s
considered. Such newspapers as were in a few years to become powerful
in the world of cultivated (and respectable) readers were as yet,
relatively speaking, in an undeveloped state. Editor of the Quarterly,
he was to remain, till hopelessly impaired health brought an end to
his labors, nearly twenty-eight years later. During these years he
contributed more than a hundred articles to the Review, on the
greatest possible variety of topics,--he could write on everything,
from poetry to dry-rot, it was said. He was that rare thing in our
race, a born critic; but he did not use the {p.xxiii} work
criticised as a text for a discourse of his own; but of deliberate
choice, it would seem, kept closely to his author. So, many of his
papers are simply admirable reviews written for the day, not essays
for future readers. But, as one turns the pages of the Quarterly, how
alive some of the most transient of these articles seem, in comparison
with the often excellent matter in which they are embedded! The clear,
forcible style, the keen wit, the thorough workmanship, are never
wanting. As would be expected, there is permanent interest in the
biographical studies; of these, one of the most interesting and
impressive was fortunately republished in another form.

As a biographer this variously accomplished man of letters was to show
a gift that can almost be called unique. His Life of Burns, published
in 1828, was written when the Scotland of the poet was still known to
all his mature countrymen, though it was too early for the
thoroughgoing scrutiny into every detail of his history practised by
later writers; but, setting that consideration aside, the sympathy,
intelligence, good taste, fairness, and above all, the sanity of the
work, to say nothing of its admirable literary quality, have given it
a position by itself, which it is not likely to lose. This memoir is
not an over-large book, but the Life of Theodore Hook--a reprint of a
Quarterly Review article written in 1843--is one of the smallest of
volumes, yet it is written with so fine an art, the presentment of its
subject, if rapidly sketched, is so vivid, that the reader feels no
sense either of crowded incidents or large omissions; with this
biographer the story is of perfect proportion, whether it fills seven
volumes or one, or does not extend beyond the limits of a _brochure_.
Nothing Lockhart did was ever in the smallest degree slovenly or
careless, but his admirable workm