arties.... I believe the only individuals
whom Blackwood ever really and essentially injured were myself and
Wilson."[3]

[Footnote 3: Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, vol. i. pp. 128-130.]

In May, 1818, occurred the day, memorable to Lockhart, when he first
met Scott, who later invited him to visit Abbotsford. The meeting and
visit have been described by Lockhart, as he alone could do it; but he
does not tell how speedily he won the regard and confidence of the
elder writer, feelings that were constantly to grow warmer and
stronger as the years went on. Scott heartily welcomed Peter's Letters
to his Kinsfolk the next year, those clever, vivid, and apparently
harmless sketches of the Edinburgh of that day,--literary, artistic,
legal, clerical,--which caused an outcry not now to be understood. In
April, 1820, Lockhart and Sophia Scott were married,--a perfect
marriage in its mutual love and trust. How willingly Sir Walter gave
the daughter, so peculiarly dear to him, to the husband of her choice,
his letters to his intimate correspondents show; and how fortunate the
union was to be for him in its results, he seems almost to have
divined. It gave him not only the most affectionate and devoted of
sons,--such love was already his,--but also the most complete
comprehension and sympathy in his home circle. And all the rare
literary gifts which he so early discerned and so heartily admired in
his young friend, informed by delicate insight, loving knowledge, and
a keen intelligence, were to be employed to make him known to the
world, so that the great author should be loved even above his works.

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 {p.xx} 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