d, 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 {p.xv} 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 am