Born, at Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, 14 July 1794. At school in Glasgow. At Glasgow Univ., 1805–09. Matric. Balliol Coll., Oxford, as Exhibitioner, 16 Oct. 1809; B.C.L., 1817. Studied Law in Edinburgh, 1813–16; Advocate, 1816. Travelled in Germany, 1816–17; visited Goethe at Weimar. Contrib. to “Blackwood’s Mag.” from Oct. 1817. Friendship with Sir Walter Scott begun, May 1818. Married Sophia Scott, 29 April 1820. Lived at Chiefswood, near Abbotsford. Active literary life. Removed to London, 1825. Edited “Quarterly Review,” 1825–53. Called to Bar at Lincoln’s-Inn, 22 Nov. 1831. D.C.L., Oxford, 13 June 1834. Auditor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1843. Withdrew from society in later years. In Italy, winter 1853–54. Died, at Abbotsford, 25 Nov. 1854. Buried in Dryburgh Abbey. Works: “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk” (under pseud. “Peter Morris”), 1819; “Valerius” (anon.), 1821; “Some passages in the life of Mr. Adam Blair” (anon.), 1822; “Reginald Dalton” (anon.), 1823; “The History of Matthew Wald” (anon.), 1824; “Life of Robert Burns,” 1828; “History of Napoleon Buonaparte” (anon.), 1829; “History of the late War,” 1832; “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott” (7 vols.), 1836–38; “Songs of the Edinburgh Squadron” (anon.), 1839; “The Ballantyne Humbug Handled,” 1839; “Theodore Hook” (anon.), 1852. He edited: Motteux’s translation of “Don Quixote,” 1822; Sir W. Scott’s “Poetical Works” (under initials J. G. L.), 1833–34; Byron’s Works (with Sir W. Scott), 1835; and translated: “Ancient Spanish Ballads,” 1823. Life: “Life and Letters,” by A. Lang, 1897.
Personal
To Moore, Lockhart offers a strong and singular contrast. Tall, and slightly, but elegantly formed, his head possesses the noble contour, the precision and harmony of outline, which distinguish classic sculpture. It possesses, too, a striking effect of color, in a complexion pale yet pure, and hair as black as the raven’s wing. Though his countenance is youthful (he seems scarce more than thirty), yet I should designate reflection as the prominent, combined expression of that broad, white forehead; those arched and pencilled brows; those retired, yet full, dark eyes; the accurately chiselled nose; and compressed, though curved lips. His face is too thin, perhaps, for mere beauty; but this defect heightens its intellectual character.
When it is considered what literary celebrity Lockhart has gained so early in life, and how warm and disinterested a friend he has been to me, it argues but little for my sagacity that I scarcely recollect anything of our first encounters. He was a mischievous Oxford puppy, for whom I was terrified, dancing after the young ladies, and drawing caricatures of every one who came in contact with him. But then I found him constantly in company with all the better rank of people with whom I associated, and consequently it was impossible for me not to meet with him. I dreaded his eye terribly; and it was not without reason, for he was very fond of playing tricks on me, but always in such a way that it was impossible to lose temper with him. I never parted company with him that my judgment was not entirely jumbled with regard to characters, books and literary articles of every description. Even his household economy seemed clouded in mystery; and if I got any explanation, it was sure not to be the right thing.
A precise, brief, active person of considerable faculty, which, however, had shaped itself gigmanically only. Fond of quizzing, yet not very maliciously. Has a broad black brow, indicating force and penetration, but the lower half of face diminishing into the character at best of distinctness, almost of triviality. Rather liked the man, and shall like to meet him again.
Among some other places I went to afterwards was John Murray’s,—the publisher’s,—where I fell in with Lockhart, with whom I have exchanged cards this week, but whom I had not seen. He is the same man he always was and always will be, with the coldest and most disagreeable manners I have ever seen. I wanted to talk with him about Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella,” and by a sort of violence done to myself, as well as to him, I did so. He said he had seen it, but had heard no opinion about it. I gave one with little ceremony, which I dare say he thought was not worth a button; but I did it in a sort of tone of defiance, to which Lockhart’s manner irresistibly impelled me, and which I dare say was as judicious with him as any other tone, though I am sure it quite astonished Murray, who looked … as if he did not quite comprehend what I was saying.
Those who best know him have spoken cordially and gratefully of his kindly nature—among these were Hogg, Moore, Sterling, and Haydon. A certain hauteur of manner, which sometimes was even supercilious, has contributed to strengthen the opinion that he was cold, proud, and distant. But he has been afflicted with deafness for many years,—an ailment which naturally checks the geniality of one’s nature, by preventing familiar companionship.
Lockhart lived in an age of literary animosities. He played an active, a manly, and sometimes a mischievous part in the intellectual life of his day. He had a clear “complication-proof” head, a quick temper, a pitiless pen, and a dangerous sense of humor. He was loyal and loving to his friends, and not particularly forgiving to his foes. He failed to understand the valuable art of hedging, and prudence and amiability were by no means his characteristic virtues. When we add to these natural qualifications of making enemies, the ill-will aroused by the acrimonious warfare of political creeds, and the curious fact that personal abuse of the Whigs by the Tories has always been accounted a graver crime than personal abuse of the Tories by the Whigs, we comprehend why Lockhart has carried on his shoulders for half a century the weight of other people’s sins, just as Claverhouse bears the blame of all the brutality committed by the royalists in Scotland, and Sidney Smith is held responsible for every witticism uttered in his day.
He has been spoken of as cold, heartless, incapable of friendship. We have written in vain, and his own letters are vainly displayed, if it be not now recognised that the intensity of his affections rivalled, and partly caused, the intensity of his reserve. Garrulous lax affections and emotions are recognised and praised: ready tears, voluble sorrows, win sympathy,—and may have forsaken the heart they tenanted almost in the hour of their expression. Lockhart felt too strongly for words, and his griefs were “too great for tears,” as the Greek says. His silence was not so much the result of a stoical philosophy, as of that constitutional and ineradicable play of nature which, when he was a child, left his cheeks dry while others wept, and ended in a malady of voiceless grief. He was born to be so, and to be misconstrued…. Unfortunate in so much, Lockhart was most happy in a wife and daughter who inherited the sweetness of spirit of their father and their grandfather. To their influence, in part, we may trace the admirable qualities which, in his later years, contrasted with the acerbity of his early manhood. To adapt the noble phrase of the Greek historian, “Being a man, he bore manfully such things as mortals must endure.”
A man of many gifts and accomplishments, a good scholar, a keen satirist and critic, a powerful novelist, an excellent translator. He was accomplished with the pencil as well as with the pen, and some of his caricatures are at once irresistibly amusing and profoundly true. His “Scotch judge” and “Scotch minister” would make the reputation of a number of Punch. His biting wit won for him the sobriquet of “the Scorpion;” but notwithstanding his sting he won and retained through life many warm friends.
He was slim and straight and self-contained, a man of elegance and refinement—words dear to the time—in mind as in person, dark of hair and fine of feature, more like a Spaniard than a Saxon, a perfect contrast to the Berserker hero by his side. They were both of that class which we flatter ourselves in Scotland produces many of the finest flowers of humanity, the mingled product of the double nation—pure Scot by birth and early training, with the additional polish and breadth of the highest English education: Glasgow College, as it was then usual to call that abode of learning, with Oxford University to complete and elaborate the strain…. All energy and darting wit on one side, all kindness and tender domestic feeling on the other; fastidious, keen, refined, yet quite capable of picking up the coarsest missile, and flinging it with a sudden impulse hotter and swifter than anything the ruddy Berserker was capable of. Men like Wilson are to be found everywhere in Scotland, if seldom with his endowment of genius. Men like Lockhart are very rare anywhere.
Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk, 1819
What an acquisition it would have been to our general information to have had such a work written, I do not say fifty, but even five-and-twenty years ago! and how much of grave and gay might then have been preserved, as it were in amber, which have now mouldered away. When I think that, at an age not much younger than yours, I knew Black, Ferguson, Robertson, Erskine, Adam Smith, John Home, &c., and at least saw Burns, I can appreciate better than any one the value of a work which, like this, would have handed them down to posterity in their living colours.
A worthless book, will give you some idea of the state of literature in Edinburgh at this time: it was in great vogue three years ago, but is now dead as mutton.
[It] gives us the pictures, mental and bodily, of some of the leading men of Scotland, with great truth and effect. It is a singular hotch-potch, and full of wit and humour.
Nobody but a very young and a very thoughtless person could have dreamed of putting forth such a book…. Since I have alluded to “Peter’s Letters” at all, I may as well take the opportunity of adding that they were not wholly the work of one hand.
A prying criticism may discern a few of those contraband epithets and slipshod sentences, more excusable in young “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,” where, indeed, they were thickly sown, than in the production of a grave Aristarch of British criticism.
Valerius, 1821
It is an attempt, in short, which, though creditable to the spirit and talents of the author, we think he has done wisely in not seeking to repeat, and which, though it has not failed through any deficiency of his, has been prevented, we think, from succeeding by the very nature of the subject.
Though the skeleton was dug out of the grave, he has clothed it so dexterously with flesh and muscle, and breathed into it so strongly the breath of life, that it seems the work of nature.
Seems to me one of the most remarkable works of fiction ever composed.
The most successful attempt which has ever yet been made to engraft the interest of modern romance on ancient story: its extreme difficulty may be judged by the brilliant genius of Bulwer having alone rivaled him in the undertaking.
Immediately took its place among the secondary Scottish novels, as those were called which would have been first but for Scott’s series. That book was full of interest, and of promise of moral beauty which was not fulfilled.
A highly accomplished attempt to resuscitate domestic society under Trajan.
Adam Blair, 1822
It is a story of great power and interest, though neither very pleasing, nor very moral, nor very intelligible…. There is no great merit in the design of this story, and there are many things both absurd and revolting in its details; but there is no ordinary power in the execution; and there is a spirit and richness in the writing, of which no notion can be formed from our little abstract of its substance.
Amid scenes of dramatic talent and passages impressed with the finest sensibilities, there is evidence now and then of the distempered feeling of the German school.
His novel is not of the first rank (I should call it an excellent second-rate one), but it borrows a charm from the fact that his vigorous, but not strongly imaginative, mind was impregnated with the reality of his subject. He did not always succeed in rendering this reality; the expression is sometimes awkward and poor. But the reader feels that his vision was clear, and his feeling about the matter very strong and rich.
“Adam Blair” is almost a masterpiece in concentrated power and passion.
There are scenes in that unevenly written Lockhart story of “Adam Blair”—hardly known now—which for thrilling passion, blazing out of clear sufficiencies of occasion, would compare well with kindred scenes of Scott’s own, and which score deeper colorings of human woe and loves and remorse than belong to most modern stories; not lighted, indeed, with humor; not entertaining with anecdote; not embroidered with archæologic knowledge; not rattling with coruscating social fireworks, but subtle, psychologic, touching the very marrow of our common manhood with a pen both sharp and fine.
Ancient Spanish Ballads, 1828
All other translations fade away before them.
These Spanish ballads are known to our public, but generally with inconceivable advantage, by the very fine and animated translations of Mr. Lockhart.
Mr. Lockhart’s picturesque version of the Moorish ballads.
A work of genius beyond any of the sort known to me in any language…. The admirably spirited but very free translations by Mr. Lockhart.
Long esteemed for the spirit and elegance with which the poet has exhibited the peculiar beauties of this literature in our English dress.
These translations derive, as I have said, not a little of their excellence from Mr. Lockhart’s being himself a poet of fine genius—clear in his conceptions, and masculine in execution…. What was tame he inspired; what was lofty gained additional grandeur; and even the tender—as in the lay of “Count Alarços”—grew still more pathetic beneath his touch.
Mr. Lockhart’s spirited volume of Spanish ballads, to which the art of the modern translator has given the charm of the vigorous old poets.
Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1836–38
Fortunate as Sir Walter Scott was in his life, it is not the least of his good fortunes that he left the task of recording it to one so competent as Mr. Lockhart, who to a familiarity with the person and habits of his illustrious subject unites such entire sympathy with his pursuits, and such fine tact and discrimination in arranging the materials for publication.
Executed with so much skill, and in so admirable a manner, that, next to Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” it will probably always be considered as the most interesting work of biography in the English language.
The defect of Lockhart’s book is that he devotes too much space to a discussion of the connection between Scott and the Ballantynes. The tone and temper of this discussion are equally out of keeping with the biography and its author’s intention of exhibiting Scott in a favorable light. The executors of James Ballantyne replied, in a voluminous pamphlet, the object of which was to show that Ballantyne was more sinned against than sinning. Lockhart retorted, in a bitter publication called “The Ballantyne Humbug Handled.” It was contemptuous and personal. Then followed a rejoinder, going closely into detail, in which they showed how constantly Scott used to draw on Ballantyne for money, and how improvident he was. To this there was no reply, but the discussion, which was provoked by Lockhart’s aspersions, did not tend to exalt Scott in public estimation.
It seems as if, in that darkly-guessed-at Wisdom which governs our world, Lockhart had been born to love Scott, and, beyond even that regard which Scott’s works awaken in every gentle heart, to make him by all men yet more beloved. Lockhart has given to us a friend, the object of his own intense and undemonstrative devotion; and we, who find that even his death before our day cannot sever from our living affection the man whom, “not having seen, we love,” owe this great debt to Lockhart, and for very gratitude, must forgive all that in him which is less noble than himself—quia multum amavit.
As a man of letters, Lockhart is a fascinating, if not a prominent, figure in the history of the earlier half of our century; but to the majority he will never be more than the biographer of Scott.
It is by his “Life of Scott” that Lockhart will live in literature.
General
Has been universally accepted [“Life of Burns”] as a graceful treatment of the subject; kind, without being partial, towards Burns, and informed with a fine spirit of criticism. It adds, however, little to the details previously known, and certainly any effort made by the author to attain correctness in the statement and arrangement of facts, was far from what would appear to have been necessary in the case.
Its present accomplished editor [of the Quarterly Review] Lockhart, who at a short interval succeeded Gifford in its direction, brought to his arduous task qualities which eminently fitted him for its duties. He is not political in his disposition, at least so far as engaging in the great strife of public questions is concerned: he is one of the light, not the heavy armed, infantry, and prefers exchanging thrusts with a court rapier to wielding the massy club of Hercules. But in the lighter branches of literature he has deservedly attained the very highest eminence. As a novelist, a critic, and a biographer, he has taken a lasting place in English literature.
It was his own callousness which made the sensitiveness of others so highly amusing to him.
No student of biography can afford to overlook Lockhart. Apart from his skill in choosing significant circumstances, he is peculiarly distinguished by his faithful adherence to reality: his biographies are remarkably free from the distortions of romance and hero-worship. He objected on several grounds to the writing of the lives of persons recently deceased; but he held that if “contemporaneous biography,” as he called it, is to be permitted the biographers should be peculiarly careful not to make in favour of the hero suppressions that might do injustice to other persons concerned. It was probably in pursuance of this principle that he made revelations concerning Scott which extreme admirers of the poet would rather he had left unsaid. Lockhart’s is not a studied, finished style, but he had a great mastery of language, and is exceedingly fresh and varied in his diction. His characteristic qualities are keen incisive force, and sarcastic exuberant wit.
Only a word on his novels,—“Valerius, a Roman Story,” coldly and sternly classical as a romance of Apuleius or Barclay; “Adam Blair,” with its burning passion and guilt, which startled the kirk like a bombshell; “Reginald Dalton,” light, easy and superficial, in which the author sought to depict, with a difference,—as “Tom Brown” has done for us in later days,—undergraduate life at Oxford’s it was during the earlier period of his own academical career; and lastly, not the least remarkable, “Matthew Wald” forcibly portraying a character, which, though redeemed by some better impulses, gradually sinks downward, by reason of its innate selfishness, to degradation and madness. These storys are, one and all, powerfully written; they exhibit force of narrative, passages of surpassing beauty and pathos, and elegance of style; but they have failed to gain for their writer an exhalted or permanent place among the great masters of fiction.
The truth is, that Lockhart, in his own line, was as narrow as the Shepherd was in his.
He was very much more than a satirist and a snarler. From the first he seems to have had the command of a really excellent style—a style in which a few slight oversights may be noted here and there, but which in the main is one of the very best examples of a class too generally undervalued—the class showing the latest phase of the “classical” style of the eighteenth century, free from over-classicism, slightly suppled and modernised by foreign and vernacular influences, but as yet untouched by the tendencies to lawlessness, to extreme ornament, and to other excesses which were successively illustrated in Landor, in De Quincey, in Carlyle, and in Mr. Ruskin. And he put this style, in his avowed and substantive work, to most excellent use, assisting its operation by the display of good reading, of sound, if sometimes slightly grudging criticism, and above all of a manly and judicial sense with which few have shown themselves better provided.
Lockhart, though an acute critic, and a very clever translator, was a supreme worshipper of “conditions,” rather than of qualities.
He was not a swashbuckler like Wilson, making his sword whistle round his head, and cutting men down on every side. His satire was mischievous, virulent, not so much from hate as from nature. It was as if he had a physical necessity for discharging that point of venom, which he emitted suddenly without warning, without passion or excitement, proceeding on his way gaily with perfect unconcern when the dart was flung. It is impossible to imagine anything more unlike the roaring choruses of conviviality which were supposed to distinguish Ambrose’s than this reticent, sensitive, attractive, yet dangerous youth, by whose charm such a giant as Scott was immediately subjugated, and who slew his victims mostly by the midnight oil, not by any blaze of gaiety, or in the accumulative fervour of social sarcasm. From him came the most of those sharp things which the victims could not forget. Wilson hacked about him, distributing blows right and left, delivered sometimes for fun, though sometimes with the most extraordinary impulse of perversity, in the impetus of his career. Lockhart put in his sting in a moment, inveterate, instantaneous, with the effect of a barbed dart—yet almost, as it seemed, with the mere intention of giving point to his sentences, and no particular feeling at all.
