uces himself except when it is
necessary. Yet, on the other hand, when Scott himself makes
complimentary references to him (as when he speaks of his party "having
Lockhart to say clever things"), he neither omits the passage nor stoops
to the missish _minauderie_, too common in such cases, of translating
"spare my blushes" into some kind of annotation. Lockhart will not talk
about Lockhart; but if others, whom the public likes to hear, talk about
him, Lockhart does not put his fan before his face.

This admirable book, however, is both well enough known (if not so well
known as it deserves) and large enough to make it both unnecessary and
impossible to criticise it at length here. The third work noticed
above, the sketch of the life of Theodore Hook, though it has been
reprinted more than once, and is still, I believe, kept in print and on
sale, is probably less familiar to most readers. It is, however, almost
as striking an example, though of course an example in miniature only,
of Lockhart's aptitude for the great and difficult art of literary
biography as either of the two books just mentioned. Here the difficulty
was of a different kind. A great many people liked Theodore Hook, but it
was nearly impossible for any one to respect him; yet it was quite
impossible for Lockhart, a political sympathiser and a personal friend,
to treat him harshly in an obituary notice. There was no danger of his
setting down aught in malice; but there might be thought to be a
considerable danger of over-extenuation. The danger was the greater,
inasmuch as Lockhart himself had certainly not escaped, and had perhaps
to some extent deserved, one of Hook's reproaches. No man questioned his
integrity; he was not a reckless spendthrift; he was not given to
excesses in living, or to hanging about great houses; nor was he
careless of moral and social rules. But the scorpion which had delighted
to sting the faces of men might have had some awkwardness in dealing
with the editor of _John Bull_. The result, however, victoriously
surmounts all difficulties without evading one. Nothing that is the
truth about Hook is omitted, or even blinked; and from reading Lockhart
alone, any intelligent reader might know the worst that is to be said
about him. Neither are any of his faults, in the unfair sense,
extenuated. His malicious and vulgar practical jokes; his carelessness
at Mauritius; the worse than carelessness which allowed him to shirk,
when he had a