ioned in connection with his
history, yet who then and always was exceptionally dear to
him. The lines themselves were often on his lips to the end
of his own life, and will not be easily forgotten by any one
who reads them." Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_, vol. i. p. 249.]

Carlyle {p.xxix} earnestly urged that Lockhart's memoirs should be
written while his old friends were yet living. Had this been done, not
only would more of his letters have been preserved, to the gain of
readers, but some misapprehensions regarding him might not have
hardened into conventions.[10] When the Lockharts left Scotland, Sir
Walter wrote with much feeling to his good friend, Mrs. Hughes, soon
to become and to remain their good friend as well, regarding the
painfulness of the separation, adding: "I wish to bespeak your
affection for Lockhart. When you come to know him you will not want to
be solicited, for I know you will love and understand him, but he is
not easy to know or to be appreciated, as he so well deserves, at
first; he shrinks at a first touch, but take a good hard hammer (it
need not be a sledge one), break the shell, and the kernel will repay
you. Under a cold exterior, Lockhart conceals the warmest affections,
and where he once professes regard he never changes."[11] Long
afterwards, the son-in-law of Lockhart was to speak of the "depth
{p.xxx} and tenderness of feeling which he so often hid under an
almost fierce reserve." This reserve, largely the result of
constitutional shyness, was intensified by the sharp sorrows of his
later life. In truth, as Mr. Leslie Stephen has said: "Lockhart was
one of the men who are predestined to be generally misunderstood. He
was an intellectual aristocrat, fastidious and over-sensitive, with
very fine perceptions, but endowed with rather too hearty a scorn of
fools as well as of folly.... The shyness due to a sensitive nature,
was mistaken, as is so often the case, for supercilious pride, and the
unwillingness to wear his heart on his sleeve, for coldness and want
of sympathy. Such men have to be content with scanty appreciation from
the outside."[12] Fortunately, there were those, not a few, who did
not remain outside, and when any of these have written of their
friend, there is a singular agreement in their testimony. In every-day
matters, in the performance of his editorial or social duties, he was
unfailingly prompt, exact, and courteous. Never a rich man