At a happy period in Lockhart’s early life, in the good days of Chiefswood, we interrupted the continuity of his biography, to comment on his skill as a verse-writer and a caricaturist. Now he has reached the age when he might say, in his own quotation from Merdinn Wyltt—
“God hath provided bitter things for me:
Dead is Morgenen, dead is Mordag, Dead is Morien, dead are those I love.” |
Here, then, before telling the story of his latest years, we may consider him in his capacity as a journalist.
246 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
After the completion of his “Life of Sir Walter Scott,” Lockhart did not attempt, and probably did not even contemplate, any book on a great scale. Indeed, though he thought of amplifying and extending his “Life of Burns,” there is no evidence that he intended to write any book at all, except, perhaps, a version of the “Iliad.” The spring of ambition, long weakened by sorrows and disappointment, broke at the death of his wife. He became occupied with the education of his children, the pleasures of friendship, the observation of society, and the daily duties of editorial routine. These included, as it seems, a vast deal of consultation, both by word of mouth and by written notes, with Mr. Murray, with Croker, with Milman (for whose counsel Lockhart was wont to apply); and possibly there were other advisers—indeed, too many.
This kind of occupation, though not laborious, is distracting and fretful, and adverse to serious and sedulous literary composition. No journalist, by the very nature of his duties, has the undisturbed leisure which literature demands, and Lockhart was a journalist. Mr. Carlyle, during these very years, was occupied with great works, and was building his own literary monument. Readers of Mr. Carlyle’s journals can readily imagine what sort of monument he would have erected, had he been obliged eternally to keep an eye on “the literary movement,” to watch the stream of new books, to criticise things in general “from Poetry to Dry-
JOURNALISM | 247 |
Charges, which have some truth in them, represent Lockhart as making, or permitting to be made, unwelcome or sarcastic interpolations in the articles of contributors. The custom was traditional, and Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, had interpolated
248 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
The Quarterly Reviews of old partook more than they now do of the nature of journalism. But writers in them were justly annoyed when interpolations into their work attacked, it may be, persons whom they admired. The most severe comments on Lockhart’s editorship which I have seen, occur in a private letter of a critic now dead. But opposite this gentleman’s name, in a diary of Lockhart’s, is written in Greek the quotation of that speech of Achilles: “Hateful to me, even as the gates of hell, is he that hideth one thing in his heart, and uttereth another.”
An explicit statement of a grievance in this kind occurs in a paper prepared by Lord Stanhope (Lord Mahon), the distinguished historian, for Mr. Gleig, a paper partly published in Mr. Gleig’s often-cited article on Lockhart in the Quarterly Review.2 Here follows the passage. It deals with Lockhart’s
1 Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxviii. p. 233. 2 The document is lent by the kindness of Colonel Gleig. |
LORD STANHOPE | 249 |
“Being asked,” says Lord Stanhope, “to write my reminiscences of my much lamented friend Mr. Lockhart, I feel on this occasion, as I have on many others, that nothing can supply the place of notes taken at the time. Even the most brilliant conversations, and the most lively traits of character, seem dim and more than half obliterated when viewed through the retrospect of years.
“My first acquaintance with Mr. Lockhart was made about the year 1829, in dining with our common friend Robert William Hay, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. Subsequently we often met at dinner-parties and sometimes in country-houses. Above all, we used then to meet at Hatfield. Both he and I were honoured with the friendship of the Marchioness of Salisbury, first wife of the present peer. Even thus, in passing, let me say how justly we learnt to appreciate the qualities of that highly gifted lady—her generous and lofty character, her disdain of everything that was false and mean, her manifold accomplishments of mind, and her most attractive conversation. When, in October 1839, she died after a long protracted illness, there were few beyond her family
250 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“It was not long ere my friendship with Mr. Lockhart engaged me—nothing loth—as a writer in the Quarterly Review. I contributed an article on the French Revolution, in reply to a new theory which Mr. Macaulay had just before in another review propounded. But when my article was finished, my friend in Sussex Place, without apprising me, placed it in Mr. Croker’s hands, and left him at liberty to add some further observations.1 Mr. Croker, as is well known, did not allow to lie dormant his great powers of caustic wit. No man knew better how to enliven a dry or difficult subject by the pungency of personal allusion; and no man was more fully aware of his own abilities in that respect. I remember, for example, a series of private notes from him to Sir Robert Peel in the autumn of 1841, when Mr. Croker was assiduously employed in the composition of a stinging article ‘against the Whigs.’ He declares himself so hard at work that he must for the present
1 The Revolution was Croker’s private province in the Review. He had to be consulted, otherwise trouble arose. |
CROKER INTERPOLATES | 251 |
“Mr. Croker, then being in full possession of my unfortunate proofs, proceeded to embody with them some comments by himself on a former publication by Lord John Russell. With the article so ‘amended’—if amended I must call it—the Quarterly came out in April 1833. But when on its appearance I saw how my handiwork had been dealt with, I was much annoyed and displeased. The disparaging remarks on Lord John Russell seemed to me open to objection in their tone and temper, and did not accord with my feeling of respect for that eminent man. I did not wish to be considered as their author, in case the entire article were ascribed to me. Accordingly, I published as a separate essay the article as it stood at first, declaring at the same time to Mr. Murray that I would never—no, never—write again for his Review.1
“It is worthy of note, I think, as showing how high the character of Mr. Lockhart stood among his friends, that although I chafed—possibly more than I ought—at the treatment of my bantling in the Quarterly, I did not, even at the outset, impute any want of kindness or consideration for me to the Editor. It was only, as I was convinced, that he had seen the matter in a different, perhaps, as the public might think, in a juster view. It was
1 A broken vow. |
252 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“It was not, however, until eight years afterwards—in the spring of 1841—that I resumed my pen in the service of the Quarterly. The bait held out, and that hooked me, was an offer to review Mr. Fraser Tytler’s ‘History of Scotland.’ It gave me the occasion to discuss, according to a via media which I had formed, the character of poor Queen Mary—a princess certainly quite as attractive to scribblers since her death as she can have been to gallants in her lifetime!
“In literature and politics, Mr. Lockhart has been very frequently censured as too bitter. So far as regards the literary field, he was convinced that, like other fields into which crowds are pressing, it requires a police—that a warning voice should keep it clear, so far as possible, of impudent pretence, as well as shallow ignorance. That duty had been discharged in a spirit of stern justice by Mr. Gifford and Lord Jeffrey. It was no less needful in Mr. Lockhart’s time; and the keen weapon of ridicule, which they knew so well how to wield, shone as bright in Mr. Lockhart’s hands.
“On the other point, and so far as politics are
LOCKHART’S POLITICS | 253 |
“In these days we took comfort—and certainly we needed some—in the idea that we had often the better of the arguments, though always beaten to pieces at the hustings or the House. I remember raising a smile in Mr. Lockhart when I told him of an Irish friend of ours, who, with honest warmth, exclaimed to me that we had now a clear majority in everything except in numbers!
“But besides the distaste of Mr. Lockhart to rash
254 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
The Crokerian interpolations into the article of Lord Mahon may be recognised by a babe in criticism. Mr. Croker never abstained from three things—personal sneers; the use of copious italics and of capital letters; and the impassioned defence, in season and out of season, of his beloved religion. These marks of Mr. Croker will be found in Lord Mahon’s review of Lord John Russell. Mr. Croker was the literary Thangbrand of Christianity, ever “spoiling for a fight,” like the militant Apostle of Iceland; he was an Anglican Berserk. Lord Mahon need not have feared that these qualities, or Mr. Croker’s italics, would be attributed to him; still, he did well to be angry.
So much for Lockhart as a political Editor. In literary Editorship he inherited the tradition expressed in the motto of the Edinburgh Review: Judex damnatus quum nocens absolvitor. An author on this theory is, ex officio, nocens, or at least reus: an accused person on his trial. Tennyson, as we saw, was tried and condemned, humorously and unjustly, for the “Poems” of 1833—not for those of 1842, or for “The Princess.” Luckily, perhaps, for Lockhart, Mr. Browning did not appear
LOCKHART’S ESSAYS | 255 |
As a contributor to the Quarterly Review, Lockhart was industrious. During his twenty-eight years of Editorship he wrote more than a hundred articles on subjects the most various. He reviewed the notable great literary works of the hour, such as Croker’s “Boswell,” Scott’s “Lives of the Novelists,” Moore’s “Sheridan,” Leigh Hunt’s “Byron and his Contemporaries,” Tennyson’s “Poems” of 1833, the histories of Lord Mahon, Southey’s “Doctor,” Taylor’s “Philip Van Artevelde,” and Mure’s “Literature of Greece.” Biography interested him especially, and he once (as we have seen) thought of publishing an extra number, entirely consisting of biographies of great men recently dead, including Scott and Goethe. He did, as occasion arose, write on the lives of Crabbe, Theodore Hook, Edmund Kean, Southey (in part), Wilkie the Painter, Beattie’s “Life of Campbell,” and, at the last, was part author of the article on the life of his old opponent, Jeffrey. He also frequently reviewed books of travel—especially, perhaps, books of travel in America, or by Americans in England. He wrote an interesting essay (No. 90), on Donn’s Gaelic Poems. He reviewed a number of novels now for the most part forgotten. He produced an essay, still lively and readable, on Dry-Rot in Timber (No. 97). That number also
256 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
An essayist so various, so industrious, so spirited, and so learned, must have left, it might be thought, many pages worthy of rescue from the shelves devoted to old magazines. But Lockhart, in fact, left no such legacy. His essays, if collected and published, could not pretend to rival those of Macaulay. A volume of his biographical studies might, indeed, be worth contemplating, and the censure on Tennyson is a remarkable literary curiosity, while some few other literary articles perhaps deserve a permanent form. The rest was written for the current quarter, not for posterity.
This is a disappointing circumstance, which Lockhart himself may be said to explain. Late in his career he wrote (September 1850) a criticism of Colonel Mure of Caldwell’s “History of the Language and Literature of Greece.” I venture to dwell at some length on this topic—first, because the criticism is so thoroughly characteristic of Lockhart; next, because the gallant and learned Colonel’s
DUTY OF REVIEWERS | 257 |
He writes, and he is obviously thinking of Macaulay’s “Essays”: “On the present occasion we mean to confine ourselves within narrow limits, and to keep before us principally what critics nowadays are apt to regard as a humble and trivial function. For we adhere to our old-fashioned notion, that, when a man of rich endowments makes his first appearance, or offers the first specimen of what seems to be the main monument of his literary energy—but more especially when the book is of the graver class—it is the primary duty of reviewers to think not of themselves but of their author; to put the rein on indulgence in any sort of display except the display of his qualities; to aim, in short, at encouraging his zeal by awakening the curiosity and sympathy of his and their public . . . This excludes all chance of formal, original, or would-be original disquisition on the part of the journalist; and we suspect that even at present, when the case is really one of solid and serious claims, our friends are far from being displeased with a recurrence to the primitive notion of Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres.”
Here is Lockhart’s explicit avowal of his own theory of his own function. He is not the inde-
258 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
There are other drawbacks. Lockhart had ever in his mind the Conservative character of his organ, and would make temporary defences of its ideas, with reference to the questions of the hour, where perhaps no such excursions were necessary. Now they are superseded and otiose, if the essays be taken as works of pure literature. They become journalism, as Lockhart knew and intended, and nothing is less
1 Mr. James Traill, son of Lockhart’s friend, Mr. Traill. |
HOMERIC CRITICISM | 259 |
Not much out of season are his remarks in this kind on Colonel Mure’s “History of Greek Literature.” The Colonel necessarily devoted much of his space to the Homeric question, the question of the unity and antiquity of the Homeric Epics. This unity had been assailed, as every one knows, by the learned Wolf, and ever since his day German criticism has been sedulously occupied with dissecting the poems, and tearing the poet into disjecta membra of all manner of diverse dates and authorships. Many, one might even say most, of these dissertations are marked by learning, indeed; but are also notable for perverse and wilful caprice of fancy, for utter insensibility to poetry, and for a blind indifference to the fact that most of the arguments against the unity of authorship in the Homeric poems are just as strong arguments against the unity of authorship of the Waverley Novels, of “Paradise Lost,” or of almost any other sustained work of imagination.
Lockhart made these reflections, and stated them with point and vivacity. But he also noticed, what in fact nobody of sense can overlook, the analogy between destructive Homeric and destructive Biblical criticism. The wilful and tasteless vagaries of pedantic ingenuity, the arbitrary, baseless, contradictory theories of the Homeric critics, are not
260 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
Lockhart was interested in Biblical criticism. He did not wish to burke it: he did wish that it should be studied; should, if possible, be answered, as the following letter shows. It is quoted here, as it illustrates his attitude to the important subject which he introduced into his discussion of Colonel Mure’s remarks in defence of the unity of Homer—
“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. |
BIBLICAL CRITICISM | 261 |
“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. |
262 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“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,
These and similar ideas as to Biblical criticism
1 From this letter I have omitted many passages which elucidate, in a curious and interesting way, the internal management of the Quarterly Review. For reasons elsewhere stated, these matters are beyond my province; but it was necessary to publish as much as concerns Lockhart’s position with regard to a subject of high importance. |
DOLL TEARSHEET | 263 |
“With the Germans, eccentricity has long been the standard substitute for genius. . . . The attacks” (on Homer and on the Bible) “were conducted upon the very same principles, and it would be curious enough to exhibit in detail the precise parallels between the methods of working out these principles, the results announced, the overawing effect produced for the moment, the subsequent reaction of a scepticism against the sceptics, and the ultimate success of awakened reflection, honest investigation, and candid judgment in disentangling the whole vast web of sophistry. . . .”
Taste, learning, humour, and sense concur in Lockhart’s article on Colonel Mure, an article more vivacious by far than we can expect from the grave quarterly serials of to-day. The Teutonic love of “anything odd and startling in the way of theory,” combined with the Teutonic total “want of taste,” is displayed as the inspiration of German efforts to lacerate the sacred body of Homer. Analogies are found in German dealings with our own literature. “We are proved to be wholly wrong about Doll Tearsheet, whose genuine affection for Sir John ought to cover a multitude of early indiscretions, and who was uttering the deepest emotions of a true heart when she declared that she would never dress herself handsome till her little tidy boar-pig
264 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Scott amused himself with an imitation of Crabbe: it is as clever as James Smith’s—but is that all? When Crabbe read it, the honest bard smiled and sighed. ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘this man has caught my trick; he can do all that I can do, but he can do something more.’” Is it very probable, Lockhart asks, that the presumed author of the nucleus of the “Iliad” would find plenty of poets, like those of Book ix. and Book xxiv., and of the “Odyssey,” who had “caught his trick, could do all that he could do, and something more”?
Lockhart then applies the pettifogging manner of the critics to Virgil and Milton, showing that they are as vulnerable as Homer. He next, more suo, makes long extracts from Colonel Mure: for
HELEN | 265 |
It may seem a pity that Lockhart did not try his method on the weaker points of Biblical criticism, which are full of entertaining opportunities. But orthodoxy is too apt to leave ridicule to its opponents, and to neglect the legitimate diversion of comparing the contradictory dogmas and mythological ingenuities of competing Biblical theorists.
Among Lockhart’s Quarterly articles, the most permanently valuable are his brief contributions to biography. Of these the essay on Theodore Hook (1843, No. 143) is the best known, having been published separately in Murray’s “Railway Reading,”
266 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
1 Theodore Hook. A Sketch. Fourth Edition. London, 1853. |
TEMPERANCE CORNER | 267 |
Lockhart traces the black threads of these errors running through the brilliant warp and woof of Hook’s social and literary success. He follows Hook’s regret and remorse, through his diaries, and in the veiled confessions of his novels. This jester had the gloomiest of faces behind his merry mask. He filled—strange as it seems now—Hook filled the Athenæum Club with revel and glee. His favourite corner in the dining-room was called Temperance Corner. “Many grave and dignified persons being frequent guests, it would hardly have been seemly to be calling for repeated supplies of a certain description; but the waiters well understood what the oracle of the corner meant by ‘Another
268 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
In Lockhart’s diaries I observed, before reading this remark, that he dined pretty often at the Athenæum, and I wondered why. Causa patet!
“It is said that at the Athenæum the number of dinners fell off by upwards of 300 per annum after Mr. Hook disappeared from his favourite corner, near the door of the coffee-room.”
As the little “Life of Hook” is not now very common on the railway bookstalls, I extract a story of Hook and Coleridge, already once referred to in this book. The “friend” who shared and describes the revel is, of course, Lockhart himself.
“The first time I ever witnessed Hook’s improvisations was at a gay young bachelor’s villa near Highgate,1 when the other lion was one of a very different breed, Mr. Coleridge. Much claret had been shed before the Ancient Mariner proclaimed that he could swallow no more of anything, unless it were punch. The materials were forthwith produced—the bowl was planted before the poet, and as he proceeded with the concoction, Hook, unbidden, took his place at the piano. He burst into a bacchanal of egregious luxury, every line of which had reference to the author of the ‘Lay Sermons’ and the ‘Aids to Reflection.’
1 The residence of the late Frederick Mansell Reynolds—then a gay character enough, though best known as author of the novel entitled “Miserrimus.” He was son to the popular dramatist. |
“WINDOW-SMASH” | 269 |
In Lockhart’s diaries he notes the death of Mr. Reynolds, and adds that at his table he saw Coleridge begin the breaking of the window panes. Lockhart’s recollections of Hook include examples of great and genuine kindness, as well as of frolic He had also met Hook at Hatfield House, where he composed “light and easy little melodramas” for the amusement of Lady Salisbury’s guests, dramas “staged” by “that grave Presbyterian, Sir David Wilkie.” The whole essay is full of pleasant anecdote, as well as of sympathy, clear observation, just appreciation, and incisive statement. Lockhart ends:
270 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
This remark does not apply to his essay on Sir David Wilkie, a criticism of Allan Cunningham’s biography of the painter. Poor Cunningham left the book unrevised, and Lockhart makes just allowances for its blemishes. He was much attached to Allan Cunningham: to him and to Hogg, as we saw, he had dedicated his “Life of Burns.”
“To-day died good Allan Cunningham,” he notes in his Diary, as, on another such sad occasion, he speaks of “good Mrs. Murray of Albemarle Street.” Cunningham was bred to the trade of a mason. He entered literature as Cromek’s assistant in collecting Galloway legends and ballads, many of which Allan is believed to have manufactured, in the spirit which made Surtees of Mainsforth palm off impostures on Scott. Lockhart is obliged to
WILKIE | 271 |
Lockhart, as we learn from the “Memoir of Mr. Murray,” was rather unwilling to write this essay. He had conceived that he could not please Mr. Murray by his work—an example of the presence of “the black dog.” Again, he did not care for the coldness and want of geniality which he found in Wilkie—characteristics constantly censured in himself. None the less, “a manse bairn” himself, he enters with zest into the history of the early days of this illustrious child of the manse. Wilkie, as a boy, caricatured the minister in the pulpit, with a bit of soft charcoal, on the bald pate of the venerable and slumbering miller of Pitlessie! The freak was a Scævolæ studiis haud alienunt. It is a temp-
272 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
The malignant Lockhart extracts in full the charming sketch of Hogg at Altrive, with his rural hospitality, and his noble compliment to Wilkie:—
“‘Laidlaw, this is no’ the great Mr. Wilkie?’
“‘It’s just the great Mr. Wilkie.’
“‘Mr. Wilkie—sir,’ exclaimed the Shepherd, seizing him by the hand, ‘I cannot tell you how proud I am to see you in my house, and how glad I am to see you so young a man.’
“When I told Scott of Hogg’s reception of Wilkie, ‘The fellow!’ said he; ‘it was the finest compliment ever paid to man.’”
In Wilkie’s painting of Scott with his Family, Lockhart did not find much merit, except in the portrait of Sir Adam Ferguson. We are glad to welcome his tribute to the Shepherd, as proving that Lockhart’s irritation caused by the unlucky “Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott” had passed away.
In commenting on Wilkie’s criticisms of the great Italian painters, Lockhart shows his usual keen but unobtrusive interest in and knowledge of their art. He had taste and skill enough and practice enough to know “how difficult it is,” but he never dealt in technical terminology and the special argot of the studio. The essay on Wilkie is a worthy pendant to that on Theodore Hook.
CAMPBELL | 273 |
The study of Crabbe’s Life (No. 100) is briefer, more of a reviewal, yet marked by sympathy and personal knowledge. If ever it is reprinted it should be accompanied by Lockhart’s criticism of Crabbe’s poetry. Another interesting, though rather painful, essay is devoted to Dr. Beattie’s “Life of Thomas Campbell.” The poet’s letters are not of much merit, and do not display, Lockhart says, “that ever-glowing necessity of the brain and blood to which we owe the correspondences of Cicero, Erasmus, Voltaire, Scott, Byron—of Goethe, whose signet bore a star with the words ohne hast, ohne rast; and, we may safely add by anticipation, the name of Southey” (1849). Had Lockhart’s correspondence with his friends been better preserved, his own name might well have been added to those of the great men of letters who shine in this field, with the names also of Cowper, Gray, Carlyle, Macaulay, and Thackeray. Campbell’s genius, however, he says, “seldom animates the page that was meant for a private eye.” “What he did with his eye set on immortality was first thrown out with vehement throes, half pain, half rapture, and then polished with anxious and timid toil; the happiest of the first suggestions not seldom suffering grievous mutilation, sometimes eclipse, in this cold process. Let us be thankful for what has escaped such risks. It is no wonder that an author so framed, and compelled to give a considerable space of every day to joyless, uncon-
274 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
Lockhart was probably disappointed to some degree in his anticipations of Southey’s published correspondence. His own essay on Southey’s “Life,” though interesting, is more or less narquois. “His style of writing to third parties about those with whom he was content to co-operate, so much to his own pecuniary benefit, for more than a quarter of a century, does not seem to us very becoming.”1 He and Southey never “took to” each other. Of all faults Lockhart most detested vanity, a failing which has its amiable side in the comfort yielded by “a canty conceit o’ oursel’.” For this the Scotchman prayed!
With more of canty conceit, Lockhart would have been a happier, a more successful, and a more popular man. Mr. Christie has remarked on his contempt and intolerance of vanity. Now, the vanity of Southey, though most innocent, was very great: we have given an example in his remarks on his own book, “The Doctor,” and Lockhart collected a spicilegium of instances in his review of Southey’s “Life.”
The following letters to Professor Wilson, on Wilson’s notes for use in the Quarterly Review, after Wordsworth’s death, set forth Lockhart’s estimate of Wordsworth and Southey as men. They
1 Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxviii. (1851), p. 233. |
WILSON AND WORDSWORTH | 275 |
In this letter Lockhart asks Wilson for reminiscences of Wordsworth:—
“My dear Wilson,—I was, I need not say, well pleased to hear of your restoration to health and all your usual duties, as soon as of your having been out of order. Pray assure me that all continues well with you.
“Quillinan called here yesterday, and told me he understood you had declined to review the ‘Memoirs of William Wordsworth,’ by his nephew, the canon of Westminster. I have this day got the book and read two or three chapters. I fear it is clumsily executed—but these opening chapters contain some very striking specimens of Wordsworth’s early letters, and I see, on glancing through the book, more correspondence than I had expected; so that there must be abundant interest of some kind in this book.
276 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“I have no notion what you think of the Prelude, but I confess it very much disappointed me. Coleridge, and you, and lesser men, had conspired to give me very lofty expectations. I found it, on the whole, heavy, and what there is of life in far greater proportion strong rhetorical declamation than poetry. But I am conscious that I may have outlived any degree of capacity for feeling poetry that I ever had—albeit not much—and would very gladly learn your impressions on now reading for yourself what you had in young days listened to ex ore magistri. Pray indulge me for once—and indeed if you have no view of criticising the ‘Memoirs,’ nor are in communication with any one who counts on your hints for an article thereon in Maga, anything that occurs to you on reading this book too would be very thankfully received by me. I wonder who writes the two articles in Ebony on the Life of Southey—if no secret, tell me. He has in various places contradicted what I had said in the Quarterly Review,1 but nowhere, I think, brought any argument to his side. He is, however, an able reviewer, and I should think has had suggestions from H. Taylor—though I can hardly doubt that Taylor will in the Edinburgh Review, or somewhere else, treat the ‘Life’ of his friend for himself. He wished to write on it in the Quarterly, but as he would insist that of all men Southey had the least vanity, I was reluctantly compelled to reject his always
1 No. clxvii. |
MANNING | 277 |
“Manning is, I fancy, on the whole, next if not equal to Newman for importance as a convert: his influence very great in society at large, as well as among the younger clergy. He is a very agreeable and polished gentleman—a fine ascetical coxcomb (and tuft-hunter)—the image of a Jesuit Cardinal of the sixteenth century, and I expect him to be followed by a long train of ladies, including probably the —— of ——, and Lady ——.1
“I am hopeful that Rutherford is really recovered, but even so think him wise in taking the Bench, especially under existing circumstances as to Whiggery.—Ever yours affectionately,
The next letter is in answer to one of Wilson’s, apparently no longer extant:—
“Dear Professor,—I am delighted with John Wilson’s letter about you and others—especially for its own excellence in all but the penmanship,
1 One lady followed, the other did not. |
278 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
1 Professor Wilson’s hand, in letters to Lockhart, is a difficult, untidy scrawl. 2 Lectures, by Dr. Moir (Delta), on the Literature of the Age. |
WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY | 279 |
“I yesterday read over calmly the Prelude, and am doubly in the dark as to its meaning—doubly dumfoundered by its heaviness and unharmony. The Canon’s book also I have re-read, and pronounce it raw and bald unbearably. There is nothing of his that helps you in the least to a conception of what the living man was. But it is not so with some of the letters by William Wordsworth, or with some of the reminiscences.
“William Wordsworth’s arrogant chillness as to all the contemporary bards comes out well—Southey not excepted—indeed with no exception but Coleridge. This we expected—but still there is a manliness about William Wordsworth that separates him vastly from Robert Southey. What else can it be? Or is it that the one was really a great poet—the other not—the one’s ‘conceit,’ in short, based on a really grand something, though not on any one grand work—the other’s erected on no similar foundation? I cannot answer. What I know is that I liked William Wordsworth and never liked Robert Southey, and this though they both equally and completely differed from all my critical notions as to almost all their contemporaries, and as to all the best of them. I think, too, that William Wordsworth was a better man than Robert Southey—far better—even in the qualities for which Robert Southey deserves most praise, with the one exception of
280 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“I have read fifty articles on Wordsworth’s philosophy. Hang me if I don’t suspect ’tis all an airy sham—beyond what lies on the very surface, that is to say, and might be expressed on this page in plain prose—as humble as any scrap of the Prelude is pompous. ‘Words, words.’
“It seems to be assumed that William Wordsworth made some wonderful discovery, which Homer, Dante, &c &c., lived and died without having had even a glimpse of. I beg to doubt. There is more exact observation of Nature implied in the epithets of the Second Iliad than declared in all William Wordsworth’s tomes, and bragged of by all his laudators, from Wilson down to Delta.
“I suspect there is more of artifice than of art in all that has been relied on for proof of this modern originality.
“Let me hear again either from John Wilson or the Professor. They are both far finer fellows than either William Wordsworth or Robert Southey, or even W. S. Landor.—Yours,
Wilson replied, and sent notes very hostile to Wordsworth. These, he said, must be published complete, or not at all. Lockhart answers:—
WILD WORDS | 281 |
“Dear Professor,—Yours of yesterday beats all cockfighting! But you have sickened me about William Wordsworth in toto. How or what can I now write on his Life—Prose or Prelude?
“You can’t have recollected the language of your former sheets, when you said in the penult that I must put in every word or none. Could one make the Quarterly Review talk of William Wordsworth as the fat ugly cur, for instance? It would cause old Gifford to snort in his grave. You were laughing! But in truth I am very unwell, and now despair of doing the job—at least now. Lord Lonsdale has surprised me by writing that on examination he finds the statement about his father’s payment in 1806 to be ‘near the mark’—that he believes the old peer had rebelled at the extravagance of his solicitor’s charges—but that he (Lord Lonsdale) would now like nothing to be said of the concern. Sir James, I fancy, was next door to mad. There is a picture of William Wordsworth in this Exhibition, by the younger Pickersgill, which would give you a good chuckle. The Stamp-master is at full length, reclining or leaning on a rock near a stream, and is smiling so sweetly. Evidently the foreground should have displayed the daffodils. ‘The Professor,’1 by Watson Gordon, was much noticed by the Queen, who, on hearing who it was, turned back again and
1 Wilson himself. |
282 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Lord Peter is here, guest of a rich City man, Peter Dixon, in this pack celebrated for his cookery. Peter R—— dined with me yesterday and seemed in high fig, though not at all riotous. It was the first time any one had dined with me for many months—for I am as much a recluse now as you can be.—Ever affectionately yours,
Wilson repeated that he was in earnest about his remarkable notes on Wordsworth. Lockhart answers:—
“My dear Professor,—Since you are really serious, I must return your sheets, and I do so now (though most sorrowfully), in case you should possibly think of making some use of them in Maga.
“I certainly could never venture to produce such an article in the Quarterly Review. Were there no other obstacle, my kindness from the present William Wordsworth (who has always been a favourite with me) must be an insuperable one.
“Your story about Quillinan reminds me of a similar manœuvre in reference to the Quarterly
WILSON AND LOCKHART | 283 |
“You see I send back everything. I have not mentioned, nor shall I mention, a word about your having communicated with me on the topic, to anybody. So all is and will be with yourself. Whatever report may reach me it must originate in No. 6 G. P.2—Ever affectionately yours,
These interesting letters, proving the continued kindness of the relations between Wilson and Lockhart, occurred in a mass of domestic correspondence with Mr. and Mrs. Hope Scott. They make us regret the loss of so many of Lockhart’s literary epistles. It is conceivable that Professor Wilson’s severe illness, alluded to in the first letter, may have affected his ideas about Wordsworth. As Lockhart returned all Wilson’s “sheets” of unfriendly Reminiscences, they are not, of course, to be found among the few letters of his at Abbotsford.
To return to Lockhart as a journalist: it may
1 This letter seems to be lost. 2 Gloucester Place, Edinburgh—Wilson’s house. |
284 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
The mention of Southey has led us aside from Lockhart’s Essay on Campbell. It contains his reflections on the failing and the vice which almost make up one popular impression of his own character—shyness and arrogance. “In these,” he says, “we see merely different shapes of the same too indulgent self-esteem, or, if the phrenologists please, different developments of the same love of
SHYNESS | 285 |
The mass of Lockhart’s Quarterly articles cannot possibly be criticised here in detail. Not many of the papers deserve our dislike; among these are the review of Moore’s “Sheridan,” which displeased Sir Walter, and the critique of Leigh Hunt’s unhappy “Lord Byron and his Contemporaries.” The book was une mauvaise action: perhaps it could not be passed over. But, despite Lockhart’s reputation for skill in satire, it must be said that, in satire (except in the “chaff” about Tennyson), he is always at his worst, and is always at his best when he is most sympathetic
Many fine and valuable extracts might be made from his critique of Croker’s “Boswell.” His essay on Coleridge’s “Table Talk” deals too much in extracts, too little in personal reminiscences. A just remark may be cited.
“The equanimity with which Mr. Coleridge looked back upon a life which any worldly person must have called eminently unfortunate will not surprise any one who had the honour and privilege
286 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
This summary does not pretend to exhaust the qualities of Lockhart as, in his own words, “a journalist.” His notes on travel, on contemporary fiction, on minor poetry (the age was unpoetical), and even his reviews of works of history, are passed over in silence. He could be vivacious, or sober: learned with gaiety, earnest and clear in discussion (witness his essay on Copyright); he was
1 Keats made exactly the same remark in a note on Shakespeare. |
TO A CONTRIBUTOR | 287 |
These comments on Lockhart as a Reviewer may conclude with a note of his to an unsuccessful and tedious contributor unknown1:—
“Sir,—I cannot admit literary labour to be placed,
1 For this letter I have to thank Mr. George Dunlop, of Kilmarnock, who bought the original from a dealer. |
288 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“I never ordered a review from you, to be accepted by me whatever its merits or demerits: I only, at your own request, sanctioned your trying to make an article suitable for the Quarterly on the subject of the Byzantines, which subject you told me you had curiously and elaborately studied. It was this previous study that I relied on in listening to your proposal; but I well knew the difference between sketching an outline and finishing an essay, and was not surprised, though sorry, when I found your performance a very poor affair.—Your obedient servant,
≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |