A QUARTERLY REVIEWER

189

Playfair I have not seen and never heard of; but I did hear that the Professor, I suppose in some moment of irritation, declared aloud, in a public assembly, that the Quarterly Review was a most contemptible journal, and a disgrace to the literature of the age. Now, if such be the fact, and the young men you speak of who are friendly to the Quarterly should have heard it, Professor Playfair cannot refuse them the fair play (vile pun) of retaliation. But I know nothing of the matter in dispute one way or other, nor do I believe it interests us of the South in the slightest degree. For my own part, I am candid enough to confess that, in spite of the talent put forth in the Edinburgh Review, and the trash which the learned Professor finds in the Quarterly, I am stupid enough to derive more amusement from the latter than the former, and this does not arise, I can assure you, from the slightest prejudice for or against either.

"Very faithfully yours."

This letter, from a future victim of Blackwood's, refers to the publication of the challenges not accepted by the author of "Hypocrisy Unveiled."

“RAITH, 25th October 1818.

"MY DEAR SIR,— . . . I am glad to see from the Scotsman to-day, that those assassins of Blackwood's have been made to feel some of the pangs which

they have been attempting to inflict on others. This will probably put an end to their plots.— Sincerely yours,

"JOHN LESLIE."

Professor Leslie was soon to learn that his hope was unfulfilled. Mr. Macvey Napier's interest in these feuds probably led to the belief that he was the author of "Hypocrisy Unveiled."

CHAPTER VII

EDINBURGH, 1818-1820

Lockhart meets Scott.-"The Shirra."-Invitation to Abbotsford.— Lord Melville.-Scott discourages the iniquities of Blackwood's. -His chuckle.-The attack on Keats.-Mr. Colvin's theory.— Bailey's story.-The story criticised.-Common friends of Keats and Lockhart.-Christie on Keats.-Kindly remark of Lockhart on Keats.-Lockhart and the scrape of a friend.-Action of Lockhart. His relations with his father.-Letter to Christie.His view of Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt.-Quarrel with Hamilton.

I HAVE just mentioned Lockhart's letter to Scott about Wilson's agitation under the lash of "Hypocrisy Unveiled." It is necessary to retrace a step, and, reverting to Lockhart's private history, to mention the origin of his relations with Scott. This is the more needful, as Scott has been causelessly implicated in a new sin of Blackwood, the attack on Keats (August 1818). But it were impertinent, and is superfluous, to re-tell here the story of that first interview with Scott, which Lockhart has so admirably narrated. ("Life of Scott," vol. v., chapter xli.) Lockhart had doubtless often seen Sir Walter in public, in the Law Courts, in bookseller's shops, even in large gatherings. He first met Scott in private society, apparently

in June 1818, at a dinner given by Mr. Home Drummond of Blair Drummond. Sir Walter greeted him with his usual cordiality, and, after dinner, while expressing a wish to "have a talk with Goethe about trees," invited Lockhart to visit him at Abbotsford. Lockhart had remarked that, in Weimar, when he was there, Goethe was only known as the Herr Geheimer-Rath von Goethe, not at all as der grosse Dichter. Scott, too, warned Lockhart that, in his own country, he must be asked for as "The Shirra."

A few days later, Scott, through Ballantyne, offered to hand over to Lockhart his own task of compiling the historical part of the Edinburgh Annual Register. From a letter to Christie we learn that "the job," as Hazlitt would have called it, was worth £500 a year. Sir Walter was eager enough to play the historian during Napoleon's wars; he did not love celebrare domestica facta. The elder writer, it is plain, had "taken to" the young one, who, in turn, as Scott avers, "loved him like a son." They often met, over business, or at Scott's table, during the summer; they often examined together the legendary houses and heraldic blazons of the Old Town; and Lockhart's pen, in the chapter cited, draws the happiest picture of Sir Walter's domestic life, in Edinburgh, and at Abbotsford. Thither, in the following note—the first of the Shirra's to his young friend-Lockhart was invited.