JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART.

John Gibson Lockhart was born at Cambusnethan in 1793, was educated at Oxford, married Scott's daughter, was in 1826 appointed editor of the Quarterly Review, and died in 1854. Lockhart's Life of his father-in-law is one of the most perfect examples of good taste and good workmanship in biography, while all his abundant miscellaneous work is full of thought, judgment, scholarship, and style.

CHARACTER OF HOOK.

HIS defects are great; but Theodore Hook is, we appre

hend, the only male novelist of this time, except Mr. Dickens, who has drawn portraits of contemporary English society destined for permanent existence. A selection from his too numerous volumes will go down with Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. His best works are not to be compared with theirs, either for skilful compactness of fable or general elegance of finish. His pace was too fast for that. But he is never to be confounded for a moment either with their clumsier and weaker followers, or with the still more tedious imitators of their only modern superior. He understood London thoroughly, with all the tributary provinces within reach either of St. Peter's bell or St. Paul's. The man of that world was known to him intus et in cute, and its woman also, or at least not a few of the most interesting, amusing, and absurd varieties of its womankind. Strong, terrible, sinful, and fatal passions were not beyond his sphere-witness especially "Cousin William "; but his serious power is more usually revealed in brief pauses of commentary on the tragic results of trivial machinery. He is to the upper

and middle life of that region, what Dickens alone is to its low life-a true authentic expositor; but in manner he is entirely original, and can be likened to no one. In the exuberance of exulting glee with which he elaborates detached scenes of pretension, affectation, the monomanias of idiosyncrasy, he has had no parallel since Smollett and Foote; and he perhaps leaves even them behind him in the magical felicity of phrase with which he brings out the ludicrous picturesque. Like all other first-rate humourists, he betrays everywhere the substratum of solid sagacity; and like them all, except Swift, he is genial. He comprehends human nature, and no one makes better sport with it; but it is never doubtful that he loved his kind, and contemplated the follies of others with a consciousness of his own frailty. That with such an education, and such an external course of life, he should have left so little to be complained of in the morality of his fictitious narratives, seemed to us one of the least intelligible things in the history of literature, until these careless diaries-for we never saw any that could be less supposed to have been written with any view to inspection-withdrew in part the veil under which the natural shyness of genius and the jealousy of conscience had concealed very much of the man from many who thought they understood him.

We have already expressed our opinion, however, that Theodore Hook's ability in conversation was above what he ever exemplified in his writings. We have seen him in company with very many of the most eminent men of his time; and we never, until he was near his end, carried home with us the impression that he had been surpassed. He was as entirely, as any parent of bon-mots that we have known, above the suspicion of having premeditated his point; and he excelled in a greater variety of ways than any of them. No definition either of wit or humour could have been framed that must not have included him; and he often conveyed what was at once felt to be the truest wit in forms, as we believe, entirely new. He could run riot in conundrums-but what seemed at first mere jingle, was often perceived, a moment after, to contain some allusion or insinuation that elevated the vehicle. Memory and knack may suffice to furnish out an amusing narrator; but the teller of good stories

seldom amuses long if he cannot also say good things. Hook shone equally in both. In fact he could not tell any story without making it his own by the ever-varying, inexhaustible invention of the details and the aspects, and above all, by the tact that never failed to connect it with the persons, the incidents, the topics of the evening. Nothing was with him a patch-all was made to assert somehow its coherence with what had gone before, or was passing. His play of feature, the compass and music of his voice, his large and brilliant eye, capable of every expression from the gravest to the most grotesquely comical, the quiet aptness of every attitude and gesture, his power of mimicry, unrivalled but by Mathews-when to all this we add the constant effect of his innate, imperturbable good humour-the utter absence of spleen-and ever and anon some flash of strong sterling sense, bursting through such an atmosphere of fun and drollery-we still feel how inadequately we attempt to describe the indescribable. The charm was that it was all Nature, spontaneous as water from the rock. No wonder that he should have been courted as he was: but the most honourable part is, that he was far from assentation. There was sad weakness in allowing himself to be hunted out for the amusement of others, at such a heavy sacrifice of time and health and ultimate peace of mind: but once in society, of whatever class, he showed no shabby weakness of any sort. He had undoubtedly a degree of respect for mere rank and worldly splendour, which savoured of his humble origin and early associations; but his abstinence from all the arts of meanness was the more remarkable and creditable, for being shown in the midst of a superstition that otherwise brought much damage to him. Well says The Rambler" It is dangerous for mean minds to venture themselves within the sphere of greatness. Few can be assiduous without servility, and none can be servile without corruption." He was never servile. Those who did not know with what pertinacity he was sought, might speak of him as a tuft-hunter-but neither ignorance nor envy ever presumed to class him with toad-eaters.

We have not endeavoured to conceal or even palliate his errors. To do so, even in the slightest biographical sketch, seems to us most culpable. We believe we have by our-how

ever rapid-retrospect both afforded evidence of good feelings and good principles, preserved and cherished where they had been commonly supposed to be obliterated, and recalled many forgotten circumstances which must be considered as likely to operate powerfully and permanently on the development of any character, however originally amiable and upright. The example of such talents, exerted so much to the delight of others, so little to their possessor's profit-of a career so chequered by indiscretion and so darkly closed at a period so untimely―ought not, at all events, to be destitute of instructiveness. May it have its effect with those who knew Theodore Hook only afar off. We are not afraid that any of his real friends will suspect us of regarding his memory without tenderness, because we have discharged our duty by telling what we believed to be the truth. Life of Theodore Hook.

P. 350, 1. 2. Only male novelist. When this was written Thackeray was not known as a novelist, and in a note to a reprint of it Lockhart specially recorded the fact.

A A

THOMAS CARLYLE.

Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan in 1795, and died in London in 1881. His life, the prey of biographers and the stumbling-block of fools, had chiefly literary eventfulness; his work is copious, charac teristic, and masterful as that of few other English writers. Its peculiarities of style have been the subject of pedantic horror and of disgusting imitation, but the result of them is unique.

IN

OLD DRAGOON DROUET.

N this manner, however, has the Day bent downwards. Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field labour; the village artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village street for a sweet mouthful of air and human news. Still summer-eventide every where! The great Sun hangs flaming on the utmost Northwest; for it is his longest day this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will ere long be at their ruddiest, and blush Good-night. The thrush in green dells, on long shadowed leafy spray, pours gushing his glad serenade, to the babble of brooks grown audibler; silence is stealing over the Earth. Your dusty Mill of Valmy, as all other mills and drudgeries, may furl its canvass, and cease swashing and circling. The swenkt grinders in this treadmill of an Earth have ground out another Day; and lounge there, as we say, in village groups; moveable, or ranked on social stone seats; their children, mischievous imps, sporting about their feet. Unnotable hum of sweet human gossip rises from this Village of Sainte-Menehould, as from all other villages. Gossip mostly sweet, unnotable; for the very Dragoons are French and gallant: nor yet has the