(1794-1854)
It is to be regretted that Lockhart, who is so honourably remembered by
his great _Life of Scott_, his "fine and animated translation" of
Spanish Ballads, and his neglected--but powerful--_Adam Blair_, should
be so intimately associated with the black record of the _Quarterly_. He
was also a contributor to _Blackwood_ from October, 1817, succeeding
Gifford in the editorial chair of Mr. Murray's Review in 1825 until
1853.
But Lockhart was "more than a satirist and a snarler." His polished
jibes were more mischievous than brutal. "This reticent, sensitive,
attractive, yet dangerous youth ... slew his victims mostly by the
midnight oil, not by any blaze of gaiety, or in the accumulative fervour
of social sarcasm. From him came most of those sharp things which the
victims could not forget.... Lockhart put in his sting in a moment,
inveterate, instantaneous, with the effect of a barbed dart, yet almost,
as it seemed, with the mere intention of giving point to his sentences,
and no particular feeling at all."
Carlyle describes him as "a precise, brief, active person of
considerable faculty, which however, had shaped itself _gigmanically_
only. Fond of quizzing, yet not _very_ maliciously. Has a broad, black
brow, indicating force and penetration, but the lower half of the face
diminishing into the character at best of distinctness, almost of
triviality."
* * * * *
There is certainly a good deal of perversity about the _abuse_ of
Vathek, so startlingly combined with almost immoderate eulogy: to which
the discriminating enthusiasm of his Coleridge affords a pleasing
contrast.
It should be noticed that Lockhart has also been credited with the
bitter critical part of the _Jane Eyre_ review, printed below--of which
any man ought to have been ashamed--as Miss Rigby (afterwards Lady
Eastlake) is believed to have written "the part about the governess." He
probably had a hand in the Blackwood series on "The Cockney School of
Poetry" (see below); and, in some ways, those reviews are more
characteristic.