strong belief frequently lack, and, above all, the faculty of
writing like a gentleman without writing like a mere gentleman. No one
can charge Lockhart with dilettantism: no one certainly can charge him
with feebleness of intellect, or insufficient equipment of culture, or
lack of humour and wit.

His life was, except for the domestic misfortunes which marked its
close, by no means eventful; and the present writer, if he had access to
any special sources of information (which he has not), would abstain
very carefully from using them. John Gibson Lockhart was born at the
Manse of Cambusnethan on 14th July 1794, went to school early, was
matriculated at Glasgow at twelve years old, transferred himself by
means of a Snell exhibition to Balliol at fifteen, and took a first
class in 1813. They said he caricatured the examiners: this was,
perhaps, not the unparalleled audacity which admiring commentators have
described it as being. Very many very odd things have been done in the
Schools. But if there was nothing extraordinary in his Oxford life
except what was, even for those days, the early age at which he began
it, his next step was something out of the common; for he went to
Germany, was introduced to Goethe, and spent some time there. An odd
coincidence in the literary history of the nineteenth century is that
both Lockhart and Quinet practically began literature by translating a
German book, and that both had the remarkably good luck to find
publishers who paid them beforehand. There are few such publishers now.
Lockhart's book was Schlegel's _Lectures on History_, and his publisher
was Mr. Blackwood. Then he came back to Scotland and to Edinburgh, and
was called to the bar, and "swept the outer house with his gown," after
the fashion admirably described in _Peter's Letters_, and referred to by
Scott in not the least delightful though one of the most melancholy of
his works, the Introduction to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_.
Lockhart, one of whose distinguishing characteristics throughout life
was shyness and reserve, was no speaker. Indeed, as he happily enough
remarked in reply to the toast of his health at the farewell dinner
given to celebrate his removal to London, "I cannot speak; if I could, I
should not have left you." But if he could not speak he could write,
and the establishment of _Blackwood's Magazine_, after its first
abortive numbers, gave him scope. "The scorpion which delighteth to
sting the faces