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380 tion of their excellence. After a short interval, Lockhart came forth in a new character, by his translations from the "Spanish Ballads;" and such was the classical taste, melody of versification, and rich command of language which these translations evinced, that the regret was general that he had not been more exclusively a poet, instead of a student and author in miscellaneous literature. His next productions were in the department of biography, in which he gave an earnest of his fitness to be the literary executor and historian of his illustrious father-in-law these were the "Life of Robert Burns," which appeared in "Constable's Miscellany," and the "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte," which was published in "Murray's Family Library."

The varied attainments of Mr. Lockhart, and the distinction he had won in so many different departments of authorship, obtained for him, at the close of 1825, a situation of no ordinary responsibility. This was the editorship of the "Quarterly Review," the great champion of Toryism, when the political principles of Toryism were no longer in the ascendant, and which was now reduced to a hard battle, as much for life itself as for victory and conquest. It was no ordinary merit that could have won such a ticklish elevation at the age of thirty-two. Lockhart gladly accepted the perilous honour, linked, however, as it was with the alternatives of fame and emolument ; and for twenty-eight years he discharged its duties through the good and evil report with which they were accompanied. In his case, as might be expected, the latter prevailed, and the angry complaints of scarified authors were loudly swelled by the outcries of a political party now grown into full strength and activity. With the justice or the unreasonableness of these complaints we have nothing to do; but it speaks highly for the able management of Lockhart, that in spite of such opposition, the "Review" continued to maintain the high literary and intellectual character of its earlier years. His own contributions to the "Quarterly" will, we trust, be yet collected into a separate work, as has been the case with the journalism of Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Macaulay; and that they will be found fully worthy of such a distinguished brotherhood. During the latter years of his life, his health was greatly impaired; but for this, his intellectual exertions, as well as family calamities and bereavements, will sufficiently account. In the summer of 1853, he resigned his editorship of the "Quarterly Review," and spent the following winter in Italy; but the maladies under which he laboured, although assuaged for a time, came back with double violence after his return home, and he died at Abbotsford, now the seat of his son-in-law, on the 25th of November, 1854.

Although not directly enumerated in the list of his authorship, the ablest, the widest known, and probably the most enduring of all Lockhart's productions, will here naturally occur to the mind of the reader. Who, indeed, throughout the whole range of educated society, has failed to peruse his "Life of Seott," or will forget the impressions it produced? But even here, too, the angry objections with which "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk" was encountered, were revived with tenfold bitterness, and the charges of violated confidence, unnecessary exposure, or vainglorious adulation, were raised according to the mood of each dissatisfied complainer. But could a more perfect and complete picture of the whole mind of Sir Walter Scott, in all its greatness and defects, have been better or even otherwise produced? Posterity, that will recognize no such defects in this great master-piece of biography, will wonder at the ingratitude of their predecessors, whom it so enlightened, and who yet,