caturing the examining masters." On this occasion, it is interesting to record, the name which stood next to his own in the alphabetical arrangement of the first class, was also destined to become celebrated. This was that of Henry Hart Milman, later on Dean of St. Paul's, the well-known poet and dramatist, and his life-long friend.
When Lockhart quitted Oxford,—fellowships were not then, even in Balliol, open to competition,—he turned his attention to the study of Scottish law. But, having long been a proficient in the German language, he was extremely desirous, before taking up his necessary residence in Edinburgh, of visiting Germany, and making the personal acquaintance of Goethe, and others of that band of poets and scholars who, in a single generation, had raised their language from barbarism, and gained for the literature of their country the high rank which it holds among the nations of Europe. The means for accomplishing this object were afforded to the young aspirant by Blackwood. That sagacious publisher, to whom Lockhart's first literary essay—if I mistake not, an article on "Heraldry," in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia,—was not unknown, accepted without hesitation a proposal from him to translate into English, the Lectures of Frederick Schlegel on the Study of History, and generously handed to him the price of the copyright before a line was written. The visit to Germany then took place, and Lockhart saw and conversed with Goethe at Weimar.
In 1816, he was called to the Scottish bar,—or rather, became an advocate; but briefs were few and far between. Then came the establishment, in April, 1817, of Blackwood's Magazine; for which no one, with the exception, perhaps, of Professor Wilson, wrote more frequently, or on a greater variety of subjects. In 1818, he made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott; visited Abbotsford; and on April 29, 1820, married the great novelist's eldest daughter, Sophia, more Scotico, in the evening, and in the drawing-room at Abbotsford.
Besides his contributions to Blackwood, Lockhart at this period got through a large amount of literary work. Scott had declined the responsibility of furnishing the historical portion of the Edinburgh Annual Register; and his son-in-law accepted the engagement. Then came Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk (1819, 3 vols., 8vo), a satirical work, possibly suggested by the Scotch chapters in the Humphrey Clinker of Smollett, in which, after the fashion of the Citizen of the World of Goldsmith, the Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu, and the more recent Espriella's Letters of Southey, a foreigner is supposed to record the impressions made upon him by what he saw and heard during a brief sojourn in a land which was new to him. The supposed writer was one Dr. Morris, a Welsh physician; and some folks in these epistles of the imaginary traveller saw nothing but a cento of libels. Lockhart, himself, admits that "nobody but a very young and thoughtless person would have dreamed of putting forth such a book"; but Sir Walter judged more leniently of it, and spoke of the "Doctor's" character for "force of expression, both serious and comic, and acuteness of observation." and regretted that there was not such a book fifty, or even twenty-five years ago. As a record of characters and events the work is indeed highly valuable; and it is much to be wished that some septuagenarian contemporary yet surviving would furnish us with an explanation of the personal hints and allusions. Reading the "Letters" after an interval of sixty
