the _Quarterly_, was,
perhaps, his unlucky participation in the duel which proved fatal to
Scott, the editor of the _London_. It is impossible to imagine a more
deplorable muddle than this affair. Scott, after refusing the challenge
of Lockhart,[12] with whom he had, according to the customs of those
days, a sufficient ground of quarrel, accepted that of Christie,
Lockhart's second, with whom he had no quarrel at all. Moreover, when
his adversary had deliberately spared him in the first fire, he insisted
(it is said owing to the stupid conduct of his own second) on another,
and was mortally wounded. Hazlitt, who was more than indirectly
concerned in the affair, had a professed objection to duelling, which
would have been more creditable to him if he had not been avowedly of a
timid temper. But, most unfortunately, he was said, and believed, to
have spurred Scott on to the acceptance of the challenge, nor do his own
champions deny it. The scandal is long bygone, but is, unluckily, a fair
sample of the ugly stories which cluster round Hazlitt's name, and which
have hitherto prevented that justice being done to him which his
abilities deserve and demand.

This wretched affair occurred in February 1821, and, shortly afterwards,
the crowning complications of Hazlitt's own life, the business of the
_Liber Amoris_ and the divorce with his first wife, took place. The
first could only be properly described by an abundance of extracts, for
which there is here no room. Of the second, which, it must be
remembered, went on simultaneously with the first, it is sufficient to
say that the circumstances are nearly incredible. It was conducted under
the Scotch law with a blessed indifference to collusion: the direct
means taken to effect it were, if report may be trusted, scandalous; and
the parties met during the whole time, and placidly wrangled over money
matters, with a callousness which is ineffably disgusting. I have
hinted, in reference to Sarah Walker, that the tyranny of "Love
unconquered in battle" may be taken by a very charitable person to be a
sufficient excuse. In this other affair there is no such palliation;
unless the very charitable person should hold that a wife, who could so
forget her own dignity, justified any forgetfulness on the part of her
husband; and that a husband, who could haggle and chaffer about the
terms on which he should be disgracefully separated from his wife,
justified any forgetfulness of dignity on