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.

[Footnote 4: It has been said of _Valerius_, that it
"contains as much knowledge of its period, and that knowledge
as accurate, as would furnish out a long and elaborate German
treatise on a martyr and his time;" so that, whether the
report that reached its author, that the novel had been used
in Harvard College as a handbook, was correct or no, it would
scarcely have been a misuse of the book. It is certain that
it was speedily appropriated by an American publisher, and we
have a traditional knowledge of its having been much read and
admired in certain New England circles.]

Lockhart {p.xxi} edited a new edition of Don Quixote in 1822, and the
next year published his Ancient Spanish Ballads, most of which had
been previously printed in Blackwood's Magazine. This was the first of
his books to bear his name, which the volume, winning wide and
enduring success, made well known. Some competent critics have agreed
with Scott in regarding the translations as "much finer than the
originals," but, however this may be, there is no question whatever as
to the excellence of the ballads in their English form. They have
vigor and swiftness of movement, grace and picturesqueness, simplicity
and spontaneity. And there are exquisite lyrics amongst them, witness
The Wandering Knight's Song. Mr. Lang has made a few selections from
Lockhart's scattered verse in Blackwood as further illustrations of
his poetic gift,--a number of admirable stanzas (in