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

In the next few years, spent at Edinburgh and at Chiefswood, years that Lockhart was to remember as the happiest of his life, he did much literary work, beside the occasional articles for Blackwood. Valerius was published in 1821,—the story of a visitor from Britain to Rome in the time of the persecution of the Christians under Trajan. It is admirably well written, and reads exactly like what it professes to be,—a translation from the Latin. "I am quite delighted with the reality of your Romans," wrote Scott to the author. But the very correctness of the studies makes them seem remote and cold to the ordinary reader.[4] A little later, appeared by far the best of Lockhart's novels, Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross Meikle. A story of the temptation and fall of a good man, which his father told one day after dinner, suggested this tale, which is written with force and feeling, a passion that is still glowing, and a pathos which can still move, while there are both strength and delicacy of touch in the character-drawing. Reginald Dalton was published in 1823, and was at the time a decided success; but these somewhat exaggerated sketches of Oxford life are now chiefly interesting for the glimpses of personal experience to be found in the early chapters. Matthew Wald followed in 1824, and was the last novel written by Lockhart. Scott characterized it succinctly as "full of power, but disagreeable, and ends vilely ill," a kind of tale which had not yet become popular. There is power in the description of an ever growing selfishness and unrestrained passion ending in madness; but the story is ill constructed, and, despite some vigorous and graphic passages, has not real vitality.