The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart
Chapter 18: 1837-43
John Gibson Lockhart to Henry Hart Milman, 4 October 1840
“Milton, October 4, 1840.
“My dear Milman,—Thanks for your seria
mixta jocis. I believe I must cut ecclesiastical things
entirely—it is so very hard to keep the peace among my reverend allies:
but I think I altered nothing in your last article, though I omitted a few
things, and italicised one or two of the quotations; and I am sure you will own
that if the article were to be in the same number with that on Tom Carlyle, this was as little as
the Editor could do in the way of manipulation, and most assuredly I took a
hundred times more liberty with the Oxonian,1 wherefore
his jobation is yet to come. He has spent these three months past in Ireland,
and is still there. . . . I expect that his lucubrations will be highly curious and
interesting, as regards the prime object of his study, viz., the actual state
and system of the Romish clergy, and I hope that this study will be found
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| 190 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. | |
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to have much qualified his general theory as to the
legitimate scope of ecclesiastical authority. It would be a lamentable thing
for me to lose him. I seriously think him one of the greatest writers now
going; and even Croker expresses
admiration pure and unmixed of his last paper, though he is as far as you are,
perhaps, from the New Mania; but I am thoroughly alive to the danger of the
case, and extremely obliged to you for all your hints.
“Of the nine poetesses1 only one has written in acknowledgment—and perhaps she is
the best of them, ‘V——.’ She says that ‘all her good has
come on her at once,’ for she never ‘hoped’ either to
be praised in the Quarterly Review, or to get a husband, and that both this article and a proposal
‘reached her in the same week.’ I expect cake.
H. B. must not make her the Terpsichore of the choir.
“I am sorry John
Murray has not sent you the Memoirs you wanted—pray,
en attendant, give us a short
article on the French tract you mention—but can I not persuade you to
buckle to Juvenal and Persius? You only have to assume the truth as to
the profound ignorance of the public, and make free use of the best bits of
Dryden, Gifford, Drummond,
&c, &c, and throw off a fine rhapsody on Satire—Greek, Roman,
Italian, French, and English—and you can’t fail to produce a most
entertaining, instructive, and really valuable article.
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Gifford’s notes are capital material, many of them,
both for extract and in the way of suggestion. Hallam has shown, as well as yourself heretofore, how new such
old things may be made to appear under the treatment of a vigorous hand
thoroughly mistress of the craft. Another favourite scheme of mine for you has
been ‘Ovid.’”
Archer Clive (1800-1878)
Educated at Harrow and Brasenose College, Oxford, he was rector of Solihull in
Warwickshire (1829-47); in 1840 he married the writer Caroline Meysey-Wigley.
Caroline Clive [née Wigley] (1801-1873)
English poet and novelist who married the Reverend Archer Clive in 1840; she enjoyed
enduring success with her books
IX Poems by V (1840) and
Paul Ferroll: a Tale (1855), the later a sensation-novel.
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).
Sir William Drummond (1770 c.-1828)
Scottish classical scholar and Tory MP; succeeded Lord Elgin as ambassador to the Ottoman
Porte (1803); his
Oedipus judaicus, in which he interpreted the Old
Testament as an astrological allegory, was privately printed in 1811.
John Dryden (1631-1700)
English poet laureate, dramatist, and critic; author of
Of Dramatick
Poesie (1667),
Absalom and Achitophel (1681),
Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique (1697),
The Works of Virgil translated into English Verse (1697), and
Fables (1700).
William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published
The Baviad (1794),
The Maeviad
(1795), and
The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the
Quarterly Review (1809-24).
Henry Hallam (1777-1859)
English historian and contributor to the
Edinburgh Review, author
of
Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 4 vols (1837-39) and
other works. He was the father of Tennyson's Arthur Hallam.
Juvenal (110 AD fl.)
Roman satirist noted, in contrast to Horace, for his angry manner.
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.
Persius (34-62)
Roman poet, the author of six surviving satires.
William Sewell (1804-1874)
English divine; he was tutor at Merton College, Oxford (1831-53) and dean (1839); he
wrote for the
Quarterly Review.
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.
