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on, and on the University of Glasgow. At his graduation, on the completion of his attendance at Baliol, he realised the expectations of his admiring preceptor; the youngest of all who graduated on the occasion, being in his eighteenth year, he was numbered in the _first class_,--an honour rarely attained by the most accomplished Oxonians. In the choice of a profession he evinced considerable hesitation; but was at length induced by a relative, a member of the legal faculty, to qualify himself for practice at the Scottish Bar. Besides affording a suitable scope for his talents and acquirements, it was deemed that the Parliament House of Edinburgh had certain hereditary claims on his services. Through his paternal grandmother, he was descended from Sir James Lockhart of Lee, Lord Justice-Clerk in the reign of Charles II., and father of the celebrated Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath, Lord President of the Court of Session; and of another judge, Sir John Lockhart, Lord Castlehill. Having completed a curriculum of classical and philosophical study at Oxford, and made a tour on the Continent, Lockhart proceeded to Edinburgh, to prosecute the study of Scottish law. In 1816 he passed advocate. Well-skilled in the details of legal knowledge, and in the preparation of written pleadings, he lacked a fluency of utterance, so entirely essential to success as a pleader at the Bar. He felt his deficiency, but did not strive to surmount it. Joining himself to a literary circle, of which John Wilson and the Ettrick Shepherd were the more conspicuous members, he resolved to follow the career of a man of letters. In 1817, he became one of the original contributors to _Blackwood's Magazine_; and by his learned and ingenious articles essentially promoted the early reputation of that subsequently popular periodical. In 1819 appeared his first separate publication, entitled, "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,"--a work of three octavo volumes, in which an imaginary Doctor Morris humorously and pungently delineates the manners and characteristics of the more distinguished literary Scotsmen of the period; and which, by exciting some angry criticism, attracted general attention to the real author.[42] In May of the previous year, at the residence in Edinburgh of Mr Home Drummond of Blair-Drummond, he was introduced to the personal acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott. Their acquaintance ripened into a speedy intimacy; and on the 29th April 1820, Lock
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