BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

John Gibson Lockhart was born in the manse of Cambusnethan, July 14, 1794. His father, the Rev. John Lockhart, was twice married, and of the children of his first wife only one, William, the laird of Milton-Lockhart, reached manhood. The second Mrs. Lockhart was Elizabeth, the daughter of the Rev. John Gibson, minister of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, and that clergyman's namesake was her eldest child. "Every Scottishman has his pedigree," says Scott in his fragment of Autobiography, and there is no lack of interest in the honorable one of his son-in-law, from the days of Simon Locard of the Lee, in the county of Lanark, who was knighted by Robert the Bruce, and after his king's death sailed with the good Lord James Douglas, who was bearing his master's heart to the Holy Land,—the heart which Locard rescued from the Moors, when Douglas fell fighting in Spain, and brought back to Scotland with Lord James's body. Then the Locards added to their armorial bearings a heart within a fetterlock, and took the name of Lockhart. From Sir Stephen Lockhart of Cleghorn, a man of note in the court of James III., was descended Robert Lockhart of Birkhill, who fought for the Covenant, and led the Lanarkshire Whigs at the battle of Bothwell Brig.

William Lockhart, the Covenanter's grandson, married Violet Inglis, the heiress of Corehouse. The Rev. John Lockhart was the younger of their two sons. From his father Lockhart seems to have inherited his scholarly tastes, while in person he appears to have resembled his mother; to both he was always the most affectionate and devoted of sons. His warmth of feeling, even in childhood, as well as his constitutional reserve, is shown by his intense suffering at the loss of a younger brother and sister, who died within a few days of each other. He did not weep like the rest of the children, or show other sign of emotion, but fell seriously ill, and was long in recovering from the shock. From the first he was a delicate child, and the removal of the family from country to town, when he was in his second year, probably did not tend to strengthen him. Dr. Lockhart became minister of the College Kirk in Glasgow, and his son in due time entered the High School there. In after-years his schoolmates remembered him as a very clever, but hardly a diligent boy. Though frequently absent from illness (one of these childish maladies caused the deafness in one ear from which he suffered), he always kept his place at the head of his class. "He never seemed to learn anything when the class was sitting down," wrote a fellow-pupil, "and on returning after one of his illnesses, he of course went to the bottom, but we had not been five minutes up when he began to take places, and he invariably succeeded, sometimes before the class was dismissed at noon, in getting to the top of it again."

In 1805, when he had but just entered his twelfth year, Lockhart matriculated at the University of Glasgow. More than fifty years later, two of his classmates wrote their recollections of the boy student,—recollections vivid enough to show how strong an impression he made on his companions. He still was somewhat delicate in health, and kept a high position in his studies more from ability than assiduity. A strong sense of the ludicrous, allied with a turn for satire, was already one of his marked traits. At the close of the session of 1805-6 a little incident shows the admiration felt for him by some of his companions. He had been disappointed in not obtaining a certain Latin prize, and several of his friends, sharing his feeling, determined to present to him a testimonial. He was very fond of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, then a new book, so the lads procured a splendidly bound copy, and, at their suggestion, the Professor, at the public distribution of prizes, gave the volume with warm commendations to Johannes Lockhart, as a prize the students had themselves provided. It was not till Lockhart joined the logic class (at the age of thirteen), that he suddenly outstripped all his companions, whom he later astonished by the amount of Greek which he professed at the Blackstone examination. It was thought a profession of reasonable amount "when a student intimated his willingness to translate and be examined critically on Anacreon, two or three of Lucian's dialogues, extracts from Epictetus, Bion, and Moschus, and perhaps a book or two of Homer." "But," declares one of his former fellow-students, "Lockhart professed the whole Iliad and Odyssey and I know not how much besides." His brilliant success on this occasion led to his being offered one of the Snell Exhibitions to Oxford,—an offer which was accepted after some hesitation on account of his youth. He was not yet fifteen, and still wore the round jacket of a schoolboy when he was entered at Balliol College.

In May, 1818, occurred the day, memorable to Lockhart, when he first met Scott, who later invited him to visit Abbotsford. The meeting and visit have been described by Lockhart, as he alone could do it; but he does not tell how speedily he won the regard and confidence of the elder writer, feelings that were constantly to grow warmer and stronger as the years went on. Scott heartily welcomed Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk the next year, those clever, vivid, and apparently harmless sketches of the Edinburgh of that day,—literary, artistic, legal, clerical,—which caused an outcry not now to be understood. In April, 1820, Lockhart and Sophia Scott were married,—a perfect marriage in its mutual love and trust. How willingly Sir Walter gave the daughter, so peculiarly dear to him, to the husband of her choice, his letters to his intimate correspondents show; and how fortunate the union was to be for him in its results, he seems almost to have divined. It gave him not only the most affectionate and devoted of sons,—such love was already his,—but also the most complete comprehension and sympathy in his home circle. And all the rare literary gifts which he so early discerned and so heartily admired in his young friend, informed by delicate insight, loving knowledge, and a keen intelligence, were to be employed to make him known to the world, so that the great author should be loved even above his works.

The early years of Lockhart's married life were so intimately connected with the life of Scott as to need no chronicle here. The young advocate, with many of the qualities essential to the making of a great lawyer, lacked one most needful to his branch of the profession, facility as a public speaker; his extreme shyness would account for this. As he said at the farewell dinner given to him by his friends in Edinburgh: "You know as well as I, that if I had ever been able to make a speech, there would have been no cause for our present meeting." So literature had become more and more his occupation,—it became entirely so when, in the autumn of 1826, he accepted the editorship of the Quarterly Review,—a very responsible and distinguished post for so young a man, when the position of the Review at that time, in politics, literature, and society, is considered. Such newspapers as were in a few years to become powerful in the world of cultivated (and respectable) readers were as yet, relatively speaking, in an undeveloped state. Editor of the Quarterly, he was to remain, till hopelessly impaired health brought an end to his labors, nearly twenty-eight years later. During these years he contributed more than a hundred articles to the Review, on the greatest possible variety of topics,—he could write on everything, from poetry to dry-rot, it was said. He was that rare thing in our race, a born critic; but he did not use the work criticised as a text for a discourse of his own; but of deliberate choice, it would seem, kept closely to his author. So, many of his papers are simply admirable reviews written for the day, not essays for future readers. But, as one turns the pages of the Quarterly, how alive some of the most transient of these articles seem, in comparison with the often excellent matter in which they are embedded! The clear, forcible style, the keen wit, the thorough workmanship, are never wanting. As would be expected, there is permanent interest in the biographical studies; of these, one of the most interesting and impressive was fortunately republished in another form.

As a biographer this variously accomplished man of letters was to show a gift that can almost be called unique. His Life of Burns, published in 1828, was written when the Scotland of the poet was still known to all his mature countrymen, though it was too early for the thoroughgoing scrutiny into every detail of his history practised by later writers; but, setting that consideration aside, the sympathy, intelligence, good taste, fairness, and above all, the sanity of the work, to say nothing of its admirable literary quality, have given it a position by itself, which it is not likely to lose. This memoir is not an over-large book, but the Life of Theodore Hook—a reprint of a Quarterly Review article written in 1843—is one of the smallest of volumes, yet it is written with so fine an art, the presentment of its subject, if rapidly sketched, is so vivid, that the reader feels no sense either of crowded incidents or large omissions; with this biographer the story is of perfect proportion, whether it fills seven volumes or one, or does not extend beyond the limits of a brochure. Nothing Lockhart did was ever in the smallest degree slovenly or careless, but his admirable workmanship is specially evident in the Life of Scott. The skill is masterly with which the immense mass of material has been handled, making letters, diaries, extracts, and narrative one harmonious whole, with never an occasional roughness to cause the ordinary reader fully to realize the smoothness of the road he is traversing. The absolute modesty and freedom from self-consciousness of the author—the editor, he calls himself—in telling a tale of which for a number of years he formed a part, is as striking as it is rare. He is one of the actors in a great drama; if it be necessary now and then that he should come to the front, he does it simply and naturally—that is all. Always and everywhere the hero is the central figure to whose full presentation all else is subsidiary. There is no need to speak of the faultlessness of the style, or of the deep but always manly feeling with which the more intimate details of the story are told; effusiveness or sentimentality was as alien to Lockhart as to Scott, and for these reasons no familiarity or change in literary fashions can make the matchless closing pages less moving; they are of the things that remain.

In January, 1837, Lockhart wrote a letter to William Laidlaw, of singular autobiographic interest. After thanking his friend for a letter and a present of ptarmigan, "both welcome as remembrances of Scotland and old days," he says:—

"The account you give of your situation at present is, considering how the world wags, not unsatisfactory. Would it were possible to find myself placed in something of a similar locality, and with the means of enjoying the country by day and my books at night, without the necessity of dividing most of my time between labors of the desk—mere drudge labors mostly—and the harassing turmoil of worldly society, for which I never had much, and nowadays have rarely indeed any relish! But my wife and children bind me to the bit, and I am well pleased with the fetters. Walter is now a tall and very handsome boy of nearly eleven years; Charlotte a very winsome gypsy of nine,—both intelligent in the extreme, and both, notwithstanding all possible spoiling, as simple, natural and unselfish as if they had been bred on a hillside and in a family of twelve. Sophia is your old friend,—fat, fair, and by and by to be forty, which I now am, and over, God bless the mark! but though I think I am wiser, at least more sober, neither richer nor more likely to be rich than I was in the days of Chiefswood and Kaeside,—after all, our best days, I still believe."

He goes on to say that he has quite forsworn politics, over which he and his correspondent used sometimes to dispute, and has satisfied himself "that the age of Toryism is by forever." He remains "a very tranquil and indifferent observer."

"Perhaps, however, much of this equanimity as to passing affairs has arisen from the call which has been made on me to live in the past, bestowing for so many months all the time I could command, and all the care I have really any heart in, upon the manuscript remains of our dear friend. I am glad that Cadell and the few others who have seen what I have done with these are pleased, but I assure you none of them can think more lightly of my own part in the matter than I do myself. My sole object is to do him justice, or rather to let him do himself justice, by so contriving it that he shall be as far as possible, from first to last, his own historiographer; and I have therefore willingly expended the time that would have sufficed for writing a dozen books on what will be no more than the compilation of one. A stern sense of duty—that kind of sense of it which is combined with the feeling of his actual presence in a serene state of elevation above all terrestrial and temporary views—will induce me to touch the few darker points in his life and character as freely as the others which were so predominant; and my chief anxiety on the appearance of the book will be, not to hear what is said by the world, but what is thought by you and the few others who can really compare the representation as a whole with the facts of the case. I shall, therefore, desire Cadell to send you the volumes as they are printed, though long before publication, in the confidence that they will be kept sacred, while unpublished, to yourself and your own household; and if you can give me encouragement on seeing the first and second, now I think nearly out of the printer's hands, it will be very serviceable to me in the completion of the others. I have waived all my own notions as to the manner of publication, and so forth, in deference to the bookseller, who is still so largely our creditor, and, I am grieved to add, will probably continue to be so for many years to come.

One of the friends of these years was Carlyle, who had first met Lockhart at a Fraser dinner in 1831, and "rather liked the man, and shall like to meet him again." Long afterward he was to write of him as one "whom in the distance I esteemed more than perhaps he ever knew. Seldom did I speak to him; but hardly ever without learning and gaining something." Though the two men did not meet often, Carlyle became warmly attached to Lockhart, and so much of their correspondence as has been preserved forms one of the most interesting chapters in Mr. Lang's biography. Some of the letters show Carlyle in his best mood, and are peculiarly affectionate in tone. On one occasion he writes to Lockhart, as though sure of his sympathy, in a time of sorrow, and the reply, which came quickly, contains a part of a poem which was written in one of Lockhart's diary books in June, 1841, and cannot be omitted from any sketch of his life:—

Lockhart's letters show how well pleased he was with his daughter's marriage, though it left him alone in his home. His diary says of 1847: "A year to me of very indifferent health and great anxieties. Charlotte's marriage the only good thing." The beginning of the year had been saddened by the death of his brother-in-law, Sir Walter Scott; and the extravagance and waywardness of his son, now the laird of Abbotsford, had already greatly distressed the father and were to inflict more torturing anxiety and keener suffering as time went on. Walter Lockhart, in his happy, healthy boyhood, did not show the intellectual precocity of his elder brother; but he was a handsome, intelligent, and winning lad, with no foreshadowing of the recklessness of his later years. Mr. Lang, who can speak from knowledge, says: "Could all be known and told, it is not too much to say that Lockhart's fortitude during these last years, so black with affliction, bodily and mental, was not less admirable than that of Sir Walter Scott himself. Thus, the trials from which we are tempted to avert our eyes, really brought out the noblest manly qualities of cheerful endurance, of gentle consideration for all, who, being sorry for his sorrow, must be prevented from knowing how deep and incurable were his wounds." And it should be said that in these years Lockhart had to suffer that sharpest of griefs which happily Sir Walter never knew.

Outwardly, Lockhart's life went on much as usual, save that constantly failing health made editorial labors more fatiguing, and social relaxations less and less frequent. But in his letters there is little change; nothing could overcome "a kind of intellectual high spirits when his pen was in his hand." His ill health is but slightly dwelt upon, and only to his daughter is the ever present anxiety revealed. At last came a ray of hope to the father's heart, a reconciliation, and then Walter's sudden death. Sorely tried as it had been, the father's love had never weakened; and after those inexpressibly sad days at Versailles, recorded with such self-restraint in his letters to his daughter, his health declined rapidly. On July 5, 1853, he notes that his doctors agree that he must not attempt the next Review, and a few days later, he writes, "I suppose my last number of the Quarterly Review." He had never ceased to be an occasional contributor to Blackwood; the pages in memory of its founder, which appeared in October, 1834, were from his pen, and in those days he still took pleasure in sometimes "making a Noctes." The annalist of the Blackwoods has given the last note to the publisher, written very near the end:—

"Dear B.,—If you think the enclosed worth a page, any time, they are at the service of Maga, from her very old servant, now released from all service, J. G. L."

That service had lasted for more than the length of a generation.

Lockhart spent the autumn and winter of 1853-54 in Rome, seeking too late for such amendment as rest and change might give. He was too ill to take much pleasure in his sojourn there, but his bodily feebleness did not dull his mental vigor, and it is characteristic that he at once began to read Dante with Dr. Lucentini. He knew the language well, but wished to master the difficulties of the great poet, and so turned to the most accomplished of helpers, who naturally found Lockhart a brilliant and acute pupil, the mention of whom ever after roused the teacher to enthusiasm. No one, he declared, had ever put him so on his mettle. The invalid wrote long letters, descriptive of his Roman life, to his daughter, which show that he exerted himself much beyond the little strength that remained to him, and in the spring he gladly turned his face homeward. His resignation of his editorship was now made absolute, and, with greatly diminished income (his expenses in consequence of his son's follies had been heavy), he prepared to leave the house which had been so long his, and seek some new abiding-place. But his release was at hand. In August, he went to Milton-Lockhart, to the kind care of his brother's household, always writing as cheerfully as might be of himself to his daughter. "The weather is delicious," he says in one of the last letters, "warm, very warm, but a gentle breeze keeping the leaves in motion all about, and the sun sheathed, as Wordsworth hath it, with a soft gray layer of cloud. I am glad to fancy you all enjoying yourselves (I include sweet M. M.) in this heavenly summer season. If people knew beforehand what it is to lose health, and all that can't survive health, they would in youth be what it is easy to preach; do you try? I fancy it costs none of you very much effort either to be good or happy." In October he went to Abbotsford, and it was at once seen that he was a dying man. He had gone one day in "most heavenly weather," from Milton-Lockhart to Douglas, where he had spent, in the old time, a memorable summer day with the stricken Scott, of which he has left us the record; and he now desired to be driven about to take leave of the places on Tweedside, which then had been a part of his life. His little granddaughter was very dear to him in these last days. It is still remembered, how, as he lay ill, he loved to hear her running about the house. "It is life to me," he said. He died November 25, 1854, and was buried, as he had desired, in Dryburgh Abbey, "at the feet of Sir Walter Scott."[Back to Contents]