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

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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 concerned with my apparent, though perfectly unintentional, 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.

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Brewster Macpherson has kindly lent me his collection of Lockhart’s sketches.

I have to thank, first of all, Mrs. Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford, without whose aid this biography 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 extracted had it seemed desirable celebrare domestica facta. Mrs. Lockhart’s letters have also been sparingly used.

For the important though incomplete series of

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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 publisher 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 grandfather, 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.

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My friend, Mr. Falconer of Dundee, has lent me, and even more kindly copied out for me, an important 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. 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. Lockhart’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 celebrated 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

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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 examining 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

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few living people remember, and whom none remembers 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 biography may seem to resemble a speech for the defence. But Mr. Lockhart has been so vehemently attacked, and often so unjustly misrepresented, that a defensive attitude was sometimes unavoidable.