Andrew Lang: The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart

It has seemed desirable to finish the story of Lockhart’s relations with Scott, before sketching his London life, and describing his connection with one, at least, of his most important allies in the Quarterly. The letters to that friend, Milman, were partly written in Scott’s last days. The society which Lockhart frequented in town may easily be guessed from a series of diaries, mere jottings, kept by himself and Mrs. Lockhart. In 1826, as new-comers to London, we find the Lockharts entertaining,

“DIZZY”

among others, Mr. Christie, Mr. Wright, and Mr. Disraeli, probably the elder Disraeli. The younger had vanished from the Representative, and was at odds with Mr. Murray. Lockhart speaks, later, without approval (to put it mildly) of his personal assault on “Crokey” as Rigby, in “Coningsby.” The old Blackwoodsman thought it too personal, without palliating Croker’s relations with the Marquis of Steyne. Lockhart and young Disraeli must have become unfriendly. Mr. Disraeli, wishing to revile Mr. Morier’s novel, “Zohrab,” in the Edinburgh, told Mr. Macvey Napier that it had been praised in the Quarterly because the Quarterly was edited by a “tenth-rate novelist.”1 Writing to Lady Blessington, he described Lockhart’s style as exquisitely bad, and notable for confused jumbles of commonplace metaphors—a childish criticism which only enmity could inspire.

No diary for 1833 seems to be extant, but, on July 20, Lockhart is obliged to inform his brother William of another death in this ill-fated family: “I need not write about poor Anne Scott’s death; . . . you may conceive how various circumstances have combined to make the blow really a shocking

DEATH OF ANNE SCOTT

one to Sophia. She, too, ere things began to look seriously bad, had the luck to fall and sprain her old rheumatic knee very severely.” “She had never before been so stunned and shattered,” he adds, in a letter to Miss Violet Lockhart, “for Johnnie’s death and her father’s were long expected. This was so sudden.”

A little later, on March 24, we find him writing to Mrs. Maginn. In the extraordinary licence which evil tongues have taken with the memory of Lockhart, some have even accused him of unkindness to Maginn. Of his relations with “bright, broken Maginn,” not many traces are left. The archives of the first series of Fraser’s Magazine, mainly conducted by Maginn, with that wonderful staff which included Thackeray, Carlyle, Galt, Coleridge, Harrison Ainsworth, and many another name of various note, are no longer accessible, and no key but that of conjecture is left as to Lockhart’s contributions; but of his unwearied kindness to Maginn, traces do survive.

“Sept. 13.—Blackwood in bed. Dying. Quite clear—says he has got the turn, and asks me to smoke a cigar!

Lockhart’s personal aspect at this time is portrayed in the gallery of Fraserians, by Maclise. He is dressed (Sir Walter would have disliked the costume) in a kind of long dressing-gown; he has a cigar in his mouth, and a manuscript in his hand. His profile and head are of classical beauty, his figure is manly and finely proportioned. Another profile, in a group of “The Fraserians,” is no less distinguished.

Before offering a collection of Lockhart’s letters to Milman, on Quarterly matters, we must not evade confession of his famous misdeed, the éreintement of young Mr. Tennyson’s “Poems” of 1833. The biographer must admit that though his admiration of the greatest English poet since Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott, is apt to go further than “this side idolatry;” though he—as a matter of private opinion—ranks Lord Tennyson at least the peer of the highest; though Lord Tennyson’s early verses are, above all, his favourites, yet he cannot read Lockhart’s review without laughing. Laughter is not begotten by the review of Keats (whoever wrote it), or by the assaults on Leigh Hunt: these rouse a very different emotion. But “that noble lady, or gentleman who is not freely merry” over the Tennysonian criticism, “is not my friend.”

Lockhart, in a letter to Scott, speaks of Chantrey arranging statues “that noble place in”—namely, Windsor Castle: he liked the Doric idyll. He omits the singular taste displayed by Mr. Tennyson’s soul when “she lit white streams of dazzling gas” (so bad for pictures) in “The Palace of Art.” Yet Lockhart hated the globes of dazzling gas at Abbotsford. For the rest the curious may turn to the old Quarterly Review.

Yet, how could the author of “I Ride from Land to Land,” and “When Youthful Faith is Fled”—how could he, as Mr. Saintsbury asks, overlook the merit of “Mariana in the South,” of the “Lotus Eaters,” and of “The Lady of Shalott,” and “Œnone,” even in their crude, early forms? Mr. Saintsbury speaks of Lockhart’s objection “to romantic poetry.” Yet Lockhart appreciated “Kubla Khan,” “Christabel,” and the “Ancient Mariner,” the very corner-stones of romantic poetry. His blindness is inexplicable. Probably, he was in a wicked mood; his sense of humour was captivated by certain passages exquisitely ludicrous; in “Mariana” and “Eleanore” he found only, what we all find with delight, “a dreamy tissue”; and he delivered himself to the spirit of mockery. Let it be remembered that Dr. Johnson, Scott’s favourite poet, analysed “Lycidas,” and the “Odes” of Gray, with just as little sympathy as Lockhart showed for the “Lady of Shalott.” In later years, Lockhart braved the wrath of “Crokey,” that Tennyson might be fairly reviewed in the Quarterly.

During these years (1833-1836), Lockhart, in addition to his labours on the Quarterly, was revising and editing all Sir Walter’s works, poetry and prose. His letters to Mr. Cadell are mainly occupied with technical details about printing and publishing. The payment of the debts of Scott was Lockhart’s aim and reward. On June 16, 1835, he remarks, “To omit the Miss Austen” (the review of that great novelist by Scott) “would be unjust to Sir Walter’s character—his kind notice made her fame.” He goes on, speaking of his preparations for the “Life”: “I now sit among a multitude of Collectaneana, hopping and peering, for hours sometimes, before I can settle the plan of the day’s operations. Perhaps I may promise a volume of my own reminiscences of our intercourse and fireside talk. I never thought of being a Boswell, but I have a fair memory, and to me he no doubt spoke more freely and fully on various affairs than to any other who now survives. . . . The letters to the Major and myself are, in their different ways, the most valuable he ever wrote, being by far the simplest, honestest, and wisest. So I say from general recollection, never yet having gone over them with a view to practical purposes—I mean book-making purposes.”

We now offer a sample of Lockhart, not as a critic, but as an editor. His correspondence with Milman, the most distinguished of his regular literary contributors at this date, may be left, with very few elucidatory notes, to speak for itself. In 1826, Lockhart had read the manuscript of Milman’s “Anne Boleyn” for the publisher, and had declared it to be, with the exception of “half-a-dozen passages of stately and noble versification, feeble in the extreme. . . . If he would learn to write prose as well as he does verse, he might make a figure worth speaking of.”1 The criticism was a prediction. Milman became one of Lockhart’s closest friends, and to him, as to Carlyle, he was able, once or twice, to act on the spirit of his motto, corda serrata pando, to lay bare his heart.2 We find one early undated business note, ending with this scra pof rhyme:—

“The Rev. H. M1lman.”

(With Pope’s “Essay on Man,” and Wilkinson’s “Materia Hieroglyphica.”)

. . . . . .

“A friend of mine witnessed a set-to t’other day between two blackguards in Covent Garden’s sweet purlieus, and they saluted each other, in place of
98 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
the olden endearments, with ‘you blasted borough-monger,’ and ‘you damned bishop.’

“Set your house in order.—Ever yours,

“J. G. L.

“Monday, Nov. 14, 1831.”

Here is brief reference to Johnnie’s death. The scheme of a poetical collection seems to have collapsed:—

“London, December 30, 1831.

“My dear Milman,—. . . Thanks for your kind note. In addition to that long expected, but still painful blow, my little girl of three years has fallen downstairs and broken an arm, poor thing; but she is doing well; and when something re-established, if you don’t come up to town I think I shall invade you on my first excursus. I want to talk with you about various matters. Meantime, have you any stray leaves of verse, original or translations, you could entrust to my hand in case of a thing being suddenly begun which we spoke of as proper to be attempted? There appears to be an embryo getting into some signs of life.—Yours ever very truly,

“J. G. Lockhart.”

The edition of Milman is referred to here.

. . . . . .

“I think Murray will make you an offer about an Edition of Gibbon one of these days;1 at least, I
1 The Gibbon here alluded to, unlike the verses, was a happy and most successful enterprise.

BIOGRAPHIES 99
heard him ordering calculations to be made about printing such a book, &c As to the F. L., he still persists in keeping total silence to me.”

Biography was always Lockhart’s favourite theme: his liking for it is manifest here:—

“The Rev. H. Milman, Reading.
“London, July 1, 1832.

“My dear Milman,—What think you of an idea that has come into my head? It is to have an extra number of the Quarterly Review this autumn entirely biographical. We have just lost Cuvier, Goethe, Mackintosh, Crabbe, and Bentham. Would you, if you approve the notion, make one of the articles—and would ‘Goethe’ please your hand? If so, the materials are abundant, and by interweaving original translations you could make a most charming paper. I think of asking Herschell to do Cuvier—Croker, Mackintosh, and of assaulting Crabbe myself. But I want before going further to ascertain your opinion of the scheme, and whether I might rely on your co-operation. (Should there be prints?) Sir Walter Scott continues to linger on in a hopeless stupor—how much longer he might do so none can guess, but I suspect the end will be hastened by a fresh attack.—Ever yours,

J. G. Lockhart.”

Domestic troubles caused by the ignorant gossip
100 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
of journalists after Scott’s death, are here exposed:—

“My wife and her sister are now well and quiet—I and my brothers-in-law are harassed beyond imagination about the money affairs of Sir W. Scott. The newspaper paragraphs here, though well meant, have done us in the meantime at least a world of mischief. They have inflamed the hopes of the creditors, and, I fear, taken away all chance of their acceding to the proposals we tendered for a general settlement of the affair. And all, or almost all, this difficulty comes of the officiousness of friends here who could not wait one week till some of the family could be communicated with.

“The Quarterly Review has been sadly neglected, and I must work hard at it now. Do let me have your strenuous quill at my need.—Ever yours,

“J. G. Lockhart.”

Thanks to the enterprise and goodwill of Mr. Cadell, who advanced £30,000 on the security of Scott’s copyrights and literary remains, a settlement with Sir Walter’s creditors was concluded on February 2, 1833. The “Life” of Scott did much towards clearing the debt.

Early in 1834 arose a little question of literary interest. Who wrote “The Doctor”? Lockhart says to Milman (February 19). “I have a letter from Southey about ‘The Doctor,’—he wholly
THE DOCTOR 101
denies it, and suspects Frere; but Henry Coleridge tells me he knows the author. Can he be, after all, Hartley Coleridge or De Quincey? They both have lived much with the elder Lakers, and may either of them have been Boswellising as to stories as well as opinions. I could have sworn Southey wrote the bit about Lord Lauderdale and the Chimney Sweeps—and now believe he spoke it.—Ever yours,

J. G. L.”

Milman replied:—“‘The Doctor’ must be Southey’s. He told me the story of Thistlewood which appears there, totidem verbis, when we met at dinner at Murray’s. I confess that the gleams of genuine Southeyism appear to me faint, as far as his nobler qualities go; much of the art is his, and style.”

Southey himself had written to Lockhart (February 3):—“’The Doctor’ has been sent to me, with my name in rubric letters on the back of the title-page, and with the author’s compliments, but with no indication who that author is; nor has the channel through which it came enabled me to guess at the source. Some guesses that seemed likely enough were met by greater unlikelihoods; but when I heard Frere named as the supposed author, I wondered that I had not thought of him at first. I know not in what other person we could find the wit, the humour, the knowledge, and the consummate mastery of style,” which were really Southey’s own!

102

LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.

All this was fairly cool in Southey, who, of course, was himself the author. He amused himself, later, by fixing on Theodore Hook as the writer, and by sending to him all letters on “The Doctor” that reached his own hands. “I have to thank you for a copy of ‘The Doctor,’” he wrote to Hook on January 24, 1832. Lockhart, in his essay on Hook, remarks that Southey had, in a letter, quite unprovoked, to himself, “seemed to deny most explicitly the least concern in the anonymous production. It is probable that if we could lay our hands on it at this moment a loophole could be detected; but in our notice of ‘The Doctor’ we assumed that our original conjecture had been unfounded.”

The letter survived, and has just been quoted. It is a strange affair. Southey played off a hoax much in Hogg’s vein—or rather, several hoaxes. Coleridge had assured Lockhart that the book was Southey’s. But Southey, in his letter to Lockhart, does not say explicitly, “I did not write ‘The Doctor.’” The kind of amusement which the worthy man sucked from his mystification is not very obvious, but he certainly praised “The Doctor” in a manner which he usually kept for his own productions. There soon follows, in a note to Milman, an early reference to Lockhart’s work on “Scott’s Life”:—

“Now don’t cut the Quarterly Review. If you do, this next year or so we go to pot, for my hands
ICHTHYOSAURI 103
are much employed on another concern for that time, and really without you we can’t do at all.”

From Edinburgh, where Mr. Blackwood, as we saw, was dying in 1834, Lockhart wrote:—

“September 12, 1834.

“My dear Milman,—I received your letter here yesterday, having come hither to see the savants” (the British Association) “in their glory. I squeezed in in the evening, and found Buckland amusing, with puns and conundrums about the ichthyosauri, an assembly of nearly 2000 Christians, male, female, young and old—horrid humbug, but the newspapers will give you enough of it. I shall be at Rokeby, in Yorkshire, in another week, and, as there is a good library there, shall begin and think again of business. As the Murrays are both out of town, I need not write about anything to Albemarle Street; but I wish you would find the exact title of a book called something like ‘Origines Biblicæ,’ lately published by a Mr. Beke, of London, which I heard much spoken of by a clever man I met a week or two ago. Mr. Beke, it seems, has discovered that the Mityraem” (Mithraim?) “of the Pentateuch is not Egypt, but Arabia Petræa, and my friend appeared to think he had established many points of his argument. I can’t believe that the universal tradition could have been wholly wrong on such a matter; but pray, look at the book and consider it along with Arundel, who is,
104 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
I fear, a weak brother. Please ask ‘Mr. Dundas or Mr. Day’ at Murray’s to forward you these or any other books; and, N.B., though I ask you to consider Beke with Arundel, I should like two shortish articles better than one long one.

“I have heard nothing of the last Quarterly Review, except from yourself and Murray, whose intelligence is that he has rarely sold so many copies of a Number, and that pleases him. I thought and think the Number a bad one, all but your own article, and that on Bérard. It is the radical vice of a certain acute mind1 that it really is cursed nil admirari, and therefore I must try, as far as possible, to keep it at work in such affairs as French politics and French memoirs.

“My wife unites with me in earnestly hoping that Mrs. Milman may soon shake off the relics of her disorder.—Ever sincerely yours,

“J. G. Lockhart.”

On the last day of 1834, Lockhart wrote a letter of political gossip, asking for an article on ecclesiastical affairs. He ends thus:—

“Meanwhile here are Coleridge’s ‘Ana’ full of all sorts of ultra Toryism, to be quoted. He says, ‘Mark the use Shakespeare always makes of a villain when he gets hold of one—he makes him speak all the grand wickednesses that have been
1 Croker?

BAD TIMES 105
coming into his own head since he had such another opportunity.’ Now old Samuel Taylor Coleridge shall be my villain for once. All this treason pray suppress, except to your fair dame, if she cares for such matters; and do write your article quam primum, for you see time is likely to press, and especially if I am obliged to run down to Scotland for these elections.

“I told Croker ten days ago that Peel ought to give you one of his first good things, and I know that Croker wrote to him to that effect—but the answer has not been communicated to the sous-signé,

J. G. Lockhart.”

Here comes an unhappy gap in the correspondence, which is either missing, or devoid of interest, till the year, the most unhappy, or one of the most unhappy, in Lockhart’s life, 1837. Southey’s letters in 1831 are much occupied with a topic noticed in his published articles, a temporary diminution in the rate of payment for his articles. The times were bad (owing to Reform); Lockhart writes gloomily thereon to one of his brothers; and he himself (September 16, 1831) expressed his readiness to have his own rate of payment lowered.1 Croker, at the same time, took the same position. Southey appears not to have received due notice of a change most unwelcome to a man who “drew his revenue from his inkstand.” On March 15,
1 “Life of John Murray,” ii. 371.

106 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
1832, he says, “Mr. Murray overpays me largely,” so times may have improved for the Quarterly. Southey was anxious that Scott should see Landor in Florence, as the thing “most worth seeing in Italy.” Of Sir Walter’s death Southey writes with deep feeling (September 16, 1832): “My heart has often ached at thinking of you and Mrs. Lockhart. The tragedy, I hope, has now closed. You have indeed been tried in the burning fiery furnace; God grant you present support and relief, and peace and happiness hereafter.” In March 1833, Southey sent Lockhart some of Sir Walter’s letters: he had looked over his correspondence in 1826. “This is a task in which the person who performs it saves his representatives from much trouble, at the expense of much pain to himself.”

There is a short way with letters!

“The birds of prey are already at work,” Southey says, referring to magazine articles on Scott.1 He had refused an invitation to write a dirge on his own terms. He replied that “the death of an old friend was not an affair which he could treat in this way, nor upon such considerations.”

Here, again, the correspondence ends, till, in 1838, Southey congratulates Lockhart on having produced “the most complete biography that has yet appeared of a great man.” As a rule, Southey’s letters to Lockhart are of very slight interest.

1 An unauthorised “Life of Scott,” by George Allan, appeared in 1834.

TROUBLES WITH HOGG

107

The task of collecting material for the great biography was heavy, and involved much correspondence. By far the most extraordinary letter on the subject of his “Life of Scott” which Lockhart received, was written by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. Now, some friends of the Shepherd, among them his daughter, Mrs. Garden, in her “Memorials,” and Professor Veitch, in the same work, have blamed Lockhart’s behaviour to Hogg, and especially his comments on Hogg in the “Life of Scott.” I do not think that either the Shepherd, or the faithful to his memory, have many serious grievances against Lockhart; and if “dear friends may meet once more,”
“Beyond the sphere of Time,
And Sin, and Fate’s controul,
Serene in changeless prime
Of body and of soul,”
there, assuredly, all unkind temper and rancour is long ago forgotten and forgiven.

That the Shepherd, in early Blackwood days, had something to forgive the author, whoever he was, of a certain review, is undeniable. But he did forgive it. We have seen how Lockhart brought Hogg to Abbotsford, not to Lady Scott’s delight; and to Hogg and Allan Cunningham Lockhart dedicated his “Life of Burns”; while he, of course, entertained and befriended the Shepherd in London. In some Reminiscences, at the beginning of his
108 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
“Altrive Tales” (London, 1832), Hogg sketched the portrait of Lockhart as a very young man, with his six black servants, his hoaxes and his caricatures. “A warm and disinterested friend he has been to me,” says the Shepherd.1 At the close of his “Confessions of a Justified Sinner,” Hogg introduces Lockhart, and puts into his mouth comments on the Shepherd’s own love of literary hoaxes.

That, in early Blackwoods, Hogg’s name was occasionally attached to what he did not write, is certain; to a sonnet on Mr. Blackwood, for example, and, I believe, to a letter on the Edinburgh Review’s censures of his “Jacobite Relics.” This letter contains a curious expression of kindness to Keats, reports of whose illness had reached Edinburgh. It reads like a shame-faced apology. Whatever harm there was in all this, the Shepherd, himself a hoaxer, had long condoned. We have seen that Scott and Lockhart were busily trying to procure for Hogg a pension from the Royal Society of Literature. In 1831,2 Lockhart wrote about Hogg (we have already referred to this matter), “His acquirements are now such that the Royal Society of Literature, in patronising him, might be justly said to honour a laborious and successful student, as well as a masculine and fertile genius.” Then, to disarm objections which he may have encountered
1 P. cxxxix.
2 Quarterly Review, vol. xliv. pp. 8l, 82.

PRAISE OF HOGG 109
in pleading Hogg’s cause, Lockhart adds, “A more worthy, modest, sober, and loyal man does not exist in his Majesty’s dominions than this distinguished poet, whom some of his waggish friends have taken up the absurd fancy of exhibiting in print as a sort of boozing buffoon; and who is now, instead of revelling in the licence of tavern suppers and party politics, bearing up, as he may, against severe and unmerited misfortunes, in as dreary a solitude as ever nursed the melancholy of a poetic temperament.”

The plea is over-stated. Modesty was not Hogg’s forte, nor was melancholy his foible. Probably, when Lockhart wrote, the Shepherd was happy enough at the Roaring Game, or was shooting wild duck.1 The Shepherd of the Noctes, as described by Wilson, was, in fact, apt to be misconstrued by stupid people as a “boozing buffoon”—and the officials of the Royal Society of Literature were not clever people.

Wilson was very angry; he called Lockhart’s remarks “a feeble fumble of falsehood,” “a matter-of-fact lie by a Cockney in his dotage,” and so forth. Such was the point and polish of his repartee.2 In June 1830, Wilson had begun the trouble by attacking Sir Walter—“There’s Sir Walter wi’ his everlasting anecdotes, nine out o’ ten meaning naething, and the tenth itsel’ as auld as the Eildon Hills;” this, with other insolent reflections on
1 January 1831. 2 “Noctes,” March 1831.

110 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
Scott’s old age, Wilson had put into the mouth of Hogg. But Lockhart’s observation was merely meant to satisfy the people who had in their gift the pensions of the Literary Society. Probably, too, he was not well pleased by the assaults on Sir Walter, which were assigned to the Shepherd. So Wilson fell back on the lie direct, and the cry of “Cockney!” Lockhart forgave the offences with perfect magnanimity.

As to Hogg himself, on December 14, 1831, he wrote to Lockhart, asking for a preface to his Tales, and proposing to “have half a mutchkin” with one of the writers in the Quarterly. Later, in an undated note, he acknowledges Lockhart’s literary advice as that of “a true friend.” Signs there are of a quarrel with Blackwood; in whose magazine he declares that he can never again consent to appear. This note was written from Huntley Burn (Sir Adam Ferguson’s), after the Shepherd’s visit to London. About that visit Lockhart writes thus to Will Laidlaw; there is no trace of “virulence” here:—

“March 1832.

“My dear Laidlaw,—We have letters last night from Naples. Sir Walter writes this time a much better hand than the last, but I grieve to say he seldom writes about anything but new books he is or is to be about! I fear he will find Cadell little disposed for new undertakings at this time.

HOGG IN TOWN

111

“The Hogg is the Lion of the season, and is playing his part with great good sense to all appearance. I hope and trust we shall be able to do something for his real good in the way of a subscription edition of the ‘Queen’s Wake,’ which Murray is starting, and which the Highland Society are, it is believed, likely to patronise. As for his plan of twelve volumes of novels and tales, of that I never could have had any favourable opinion; and, between ourselves, I believe it is in the hands of a publisher not likely to be solvent, even if there were anything to pay.1 At all events, the Shepherd, if he retires soon, will have left a good impression of himself here—and laid in a stock of new observation to boot, and thus, if in no other way, I trust he will have benefited by his trip. I keep my budget of his sayings and doings, which is a rich one, till I can communicate it over a tumbler.

“Whether I may be able to get away from town this year long enough to admit of my making a run to see the laird” (Scott, in Italy), “wherever he may chance to be, I can’t yet say. If I cannot, we shall go down for a few weeks to Abbotsford, and place ourselves at the tender mercies of Mrs. Mackay.

1 Mrs. Garden, in her Memorials of her father, thinks that Lockhart believed in the solvency of Cochrane, the publisher. There must have been a misconception on one side or the other. The publisher failed: Hogg was often unlucky. A letter of Mrs. Lockhart’s, to Will Laidlaw, suggests that Lockhart may have changed his mind about Cochrane, as no better publisher was ready to take Hogg’s work.

112

LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.

“Love to the ladies, and, when you see him, to Colonel Ferguson.—Ever yours truly,

“J. G. Lockhart.”

Finally, after Scott’s death, on October 4, 1832, Hogg writes from Altrive Lake, advising Lockhart, in composing the Life of Sir Walter, to take his (Hogg’s) “name and forthright egotistical stile, . . . which will likewise do him some credit as a biographer.” If Lockhart thinks it necessary, Hogg will copy the manuscript with his own hand. He ends, “May I copy a few pages of your ‘Life of Burns’?”

In a similar vein, Hogg had long before proposed that Scott should transcribe and father Hogg’s “Life of Hogg”!1 Lockhart’s comment on that request is, “To say nothing about modesty, Hogg’s notions of literary honesty were always exceedingly loose; but, at the same time, we must take into account his peculiar notions, or rather no notions, as to the proper limits of a joke.”

The malignant Lockhart could have given another and stranger example of Hogg’s ideas about literary honesty and the limits of a joke, namely, those set forth in Hogg’s letter of October 4, 1832. But Lockhart held his peace about that egregious and almost incredible proposal: so far did he carry his “virulence.”

For the rest, as Mr. Saintsbury has shown, the
1 “Life of Scott,” ii. 171, 172.

HOGG ON SCOTT 113
anecdotes about Hogg, in the “Life of Scott,” exhibit the self-same Shepherd as the Shepherd of those memoirs which “I like to write about myself.”1

Unluckily Scott was not long dead when Hogg put forth his “Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott,” in which the vain, random, egotistic gossip was accompanied by depreciatory notes from some editorial hand. “The pamphlet,” says Mr. Saintsbury, “contains among other things, besides the grossest impertinences about Lady Scott’s origin, at least one insinuation that Scott wrote Lockhart’s books.” The Shepherd meant no harm, I believe. If, as Lockhart says, “he did not follow his best benefactor until he had insulted his dust,” there was no conscious malice in his blundering comments. The book contains some golden sentences on Sir Walter. But the man who could make the proposal about a “Life of Scott,” by Lockhart, but signed by Hogg, did not and could not see things as the rest of mankind see them. As Lockhart says, Hogg was “a true son of nature and genius, with a naturally kind and simple character.” But the children of nature are capable of very amazing and very irritating behaviour.2

From Lockhart’s correspondents on the subject of Scott’s “Life,” not many letters are preserved. The most important papers are those of Mr. Skene
1 “Altrive Tales,” p. 1.
2 Mr. Saintsbury’s criticism of Hogg, in relation to Scott and Lockhart, will be found in his “Essays in English Literature,” pp. 37-44.

114 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
of Rubislaw, whose “Reminiscences” would make a small volume of considerable interest. Mrs. Scott of Harden (Lady Polwarth) mentions two anecdotes of Sir Walter’s early childhood: “You don’t know how ignorant these boys are,” he said, when asked why he did not play with some other boys, instead of reading. Again, as he sprawled on the carpet, perusing, of all books, “Tristram Shandy,” some one inquired, “Do you understand that book, Walter?” “No,” answered the young critic, “and I do not think that the author meant it to be understood.”

The following letter, from Mrs. Lockhart to Mr. Cadell the publisher, describes Lockhart at work:—

“24 Sussex Place, March 4, 1836.

“Dear Mr. Cadell,—Knowing how anxious you are for the ‘Life,’ I cannot help writing you a few lines to tell you it is fairly begun, and Lockhart working as hard at it as ever you could wish. He has been arranging it so long in his mind that, now fairly commenced, he will not be long about it; and he has read to me, and continues to do so, what he writes, and I am much mistaken if anything in our time will come up to it in interest, style, or as a picture of manners just passing away. I cannot speak enough of the interest he has contrived to give to the genealogy, the least promising part, and you may believe the rest is not behind hand.
MR. CADELL 115
. . . When once set to a thing, he neither sleeps nor takes the necessary exercise. . . .”

Among Lockhart’s correspondents, Mr. Cadell, Scott’s publisher, was the most active. He pursued all the old gentlemen who might remember Sir Walter’s youth, such as Mr. Irving, a Mr. Ramsay, and an English acquaintance, one Jones; “nobody knows what became of him.” This, probably, is the friend who predicted Scott’s literary greatness as early as 1789.1 Mr. Clerk, “Will Clerk,” was lazy in producing his recollections, and needed to be urged on by the Chief Commissioner, Mr. Adam of Blair Adam. Mr. Clerk found a few old letters; and the energetic Cadell says: “You may suppose that I implored, and prayed, and begged of Clerk to howk (dig) and search, and rummage for more, but I see nothing does him so much good as a note from Mrs. Lockhart. . . . Mr. Clerk cannot find the love-letters he thought he had, and thinks he must have burned them.” Sir Walter in these days (1793) “used unceasingly to quote and repeat Smollett.” On January 8, 1836, Mr. Cadell exclaims, à propos of Lockhart’s industry in composing the “Life”: “At no time did I ever hear you speak of yourself, certainly never in your own praise. I wonder if you ever think of yourself, and the filthy siller that you can make. I wonder, too, if it were possible to bribe you! If bribery in hand would be eschewed, the
1 “Life,” i. 215.

116 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
prospect of a lump of money at the completion of the job might be held out. . . . I am sure if you were selfish and money-loving all this must cross you.”

This is indeed “testimony to character.”

On November 24, 1836, Mr. Cadell sent to Lockhart the little sketch of his own life by John Ballantyne. “What a partner for the great minstrel!” he exclaims. In a letter of September 8, 1837, Mr. Cadell makes the important remark that Constable’s firm and the Ballantynes’ should have stopped on December 18, 1825, not on January 17, 1826. All the money raised by the firms between these dates was thrown away. “I told Sir Walter on the 18th December that the kettle would not clout” and Mr. Cadell blames Constable, then his partner, for continuing to struggle, or talk of struggling, for he did not at once go to London. This long letter is, unluckily, imperfect; but Scott’s Journal for December 18, 1825, shows that he regarded Mr. Cadell as the bearer of good tidings. These financial affairs are excessively perplexing; we shall be obliged to touch on them in the matter of the Ballantyne controversy; and it will, at least, be plain that if Lockhart made errors, he worked on the best accessible authorities, and under the supervision of the person most likely to understand these problems, namely, Mr. Cadell. That gentleman, on September 23, 1837, sent to Lockhart a letter from Sir Walter to Lord Kinneder, found by Constable in the box containing the Waverley MSS. “It completely bears out your
LOCKHART TO LAIDLAW 117
view of the ‘Beacon’ affair.”1 Mr. Cadell’s letters were, throughout the composition of the “Life,” most appreciative and encouraging.

There is extant, fortunately, a letter of Lockhart’s to Will Laidlaw, written in January 1837, and describing his own attitude towards his work on the “Life.” He says that he is, “I think, wiser, at least more sober, neither richer nor more likely to be rich than I was in the days of Chiefswood and Kaeside—after all our best days, I at least believe. As to politics, I am a very tranquil and indifferent observer. Perhaps, however, much of this equanimity as to passing affairs has arisen from the call which has been made on me to live with the past, bestowing for so many months all the time I could command, and all the care I have had any real heart in, upon the MS. remains of our dear friend. I am glad that Cadell and the few others who have seen what I have done with these are pleased, but I assure you none of them can think more lightly of my own part in the matter than I do myself. My sole object is to do him justice, or rather to let him do himself justice, by so contriving it that he shall be, as far as possible from first to last, his own historiographer, and I have therefore willingly expended the time that would have sufficed for writing a dozen books on what will be no more than the compilation of one.

“A stern sense of duty—that kind of sense of it
1 “Life,” vi. 426.

118 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
which is combined with the feeling of his actual presence in a serene state of elevation above all petty terrestrial and temporary views—will induce me to touch the few darker points in his life and character as freely as the others which were so predominant; and my chief anxiety on the appearance of the book will be, not to hear what is said by the world, but what is thought by you and the few others who can really compare the representation as a whole with the facts of the case.”

Lockhart then asks Laidlaw to read, and advise with him on the proof-sheets, ending—

“Out of these confused and painful scraps” (the very last letters) “I think I can contrive to put together a picture that will be highly touching, of a great mind shattered, but never degraded, and always to the very last noble, as his heart continued pure and warm as long as it could beat.”1

This letter is, in itself, a sufficient reply to some of the censures urged, at the time of publication, against Lockhart’s work.

The first six volumes of the “Life of Scott” were published early in 1836. “The criticisms,” as Lockhart observed when the work was concluded, “were, of course, contradictory.” The book was too cheap; it was too dear; it was too
1 I owe the copy to Mr. David Douglas, who inscribes it thus, “From Maidment’s collection, in the possession of Mr. Kermack.” The letter is in answer to one of Mr. Laidlaw’s from the North, with a present of ptarmigan. It has been printed in Dr. Carruthers’ “Abbotsford Notanda.”

CRITICISMS 119
long; it was too short; it told too much; it did not tell enough; Sir Walter was too much glorified; Sir Walter was traduced. Every author knows the discordant verdicts of contemporary criticism. On the whole, there was more agreement in the opinion that the book was too long, than in any other judgment. In his later abridged edition Lockhart declares that he would rather make it longer than shorter; the interest of Scott’s life lying in the details. He contemplated the publication of selected letters, and Mr. Cadell urged him to write a book of “Reminiscences,” while he himself thought of a collection of Sir Walter’s oral legends and anecdotes. None of these plans was carried into effect, to our great loss.

Of all the contemporary reviewals,1 but one holds its ground, that of volumes i.-vi., contributed to the London and Westminster Review, by Mr. Carlyle, in 1837. Mr. Carlyle was then a distant acquaintance of Lockhart’s; they afterwards became friends, Mr. Carlyle finding in Lockhart “a thinking man.” It was unfortunate that the reviewer had not the last melancholy and heroic volume before him, and it has often been conjectured that he resented Scott’s unlucky oversight of his letter about Goethe. Mr. Carlyle, indeed, did not write in his most genial mood. He objected to the quantity of the work,
1 There were minute, and to my mind prejudiced and unfair censures in Tait’s Magazine. I have read, but do not mean to notice them.

120 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
as if it were what Lockhart styled it, a mere “compilation,” a collection of materials. Mr. Carlyle did not foresee his own immense Life of Frederick, called the Great. Indeed, Mr. Carlyle’s remarks on voluminousness were always like those of Baby Charles denouncing dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on incontinence. However, he said that “sagacity, decision, candour, diligence, good manners, good sense, these qualities are throughout observable,” and “the compilation is the work of a manful, clear-seeing, conclusive man. Lockhart’s free-speaking has laid him open to censure, a censure better than a good many praises.” He has not left Scott “in the white beatified-ghost condition.” As to the Ballantynes, of whom, alas, there is more to be said, Mr. Carlyle detected “nowhere the smallest trace of ill-will or unjust feeling.” “Standing full in the face of the public, Mr. Lockhart has set at naught, and been among the first to do it, a public piece of cant; one of the commonest we have, and closely allied to many of the fellest sort, as smooth as it looks.” Mr. Carlyle then demolishes the absurd theory, attributed to Rogers, “that Mr. Lockhart at heart has a dislike to Scott, and has done his best in an underhand treacherous manner to dishero him.” On the other hand, if Lockhart has a defect, “it is that Scott is altogether lovely to him; . . . that his very faults become beautiful, his vulgar worldlinesses are solid prudences, proprieties, and of his worth there is no measure.”

CARLYLE

121

Here Mr. Carlyle was undeniably in error. Lockhart records Sir Walter’s own remark that he had “a thread of the attorney in him,” in money matters. Lockhart’s sentiments about Scott’s commercial dealings, about his too close association with, to be frank, flatterers, and creatures, if devoted creatures, like the Ballantynes—are plainly expressed, and not merely to be read between the lines. Lockhart does not disguise (though he understands it so well that he forgives it) Sir Walter’s respect for rank, a feeling so often misunderstood. Nor does he conceal Scott’s financial recklessness. I am unaware of any other motes in the brilliance of Sir Walter’s moral character. Lockhart tells (though Mr. Cadell and other friends “winced”) the tale of Scott’s severity to his unhappy brother Daniel—and of his repentance. He shows how fraternal feeling caused Scott to behave as he did behave to Lord Holland at a Friday Club dinner; and he reports their reconciliation.1 Again the friends winced, but the truth prevailed.

Not of all men is it well, perhaps, that biography should be written thus. Not thus unsparingly did Lockhart think it becoming to write about Robert Burns. But it is a thing to rejoice in, that the full story of one great man’s life can be told as Lockhart has told the story of Scott’s life. We know the worst of Sir Walter; we have the full portrait of a man; the defects are blazoned by the intense
1 “Life,” iii. 198, ix. 225, iii. 239, x. 189.

122 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
light of genius and goodness, and, thus displayed, how slight they are, how high is that noble nature above ours, if indeed it attains not to the rare perfection of the saints! Scott, assuredly, was not a saint, but a man living in the world, and, it is granted by his biographer, living too much for the world. But he lived for other men as few but the saints have lived, and his kindness, helpfulness, courage, temper, and moral excellence, his absolute, immaculate freedom from the literary sins of envy, jealousy, vanity, shine in Lockhart’s pages as an eternal, if unapproachable, example. Only a good man could have so clearly observed, so affectionately adored, and so excellently recorded these virtues; and, though Lockhart’s assuredly was a very faulty, as well as a very complex and occasionally perverse character, that would be a judgment harsher than men should judge with, which finally denied to him the character of a good man. Our temptations strike us on the unguarded side, as the poor stag in the fable was smitten by an arrow from the sea. Against the very different faults of Lockhart and of Scott, pride might have seemed a shield, but its protection was unavailing.

Of the literary merits of the “Life of Scott” it is not possible for one whose breviary, as it were, the book has been from boyhood, to speak with impartiality. To a Scot, and a Scot of the Border, the book has the charm of home, and is dear to us as his own grey hills were dear to Sir Walter. Necessarily,
LIFE OF SCOTT 123
inevitably, the stranger cannot, or seldom can, share this sentiment. Mr. Saintsbury, now in some degree a Scot by adoption, has, indeed, placed the book beside or above Boswell’s. That is a length to which I cannot go; for Boswell’s hero appears to myself to be of a character more universally human, a wiser man, a greater humourist, his biography a more valuable possession, than Sir Walter and Sir Walter’s “Life.” But it were childish to dispute about the relative merits of two chefs-d’œuvre. Each work is perfect in its kind, and in relation to its subject. The self-repression of Lockhart, accompanied by his total lack of self-consciousness (so astonishing in so shy a man), when his own person has to figure on the scene, is as valuable as the very opposite quality in Boswell.

Later writers, Thackeray, Macaulay, Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Louis Stevenson, Mr. Pater, have given examples of styles more personal, infinitely more conspicuous, than Lockhart’s; to many, doubtless to most readers, more taking. Lockhart has no mannerisms, no affectations, no privy jargon, no confidences with the reader; but it may almost be said that he has no faults. His English is like the English of Swift, all the light is concentrated on the object. Without disparagement of the great or pleasing authors already named; with every acknowledgment of the charming or the astonishing qualities of their various manners, we must also claim a place,
124 LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.
and a high place, for the style of Lockhart. He wrote English.

Concerning what may be reckoned the chief fault of Lockhart’s “Life of Scott,” more must be said in a later chapter. In whatever degree the Ballantynes were accessory to the financial ruin of Scott, Sir Walter, in choosing such instruments, was himself foremost in the fault, and this (as I understand Lockhart’s account of the matter in the “Life”) was Lockhart’s own opinion. That all the anecdotes of the Ballantynes were strictly necessary to illustrate their characters, and the relations between Scott and them, I am far from being convinced; and Constable, too, might have been much more gently handled. Strange pictures of human life, entertaining passages admired by Mr. Carlyle, would, indeed, have been lost if Lockhart had been of this opinion; a portrait much less vivid of Sir Walter would have been presented. The balance must be adjusted by the sense of each reader of the book.

One other point in the “Life” may be regretted. Lockhart published certain passages of Sir Walter’s Journal which reflected on the manners of some Americans with whom he was acquainted. He had suffered a good deal from American tourists, and from volunteer correspondents, like the young lady who cost him ten pounds for postage on two copies of “The Cherokee Lovers,” in manuscript. English tourists and epistolary bores were, of course, no less frequent trials. But Cooper the novelist did his best
AMERICAN CRITICS 125
to secure some remuneration for Scott’s novels as circulated in the States. Unluckily, Scott dropped a remark on Cooper’s manner as contrasted with his genius, and this seems to have escaped the attention of Lockhart, Morritt, and Milman, who read the whole Journal in print. Cooper was, not unnaturally, angry, and wrote a review in which, as Mr. Charles Sumner observed, he scathed “the vulgar minds of Scott and Lockhart.”1 Sir Walter had American friends and guests whose letters attest the cordiality of their relations. This “rapacious” man (as Macaulay terms him) was much more anxious that the Americans should have cheap “Waverley” novels, than that he should be paid for them by the Americans. They are the most pious and frequent of pilgrims to his shrines, so let us hope that the tomahawk is buried. But Professor Lounsbury in his “Life of Cooper” (1895), is still palpitating with a cruel sense of wrong!

1 In the Knickerbocker Magazine.

≪ PREV

NEXT ≫

William Adam (1751-1839) Scottish barrister, Whig MP (1784-1812) and ally of Charles James Fox (whom he once wounded in a duel); he was privy councillor (1815) and a friend of Sir Walter Scott.

William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) Historical novelist who published in the New Monthly Magazine and London Magazine.

Sir Edward Hall Alderson (1787-1857) English barrister educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple; in 1830 he was judge of the court of common pleas. He was a cousin of Amelia Opie.

George Allan (1832 fl.) Not identified. Sir Walter Scott's first biographer completed a task begun by William Weir of the Glasgow Argus.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) English novelist, author of Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813).

James Ballantyne (1772-1833) Edinburgh printer in partnership with his younger brother John; the company failed in the financial collapse of 1826.

John Ballantyne (1774-1821) Edinburgh publisher and literary agent for Walter Scott; he was the younger brother of the printer James Ballantyne.

Sir John Barrow, first baronet (1764-1848) English traveler, secretary of the Admiralty, and author of over two hundred articles in the Quarterly Review; he is remembered for his Mutiny on the Bounty (1831).

Harriot Beauclerk, duchess of St. Albans [née Mellon] (1777-1837) The Irish actress who in 1815 married the banker Thomas Coutts, a man twice her age, and then in 1826, William Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, ninth duke of St Albans, a man half her age.

Charles Tilstone Beke (1800-1874) Educated at Hackney and Lincoln's Inn, he was a traveller in Abyssinia and writer on biblical geography.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) The founder of Utilitarianism; author of Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).

Helen Selina Blackwood, countess of Gifford [née Sheridan] (1807-1867) English poet, the elder sister of Caroline Norton and granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; in 1825 she married Price Blackwood (1794-1841), baron Dufferin; in 1862 she remarried, to George Hay, earl of Gifford.

William Blackwood (1776-1834) Edinburgh bookseller; he began business 1804 and for a time was John Murray's Scottish agent. He launched Blackwood's Magazine in 1817.

James Boswell (1740-1795) Scottish man of letters, author of The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).

Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) Scottish natural philosopher and editor of the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia (1807-1830). He contributed to the Literary Gazette and invented the kaleidoscope.

William Buckland (1784-1856) Professor of mineralogy at Oxford (1813), president of the Geological Society (1824), and dean of Westminster (1845-56).

James Glencairn Burns (1794-1865) The younger son of Robert Burns, a major in the service of the East India Company.

Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish poet and song collector; author of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786).

Lady Charlotte Susan Maria Bury [née Campbell] (1775-1861) Scottish novelist, daughter of John Campbell, fifth duke of Argyll; in 1791 she married John Campbell of Shawfield and Islay (1796) and in 1818 Edward John Bury; she was lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline (1809) and published Diary illustrative of the Times of George IV (1838). Thomas Creevey described her as “a very handsome woman and somewhat loose.”

George Gordon Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824) The author of Childe Harold and Don Juan.

Robert Cadell (1788-1849) Edinburgh bookseller who partnered with Archibald Constable, whose daughter Elizabeth he married in 1817. After Constable's death and the failure of Ballantyne he joined with Scott to purchase rights to the Waverley Novels.

Archibald Campbell (1763 c.-1838) Of Blythswood, major in the 1st Royals; he was MP for Glasgow burghs (1806-09), Elgin burghs (1812) and Perth burghs (1818-20); he died unmarried.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) Scottish poet and man of letters; author of The Pleasures of Hope (1799), Gertrude of Wyoming (1808) and lyric odes. He edited the New Monthly Magazine (1821-30).

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and man of letters; he translated Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (1824) and published Sartor Resartus (1833-34).

Robert Carruthers (1799-1878) Scottish journalist and man of letters who assisted Robert Chambers in Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1843-44) and published a Life of Pope (1857).

John Cay (1790-1865) The son of Robert Hodshon Cay; he was Sheriff of Linlithgow (1822-65) and a friend of John Gibson Lockhart.

Frances Mary Cecil, marchioness of Salisbury [née Gascoyne] (1802-1839) The daughter of Bamber Gascoyne; in 1821 she married James Brownlow William Gascoyne-Cecil, second Marquess of Salisbury. She was a literary hostess and friend of John Gibson Lockhart.

Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey (1781-1841) English sculptor who worked as a statuary from 1804; he employed the poet Allan Cunningham in his studio from 1814. He was knighted in 1835.

Jonathan Henry Christie (1793-1876) Educated at Marischal College, Baliol College, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn; after slaying John Scott in the famous duel at Chalk Farm he was acquitted of murder and afterwards practiced law as a conveyancer in London. He was the lifelong friend of John Gibson Lockhart and an acquaintance of John Keats.

William Clerk (1771-1847) Edinburgh lawyer, the son of John Clerk of Eldin and brother of Lord Eldin (1757-1832); he was Clerk of the Jury Court (1815) and a friend of Sir Walter Scott. He is said to be the model for Darsie Latimer in Redgauntlet.

James Cochrane (1848 fl.) London bookseller who published the Metropolitan Magazine and works by James Hogg.

Hartley Coleridge [Old Bachelor] (1796-1849) The eldest son of the poet; he was educated at Merton College, Oxford, contributed essays in the London Magazine and Blackwood's, and published Lives of Distinguished Northerns (1832).

Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798-1843) The nephew and literary executor of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; he was a barrister and reviewer for the British Critic and Quarterly Review.

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.

Confucius (551 BC-479 BC) Chinese moral philosopher.

Archibald Constable (1774-1827) Edinburgh bookseller who published the Edinburgh Review and works of Sir Walter Scott; he went bankrupt in 1826.

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) American novelist educated at Yale College; he was author of The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and the other Leatherstocking Tales.

George Crabbe (1754-1832) English poet renowned for his couplet verse and gloomy depictions of country persons and places; author of the The Village (1783), The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810), and Tales of the Hall (1819).

John Wilson Croker (1780-1857) Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the Quarterly Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson (1831).

Allan Cunningham [Hidallan] (1784-1842) Scottish poet and man of letters who contributed to both Blackwood's and the London Magazine; he was author of Lives of the most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1829-33).

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) French biologist whose comparative study of fossils led him to believe in the immutability of species.

Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881) The son of Isaac D'Israeli, English novelist and prime minister (1867, 1874).

Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848) English essayist and literary biographer; author of Curiosities of Literature (1791). Father of the prime minister.

Count Alfred Guillaume Gabriel D'Orsay (1801-1852) The son of Albert, Count D'Orsay, of one of Napoleon's generals; he was a celebrated dandy and artist whose attachment to the Countess of Blessington aroused scandal.

Sir Humphry Davy, baronet (1778-1829) English chemist and physicist, inventor of the safety lamp; in Bristol he knew Cottle, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey; he was president of the Royal Society (1820).

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).

David Douglas (1823-1916) Scottish publisher and editor of Sir Walter Scott's Journal (1891).

Sophia Dumergue (1768-1831) Daughter of Charles Francis Dumergue (1740-1814), dentist to the Prince of Wales; she was a friend of Walter Scott and godmother to his daughter Sophia.

William Erskine, Lord Kinneder (1768-1822) The son of an episcopal clergyman of the same name, he was a Scottish advocate and a close friend and literary advisor to Sir 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 William Fergusson, first baronet (1808-1877) Scottish physician educated at Edinburgh University; in 1840 he was appointed to the professorship of surgery at King's College, London.

Henry Richard Fox, third baron Holland (1773-1840) Whig politician and literary patron; Holland House was for many years the meeting place for reform-minded politicians and writers. He also published translations from the Spanish and Italian; Memoirs of the Whig Party was published in 1852.

John Hookham Frere (1769-1846) English diplomat and poet; educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was envoy to Lisbon (1800-02) and Madrid (1802-04, 1808-09); with Canning conducted the The Anti-Jacobin (1797-98); author of Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft (1817, 1818).

John Galt (1779-1839) Scottish novelist who met Byron during the first journey to Greece and was afterwards his biographer; author of Annals of the Parish (1821).

Mary Gray Garden [née Hogg] (1885 fl.) The daughter and biographer of James Hogg.

Marguerite Gardiner, countess of Blessington [née Power] (1789-1849) After a separation from a first husband in 1818 she married the Earl of Blessington; they traveled on the Continent, meeting Byron in 1822; her best-known work, Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron, originally appeared in the New Monthly Magazine (1832-33).

Robert Gifford, first Baron Gifford (1779-1826) Barrister, educated at the Middle Temple, he practiced on the western circuit and was Tory MP for Eye (1817-24), attorney general (1819-24), and lord chief justice of the common pleas (1824).

George Robert Gleig (1796-1888) Prolific Tory writer who rose to attention with The Subaltern, serialized in Blackwood's; he was appointed chaplain-general of the forces in 1844.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, playwright, and novelist; author of The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Faust (1808, 1832).

Mary Gordon [née Wilson] (1814-1862 fl.) The daughter and biographer of Professor John Wilson of Blackwood's Magazine.

Elizabeth Georgiana Leveson- Gower, duchess of Sutherland [née Howard] (1806-1868) The daughter of George Howard, sixth earl of Carlisle; in 1823 she married George Granville Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, afterwards second duke of Sutherland.

George Granville Leveson- Gower, first duke of Sutherland (1758-1833) The son of the first marquess of Stafford (d. 1803); he was one of the wealthiest men in Britain with an annual income of £200,000; his program for Scottish clearances and resettlement was widely unpopular. He was created duke in 1833.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) English poet, author of “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,” and “The Bard”; he was professor of history at Cambridge (1768).

Captain Basil Hall (1788-1844) Scottish seaman and traveler; after education at Edinburgh high school he entered the Navy in 1802; he published Fragments of Voyages and Travels (1831-33) and other works.

Abraham Hayward (1801-1884) English barrister and essayist who contributed to the Quarterly Review and wrote The Art of Dining (1852); his translation of Goethe's Faust was published in 1833.

Amelia Heber [née Shipley] (1789-1870) The daughter of William Davies Shipley, dean of St Asaph; in 1809 she married Reginald Heber, afterwards bishop of Calcutta. Thomas Creevey reports that returning from India she was duped into a bigamous marriage with a Greek.

Reginald Heber, bishop of Calcutta (1783-1826) English poet and Bishop of Calcutta, author of Palestine: a Prize Poem (1807) and the hymn “From Greenland's Icy Mountains.” He was the half-brother of the book-collector Richard Heber.

Sir John Herschel, first baronet (1792-1871) English astronomer, the son of William Herschel; he was secretary to the Royal Society (1827-30).

Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812) Professor of classics and librarian at the University of Göttingen.

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) Scottish autodidact, poet, and novelist; author of The Queen's Wake (1813) and Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).

Homer (850 BC fl.) Poet of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Theodore Edward Hook (1788-1841) English novelist, wit, and friend of the Prince of Wales; he edited the John Bull (1820) and appears as the Lucian Gay of Disraeli's Conigsby and as Mr. Wagg in Vanity Fair.

Charlotte Harriet Jane Hope [née Lockhart] (1828-1858) The daughter of John Gibson Lockhart and Sophia Scott Lockhart; in 1847 she married James Robert Hope-Scott, son of General Hon. Sir Alexander Hope.

Mary Anne Hughes [née Watts] (1770-1853) Literary hostess, the wife of Thomas Hughes of Uffington (1756-1833); she contributed to the Literary Gazette and corresponded with Sir Walter Scott and Caroline Bowles Southey. She was the grandmother of the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays.

Thomas Hughes (1756-1833) Educated at Jesus College Oxford, he was tutor to the dukes of Cumberland and Sussex and canon-residentiary of St. Paul's (1807).

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of The Examiner and The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and Shelley.

John Irving (1770-1850) The younger brother of Alexander Irving, Lord Newton; he was Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh and a friend of Sir Walter Scott.

Washington Irving [Geoffrey Crayon] (1783-1859) American writer living in England in 1815, where he made his reputation with The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1820).

Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850) Scottish barrister, Whig MP, and co-founder and editor of the Edinburgh Review (1802-29). As a reviewer he was the implacable foe of the Lake School of poetry.

William Jerdan (1782-1869) Scottish journalist who for decades edited the Literary Gazette; he was author of Autobiography (1853) and Men I have Known (1866).

Rachel Jobson [née Stewart] (1775-1863) The daughter of John Stewart; in 1799 she married the Dundee merchant William Jobson (1760-1822); her daughter Jane married Sir Walter Scott's eldest son, Walter.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English man of letters, among many other works he edited A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote Lives of the Poets (1779-81).

John Keats (1795-1821) English poet, author of Endymion, "The Eve of St. Agnes," and other poems, who died of tuberculosis in Rome.

Alexander William Kinglake (1809-1891) Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he traveled in the East and published Eōthen (1844) and The Invasion of the Crimea, 8 vols (1863-87).

William Laidlaw (1779-1845) The early friend of James Hogg and Sir Walter Scott's steward and amanuensis.

Frederick Locker- Lampson (1821-1895) English poet and bibliophile, author of the oft-reprinted London Lyrics (1857).

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.

Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859) Lecturer on science and contributor to the Edinburgh Review; he published the Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829-1846).

Livy (59 BC c.-17) Roman historian; of his History of Rome 35 books survive.

Elizabeth Lockhart [née Gibson] (d. 1834) The daughter of Rev. John Gibson, minister of St. Cuthbert’s in Edinburgh; in 1793 she became of the second wife of John Lockhart (1761-1842).

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).

John Hugh Lockhart (1821-1831) The first child of John Gibson Lockhart and his wife Sophia, for whom Sir Walter Scott wrote Tales of a Grandfather (1828-1831).

Sophia Lockhart [née Scott] (1799-1837) Walter Scott's eldest daughter, who married John Gibson Lockhart in 1820.

Violet Lockhart (1801-1849) The second daughter of the Rev. John Lockhart and younger sister of John Gibson Lockhart; she died unmarried.

William Lockhart (1787-1856) Of Germiston and Milton-Lockhart, the elder, half-brother of John Gibson Lockhart; he was Conservative MP for Lanarkshire (1841-56).

Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (1838-1915) He was educated at Yale where he was professor of English language and literature from 1871 to 1906.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, baron Macaulay (1800-1859) English poet, critic, and historian, author of The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, 5 vols (1849-61).

Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).

John Norman Macleod (1788-1835) The 24th Chief of Macleod; educated at Harrow and Oxford, he was MP for Sudbury (1828-30); Walter Scott visited him in his island tour of 1814.

Daniel Maclise (1806-1870) Irish painter who exhibited at the Royal Academy and executed a famous series of portraits of literary celebrities that appeared in Fraser's Magazine from 1830 to 1838.

Ellen Ryder Maginn [née Bullen] (d. 1859) The daughter of a clergyman, in 1824 she married the writer William Maginn in Christ Church, Cork.

William Maginn (1794-1842) Irish translator, poet, and Tory journalist who contributed to Blackwood's and Fraser's Magazines under a variety of pseudonyms.

James Maitland, eighth earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839) Scottish peer allied with Charles James Fox; he was author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, and into the Means and causes of its Increase (1804) and other works on political economy.

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) Educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford, he was a poet, historian and dean of St Paul's (1849) who wrote for the Quarterly Review.

Mary Ann Milman [née Cockell] (1853 fl.) Daughter of Lieutenant-General William Cockell; she married Henry Hart Milman in 1824.

Henry James Scott- Montagu, second baron Montagu of Boughton (1776-1845) The son of Henry Scott, third Duke of Buccleuch; he was educated at Eton and St. John's College, Cambridge; he was Lord-Lieutenant of Selkirkshire (1823).

Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Irish poet and biographer, author of the Irish Melodies (1807-34), The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and Lalla Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.

James Justinian Morier (1782-1849) English novelist; he entered the Persian diplomatic service in 1807, and published oriental romances, among them Hajii Baba (1824).

John Bacon Sawrey Morritt of Rokeby (1771-1843) Of Rokeby, classical scholar, close friend of Sir Walter Scott, and member of the Society of Dilettanti.

Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, baronet (1792-1871) Scottish geologist, FRS (1826); he published The Silurian System (1838). He was made a baronet in 1866.

John Murray II (1778-1843) The second John Murray began the Quarterly Review in 1809 and published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.

Macvey Napier (1776-1847) Scottish barrister, editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and from 1829 editor of the Edinburgh Review.

Amelia Opie [née Alderson] (1769-1853) Quaker poet and novelist; in 1798 she married the painter John Opie (1761-1807); author of Father and Daughter (1801) and other novels and moral fables.

Sir Francis Palgrave (1788-1861) Barrister, medieval historian, and writer for the Quarterly Review; he was keeper of her majesty's records, 1838-61.

Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894) English essayist and critic; he was Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, and author of History of the Renaissance (1873) Marius the Epicurean (1885).

Sir Robert Peel, second baronet (1788-1850) Byron's schoolmate at Harrow, afterwards prime minister from 1834-1835 and 1841-1846.

Hugh Percy, third duke of Northumberland (1785-1847) The son of the second duke (d. 1817), he was educated at Eton and St John's College, Cambridge, and before succeeding to the title was a Tory MP for Buckingham (1806), Westminster (1806), Launceston (1806-07), and Northumberland (1807-12). He was lord-lieutenant of Ireland (1829-30).

Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) Lyric poet and founder of humanism in Italy.

Plato (427 BC-327 BC) Athenian philosopher who recorded the teachings of his master Socrates in a series of philosophical dialogues.

Plutarch (46 c.-120 c.) Greek biographer and moral philosopher; author of Parallel Lives and Moralia.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet and satirist; author of The Rape of the Lock (1714) and The Dunciad (1728).

Raphael (1483-1520) Of Urbino; Italian painter patronized by Leo X.

John Richardson of Kirklands (1780-1864) Scottish lawyer and parliamentary solicitor in London from 1806; he was Thomas Campbell's legal advisor and a friend of Sir Walter Scott.

Patrick Robertson [Peter] (1794-1855) Scottish judge, poet, wit, and friend of John Wilson; familiarly known as “Peter,” in 1848 he was elected lord rector of Marischal College.

Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular Pleasures of Memory (1792), Columbus (1810), Jaqueline (1814), and Italy (1822-28).

John Ruskin (1819-1900) Art critic and social reformer; he published Modern Painters, 5 vols (1843-60) and The Stones of Venice (1851-53).

John Russell, first earl Russell (1792-1878) English statesman, son of John Russell sixth duke of Bedford (1766-1839); he was author of Essay on the English Constitution (1821) and Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe (1824) and was Prime Minister (1865-66).

George Edward Bateman Saintsbury (1845-1933) English critic, editor, and literary historian educated at Merton College, Oxford.

Anne Scott (1803-1833) Walter Scott's younger daughter who cared for him in his old age and died unmarried.

Daniel Scott (1776 c.-1806) The dissolute younger brother of Sir Walter Scott who emigrated to Jamaica in 1804.

Lady Margaret Charlotte Scott [née Carpenter] (1770-1826) The impoverished daughter of French parents who married Walter Scott in 1797.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Scottish poet, novelist, antiquary, biographer, editor, and sheriff.

Walter Francis Montagu-Douglas- Scott, fifth duke of Buccleuch (1806-1884) Son of the fourth duke whom he succeeded in 1819; he was educated at Eton College and at St John's College and was lord privy seal in Peel's ministry (1842-46).

Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a mathematics tutor in 1815 before being elected Woodwardian professor of geology (1818-73). He was a friend of Charles Darwin.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) The Bard of Avon.

Lady Eliza Mary Shaw-Stewart [née Farquhar] (d. 1852) The daughter of Robert Farquhar and Jane Tweedie of Antigua; in 1819 she married Sir Michael Shaw-Stewart, sixth baronet. She was the half-sister of Lady Jane Davy by her mother's former marriage.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of Queen Mab (1813), The Revolt of Islam (1817), The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound (1820), and Adonais (1821).

Sir Samuel Shepherd (1760-1840) English barrister educated at Merchant Taylors' School and the Inner Temple; he was king's serjeant (1796), solicitor-general (1813), attorney-general (1817) and a friend of Sir Walter Scott.

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) Scottish physician and man of letters; author of the novels Roderick Random (1747) and Humphry Clinker (1771).

William Sotheby (1757-1833) English man of letters; after Harrow he joined the dragoons, married well, and published Poems (1790) and became a prolific poet and translator, prominent in literary society.

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).

Philip Henry Stanhope, fifth earl Stanhope (1805-1875) Historian and man of letters, the son of the fourth earl; he published The History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713-1783, 7 vols, (1836-53).

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish novelist and man of letters, the author of Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886).

Lady Louisa Stuart (1757-1851) The youngest child of John Stuart, third earl of Bute; she corresponded with Sir Walter Scott. Several volumes of her writings and memoirs were published after her death.

Charles Richard Sumner, bishop of Winchester (1790-1874) The younger brother of John Bird Sumner, archbishop of Canterbury; he was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; he was bishop of Llandaff and dean of St. Paul's (1826) and bishop of Winchester (1827).

Charles Sumner (1811-1874) American statesman; he was educated at Harvard and spent two years traveling in Europe before making his reputation as an abolitionist senator from Massachusetts.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Dean of St Patrick's, Scriblerian satirist, and author of Battle of the Books with Tale of a Tub (1704), Drapier Letters (1724), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729).

Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet who succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he published Poems, chiefly Lyrical (1830) and Idylls of the King (1859, 1869, 1872).

Daniel Terry (1789-1829) English actor; after a career in provincial theater made his London debut in 1812. A close friend of Walter Scott, he performed in theatrical adaptations of Scott's novels.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) English novelist; author of Vanity Fair (1848), Pendennis (1850) and Henry Esmond (1852).

Friedrich Wilhelm von Thiersch (1784-1860) German classical scholar and philhellene who taught at Munich.

Arthur Thistlewood (1774-1820) English radical and disciple of Thomas Spence; he was hanged after the exposure of an assassination plot against the British cabinet.

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.

James Traill (1794-1873) Of Hobbister, Orkney; educated at Balliol College (Snell Exhibitioner) and the Middle Temple, he was a police magistrate in London. Traill was John Christie's second in the duel with John Scott.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) English landscape and history painter who left his collection to the National Gallery and Tate Gallery.

John Veitch (1829-1894) Scottish philosopher and man of letters; he was professor of logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics in the University of St Andrews (1860) and of logic and rhetoric in the University of Glasgow (1864).

Virgil (70 BC-19 BC) Roman epic poet; author of Eclogues, Georgics, and the Aenead.

John William Ward, earl of Dudley (1781-1833) The son of William Ward, third Viscount Dudley (d. 1823); educated at Edinburgh and Oxford, he was an English MP, sometimes a Foxite Whig and sometimes Canningite Tory, who suffered from insanity in his latter years.

Lydia White (d. 1827) Born in Wales, the “Miss Diddle” of Byron's “Blues” held literary conversazione at her house in Park Street; Walter Scott and Samuel Rogers were among her admirers.

Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1797-1875) Egyptologist, author of Topography of Thebes and General View of Egypt (1835) and other works.

James Wilson (1795-1856) Scottish naturalist, the younger brother of “Christopher North”; he was educated at Edinburgh University, contributed to Blackwood"s Magazine, and published Illustrations of Zoology (1831) and other works.

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.

William Wright (1787-1856) London solicitor called to the bar in 1825; he was appointed Master of the Rolls in 1853.

The Beacon. (1821). A Tory newspaper partly funded by Sir Walter Scott that ceased publication after its financial backers objected to the scandals its contributors were raising.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. (1817-1980). Begun as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, Blackwood's assumed the name of its proprietor, William Blackwood after the sixth number. Blackwood was the nominal editor until 1834.

The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal. (1802-1929). Founded by Francis Jeffery, Sydney Smith, and Henry Brougham, the Edinburgh Review was for decades a principal organ of Whig opinion in Britain.

Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country. (1830-1882). Edited by William Maginn, assisted by John Abraham Herauld.

The Knickerbocker: or, New-York Monthly Magazine. (1833-1862). Edited by Lewis Gaylord Clark.

The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the Quarterly was instigated by Walter Scott as a Tory rival to the Edinburgh Review. It was edited by William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.

The Representative. (1826). A failed daily paper backed by John Murray issued from 25 January to 29 July 1826.

Tait's Edinburgh Magazine. 32 vols (1832-1861). Edited by William Tait (1832-34).

The Westminster Review. (1824-1914). A radically-inclined quarterly founded by James Mill in opposition to the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review.

George Allan (1832 fl.) Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet: with Critical Notices of his Writings. (Edinburgh: Thomas Ireland, 1834). The first biography; the preface explains that the author was completing a work begun by the Whig journalist William Weir (1802-58).

“Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott” in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine. Vol. 4-5 (April 1837-May 1838). A politically charged negative review.

“Noctes Ambrosianae” in Blackwood's Magazine. (1822-1835). A series of dialogues on literary topics set in Ambrose's Tavern in which the interlocutors are semi-fictional characters, among them John Wilson and James Hogg.

Charles Tilstone Beke (1800-1874) Origines biblicae: or Researches in Primeval History. 20 vols (London: Parbury, Allen & Co., 1834).

Henry Peter Brougham, first baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868) “The Jacobite Relics” in Edinburgh Review. Vol. 34 (August 1820): 148-60. A negative review of Hogg's first volume of Relics.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) History of Friedrich II of Prussia, called Frederick the Great. 6 vols (London: Chapman and Hall, 1858-1865).

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) “Memoirs of the Life of Scott” in Westminster Review. Vol. 28 (January 1838): 293-345. A review of John Gibson Lockhart's biography.

Robert Carruthers (1799-1878) “Abbotsford Notanda” in Life of Sir Walter Scott: with Abbotsford Notanda by Robert Carruthers. (London: Chambers, 1871). Appended to the life of Scott by Robert Chambers.

Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798-1843) Introductions to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets. Designed principally for the Use of Young Persons at School and College. (London: J. Murray, 1830).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) “Christabel” in Christabel; Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep. (J. Murray, 1816). Only the first part of "Christabel" was published in this volume.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) “Kubla Khan” in Christabel; Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep. (J. Murray, 1816). A poetical fragment of a dream inspired by reading Purchas's Pilgrimage.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in Lyrical Ballads. (Bristol: T. N. Longman, 1798). The tale of a sailor doomed to wander the globe in appeasement for guilt.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1835). Edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge.

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott” in Knickerbocker Magazine. Vol. 12 (October 1838): 349-66. A review of Lockhart's biography.

John Wilson Croker (1780-1857) “Poems by Alfred Tennyson” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 49 (April 1833): 81-96. Once attributed to John Gibson Lockhart.

John Wilson Croker (1780-1857) “The Present State of France” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 52 (August 1834): 262-291. A review of Souvenirs historiques sur la révolution de 1830 by Bérard.

Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881) Coningsby; or the New Generation. 3 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1844).

John Galt (1779-1839) The Life of Lord Byron. (London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830). Frequently reprinted in nineteenth-century pirate editions.

Mary Gray Garden [née Hogg] (1885 fl.) Memorials of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. (Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1885). By the poet's daughter, with an introduction by John Veitch (1829–1894).

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 6 vols (London: Strahan and Cadell, 1776-1783). In Childe Harold Byron described the sceptical Gibbon as “Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.”

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 12 vols (London: J. Murray, 1838-1839). Edited by Henry Hart Milman.

Mary Gordon [née Wilson] (1814-1862 fl.) Christopher North: a Memoir of John Wilson. 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1862). Reprinted 1879.

Amelia Heber [née Shipley] (1789-1870) The Life of Reginald Heber, D.D., Lord Bishop of Calcutta. With selections from his Correspondence, Unpublished Poems, and Private Papers, together with a Journal of his Tour in Norway, Sweden, Russia, Hungary, and Germany, and a History of the Cossaks. 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1830).

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) Altrive Tales. (London: J. Cochrane and Co., 1832). In prose.

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) The Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott. (Glasgow: 1834).

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) The Jacobite Relics of Scotland: being the Songs, Airs, and Legends, of the Adherents to the House of Stuart. 2 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1819-1821). With the musical scores.

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) “Memoir of the Author's Life” in Altrive Tales. (London: J. Cochrane and Co., 1832). One of several personal memoirs written by Hogg.

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: with a Detail of Curious Traditionary Facts, and other Evidence. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824). A novel, eventually regarded as the writer's most successful work.

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) The Queen's Wake: a Legendary Poem. (Edinburgh: George Goldie, 1813). A collection of poems and ballads presented by fictional Scottish bards to Mary Queen of Scots at Holyrood.

Frederick Locker- Lampson (1821-1895) My Confidences. An Autobiographical sketch addressed to my Descendants. (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1896). Edited by Augustine Birrell.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) “Coleridge's Table-Talk” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 53 (February 1835): 79-103.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) “The Doctor” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 51 (March 1834): 68-96. A review of Southey's anonymous olio.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) “Letter from James Hogg to his Reviewer” in Blackwood's Magazine. Vol. 8 (October 1820): 67-76. Not by Hogg.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) Life of Robert Burns. (Edinburgh: Constable and Co., 1828). Long considered a standard work.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, bart.. 7 vols (Edinburgh: R. Cadell, 1837-38).

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) “Moore's Life of Lord Byron” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 44 (January 1831): 168-226.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) “On the Cockney School of Poetry” in Blackwood's Magazine. (1817-1825). A series of eight Blackwood's Magazine articles signed “Z” that ridicule Leigh Hunt's coterie; the first appeared in October 1817, the last in July 1825.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) “On the Cockney School of Poetry: No. IV.” in Blackwood's Magazine. Vol. 3 (August 1819): 519-24. A slashing review of Keats's Endymion signed “Z.”

Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (1838-1915) James Fenimore Cooper. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1883).

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) Anne Boleyn: a Dramatic Poem. (London: J. Murray, 1826).

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) “Egyptian Antiquities” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 43 (May 1830): 111-155. A review of Lettres a M. le Duc de Blacas d'Aulps.

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) “Eton School-education in England” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 52 (August 1834): 128-177. A review of several titles connected with Eton.

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) The History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire. 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1840).

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) The History of the Jews. 3 vols (London: John Murray, 1829). Published as part of Murray's Family Library.

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) “The Life of Bishop Heber” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 43 (October 1830): 366-411.

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) “Origin of the Homeric Poems” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 44 (January 1831): 121-168. A review of Henry Nelson Coleridge, Introduction to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets.

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) “Sanscrit Poetry” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 45 (April 1831): 1-38.

John Milton (1608-1674) “Lycidas” in Justa Edouardo King naufrago, ab amicis mrentibus, amoris & mneias charin. (Cantabrigi: Thomam Buck, 1638).

Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Letters and Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of his Life. 2 vols (London: Murray, 1830). The first authorized collection of Byron's letters and journals.

James Justinian Morier (1782-1849) Zohrab, the Hostage. (London: R. Bentley, 1832).

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) An Essay on Man. (London: J. Wilford, 1733). In four epistles; the first publication was anonymous.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) “Emma” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 14 No. 27 (October 1815): 188-201. A review of Jane Austen's novel.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Journal: from the original ms. at Abbotsford. 2 vols (Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1890). Edited by David Douglas; extensive excerpts had been previously published in Lockhart's biography of Scott.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Waverley: or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Constable, 1814). Scott's first historical novel, set against the backdrop of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Waverley Novels. 48 vols (Edinburgh: Cadell & Co., 1829-33). The Magnum Opus edition, with the author's revisions and new prefaces. Collected editions began appearing in 1820.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Woodstock; or, the Cavalier. A Tale of the Year Sixteen Hundred and Fifty-one. 3 vols (Constable, 1826). The adventures of Charles II and the Cavaliers during the rule of Oliver Cromwell.

Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) A Publisher and His Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of the late John Murray, with an Account of the Origin and Progress of the House, 1768-1843. 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1891).

Robert Southey (1774-1843) The Doctor &c.. 7 vols (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1834-1847). A rambling biographical satire that contains the first publication of the story of The Three Bears.

Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892) “Eleanore” in Poems. (London: Edward Moxon, 1833).

Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892) “The Lady of Shalott” in Poems. (London: Edward Moxon, 1833).

Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892) “The Lotos-Eaters” in Poems. (London: Edward Moxon, 1833).

Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892) “Mariana in the South” in Poems. (London: Edward Moxon, 1833).

Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892) “Œnone” in Poems. (London: Edward Moxon, 1833).

Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892) “The Palace of Art” in Poems. (London: Edward Moxon, 1833).

Alfred Tennyson, first baron Tennyson (1809-1892) Poems. (London: Edward Moxon, 1833).

Virgil (70 BC-19 BC) Georgics. (1st cent. BC). Four didactic poems in which political philosophy is treated under the guise of rural economy.

Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1797-1875) Materia Hieroglyphica containing the Egyptian Pantheon, and the Succession of the Pharaohs, from the Earliest Times, to the conquest by Alexander, and other Hieroglyphical Subjects. (Malta: 1828).

INFORMATION FROM TEI HEADER

Source Description:

Author: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912

Title: The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897).

Electronic Edition:

Series: Lord Byron and his Times: http://lordbyron.org

Encoding Description: Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed. Obvious and unambiguous compositors’ errors have been silently corrected.

Markup and editing by: David Hill Radcliffe

Completed January 2011

Publication Statement:

Publisher: Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Tech

Availability: Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License