The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart
Chapter 20: 1826-52
John Gibson Lockhart to John Murray III [?], 16 June 1846
“June 16, 1846.
“My dear M.,—I think
you are entitled to expect that gentlemen who so very boldly denounce the
conclusions of such a scholar as Mr.
Donaldson, should show evidence of their capacity for grappling
with lore so varied as his; and also, and at least, that Mr. Croker should convey his objections in
some such shape as may admit of their being laid before Mr.
Donaldson.
“I have not heard the name either of your or
1 The letter is, apparently, addressed to
Mr. Murray. Perhaps it was
never sent to him; I found it among amass of family letters from Milton
Lockhart. |
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of Mr.
Croker’s clerical authority. Both, or either, may be
sufficient. But it is not an everyday thing to meet with a clergyman qualified
for criticising philological researches, embracing not merely Greek, Latin, and
Hebrew, but Arabic, Coptic, Sanscrit, and the whole range of the Italo-German
tongues. Mr. Croker makes no pretensions himself to
learning of this sort—but it is a little odd to see him dismiss a page of
Donaldson’s ‘Comparative
Anatomy of Language’ by a marginal note consisting of the one word
‘Gibberish.’
“Although language has been my chief study all my
days, and I have some practical knowledge in a good many of the languages in
which Mr. Donaldson has acquired, as I
believe, a really accurate skill—it never occurred to me that my
editorial care could, in such a department, be of any use to him, save in
suggesting a doubt or an illustration. So much I endeavoured to do by this as
by all other papers; and I took the advice twice
over, formally, by writing, of Milman—the only extensive scholar on the actual list of
Quarterly Reviewers.
“The grand difficulty of Ewald’s explanation of the Patriarchs’ names, as
being not personal names,1 but words describing periods
of advance or descent in art and civility—this was stated by me to
Mr. Croker orally, as well as I
could make it clear. Mr. Croker said he could see no
objection to such a
1 Attempts to “mythologise” the
Patriarchs are many, wildly conflicting, and, perhaps, discredited.
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| 262 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. | |
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view. So I understood him, certainly. I believe
Ewald is, in the main, right—and that views like
his are those of all who believe the Old Testament in any manly sense of the
word believe. People who merely adopt and repeat the
interpretations of men acknowledged not to have had a glimpse of what is now
ascertained by the science of Philology, seem to me to be precisely on a
footing with the honest Catholics who persecuted Galileo, and with the present Dean of
——, who would, if he could, roast the Dean of Westminster to-morrow.
“In my humble opinion, the wise course for Donaldson would be to place the views or
theories of Ewald and Bunsen, whenever apparently hard to be
reconciled with our old canons of interpretation, clearly before the reader of
the Quarterly
Review; but not to compromise himself or the Review by any adoption of them.
As yet, I think, knowledge of what is thought and written on such subjects by
really profound scholars, is so rare that the communication of their ideas
should be the humble task of an English journal.—Ever yours truly,
William Buckland (1784-1856)
Professor of mineralogy at Oxford (1813), president of the Geological Society (1824), and
dean of Westminster (1845-56).
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 William Donaldson (1811-1861)
Classical scholar educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; he was headmaster of King
Edward's School, Bury St. Edmunds (1841-55) and contributed to the
Quarterly Review.
Heinrich Ewald (1803-1875)
German philologist and professor of oriental languages at Göttingen University.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Italian astronomer and mathematician, inventor of the telescope.
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 III (1808-1892)
The son of the Anak of publishers; he successfully carried on the family publishing
business.
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.
