A review of these pamphlets in _Tait’s Magazine_ for 1839 states that Lockhart “had done gross and, everything considered, pitiful injustice to Mr. James Ballantyne; but, in our opinion, the case stood still worse as to Dr. John Leyden, Thomas Pringle, the Ettrick Shepherd, Alister Campbell and other men of genius, who had no sons or friendly trustees to do justice to their true characters, and defend their memories from clumsy ridicule, and wanton and unprovoked misrepresentation.... The editor of the _Quarterly_ (Lockhart) has been as condescending in the free use of abusive and insolent language, and in calling names and giving nicknames, as the veriest Grub Street author could desire; and, all the while, this vulgarity is directed against persons whom he assumes to treat as immeasurably his inferiors. The trustees, whether tradesmen or professional men, though sufficiently acute and cutting at times, have a manifest advantage over Mr. Lockhart, in never abandoning that decent propriety of language which they owed to themselves, if not to their supercilious and unceremonious adversary; while they have carefully and ably elaborated every point in Mr. Lockhart’s statements, and knocked them down one by one.... “For the unfounded assertions in the earlier volumes regarding the Ballantynes, Mr. Lockhart makes a sort of _amende honorable_: ‘I have been entirely mistaken, if those to whom I allude (Ballantyne’s relatives), or any other of my readers, have interpreted any expressions of mine as designed to cast _the slightest imputation upon the moral rectitude_ of the elder Ballantyne. I believe James _to have been from first to last a perfectly upright man_; that his principles were of a lofty stamp—_his feelings pure even to simplicity_.’... It was sufficiently proved from the documents given in the controversy that on all occasions he (Scott) made use of James Ballantyne & Co. as the means of supplying his wants. If he wanted money, and they happened to have it, he drew it out; if not, he made use of their firm to raise it. Such was his uniform practice, from the first formation of the company to the last day of its existence.”[40] John Gibson Lockhart died at Abbotsford on the 25th November 1854, in his sixty-first year. “In a letter addressed to me,” says Dr. Charles Rogers, “a few days afterwards, Mr. Robert Chambers referred to the event in these words: ‘It is melancholy to think of Lockhart sinking at sixty—and all through heart-break. Sir Adam Ferguson feels assured that such is the remote but true cause of his death. He was perhaps the least amiable man of letters I ever knew; but these considerations make his departure somewhat touching.’