fficult, if not dangerous. On
returning home he was called to the Scottish Bar, where it would seem
that he might have made some figure, but for his inability to speak in
public. _Blackwood_ gave him the very opening suited to his genius; and
for years he was one of its chief contributors, and perhaps the most
dangerous wielder of the pretty sharp weapons in which its staff
indulged. Shortly afterwards, in 1819, he published (perhaps with some
slight assistance from Wilson) his first original book (he had
translated Schlegel's _Lectures on History_ earlier), _Peter's Letters
to his Kinsfolk_. The title was a parody on Scott's account of his
continental journey after Waterloo, the substance an exceedingly
vivacious account of the things and men of Edinburgh at the time,
something after the fashion of _Humphrey_ _Clinker_. Next year, on 29th
April, Lockhart married Sophia, Scott's elder daughter; and the pair
lived for some years to come either in Edinburgh or at the cottage of
Chiefswood, near Abbotsford, Lockhart contributing freely to
_Blackwood_, and writing his four novels and his _Spanish Ballads_. At
the end of 1825 or the beginning of 1826, just at the time when his
father-in-law's financial troubles set in, he received the appointment
of editor of the _Quarterly Review_ in succession, though not in
immediate succession, to Gifford. He then removed to London, where he
continued to direct the _Review_, to contribute for a time to _Fraser_,
to be a very important figure in literary and political life, and after
Scott's death to write an admirable _Life_. Domestic troubles came
rather thickly on him after Scott's death, which indeed was preceded by
that of Lockhart's own eldest son, the "Hugh Littlejohn" of the _Tales
of a Grandfather_. Mrs. Lockhart herself died in 1837. In 1843 Lockhart
received the auditorship of the duchy of Lancaster, a post of some
value. Ten years later, in broken health, he resigned the editorship of
the _Quarterly_, and died towards the end of the year.

Lockhart's works, at present uncollected, and perhaps in no small
proportion irrecoverable, must have been of far greater bulk than those
of any one yet mentioned in this chapter except Wilson, and not
inconsiderably greater than his. They are also of a remarkable variety,
and of an extraordinary level of excellence in their different kinds.
Lockhart was not, like Wilson, an advocate or a practitioner of very
ornate or revolutionary prose. O