t Dr Jenkins, the master of the college, was
led to predict that he would reflect honour on that institution, 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