The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart
Chapter 20: 1826-52
John Gibson Lockhart to John Wilson, 15 April 1851
“Sussex Place, April 15, 1851.
“Dear Professor,—I
am delighted with John Wilson’s
letter about you and others—especially for its own excellence in all but
the penmanship,
1 One lady followed, the other did not. |
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| 278 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. | |
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which, too, will soon come right, and after all is not
much worse than I had seen thirty years ago on
occasion.1 I went a week ago to see Faed’s picture of Sir Walter Scott and his friends, and there met Home Drummond. We agreed that Adam Ferguson, T.
Thomson, and you were so far like—you had all evidently
sat to Faed, and as evidently no one else in the party
had, nor could we see resemblance in any one of them. Then all ages are
jumbled. Scott is a man of fifty.
Ferguson and Thomson are eighty.
I am twenty-five, and you are sixty or thereby. This will never do. I did not
subscribe. I could do a better picture myself of those people even now, if I
had three weeks’ free admission to Grant’s studio, and the free use of his materials. I
think I will try. What an agreeable party that would
have been! And this will perhaps be re-engraved in 1950. But then we shall be
walking serene in some grove of Hades, with Landor, and Southey, and
Hazlitt, and Jeremy Bentham; Dr.
Parr and Gray of the High
School, Johnnie Dow, Delta, &c &c. I was last night reading
here and there in Delta’s new bookie,2 and found
you, Aird, Pollock, and others glorified—nay ‘Captain Paton’s
Lament’ dug up to justify the placing of the late Dr. Odontist Scotty among the great poets of
the half century. This will do. De
Quincey, I ob-![]()
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| WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY | 279 |
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serve, is the greatest master
of language—going or lately gone. This also will do!
“I yesterday read over calmly the Prelude, and am doubly in the dark as to
its meaning—doubly dumfoundered by its heaviness and unharmony. The Canon’s book also I
have re-read, and pronounce it raw and bald unbearably. There is nothing of his
that helps you in the least to a conception of what the living man was. But it
is not so with some of the letters by William
Wordsworth, or with some of the reminiscences.
“William
Wordsworth’s arrogant chillness as to all the contemporary
bards comes out well—Southey not
excepted—indeed with no exception but Coleridge. This we expected—but still there is a manliness about William Wordsworth
that separates him vastly from Robert Southey. What else
can it be? Or is it that the one was really a great poet—the other
not—the one’s ‘conceit,’ in short, based on a really
grand something, though not on any one grand work—the other’s
erected on no similar foundation? I cannot answer. What I know is that I liked
William Wordsworth and never liked Robert
Southey, and this though they both equally and completely
differed from all my critical notions as to almost all their contemporaries,
and as to all the best of them. I think, too, that William
Wordsworth was a better man than Robert
Southey—far better—even in the qualities for which
Robert Southey deserves most praise, with the one
exception of ![]()
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pecuniary generosity, of which I fancy
William Wordsworth had little or nothing—his
early straits having hardened him effectually on that score, and no wonder.
“I have read fifty articles on Wordsworth’s philosophy. Hang me if I
don’t suspect ’tis all an airy sham—beyond what lies on the
very surface, that is to say, and might be expressed on this page in plain
prose—as humble as any scrap of the Prelude is pompous. ‘Words,
words.’
“It seems to be assumed that William Wordsworth made some wonderful
discovery, which Homer, Dante, &c &c., lived and died without
having had even a glimpse of. I beg to doubt. There is more exact observation
of Nature implied in the epithets of the Second Iliad than declared in all
William Wordsworth’s tomes, and bragged of by
all his laudators, from Wilson down to
Delta.
“I suspect there is more of artifice than of art in
all that has been relied on for proof of this modern originality.
“Let me hear again either from John Wilson or the Professor. They are both
far finer fellows than either William
Wordsworth or Robert
Southey, or even W. S.
Landor.—Yours,
Thomas Aird (1802-1876)
Scottish poet educated at Edinburgh University; he was a friend of James Hogg and John
Wilson, published in
Blackwood's, and edited the
Dumfriesshire and Galloway Herald.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
The founder of Utilitarianism; author of
Principles of Morals and
Legislation (1789).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Florentine poet, the author of the
Divine Comedy and other
works.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
English essayist and man of letters; he wrote for the
London
Magazine and
Blackwood's, and was author of
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).
John Dow (d. 1827)
Son of Archibald Dow; he was an Edinburgh shorthand writer, Writer to the Signet (1808),
and acquaintance of John Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart.
Henry Home Drummond of Blair Drummond (1783-1867)
Scottish Advocate, educated at Oxford; he was MP for Stirlingshire (1821-31) and
Perthshire (1840-52). He was the grandson of Lord Kames.
John Faed (1819-1902)
Scottish painter, the son of a tenant farmer, who painted literary subjects from Robert
Burns and Walter Scott.
Sir Adam Ferguson (1771-1855)
Son of the philosopher and classmate and friend of Sir Walter Scott; he served in the
Peninsular Campaign under Wellington, afterwards living on his estate in
Dumfriesshire.
Sir Francis Grant (1803-1878)
Scottish artist known for his portraits and sporting scenes; he was president of the
Royal Academy (1866-78).
James Gray (1770-1830)
Scottish poet, the Latin master at Dumfries, where he taught the children of Robert
Burns. He was afterwards master of the Edinburgh High School (1801-22), James Hogg's
brother-in-law, and rector of Belfast Academy (1822). In 1826 he emigrated to
Bombay.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
Homer (850 BC fl.)
Poet of the
Iliad and
Odyssey.
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
English poet and man of letters, author of the epic
Gebir (1798)
and
Imaginary Conversations (1824-29). He resided in Italy from 1815
to 1835.
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)
Editor of the
Quarterly Review (1825-1853); son-in-law of Walter
Scott and author of the
Life of Scott 5 vols (1838).
Samuel Parr (1747-1825)
English schoolmaster, scholar, and book collector whose strident politics and assertive
personality involved him in a long series of quarrels.
Robert Pollok (1798-1827)
Scottish poet and clergyman, author of the oft-reprinted
The Course of
Time (1827) issued shortly before his early death.
James Scott [The Odontist] (1830 fl.)
The first dental specialist to practice in Glasgow, he was a member of the Royal
Philosophical Society of Glasgow (1803), afterward pilloried in
Blackwood's as “The Odontist.”. Blackwood's describes him as deceased in
1831.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
Thomas Thomson (1768-1852)
Scottish lawyer and man of letters; he was one of the projectors of the
Edinburgh Review and succeeded Sir Walter Scott as president of the Bannatyne
Club (1832-52).
Thomas Thomson (1773-1852)
Friend of James Mill and professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow; he
contributed to the
Quarterly Review.
John Wilson [Christopher North] (1785-1854)
Scottish poet and Tory essayist, the chief writer for the “Noctes Ambrosianae” in
Blackwood's Magazine and professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh
University (1820).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
