But Lockhart's book has still the value of one written by a genuine man of letters, who was a born biographer, and one written while the world-commotion of Napoleon was a matter of personal report.

It is tinged by some of the contemporary illusions, no doubt; but it is clearer in its record than Scott's, and while it is less picturesque, it is more direct.
His comparative brevity is a gain, since he has to tell how, in brief space, "the lean, hungry conqueror swells," as Lord Rosebery says, "into the sovereign, and then into the sovereign of sovereigns." In view of the influence of the one book upon the other, and the one writer upon the other, it is worth note that Lockhart had a fit of enthusiasm over Scott's _Napoleon_ when it first appeared, or rather when he first read the first six volumes of the work, before they were "out," in 1827.

He thought Scott would make as great an effect by it as by any two of his novels.

This proved a mistaken forecast, but Scott was paid an enormous price--some eighteen thousand pounds.

When then John Murray, who had already co-opted Lockhart as his _Quarterly_ editor, thought of inaugurating a "Family Library," and he proposed to his editor this other Napoleon book, it must have seemed in many ways a very attractive piece of work.