upon his own.
And thus it fared with Lockhart's productions; the
incognito of their author was easily penetrated, and
a thunder-shower of angry criticism followed. But
this hostile feeling having lasted its time has died
a natural death, and the rising generation, who
cannot enter into the feuds of their fathers, regard
these writings with a more just appreciation of their
excellence. After a short interval Lockhart came
forth in a new character, by his translations from the
Spanish Ballads; and such was the classical taste,
melody of versification, and rich command of lan-
guage which these translations evinced, that the
regret was general that he had not been more ex-
clusively a poet, instead of a student and author in
miscellaneous literature. His next productions were
in the department of biography, in which he gave
an earnest of his fitness to be the literary executor
and historian of his illustrious father-in-law—these
were the Life of Robert Burns, which appeared in
Constables Miscellany; and the Life of Napoleon
Bonaparte, which was published in Murray's Family
Library.
The varied attainments of Mr. Lockhart, and the
distinction he had won in so many different depart-
ments of authorship, obtained for him, at the close
of 1825, a situation of no ordinary responsibility.
This was the editorship of the Quarterly Review, the
great champion of Toryism, when the political prin-
ciples of Toryism were no longer in the ascendant,
and which were now reduced to a hard battle, as
much for life itself as for victory and conquest. It
was no ordinary merit that could have won such a
ticklish elevation at the age of thirty-two. Lockhart
gladly accepted the perilous honour, linked, however,
as it was with the alternatives of fame and emolu-
ment; and for twenty-eight years he discharged its
duties through the good and evil report with which
they were accompanied. In his case, as might be
expected, the latter prevailed, and the angry com-
plaints of scarified authors were loudly swelled by
the outcries of a political party now grown into full
strength and activity. With the justice or the un-
reasonableness of these complaints we have nothing
to do; but it speaks highly for the able management
of Lockhart, that in spite of such opposition, the
Review continued to maintain the high literary and
intellectual character of its earlier years. During