Person:John Lockhart (25)

John died 15nov1854 at Abbotsford, Roxburghshire. Dic Nat Biog.: Lockhart, John Gibson (1794-1854), writer and literary editor, was born on 12 June 1794 in the manse at Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the eldest of five children of Dr John Lockhart (1761-1842), minister of the parish church of Cambusnethan, and his second wife, Elizabeth (d. 1834), daughter of John Gibson, minister of St Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, and Margaret Mary Pringle. Lockhart had three brothers-Laurence, Richard Dickson, and Robert-and one sister, Violet; he also had a half-brother, William, by his father's first wife, Elizabeth Dinwiddie. Early years and education In 1796 Dr Lockhart became minister of the college kirk of Blackfriars in Glasgow, so John Lockhart's formative years were spent in an urban and university atmosphere. He attended the high school in Glasgow, and in 1805, at the age of eleven, entered the University of Glasgow, where he excelled as a classical scholar, winning a Blackstone prize in Greek. In 1809 he was awarded a Snell exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford, and in 1813 he gained a first-class degree in classics. He mastered Greek and Latin and also learned German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. He returned to Glasgow after taking his Oxford degree, and for two years he had no formal occupation but continued informally his voracious reading and his study of languages. During this period he wrote to his friend Jonathan Christie, several months before Scott's Waverley was published, that ‘the Scotch character has been neglected’ (Lang, 1.72) in fiction. Lockhart hoped to fill that void with his own Scottish novel. A year later he contacted the publisher Archibald Constable, in Edinburgh, to enquire about publishing his novel of Scottish manners, although his plans did not immediately come to fruition. In 1815 he went to Edinburgh University to read law, and in 1816 he became an advocate. In Edinburgh he connected with the tory literati, particularly Constable's rival publisher, William Blackwood, and Walter Scott.. On 29 April 1820 Lockhart married (Charlotte) Sophia (1799-1837), Scott's elder daughter. They had three children: John Hugh (1821-1831), Walter Scott (1826-1853), and Charlotte Harriet Jane (1828-1858). Literary career Lockhart, who was regarded by his contemporaries as a handsome man, had thick dark hair and was of slight build, with ‘Hidalgo airs’ (Lang, 1.16). In his youth he had periods of illness and suffered a hearing impairment, which undoubtedly exacerbated a reserved, even shy, personality. He was a tender, compassionate, loving person, who was quick to provide for his friends in need and suffered deeply in his family losses. Yet he was also fun-loving and witty, had a brilliant sense of humour, and enjoyed an opportunity for satire. In his memoir of Scott (1832) James Hogg called Lockhart a ‘mischievous Oxford puppy … drawing caricatures of every one who came in contact with him’ (Hogg, 75). His intellectual acumen and satirical bent were exercised freely in the early stages of his literary career in writing and editing for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.Lockhart began publishing in Blackwood's with the first issue, in 1817. He considerably increased the scope and venom of Hogg's satire of the Edinburgh publishing industry, the ‘Chaldee manuscript’ (October 1817), which earned him the epithet Scorpion and resulted in a lawsuit against Blackwood. His attacks on Keats and Endymion (August 1818) were so strong that he soon regretted them. He was involved with John Scott, editor of the London Magazine, in a dispute over his role in Blackwood's that led to Scott's death in a duel with Lockhart's friend Jonathan Christie. However, by far the majority of Lockhart's articles were incisive, pertinent examinations of a broad range of literary publications of the day, including Greek tragedy and poetry; the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Goethe, and Byron; the fiction of Godwin and Brockden Brown; and the art of the novel in general. He eventually set the standard in literary criticism for the period.Lockhart's first book was a translation from the German of Frederick Schlegel, Lectures on the History of Literature (2 vols., 1818); this was the result of a tour in Germany sponsored by Blackwood, where Lockhart met Goethe and other German writers. Both the tour and Schlegel's lectures had a significant influence on Lockhart's own writing, especially the literary criticism in Blackwood's and his second book-length publication, Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk (3 vols., 1819). In this work of epistolary fiction Dr Peter Morris, a Welshman, travels to Scotland and connects with the important personages of the age. Penetrating and lively character sketches are the highlights of his letters to friends and relatives in Wales. As one of the most important chronicles of early nineteenth-century life in Scotland Peter's Letters can be seen as the ‘biography of a culture’ (Hart, 46).Lockhart served for a short time in the yeomanry, and in 1820 was called to service to confront the radical uprisings in the west of Scotland. However, even his military service became an occasion for humorous, satirical poetry; written over a period of about four years, Songs for the Edinburgh Troop was published in collaboration with Patrick Fraser Tytler in 1825. In 1821 Lockhart toured the northern circuit as an advocate and, as his letters to Sophia attest, collected scenes and characters for his fiction. The five years from 1821 to 1825 were among the most productive of his career. He published four new novels and revised one for a second edition, experimenting with a variety of techniques and themes; he edited, with notes and a life of Cervantes, Motteux's translation of Don Quixote (5 vols., 1822); he published a collection of translations of Spanish poetry (Ancient Spanish Ballads, 1823); he began his biography of Robert Burns, although it was not published until 1828; and he wrote more than 100 articles, review essays, and original poems for Blackwood's.Lockhart's first novel, Valerius: a Roman Story (1821), draws heavily on his classical education. Critics such as Andrew Lang and F. R. Hart admired its vivid and realistic portrayal of ancient Rome, yet the work is much more than a successful historical novel. Set in the context of the persecution of Christians under the rule of Trajan, Valerius balances the good-humoured, sympathetic characters and images of classical Rome with scenes of inhumane and irrational treatment of good, well-meaning, but misunderstood Christians. The effect, though not recognized in Lockhart's time, was to offer a metaphor of reason and moderation to the early nineteenth-century covenanting debate instigated by Sir Walter Scott in Old Mortality and taken up by James Hogg, John Galt, and others. Lockhart's second novel, Some Passages in the Life of Mr Adam Blair (1822; 2nd edn, 1824), is generally regarded as his best. Based on a true story that Lockhart heard from his father, it is a bold portrayal of passion and adultery in the keeper of community virtue, the Presbyterian minister. It is also an unusual story of compassion, forgiveness, and restoration. Henry James, in Hawthorne, compared Adam Blair with The Scarlet Letter, noting the analogies between the two and proclaiming each the ‘masterpiece’ of the author (Lockhart's Life of Scott aside): ‘Each man wrote as his turn of mind impelled him, but each expressed something more than himself’. An ‘interesting and powerful little tale’, Adam Blair: borrows a charm from the fact that [Lockhart's] vigorous, but not strongly imaginative, mind was impregnated with the reality of his subject. He did not always succeed in rendering the reality … But the reader feels that his vision was clear, and his feeling about the matter very strong and rich. (James, 112) Reginald Dalton (1823) is Lockhart's Oxford novel; though not strictly autobiographical it draws heavily on his experiences as a student at Oxford, filtered through a decade of experience and remembering. The History of Matthew Wald (1824), Lockhart's most ambitious and stylistically satisfying novel, is the story of a character's psychological journey through fragments of eighteenth-century Scottish life. More than any of his works Matthew Wald probes the internal development of the human mind and soul as the protagonist interacts with and is influenced by the social circumstances in which he finds himself. Editorship of the Quarterly Review In December 1825 Lockhart moved to London to be editor of the Quarterly Review, a position that he held until a year before his death. The Quarterly had been established by John Murray in 1809 as a tory voice to counter the whig Edinburgh Review. Lockhart's Blackwood's experience had matured him as a critic and prepared him well for his editorial duties. He was a very active editor (sometimes to the displeasure of his authors) and shaped the Quarterly into one of the most important periodicals of the late nineteenth century. Thomas Carlyle, who never published in the Quarterly, expressed his high regard for Lockhart's judgement even after Chartism was rejected for publication in the review: I consider that your decision about that wild piece … was altogether what it should have been, what on the whole I expected it to be. Fraser is printing the thing now as a separate Pamphlet. Your negative was necessary to decide me as to that step … One has an equation with more than one unknown quantity in it; eliminate the Quarterly y, there remains x = printing as a pamphlet. (Collected Letters, 11.230) Lockhart was editor of the Quarterly during the critical periods of debate on such major political issues as the Catholic question, the Reform Bill of 1832, and corn law reform. Although many of the political articles were written by John Wilson Croker and Robert Southey, Lockhart successfully accomplished what he saw as his responsibility to keep it from falling into the hands of one tory faction or another. He enjoyed the politics of reviewing; he regularly attended parliament when it was in session and at one time even aspired to a seat in the House of Commons. In May 1830 he wrote to Scott for his advice: ‘One can hardly live so continually among those gamesters as I have been doing without wishing to take a hand sometimes’ (NL Scot., MS 3913, fols. 112-15). Lockhart noted that his income was £5000 per annum, which meant that he was capable of an independent voice. Although he never held public office, in 1843 he was made auditor of the duchy of Lancaster, a government patronage position that provided an annual income of £400.Lockhart also wrote for the Quarterly and published an article or more in most of the issues under his twenty-eight-year editorship. He reviewed fiction and poetry, as well as historical and general interest works. In 1841 he published an article on copyright that had a significant influence on the development of copyright laws. The majority of his reviews focused on biographies, including such diverse subjects as Byron, Edmund Kean, Hannah More, David Wilkie, and Astley Cooper. He was also editor for many works published by John Murray, including all but the scientific volumes of the Family Library, for which he wrote the first number for the series, a two-volume biography of Napoleon (1829), a digest, or ‘compendium’, of Scott's Life of Napoleon (1827). He was largely responsible for editing and writing notes for Murray's seventeen-volume edition of Byron's works (1833) and oversaw the publication of the series of historical and travel volumes published by Murray in the 1840s, the Colonial and Home Library. The esteem in which Lockhart was held for his contributions to the literary achievements of the house of Murray is best expressed by Whitwell Elwin, whom John Murray asked to succeed Lockhart as editor of the Quarterly and who was author of a collection entitled Lives of the Poets. Elwin wrote to Murray: ‘It might look like an attempt to bend the bow of Ulysses, or rather it would look like the assumption of being able to shoot with him’ (John Murray archives). Biography of Scott and last years Lockhart's best-known work, however, is his biography of Sir Walter Scott (7 vols., 1837-8; 2nd edn, rev., 10 vols., 1839; abridged and rev., 2 vols., 1848). From its publication it has been regarded, along with Boswell's Life of Johnson, as one of the most important works in the history of biography. In preparing the life of Scott, Lockhart collected personal anecdotes and letters from many of Scott's friends and acquaintances and added to them his own intimate knowledge of the man and his works to portray with the power of a successful novelist a character in vivid scenes of place and time. Though modern criticism has pointed out inaccuracies in Lockhart's details and considered his portrait of Scott idealized it is clear none the less that he attempted to present the near heroic regard in which Scott was held in his time. As Maria Edgeworth wrote to Lockhart in 1838: We thought it impossible any publication could raise Sir Walter Scott's talents or character in public opinion or in our private opinion more especially. And yet you certainly have done it without one word of puff or exaggeration or even full-faced eulogy. (NL Scot., MS 923, no. 57) With his health failing and his eyesight growing weaker, Lockhart resigned the editorship of the Quarterly Review in 1853. He travelled to Italy in October for the winter months to try to recover his health, but he experienced only a brief revival of his energies. He had what a doctor described as not a ‘distinct disease’ but a ‘general decadence of the vital powers’ (Lochhead, 298). He had known much loss over the previous two decades: the deaths of his wife, two of his children, his sister, his parents, all his wife's siblings, and his father-in-law. He spent the last weeks of his life at Abbotsford, Selkirkshire, Sir Walter Scott's estate on the River Tweed, in Scotland, with his daughter Charlotte Hope-Scott and her family. Charlotte was the only Lockhart child to marry or have children. In 1847 she had married James Robert Hope; they lived at Abbotsford, and after the death of Sir Walter Scott's son Walter they took the name Scott, as Charlotte was the last living lineal descendant of her grandfather. Lockhart died at Abbotsford on 25 November 1854; he was buried in Dryburgh Abbey, at the feet of Sir Walter Scott, as he had wished.Thomas C. Richardson

1.   Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, Scotland (Extracted records) (1)
   FHL Film 102891 +, 1741/1819.

   Extract: Vital Records Index - British Isles - Second Edition
   Christening event for: John Gibson LOCKHART
   Gender: Male
   Birth Date: 12 Jun 1794
   Birthplace: , Cambusnethan, Lanark, Scotland
   Recorded in: Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire, Scotland
   Father: John LOCKHART
   Mother: Elisabeth GIBSON
   Source: FHL Film 102891 + Dates: 1741 - 1819

   Principal in Christening Extract.