The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart
Chapter 16: 1832-36
John Gibson Lockhart to Henry Hart Milman, 12 September 1830
“Chiefswood, Sept. 12.
“My dear
Milman,—I was tempted to put in some allusion to
Mrs. Heber’s change of name,
but withstood it, not doubting she has already begun to taste of her
punishment.
“Your paper on Homer will be most valuable and acceptable, and I shall
expect it for next number, unless you should, on maturer thoughts, accede to my
old proposition touching Moore’s
‘Byron.’ Just
such a review as that of
Heber’s ‘Life’ would be the
thing. If you don’t undertake it (in which case the second volume would
be sent instantly), I must try myself; but I have written often about Byron, and feel barren. You, without effort, could
throw off some sixteen pages of good sense and fresh feeling, and stick in
sixteen more of capital extracts from Moore’s second
volume,—and behold it is done. Byron is dead and
buried, and your feelings, as a contemporary poet, should interfere little with
this affair. I would ask Scott, but he has
already said his say in the Quarterly Review.
“Galt’s
‘Life of
Byron’ is rather a murder, and the crime is perpetrated with a
coarse weapon.—Sincerely yours,
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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
