It is strange that no one seems to think it at all necessary to say a single word about another new school of poetry which has of late sprung up among us. This school has not, I believe, as yet received any name; but if I may be permitted to have the honour of christening it, it may henceforth be referred to by the designation of The Cockney School.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October 1817, p. 38.
It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr. John, back to "plasters, pills, and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, August 1818, p. 524.
It is an old belief That on some solemn shore Beyond the sphere of grief Dear friends shall meet once more.
Letter to Thomas Carlyle, April 1, 1842; cited from Andrew LangThe Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897) vol. 2, p. 235.
Barring drink and the girls, I ne'er heard of a sin – Many worse, better few, than bright, broken Maginn.
"Here, early to bed, lies kind William Maginn" (1842), line 19; cited from R. Shelton Mackenzie (ed.) The Fraserian Papers of the Late William Maginn (New York: Redfield, 1857) p. cviii.
Here lies the peerless paper lord, Lord Peter, Who broke the laws of God and man, and metre.
Epitaph on Patrick ("Peter"), Lord Robertson (1845); cited from Mary Gordon "Christopher North": A Memoir of John Wilson (New York: W. J. Widdleton, 1863) p. 286.
Lockhart's Life of Walter Scott may be said to be the most admirable biography in the English language, after Boswell's Samuel Johnson.
Joseph CollinsThe Doctor Looks at Biography (New York: George H. Doran, 1925) p. 25.
We thought it impossible any publication could raise Sir Walter Scott's talents or character in public opinion or in our private opinion more especially. And yet you certainly have raised high as ever biographer raised his hero — And you have done it without one word of puff or exaggeration or even full-faced eulogy. Sir Walter Scott himself would say — “Well done — my good son.”
Maria Edgeworth to John Gibson Lockhart (14 January 1838), quoted in Francis R. Hart, Lockhart as Romantic Biographer (1971), p. 166
A singular relation...grew up between Carlyle and Lockhart. They lived in different circles; they did not meet often, or correspond often; but Carlyle ever after spoke of Lockhart as he seldom spoke of any man; and such letters of Lockhart's to Carlyle as survive show a trusting confidence extremely remarkable in a man who was so chary of his esteem.
James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London 1834–1881. Vol. I (1884), p. 164
