most tender friends could wish." "Lose no time. in coming up hither," he writes to Christie, ill in Bristol, "where you may at least have the comfort of affectionate friends. Your arrival would be to me a most precious relief, for I am left totally alone," the death of his mother having caused Williams to go home. "This sort of misfortune makes most of our grievances appear trifles. I am sure to go home after such an event would be enough to unman any of us." He again entreats Christie to come up "I really consider it altogether impossible to read much, without a suitable seasoning of talk, and talk is scarce. I look for Hamilton to be Would that we might all here in a week or two. spend a little time, after the furnace is past, in our old habits, lounging, bathing, port, tea, and then the long, long nights, and every kind of jaw, palaver, criticising, laughing, and so forth. My dearest Christie, do come up, if it is but a month or less, till you must come here to be examined, and do let us have the pleasure of your company for that little space before it." He writes of having received a visit from Signor Belzoni, whom he did not find amusing. This, of course, was years before Belzoni's famous discoveries in Egypt. He chronicles the vanity of "Cadwallader" (Williams), and his tales of ladies who fell in love with him "long before I thought of it." Hamilton, he says, has just read through all the "Scholia" on Homer, and is perusing ancient books on magic. These are an empty study, but Sir William, in later life, declared that in mesmerism "there is a reality which deserves far more investigation than it has hitherto received at the hands of men of science," and he quotes "Die Seherin von Prevorst," as "a very curious book," which it undeniably is. "He seriously considers it as worth his while," says Lockhart, "to pore over Wierus and Bodinus, and all the believers in witchcraft from St. Augustine downwards." A fellow student in re magica may agree with Lockhart, who seems to have had no sympathy for pursuits which attracted Hamilton as they attracted Scott. One Balliol letter describes a coolness with a friend, followed by too great heat. "He getting fiery insulted me most grossly. I was so fortunate as to keep my temper all the time, and he called on me next morning after breakfast, and made every apology. .. I confess I thought myself ill-treated -but it shall not be my fault." In fact, this college friendship was only ended by Lockhart's death. My reading has been such as gains no credit here, for modern literature is here, as you well know, a dead letter." He wishes he could get congenial work, and fears "his good father" thinks him extravagant. He wishes to support himself, while reading for the English bar. Williams has passed a triumphant examination, as Lockhart himself did in 1813. He caricatured the examiners in the schools, but this was not "unparalleled audacity," as Mr. Gleig supposed. The Master and his tutor were full of congratulations, but there was no chance of a Fellowship. Indeed Lockhart is said by legend to have inscribed, beneath a notice of a Balliol Fellowship Examination— NO SCOTCH NEED APPLY! He had, by the end of his nineteenth year, in which he got his first class, read widely in the Classics. His habit of writing "lady's Greek without the accents" would now be reckoned unscholarly; and, though a rapid and elegant writer of Latin, he never was a classical scholar in the strict Oxford, still less in the Cambridge sense. But he had learned to know the Greek mind, the Greek thought; he had been in Armida's bowers, and had laid, at least, the foundation of his Spanish and German lore. Already, it seems, literature was being contemplated by him, not as the task of a life, but as a pleasant gagne-pain till he had qualified himself for the bar. He had shown sense and discretion in his Oxford life-industry, and the power of making and retaining friends. His letters as yet do no justice to his humour, nor have they the vivacity which we might expect. A good deal of young man's banter has been omitted, as in no way characteristic of his style and fancy. Hardly one allusion to politics occurs in the fragments of his correspondence while at Oxford; nothing at all points to any party leanings. His real interests LEAVING OXFORD 59 Like Clough's were friendships and literature. hero, he "Went in his youth and the sunshine rejoicing, to "The first step on arriving at Godstowe," says Mr. Connell (a friend of Lockhart's, later a professor at St. Andrews), "was always to see the eels taken alive out of the boxes with holes in which they were kept in the river. After that, till all was ready, we usually had a match at leaping and vaulting over gates." Both Lockhart and Hamilton were great swimmers at Parson's Pleasure, on the Cherwell. The happy years before the entry on real life were few in Lockhart's case, but happy they were and well employed. He had won knowledge and won friends. About them, in his surviving letters from Oxford, there is no satire. They compare ill, perhaps, in his affection, with Christie. Christie and he were David and Jonathan, Amis and Amiles. There is a little good-natured banter of the personal vanity of one youth, and more quantity than quality of intellect is ascribed to him. But there is no display of the fangs of the Scorpion. CHAPTER III GLASGOW, 1813-1815 Early disadvantages of Lockhart.-His loneliness.-Reflections.Letters to Mr. Christie.-The Theatre in London. -Miss Duncan.-The Schools.-Anecdotes of Scotch clergymen.-The stool of repentance. Dulness of Glasgow. — Admiration of Wordsworth and Byron.-Mr. Christie's projected novel.— Lockhart's novel.-Scotch manners.-Mediæval studies.-Double authorship of "Waverley."-"Wattie a fecund fellow."-Lockhart's own novel postponed.—" Lockhart will blaze!"-His neglect of his own poetical powers. Sordid ignorance of Glasgow.— Hamilton and the Humanity Chair in Glasgow.-Lockhart's novel."The Odontist." Solitude. Glasgow society. — A commercial ball.-Count Pulltuski.-" Gaggery."-Dinner with a dentist.-Caricature of Pulltuski.-Tour after trout.--Scheme of an "Oxford Olio."-A pun.-Anecdotes of the clergy.—A Holy Fair.-Lockhart goes to Edinburgh to study law. To have gained the highest University honours at the age of nineteen, when most undergraduates are only entering college, may seem a fortunate beginning of life. But whether it was fortunate in Lockhart's case is a different question. Long afterwards, in a letter to his son Walter, on the choice. of a profession, Lockhart regrets that he entered life so young, that his resources were so scanty, and that he had in his family, and among his friends, no qualified adviser. The task of such a counsellor |