frey, and
he was also free from the monitions of his predecessor. But in Croker he
had a first lieutenant who could not very well be checked, and who
(though he, too, has had rather hard measure) had no equal in the art of
making himself offensive. Besides, those were the days when the famous
"Scum condensed of Irish bog" lines appeared in a great daily newspaper
about O'Connell. Imagine the _Times_ addressing Mr. Parnell as "Scum
condensed of Irish bog," with the other amenities that follow, in this
year of grace!

But Lockhart had not only his authors, he had his contributors. "A'
contributors," says the before-quoted Shepherd, in a moment of such
preternatural wisdom that he must have been "fou," "are in a manner
fierce." They are--it is the nature and essence of the animal to be so.
The contributor who is not allowed to contribute is fierce, as a matter
of course; but not less fierce is the contributor who thinks himself too
much edited, and the contributor who imperatively insists that his
article on Chinese metaphysics shall go in at once, and the contributor
who, being an excellent hand at articles on the currency, wants to be
allowed to write on dancing; and, in short, as the Shepherd says, all
contributors. Now it does not appear (for, as I must repeat, I have no
kind of private information on the subject) that Lockhart was by any
means an easy-going editor, or one of that kind which allows a certain
number of privileged writers to send in what they like. We are told in
many places that he "greatly improved" his contributors' articles; and I
should say that if there is one thing which drives a contributor to the
verge of madness, it is to have his articles "greatly improved." A hint
in the _Noctes_ (and it may be observed that though the references to
Lockhart in the _Noctes_ are not very numerous, they are valuable, for
Wilson's friendship seems to have been mixed with a small grain of
jealousy which preserves them from being commonplace) suggests that his
friends did not consider him as by any means too ready to accept their
papers. All this, added to his early character of scoffer at Whig
dignities, and his position as leader _en titre_ of Tory journalism, was
quite sufficient to create a reputation partly exaggerated, partly quite
false, which has endured simply because no trouble has been taken to
sift and prove it.

The head and front of Lockhart's offending, in a purely literary view,
seems to be the f