Andrew Lang: The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart

Why Scott had Lockhart and the dying Douglas in his mind during his torments, shall be explained later.

There could be no such successor. Scott’s peculiar Toryism, like that of his own Invernahyle, was a loyalty to the old feudal order which, though now forlorn, had once, in ideal if not in reality, been a reasoned system of life and of society. No other system to be called rational has risen on its ruins. Whiggery is the negation of a system, an inn, not a dwelling. Socialism was, as yet, incoherent. Scott’s sympathies were certainly more with some of the tenets of Socialism, with many of its aims at least, than with a Whiggish industrialism. He himself, in his relations with peasants and peers, lived in the light of the ideal of Feudalism; the friend and protector of all beneath him, his “men”;—the friend and true “man” of his chiefs. His political creed was a transferred allegiance from the rightful kings, who (in the male line) were no more, to the king whom, by some odd cantrip of logic, he regarded as their legitimate successor. His loyalty—so hateful and so incomprehensible to Hazlitt, for example—blossomed like a white rose, among the ruins of what had been

1 The explanation occurs later in a letter of Lockhart’s from Italy.

THE PLEADERS’ PORTRAITS

209

a stately tower, and above the graves where the royal and exiled dead sleep after their lifelong wanderings.

“I am delighted with your plan for poor Allan. It would be a shame to us all were we not to make an exertion for so wonderful a little fellow. Pray put me down for three shares. I think I shall get two names—D. Buccleugh and Lord Montagu, for two more—indeed I am almost sure of the former. Could not something be eked to the plan in the way of engraving so as to make it still further productive? I hope to be so well as to go up to London, and trust I shall get Allan an order to paint Archbishop Sharpe’s murder, of which he has made a superb sketch. If my stomach would let me exert my energies as usual, I should hope to be able to treat myself to some of his productions. But at present my nose is held to the grindstone in every way.”

On July 19, 1819, Scott acknowledged a present of “Peter’s Letters.”1 The letter need not be reprinted. “The Epistles of the imaginary Dr. Morris have so often been denounced” (says Lockhart, after apologising for the book, as that of “a very young and a very thoughtless person”) “as a mere string of libels, that I think it fair to show how much more leniently Scott judged of them at the time. Indeed Sir Walter writes, ‘The general turn of the book is perhaps too favourable, both to the state of our public society, and of individual character.’ He wished Dr. Morris to revive every half century, ‘to record the fleeting manners of the age, and the interesting features of those who will only be known to posterity by their works.’ He ‘purrs and puts up his back, like his own grey cat,’ Hins of Hinsfeldt, ‘bribed by the doctor’s kind and delicate account of his visit to Abbotsford.’”

“Peter’s Letters,” in spite of its ill repute, really contains infinitely more of good than evil. Dr. Morris, a scholar of some twoscore years, is supposed to arrive in his shandrydan from Wales. He meets a Mr. Wastle of Wastle, an old Oxford friend, and an impossible, irreconcilable Cavalier Tory. Wastle’s “sudden elopement from Oxford, without a degree, after having astonished the examining masters by the splendid commencement of his examination,” is a trait adapted from the tradition about De Quincey. The personal description is that of Lockhart himself, grown some twenty years older, while Wastle’s learned enthusiasm for Old Edinburgh is borrowed from Scott. Lockhart liked the character, and made Wastle responsible for much prose and verse in Blackwood. “This yellow visage of his, with his close, firm lips, and his grey eyes . . . one would less wonder to meet with in Valladolid than in Edinburgh.” This is worth quoting, as there is no effort to hide, but rather to proclaim Lockhart, though he is, later, introduced briefly in his proper person. Wastle’s very passion for heraldry is Lockhart’s. The attitude towards the Scotch people, especially as concerns their devotions, is exactly that of Lockhart in his “Life of Burns.” He sees them, at the sermon, rejoice when they detect a chink in the armour of the preacher’s logic, and “bowed in the dust”

214

LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.

before “some solitary gleam of warm affectionate eloquence—the only weapon they have no power to resist.” There occur, of course, frequent portraits of “local celebrities,” beginning with Jeffrey. Dr. Morris contrasts Jeffrey’s head with Goethe’s (whom Lockhart met at Weimar), “the sublime simplicity of his Homeric beauty, the awful pile of forehead, the large deep eyes, with their melancholy lightnings, the whole countenance, so radiant with divinity.” As to Jeffrey’s own eyes, “the scintillation of a star is not more fervid.” “I think their prevailing language is, after all, rather a melancholy than a merry one; it is, at least, very full of reflection.” There follows a dinner (purely Barmecide) with Jeffrey, Playfair, Leslie, and others. The sages and philosophers are described as practising leaping, a curious and by no means very humorous invention. For this the brilliant and delicate account of Jeffrey’s conversational manner might make some amends. Playfair, the victim of Lauerwinkel, “left a feeling of quiet, respectful, and affectionate admiration upon my mind.” The superiority of the Whigs in law is admitted, and in literature. But where now is their literature? Aaron’s serpent in the Magician’s hand, hath swallowed all the serpents of the Edinburgh literary Whiggery of that day.

Henry Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling, is described very favourably. In 1823, Lockhart dedicated “Reginald Dalton” to this sometime enemy

WILSON DESCRIBED

215

of Blackwood. At a Burns Dinner, in “Peter’s Letters,” Jeffrey does not propose the poet’s memory, and Dr. Morris censures his critical severity to Burns, making a very fair and unexaggerated appeal for tenderness to the poet’s failings. He tells how Mr. Maule of Panmure settled £50 a year on Mrs. Burns, and how one of the poet’s sons, as soon as he obtained a medical practice in India, provided for her so well that she was able to relieve Mr. Maule from the slight burden on his kindness. Many poets were toasted, including Crabbe, Rogers, and Montgomery, but not Wordsworth, Southey, or Coleridge, Tory minstrels. The organisers of the feast were Whigs! If Dr. Morris fables not, this is an odd proof of Whig liberality. Here, and throughout, Wordsworth is praised “with both hands.”

Wilson, of course, was present: “His hair is of the true Sicambrian yellow; his eyes are of the lightest, and at the same time of the clearest blue, and the blood glows in his cheeks with as firm a fervour as it did, according to the description of Jornandes, in those of the bello gaudentes, prælio ridentes Teutones of Attila. I had never suspected, before I saw him, that such extreme fairness and freshness of complexion could be compatible with so much variety and tenderness, but, above all, with so much depth of expression.” The variety, luxury, and feeling of Wilson’s eloquence, and “the tremulous music of a voice that is equally at home in the highest and

216

LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.

lowest of notes,” are sympathetically described. He proposed Hogg’s health; the Shepherd made a brief hearty reply, and Dr. Morris “began to be quite in love with the Ettrick Shepherd.” When the doctor sang “Donald Macdonald,” the Shepherd, its author, confessed a kindred flame,—and toddy set in. The “dreadful tusks” and other features of the “Great Boar” are described in a manner not wholly pleasing to any personal vanity which Hogg may have cherished, but “his towering brow, and eye of genius,” atone for all. The evening finished under Mr. Patrick Robertson’s (“Lord Peter’s”) chairmanship.

A very distinguished Scotsman, who remembers, “’tis sixty years since,” a bad inn described by Lockhart as still deserving his description, writes to me: “Lockhart shows a good deal of malice and irony, and does not even spare the chief of his own party—witness his account of the President of the Court of Session, Charles Hope, and his address to the corrupt attorney.” (“Letters,” third edition, ii. 102-105.) “He manages to make the President ridiculous, while exalting his eloquence and solemnity.”

Apparently there are, and were, two ways of reading “Peter’s Letters,” and Lockhart may have been suspected of irony where he was serious, or the sense of irony, in myself as in Scott, may be deficient. I am, of course, inclined to prefer my own interpretation, but it is well to state (what I certainly could never have guessed), that there is another.

From the lawyers, Dr. Morris turns to the men of letters, and, of course, to Jeffrey and his Review. The learned doctor anticipates Carlyle’s line of thought. The Edinburgh Reviewers are “the legitimate offspring of the sceptical philosophers of the last age,” and their scepticism as to the value, for example, of thought on the great problems of thought, has resulted in petulance and persiflage. In truth, the Reviewers are not “earnest,” as Mr. Carlyle would have said. The fact that Sir William Hamilton never contributed to the Review, under Jeffrey, and that when he did, under Macvey Napier, Jeffrey was vexed and puzzled, is an illustration of Lockhart’s meaning. “Cousin I pronounce the most unreadable thing that ever appeared in the Review” says Jeffrey about Hamilton’s essay on Cousin.1 Hamilton “affects to understand the worst part of the mysticism” (of

1 “Correspondence of Macvey Napier,” p. 70.

JEFFREY

219

Cousin), “and to explain it, and to think it very ingenious and respectable, and it is mere gibberish.” Jeffrey’s famous letter of advice to Carlyle, analysed by Mr. Froude, “England will never admire, nor indeed endure, your German divinities” (Goethe is in question), supplies another example. The German philosophers are “Dousterswivels,” and so forth.1 Of Goethe, Lockhart had an extreme admiration. Himself a mocker on occasion, he was absolutely in earnest about the great works of great minds. He found Jeffrey habitually misunderstanding, or never trying to understand, what was not superficial. He found him applauding vehemently “The Paradise of Coquettes,” and beginning a review of Wordsworth with “This will never do!” He found him ministering to the vanity of a nation, “which had become at once very fond of scepticism, and very weary of learning.” He saw him “counteracting, by a continued series of sarcastic and merry antidotes, the impression likely to be produced by works appealing to the graver and more mysterious feelings of the human heart.” In contemporary literature, the Review was so conducted that “I do not, on my conscience, believe that there is one Whig in Edinburgh to whom the name of my friend Charles Lamb would convey any distinct or definite idea.” As for Wordsworth, “the reading public of Edinburgh do not criticise Mr. Wordsworth, they think him below their criticism.”

The talk of Dr. Morris about the bookseller’s

BLACKWOOD

221

shops is now, of course, antiquated. Constable’s, in the High Street, was “a low dusky chamber,” without the luxuries of Mr. Murray’s emporium in Albemarle Street. There was Manner’s and Miller’s, for a modern lounge; and Laing’s, for lovers of old books and black letter, reminded Lockhart of Parker’s, in Oxford. There is a long description of Blackwood’s, in Princes Street, but we have had enough of Ebony. Mr. Blackwood is praised for shrewdness, decision, and energy, and it would be “unfair” (one does not see why) to blame him for the excesses of his Magazine. “Well, Dr. Morris,” exclaimed the Man in Plain Apparel, “have you seen our last number? Is it not perfectly glorious? My stars! doctor, there is nothing equal to it,” and so on, the author’s natural turn for banter getting the better of him here, at all events. They dine at Ambrose’s, the tavern of the “Noctes Ambrosianæ,” and Lockhart tells, very well, the tragic old story of Gabriel’s double murder, wrought here when the road was a dell in a wood. There follows a history of the Magazine, a kind of confession of contrition, a defence of the Cockney articles, an eulogy on Coleridge. Keats’s friend, John Hamilton Reynolds, “a very promising writer,” is excepted from the general abuse of the Londoners; partly, perhaps, because Christie knew Reynolds; partly because his really was “a very gay, humorous pen, capable, too, of charming poetry.”

The painters come next, and Raeburn is pro-

222

LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.

nounced “in no important particular inferior even to Sir Thomas Lawrence.” The end of the volume deals with the visit to Abbotsford, and Scott. “There is no kind of rank which I should suppose it so difficult to bear with perfect ease, as the universally honoured nobility of universally honoured genius; but all this sits as lightly upon this great man, as ever a plumed casque did upon the head of one of his own graceful knights.” Scott quotes a ballad, his face alters, his quick eyes beneath his heavy brows are fixed “with a sober solemn lustre. . . . I shall certainly never forget the fine heroic enthusiasm of look with which he spoke the lines, nor the grand melancholy roll of voice, which showed with what a world of thoughts and feelings every fragment of the old legend was associated within his breast.”

One criticism Lockhart makes, which Scott may not have welcomed. His stripling woods were dearer than his poems to the Sheriff. Lockhart speaks of the plantations, and the agriculture which will take advantage of their shelter. “To say the truth, I do not think with much pleasure of the prospect of any such changes. . . . There hovers at present over the most of this district a certain delicious atmosphere of pastoral loneliness, and I think there would be something like sacrilege in disturbing it, even by things that elsewhere would confer interest as well as ornament.”

In the third edition appears a letter to Coleridge from Dr. Morris. The doctor attributes the hubbub to the arrogance of the Scotch Whigs, which is very amusingly described. After reading Lord Cockburn’s “Memorials,” with his description of Jeffrey as “the First of British Critics,” we feel that exaggeration was impossible. Much of the book is now antiquated, but many admirable passages of living interest might be extracted. The doctor’s craniological speculations are obsolete, but it is almost as true to say that a few excisions would present a useful work, as to say that many selections would be valuable. The author insists on his old private opinion, that Scotch intellect is sufficiently represented by Hume and Adam Smith, but that Scotch character is an inexhaustible mine. As for the personalities, the Whigs had welcomed, two or three

TORY NEWSPAPER

225

years before, a personal volume by a traveller, one Simond, in which Scotch Tories had suffered grievous things.1 It is only necessary to add that an unlucky description of the Black Bull Inn, as noisy and untidy, led to legal proceedings, and Lockhart had to pay £400 of damages, without going into court. “Lockhart’s account of the inn is very correct,” says a friend already quoted, who remembers “The Black Bull,” but toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire.

Lockhart was a volunteer, with the rest; even Lord Cockburn was enrolled in some kind of armed force. Lockhart rode about in the various unopposed marches and counter marches, the Raid of Airdrie, the Trot of Kilmarnock, but he does not seem to have taken his military character seriously. “The Songs of the Edinburgh Troop” (published in 1825), are usually attributed to him.2

Lockhart had other than literary engagements at this moment. By the middle of February it had been arranged that he should marry Miss Scott. Lockhart always treasured the little notes written to him, at this time, by his future wife. The earliest begins “My dear Sir,” and is written “without Papa’s knowledge,” a thing which must never occur again. Miss Scott had spoken to her father, and Sir Walter had hinted at a little prudent delay. “Do not, for God’s sake, be so unhappy,” she writes. The unhappiness did not last long. The later notes always begin “Dear Mr. Lockhart,” kind, happy, playful missives, ending “Always affectionately yours.” Lockhart accompanied the family on a flying visit to Abbotsford, on a Saturday, of which he has left the chronicle.1 In a walk from Huntly Burn his future country home was fixed, the cottage of Chiefswood, on a little haugh beside the haunted Bogle burn, which flows through the Rhymer’s Glen. An additional gable

1 “Life,” vi. 187.

230

LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART.

has been built in the cottage, with its tiny rooms, separated only by the burn from an ancient Holy Well. Otherwise the place is unaltered. The bureau where Scott wrote “The Pirate” keeps its old place; the same venerable trees shade the lawn: the avenue is that which John Ballantyne wanted to mark out by a cross-country ride “on the Sabbath-day.” The glen is now haunted, indeed, by many memories.

In this February, Scott and Lockhart, with Prince Gustavus, the exiled heir of Sweden, saw George IV. proclaimed, where, in 1745, King James the Eighth had been vainly announced, at the Cross of Edinburgh. The Swedish exile listened, with melancholy interest, to Scott’s anecdotes of that other wanderer, Prince Charles, who, on this very scene, had snatched from Fate one hour of royalty. Scott drew Lockhart to a window apart, “Poor lad, poor lad, God help him!” he said with a natural emotion.

Of Scott’s eldest daughter and dearest, “the flower and blossom of his house,” not much is said, of course, in published memorials. I take a quaint vignette of her, from an unpublished letter to Sir Walter by Mr. Edward Everett. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 28, 1820.)

Miss Scott, as Lockhart says, in his brief and beautiful tribute to her memory, was, of all his children, the one most like Sir Walter. It was she who nearly fainted with emotion, at the discovery of the Scottish Regalia. (February 5, 1818.) “He never spoke all the way home, but every now and then I felt his arm tremble; and from that time I fancied he began to treat me more like a woman than a child. I thought he liked me better, too, than he had ever done before.”1 She it was who

1 “Life,” v. 283.

LOCKHARTS MARRIAGE

235

sang the old songs that her father loved; she was the Duke of Buccleuch’s “little Jacobite.” Her portrait, by Nicholson, in a kind of peasant costume, with a great hound looking up into her face, has an expression of the sweetest humour and friendly charm. It is barely worth noting, as an argument in the little controversy as to Sir Walter’s Presbyterian or Episcopalian leanings, that Miss Scott and her sister Anne were confirmed in April 1820.1 Lockhart and Miss Scott were married at Abbotsford, in the evening, more Scotico, of April 29, 1820. Among the marriages of men of letters, often far from happy, this, in spite of La Rochefoucauld, was un mariage délicieux, uninterrupted in its happiness, save by the misfortunes of Sir Walter, and the ill health, first of the eldest boy, and, later, of Mrs. Lockhart.

≪ PREV

NEXT ≫

Alexander II, king of Scotland (1198-1249) He was king of Scotland, 1214-1249, buried at Melrose Abbey.

Sir William Allan (1782-1850) Scottish painter who traveled in Russia and exhibited at the Royal Academy to which he was elected in 1835; he was president of the Royal Scottish Academy (1838).

Attila the Hun (406-453) Leader of the Huns whose conquests stretched from the Volga into Gaul.

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.

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.

John William Burgon (1813-1888) The son of Thomas Burgon (1787-1858), a Turkey merchant, he was educated at Oxford where he was Gresham professor of Divinity (1867); he was dean of Chichester (1876-88).

Jean Burns [née Armour] (1765-1834) The wife of Robert Burns who bore him several children before they were married in a civil ceremony in 1788.

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

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

Charles Edward [Bonnie Prince Charlie] (1720-1788) The eldest son of James Francis Edward (1688-1766), the Old Pretender; his adventures in the rebellion of 1745 became a matter of legend.

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.

Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn (1779-1854) Scottish judge, reformer, and friend of Francis Jeffrey; he wrote a Life of Lord Jeffrey (1852) and Memorials of his Time (1856).

Ernest Hartley Coleridge (1846-1920) Literary scholar and editor, the son of Derwent Coleridge and grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; he was educated at Balliol College, Oxford.

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.

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

Victor Cousin (1792-1867) French proponent of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and educational reform.

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).

George Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse (1771-1850) Scottish judge and scholar, the brother-in-law of Dugald Stewart and friend of Walter Scott; he was raised to the bench in 1826 as Lord Corehouse.

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).

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).

Edward Everett (1794-1865) American statesman educated at Harvard College; he was editor of the North American Review (1820-24), ambassador to Great Britain (1841-45), president of Harvard (1846-49).

James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) English historian and man of letters; he published History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth, 12 vols (1856-70).

Sir William Gell (1777-1836) English traveler and archaeologist; author of the Topography of Troy (1804), Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca (1807), the Itinerary of Greece, with a Commentary on Pausanias (1810), Itinerary of the Morea (1817), Narrative of a Journey in the Morea (1823), and Itinerary of Greece (1827).

King George III of Great Britain (1738-1820) King of Great Britain (1760-1820).

King George IV of Great Britain (1762-1830) Prince Regent (1811-20) and King of Great Britain (1820-1830).

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

James Graham, first marquess of Montrose (1612-1650) Scottish Cavalier, famed for his exploits as lieutenant-general in Scotland (1644-1645).

Gustavus, crown prince of Sweden (1799-1877) The son of Gustav IV King of Sweden deposed in 1809; he served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army.

Anne Jane Hamilton, marchioness of Abercorn [née Gore] (1763-1827) Daughter of the earl of Arran; in 1783 she married Henry Hatton (d. 1793), in 1800 John James Hamilton, first marquess of Hamilton. She entertained literary figures at her villa at Stanmore, among them Lady Morgan.

Sir William Stirling Hamilton, baronet (1788-1856) Friend of John Gibson Lockhart and writer for the Edinburgh Review; he held the Edinburgh chair of logic and metaphysics (1836).

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English essayist and literary critic; author of Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817), Lectures on the English Poets (1818), and The Spirit of the Age (1825).

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.

Charles Hope, Lord Granton (1763-1851) Educated at Edinburgh University, he was Tory MP for Edinburgh (1803-05) and Lord President of Court of Session (1811-41).

Horace (65 BC-8 BC) Roman lyric poet; author of Odes, Epistles, Satires, and the Ars Poetica.

David Hume (1711-1776) Scottish philosopher and historian; author of Essays Moral and Political (1741-42), Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748) and History of Great Britain (1754-62).

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).

James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales (1688-1766) Son of James II; his legitimacy was challenged even before his birth; following the Glorious Revolution he lived in Rome.

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.

Richard Jenkyns (1782-1854) Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was elected master in 1819; he was vice-chancellor (1824-28) and dean of Wells (1845).

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).

Jordanes (550 fl.) Roman official who composed Getica, a history of the Goths written in Constantinople.

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

William Laing (1764-1832) Edinburgh bookseller who specialized in antiquarian and foreign books; he was the father of the bookseller and antiquary David Laing.

Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834) English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of Essays of Elia published in the London Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) English portrait painter who succeeded Joshua Reynolds as painter in ordinary to the king (1792); he was president of the Royal Academy (1820).

David Leslie, first Lord Newark (1601-1682) Scottish general who in 1645 defeated James Graham, Marquis of Montrose at the Battle of Philiphaugh; in 1651 he was defeated by Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester.

Sir John Leslie (1766-1832) Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University, author of Experimental Enquiries into the Nature and Properties of Heat (1804), and contributor to the Edinburgh Review.

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).

Lawrence Lockhart (1795-1876) The son of the Rev. John Lockhart and younger brother of John Gibson Lockhart; he was minister of Inchinnan (1822-60) after which he resided on the family estate at Milton Lockhart.

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

Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831) Scottish man of letters, author of The Man of Feeling (1770) and editor of The Mirror (1779-80) and The Lounger (1785-87).

Alexander Manners (d. 1825) Edinburgh bookseller in partnership with Robert Miller from 1794 to 1825. He was an acquaintance of Walter Scott.

William Ramsay Maule, first baron Panmure (1771-1852) The second son of George Ramsay, eighth earl of Dalhousie; Scottish aristocrat, MP, and member of the Whig Club who scandalized his contemporaries by his dissipation. Samuel Smiles confuses him with his son Fox Maule (1801-74).

Robert Miller (1828 fl.) Edinburgh bookseller; he was the partner of Alexander Manners (1794-1807) and afterwards his successor.

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).

James Montgomery (1771-1854) English poet and editor of the Sheffield Iris (1795-1825); author of The Wanderer of Switzerland (1806) and The World before the Flood (1813).

James Murray (d. 1835) Journalist; he managed the foreign department at The Times newspaper during the editorship of Thomas Barnes.

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.

Francis Nicholson (1753-1844) English watercolorist who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1789; he was a founder and president of the Society of Painters in Water Colours.

Joseph Parker (1830 fl.) After an apprenticeship with Daniel Prince and matriculating at Oxford in 1798 he was an Oxford bookseller on Broad Street.

John Playfair (1748-1819) Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University and Whig man of letters who contributed to the Edinburgh Review.

Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) Scottish portrait painter and friend of Sir Walter Scott.

John Hamilton Reynolds (1794-1852) English poet, essayist, and friend of Keats; he wrote for The Champion (1815-17) and published The Garden of Florence; and other Poems (1821).

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.

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French courtier and moralist; author of Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales (1665).

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).

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

Charles William Henry Montagu- Scott, fourth duke of Buccleuch (1772-1819) Son of the third duke and friend of Walter Scott; he was a Tory MP before succeeding to the title in 1812.

James Scott [The Odontist] (1830 fl.) The first dental specialist to practice in Glasgow, he was a member of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (1803), afterward pilloried in Blackwood's as “The Odontist.”. Blackwood's describes him as deceased in 1831.

John Scott (1784-1821) After Marischal College he worked as a journalist with Leigh Hunt, edited The Champion (1814-1817), and edited the London Magazine (1820) until he was killed in the duel at Chalk Farm.

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

James Sharp, archbishop of St Andrews (1618-1679) Professor of Philosophy at St. Andrews; after his conversion to episcopacy he was made archbishop in 1661. He was murdered by Covenenters on Magus Moor.

Louis Simond (1767-1831) French-born American merchant and author of travel books.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) Friend of David Hume and professor of logic at Glasgow University (1751); he wrote Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776).

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).

Thomas of Erceldoune (1220 c.-1297 c.) Scottish poet and prophet; author (or supposed author) of the romance, Sir Tristrem.

Patrick Fraser Tytler (1791-1849) Sottish barrister, son of Alexander Fraser Tytler; he published The Life of the Admirable Crichton (1819), History of Scotland (1828-43), and other works.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) Queen of England, 1837-1901.

John Williams (1792-1858) Classical scholar educated at Balliol College, Oxford; he was a classmate of John Gibson Lockhart and friend of Sir Walter Scott, whose son he tutored, and rector of the Edinburgh Academy (1824-27, 1829-47).

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.

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 Champion. (1814-22). A Sunday London newspaper edited by John Scott (1784-1821); John Thelwall (1764-1834) was proprietor and editor from 1818.

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.

The Guardian. (1819-1825). A weekly Tory paper edited by Charles Knight from 1820-22.

The London Magazine. (1820-1829). Founded by John Scott as a monthly rival to Blackwood's, the London Magazine included among its contributors Charles Lamb, John Clare, Allan Cunningham, Thomas De Quincey, and Thomas Hood.

The Scotsman. (1817-). An Edinburgh Liberal newspaper published weekly 1817-1855, afterwards daily; the original proprietor was William Ritchie.

The Times. (1785-). Founded by John Walter, The Times was edited by Thomas Barnes from 1817 to 1841. In the romantic era it published much less literary material than its rival dailies, the Morning Chronicle and the Morning Post.

“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.

Thomas Brown (1778-1820) The Paradise of Coquettes: a Poem in Nine Parts. (London: John Murray, 1814). By the Edinburgh philosopher of mind.

Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn (1779-1854) Memorials of his Time. (Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1856).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) The Friend: a Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper, excluding personal and party Politics and the Events of the Day. (1809-1810). Published irregularly; 28 numbers appeared.

James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) Thomas Carlyle; a History of the first forty years of his Life, 1795-1835. 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1882).

Sir William Stirling Hamilton, baronet (1788-1856) “Education of the People: Cousin on German Schools” in Edinburgh Review. Vol. 57 (July 1833): 505-542.

James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835) “Donald MacDonald” in The Mountain Bard, consisting of Ballads and Songs founded on Facts and Legendary Tales. (Edinburgh: Arch. Constable and Co., 1807). Originally printed as a broadsheet, 1801.

Washington Irving [Geoffrey Crayon] (1783-1859) Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey. (London: J. Murray, 1835).

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) Ancient Spanish Ballads: Historical and Romantic. (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1823).

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) “The Clydesdale Yeoman's Return. An Excellent New Ballad” in Blackwood's Magazine. Vol. 6 (December 1819): 321-22. Ascribed to “Dr. Scott”—the Odontist.

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) “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) Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk. 3 vols (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1819). An anonymous collection of pen-portraits, several times reprinted; John Wilson contributed to the volumes.

John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) Reginald Dalton. 3 vols (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1823). A novel of Oxford life, reprinted 1842.

Macvey Napier (1776-1847) Selections from the Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, Esq.. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1879). Edited the writer's son, also Macvey Napier.

John Scott (1784-1821) “Living Authors, No. I. The Author of the Scotch Novels” in London Magazine. Vol. 1 (January 1820): 11-22. Unsigned; the content of the essay suggests that it is by the editor, John Scott.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Familiar Letters. 2 vols (Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1894). Edited by David Douglas.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk. (Edinburgh: A. Constable, 1816). The letters describe Walter Scott's journey to Waterloo in 1815.

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) The Pirate. 3 vols (Edinburgh: A. Constable and Co., 1822).

Louis Simond (1767-1831) Journal of a Tour and residence in Great Britain: during the years 1810 and 1811. 2 vols (Edinburgh: A. Constable, 1815). Reprinted 1817.

Charles Sumner (1811-1874) Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner. 4 vols (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1877-1893).

Patrick Fraser Tytler (1791-1849) Songs of the Edinburgh Troop. (Edinburgh: 1825). Anonymous; it was also attributed to John Gibson Lockhart.

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