Note Back to Main Text — BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

Dean Boyle, in his interesting notes on Lockhart in his later life, recalls his remark: "If I had to write my Life of Scott over again, now, I should say more about his religious opinions. Some people may think passages in his novels conventional and commonplace, but he hated cant, and every word he said came from his heart." Of Lockhart's own religious opinions, Mr. Gleig writes: "A clergyman, with whom he had lived in constant intimacy from his Oxford days [probably the writer himself], was in the frequent habit, between 1851 and 1853, of calling upon Lockhart in Sussex Place, and taking short walks with him, especially in the afternoons of Sunday. With whatever topic their colloquy might begin, it invariably fell off, so to speak, of its own accord, into discussions upon the character and teachings of the Saviour; upon the influence exercised by both over the opinions and habits of mankind; upon the light thrown by them on man's future state and present destiny; and the points both of similitude and its opposite between the philosophy of Greece in its best days and the religion of Christ. Lockhart was never so charming as in these discussions. It was evident that the subject filled his whole mind, for the views which he enunciated were large, and broad, and most reverential—free at once from the bigoted dogmatism which passes current in certain circles for religion ... and from the loose, unmeaning jargon which is too often accepted as rational Christianity."[15]