LOCKHART, JOHN GIBSON (1794-1854), Scottish writer and editor, was born on July 14, in the manse of Cambusnethan in Lanarkshire. At 12 he moved from the Glas gow high school to the university, and at 14 entered Balliol col lege, Oxford. He read French, Italian, German and Spanish, was interested in classical and British antiquities, and became versed in heraldic and genealogical lore. In 1813 he took a first class in classics in the final schools. For two years after leaving Oxford he lived chiefly in Glasgow before settling to the study of Scottish law in Edinburgh, where he was called to the bar in 1816. A tour on the Continent in 1817, when he visited Goethe at Weimar, was made possible by Blackwood, who advanced money for a promised translation of Schlegel's Lectures on the History of Literature (1838). In 1817 the Scottish Tories founded Black wood's Magazine. After a somewhat hum-drum opening, Black wood suddenly electrified the Edinburgh world by an outburst of brilliant criticism. John Wilson (Christopher North) and Lockhart had joined its staff in 1817. Lockhart no doubt took his share in the caustic and aggressive articles which marked the early years of Blackwood; but he was not responsible for the viru lent articles on Coleridge and on "The Cockney School of Poetry," i.e., on Leigh Hunt, Keats and their friends. He has been per sistently accused of the later Blackwood article (Aug. 1818) on Keats, but he showed at any rate a real appreciation of Coleridge and Wordsworth. He contributed to Blackwood many spirited translations of Spanish ballads, which in 1823 were published separately. In 1818 he met Sir Walter Scott, and the acquaintance soon ripened into an intimacy which resulted in a marriage be tween Lockhart and Scott's eldest daughter Sophia, in April 182o. The Lockharts spent the winters in Edinburgh and the summers at a cottage at Chiefswood, near Abbotsford. In 182o John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, wrote a series of articles at tacking the conduct of Blackwood's Magazine, and making Lock hart chiefly responsible for its extravagances. A correspondence followed, in which a meeting between Lockhart and John Scott was proposed, with Jonathan Henry Christie and Horace Smith as seconds. After complicated negotiations, a duel was fought in 1821 between Christie and Scott, in which Scott was killed.
Between 1818 and 1825 Lockhart worked indefatigably. In 1819 Peter's Letters t,o his Kinsfolk appeared, and in 1822 he edited Peter Motteux's edition of Don Quixote, to which he prefixed a life of Cervantes. Four novels followed, the best of which is Adam Blair (1822). In 1825 Lockhart became editor of the Quarterly Review. He contributed largely himself. He showed the old railing spirit in an amusing but violent article in the Quarterly on Tennyson's Poems of 1833, in which he failed to discover the mark of genius. He continued to write for Black wood; he produced for Constable's Miscellany in 1828 what re mains the most charming of the biographies of Burns; also he superintended Murray's Family Library, the opening volume being his History of Napoleon (1829).
But his magnum opus was the Life of Sir Walter Scott (7 vols., 1837-38; 2nd ed., Io vols., 1839). Lockhart was taxed in some quarters with ungenerous exposure of his subject, but to most minds the impression conveyed by the biography was, and is, quite the opposite. Carlyle did justice to many of its excellencies in a criticism contributed to the London and Westminster Review (1837). Lockhart's account of the transactions between Scott and the Ballantynes and Constable caused great outcry; and in the discussion that followed he showed unfortunate bitterness by his pamphlet, "The Ballantyne Humbug handled." The Life of Scott has been called, after Boswell's Johnson, the most admirable biography in the English language. Lockhart resigned its proceeds for the benefit of Scott's creditors.
The close of Lockhart's life was saddened by family bereave ment, resulting in his own breakdown in health and spirits. His eldest boy (the suffering "Hugh Littlejohn" of Scott's Tales of a Grandfather) died in 1831; Scott himself in 1832; Mrs. Lockhart in 1837 ; and the surviving son, Walter Lockhart, in 1852. Resign ing the editorship of the Quarterly Review in 1853, he wintered in Rome, and being taken to Abbotsford by his daughter Char lotte (Mrs. James Robert Hope-Scott), he died there on Nov. 25, 1854. He was buried near Scott, in Dryburgh Abbey.
Lockhart's Life (2 vols., 1897) was written by Andrew Lang.
A. W. Pollard's edition of the Life of Scott (1900) is the best. •