The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart
Chapter 18: 1837-43
John Gibson Lockhart to Henry Hart Milman, 17 January 1843
“January 17, 1843.
“My dear Milman,—I am
exceedingly vexed to find that the sheets containing your article on Macaulay are not printed
off—for the gross insult to Croker
in his new article on Madame
d’Arblay makes it very difficult for me to sanction the
publication of your eulogies on the perpetrator. The detection of the imposture
about F. Burney’s age was made in
the Quarterly
Review, as you know. Can the editor allow his contributor
to be thus handled, and then caress the enemy? Would not ![]()
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Croker have reason to complain of me as deserting the
soldier of my own flag?
“Do not suppose that I blame Macaulay for criticising Croker in regard to that affair; but it might
have been done in the style of a gentleman. It is done in a style of low,
vulgar rancour and injustice.
“Nor, on the other hand, do I wish to take credit
for any special tenderness of feeling towards Croker. I think he has, of late especially, not treated
Murray and myself at all well in the
concerns of the Quarterly Review. But he is at least one of our most
prominent hands; and can we continue to accept his assistance without giving
him some right to reclaim against the appearance, at this moment, of such a
paper as yours? Make the case your own. Suppose such an attack on you, from so
distinguished a quarter, for what you had written in the Quarterly Review some years ago. Suppose you
had been assailed by Blomfield, or
Whately, or Sydney Smith; and suppose it to be felt that
the odium ecclesiasticum had been
mainly excited by your use of the Quarterly Review against doctrines or tenets or Church
parties espoused by such an assailant as one of these.
“There is another difficulty which I must state. I
never received any civility from Peel in
the line of patronage but once—when he took office in 1834.1 Croker then
called here and said Peel was anxious
1 In 1838 Lockhart, writing to Mr.
Cadell, described Peel as “the greatest Reformer in heart, and
the ablest in head, of his period.” |
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| 216 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. | |
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to know if Murray
and I had anything to suggest to the new Minister for the department of
Literature and Science. Murray said he wished there could
be a pension for Mrs. Somerville. I
expressed my anxiety (Murray heartily concurring) that you
might have some London preferment, if possible a prebend, in order to break the
force of a prejudice which at that time seemed so strong as to make your
advancement in the Church improbable, unless something were done effectually to
discountenance it; and secundo, that Crabbe’s son might get a Crown living in place of his
curacy. Now all these three things were done, and that almost immediately; and
next time I saw Lord Lyndhurst, which was at
a drawing-room or levee, he said to me, ‘You are a pretty
fellow—I find your man Crabbe
is a keen Whig, if not a Radical, and he has got his living.’ He
laughed heartily; and when I told him I had not doubted that he would like the
opportunity of serving so good a man, the son of such a father, all the better
for his being of the opposite colour, he laughed the more. I have no similar
evidence to connect your prebend with Croker’s
intermediation. Perhaps you know that other and not less
efficient machinery was worked in your behalf. But I thought I must state what
I knew of the affair at this moment, and I am sure you will consider the
statement as worthy of your candid reflection under all the
circumstances.—Ever affectionately yours,
Frances D'Arblay [née Burney] (1752-1840)
English novelist, the daughter of the musicologist Dr. Charles Burney; author of
Evelina; or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World
(1778),
Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), and
Camilla (1796).
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.
John Singleton Copley, baron Lyndhurst (1772-1863)
The son of the American painter; he did legal work for John Murray before succeeding Lord
Eldon as lord chancellor (1827-30, 1834-35, 1841-46); a skilled lawyer, he was also a
political chameleon.
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).
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.
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.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845)
Clergyman, wit, and one of the original projectors of the
Edinburgh
Review; afterwards lecturer in London and one of the Holland House
denizens.
Mary Somerville [née Fairfax] (1780-1872)
Mathematician and science writer, daughter of Admiral William George Fairfax (1739-1813)
and friend of Ada Byron; she spent her later years in Italy. She was twice married.
Richard Whately, archbishop of Dublin (1787-1863)
The nephew of the Shakespeare critic Thomas Whately (d. 1772); he was educated at Oriel
College, Oxford where he was professor of political economy (1829-31) and was archbishop of
Dublin (1831-63). A prolific writer, he offered a rationalist defense of
Anglicanism.
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.
