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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Early History of Blackwood's Edinburgh
+Magazine, by Alice Mary Doane
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Early History of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
+
+Author: Alice Mary Doane
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2015 [EBook #50343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE
+
+  BY
+
+  ALICE MARY DOANE
+  A. B. Earlham College, 1914
+
+  THESIS
+
+  Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
+
+  Degree of
+
+  MASTER OF ARTS
+
+  IN ENGLISH
+
+  IN
+
+  THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
+
+  OF THE
+
+  UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
+
+  1917
+
+
+
+
+UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
+
+THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
+
+
+  June 1 1917
+
+  I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION
+  BY Mary Alice Doane
+  ENTITLED Early History of Blackwood’s Magazine
+
+  ------------------------------------------------------
+  BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
+  DEGREE OF Master of Arts in English
+
+  Jacob Zeitlin
+  In Charge of Thesis
+
+  Frank W Scott
+  Head of Department
+
+  Recommendation concurred in:[1]
+
+  --------------------  }  Committee
+  --------------------  }  on
+  --------------------  }  Final Examination[1]
+
+  [1] Required for doctor’s degree but not for master’s.
+
+
+
+
+  Contents
+
+
+    I. Introduction               p. 1-15
+
+   II. Genesis                    p. 16-29
+
+  III. Dramatis Personae          p. 30-36
+
+   IV. First Years of “Maga”      p. 37-67
+
+       Bibliography               p. 68-69
+
+
+
+
+EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+_Introduction_[2]
+
+[2] The information in this chapter is taken from the following: Oliver
+Elton: _A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830_ (Arnold, London,
+1912) V. i, ch. 13
+
+_Cambridge History of English Literature_ (Cambridge, 1916) V. xii, ch.
+6
+
+John Gibson Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk_ (Edinburgh,
+1819) V. i, ii
+
+
+People love to be shocked! That explains the present circulation of
+_Life_. It explains, too, the clamor with which Edinburgh received
+the October number of _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_ in 1817. For
+the first time in periodical history, the reading public was actually
+thrilled and completely shocked! Edinburgh held up its hands in
+horror, looked pious, wagged its head--and bought up every number! It
+is a strange parallel, perhaps, _Life_ and _Blackwood’s_,--yet not so
+strange. It is hard at first glance to understand how those yellow,
+musty old pages could have been so shocking which now seem to have
+lost all savor for the man in the street. But before we can appreciate
+just how shocking _Blackwood’s Magazine_ was, or why, it will be
+necessary first to remember the Edinburgh of those days, and the men
+who thought and fought in those pages, and the then state of periodical
+literature.
+
+When we call _Blackwood’s_ the first _real_ magazine it is by virtue
+of worth, not fact. There were numerous periodicals preceding and
+contemporary with it. Most of them have never been heard of by the
+average citizen, and no doubt oblivion is the kindest shroud to fold
+them in. The _Monthly Review_, founded in 1749, was the oldest. It
+ran till 1845 and is remembered chiefly for the fact that it had
+decided Whiggish leanings with a touch of the Nonconformist. _The
+Critical Review_, a Tory organ, ran from 1756 to 1817, the natal year
+of “Maga”, as _Blackwood’s_ was fondly dubbed. _The British Critic_,
+1793-1843, was a mouthpiece for High Church opinion; and _The Christian
+Observer_, 1802-1857, served the same purpose for the evangelicals.
+_The Anti-Jacobin_, 1797-98, was almost the only journal of the time
+where talent or wit appeared often enough not to be accidental, and
+it ran only eight months. _The Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1731-1868, has
+come in for a small share of immortality, but could never aspire to be
+considered a “moulder of opinion”. It published good prose and verse,
+and articles of antiquarian and literary tone; its scholarship was
+fair. When this is said, all is said.
+
+_The Edinburgh Review_ and _The Quarterly_ are the only two besides
+_Blackwood’s_ which come down to the Twentieth Century with any degree
+of lasting fame. In 1755 had appeared the first _Edinburgh Review_
+“to be published every six months”. It survived only two numbers,
+being too radical and self-sufficient in certain philosophical and
+religious views for that day of orthodoxy. In October 1802 the first
+number of the _Edinburgh Review and Critical Journal_, a quarterly,
+appeared, which according to the advertisement in the first number was
+to be “distinguished for the selection rather than for the number of
+its articles”.[3] Its aim was to enlighten and guide the public mind
+in the paths of literature, art, science, politics,--with perhaps a
+bit of emphasis on the words _guide_ and _politics_. Francis Jeffrey,
+of whom Lockhart, later one of the leading lights of _Blackwood’s_,
+says, “It is impossible to conceive the existence of a more fertile,
+teeming intellect”,[4] was the first editor and remained so until 1829.
+In the first number, October 1802, there were twenty-nine articles,
+contributed by Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Brougham, and
+Thomson, Murray and Hamilton. During its first three years the _Review_
+distinguished itself by adding such names to its list as Walter Scott,
+Playfair, John Allen, George Ellis, and Henry Hallam. With such pens
+supporting it, it would have been strange if it had not been readable.
+There was indeed an air of vitality and energy throughout, which
+distinguished it from any of its forerunners; it spoke as one having
+authority; and men turned as instinctively to Francis Jeffrey and
+the _Edinburgh Review_ for final verdicts, as it never entered their
+heads to seriously consider the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ or even the
+_Quarterly_.
+
+[3] _Cambridge History of English Literature_, V. xii, ch. 6, p. 157
+
+[4] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 61
+
+This first number, October 1802, is as representative as any.
+Jeffrey wrote the first article, reviewing a book on the causes of
+the revolution by Mounier, late president of the French National
+Assembly. There was an article by Francis Horner on “The Paper Credit
+of Great Britain”; one by Brougham on “The Crisis in the Sugar
+Colonies”. Another by Jeffrey, a criticism of Southey’s “Thalaba”,
+indicates the young editor’s intention to live up to the motto of
+the _Review_:--“_Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur_--The Judge is
+damned when the offender is freed”. With Jeffrey anything new in the
+world of letters was taboo, and Southey he considered “a champion and
+apostle” of a school of poetry which was nothing if not new. Quoting
+him: “Southey is the first of these brought before us for judgment, and
+we cannot discharge our inquisitorial office conscientiously without
+pronouncing a few words upon the nature and tendency of the tenets
+he has helped to propagate”.[5] Notice that Jeffrey uses the term
+“inquisitorial office”, therein pleading guilty to the very attitude of
+which Lockhart accused him, and in opposition to which in _Blackwood’s
+Magazine_ he later took such a decided stand, offending how similarly,
+we are later to discover.
+
+[5] _Cambridge History of English Literature_, V. xii, ch. 6, p. 159
+
+Lockhart admired Jeffrey and praised his talents; it was the use to
+which he put those talents that Lockhart assailed. The following
+words of Lockhart’s own, even though tinged with that exaggerated
+vindictiveness so characteristic of him, give a pretty fair idea of
+the attitude he and all the Blackwood group took against Jeffrey and
+the _Edinburgh Review_; and shows the spirit underlying the rivalry
+that took root before ever _Blackwood’s Magazine_ existed and prevailed
+for ever after. “Endowed by nature with a keen talent for sarcasm
+(Jeffrey, that is) nothing could be more easy for him than to fasten,
+with the destructive effect of nonchalance upon a work which had
+perhaps been composed with much earnestness of thought on the part of
+the author.... The object of the critic, however, is by no means to
+assist those who read his critical lucubrations, to enter with more
+facility, or with better preparation into the thoughts or feelings
+or truths which his author endeavors to inculcate or illustrate. His
+object is merely to make the author look foolish; and he prostitutes
+his own fine talents, to enable the common herd”[6]--to look down
+upon the deluded author who is victim of the _Review_. This is what
+Lockhart considered Jeffrey to be doing, and he was not alone in his
+opinion. It is to be remembered, however, that Lockhart’s attitude was
+always more tense, keener, and a little more bitter than others’, yet
+his words better than any one else’s sound the keynote of the deadly
+opposition to the _Review_ which “Maga” assumed from the first. Quoting
+him again, "_The Edinburgh Review_ cared very little for what might
+be done, or might be hoped to be done, provided it could exercise a
+despotic authority in deciding on the merits of what _was_ done.
+Nobody could ever regard this work as a great fostering-mother of the
+infant manifestations of intellectual and imaginative power. It was
+always sufficiently plain, that in all things its chief object was
+to support the credit of its own appearance. It praised only where
+praise was extorted--and it never praised even the highest efforts of
+contemporary genius in the spirit of true and genuine earnestness which
+might have been becoming”.[7] Lockhart never quite forgave Jeffrey for
+failing instantly to recognize the genius of Wordsworth. He continues,
+of the Reviewers: “They never spoke out of the fulness of the heart
+in praising any one of our great living poets, the majesty of whose
+genius would have been quite enough to take away all ideas except those
+of prostrate respect”.[8] Taking all of Lockhart’s impetuosity with a
+pinch of salt, the fact remains undeniably true that the _Edinburgh_
+assumed the patronizing air of bestowing rather than recognizing honor
+when it praised.
+
+[6] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 130
+
+[7] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 207
+
+[8] Ibid, V. ii, p. 208
+
+Among the builders of the _Edinburgh_ Henry Brougham stands one of the
+foremost. In five years he contributed as many as eighty articles,
+an average of four each number, and it is said that he once wrote
+an entire number. He was capable of it! Brougham was a powerful
+politician, but unfortunately did not limit his contributions to
+political subjects. He wrote scientific, legal and literary papers as
+well, with the air of one whose mandates go undisputed. Undisputed
+they did go, too. In fact Brougham just escaped being a genius! He made
+a big splash in his own little world and age, but his fame has not
+outlived him. Another prominent contributor was Sydney Smith, a man of
+no small reputation as a humorist. He earnestly applied his talents
+to the forwarding of serious causes, and talents undoubtedly he had;
+but the wit of his style, according to the Hon. Arthur R. D. Elliot,
+erstwhile editor of the _Review_, its cleverness and jollity, prevented
+many from recognizing the genuine sincerity of his character.
+
+By the end of 1806, Sir Walter Scott had contributed twelve articles
+in all, among them papers on Ellis’s “Early English Poets”, on
+Godwin’s “Life of Chaucer”, on Chatterton’s “Works”, on Froissart’s
+“Chronicles”. After 1806, he withdrew from the _Review_, and politics
+became the more prominent feature. No account of the _Edinburgh Review_
+has ever been given, written or told without including a remark of
+Jeffrey’s to Sir Walter Scott in a letter about this time. It would
+never do to omit it here! The remark is this: “The _Review_, in short,
+has but two legs to stand on. Literature, no doubt, is one of them: but
+its _Right Leg_ is Politics.”[9] Scott’s ideal was to keep it literary;
+and his break was on account of its excessive Whiggism. In Jeffrey’s
+mind, however, _The Edinburgh Review_ was destined to save the
+nation! He championed the causes of Catholic emancipation, of popular
+education, prison reform, even some small degree of justice in Ireland,
+et cetera, all flavored, of course, with the saving grace of Whiggism.
+
+[9] Elton: _A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830_. V. i, p. 387
+
+Modern critics more than once have characterized Jeffrey as that
+“once-noted despot of letters”. But it is not fair only to be told that
+Jeffrey once said of Wordsworth’s Excursion, “This will never do!” That
+he considered the end of The Ode to Duty “utterly without meaning”;
+and that the Ode on Intimations of Immortality was “unintelligible”;
+that he ignored Shelley, and committed other like unpardonable sins.
+Those things are true and known and by them is he judged, but they
+are not _all_ by which he should be judged by any means! There is no
+doubt in the world but what Jeffrey’s mind was cast in a superior
+mould. Lockhart himself has already testified there could not be “a
+more fertile, teeming intellect”. He was seldom, if ever, profound,
+we admit; but even the most grudging critic must grant him that
+large, speculative understanding and shrewd scrutiny so prominent in
+his compositions. Imagination, fancy, wit, sarcasm were his own, but
+not the warm and saving quality of humor. He was a great man and a
+brilliant criticiser, though hardly a great critic. The great critic
+is the true prophet and Jeffrey was no prophet. As late as 1829 in an
+article on Mrs. Hemans in the _Edinburgh Review_, he wrote: “Since the
+beginning of our critical career we have seen a vast deal of beautiful
+poetry pass into oblivion in spite of our feeble efforts to recall
+or retain it in remembrance. The tuneful quartos of Southey are
+already little better than lumber:--and the rich melodies of Keats and
+Shelley,--and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth,--and the plebeian
+pathos of Crabbe,--are melting fast from the field of our vision. The
+novels of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains of
+Moore are fading into distance and dimness, except where they have been
+married to immortal music; and the blazing star of Byron himself is
+receding from its place of pride.”[10] Herein he only redeems himself
+from his early condemnation of Wordsworth and Shelley and Southey, to
+damn himself irrevocably in our eyes again with his amazing lack of
+foresight! No! Jeffrey was no prophet. He had not the range of vision
+of the true critic, and “where there is no vision the people perish”.
+This was indeed an epitaph written a century ago for a grave not even
+yet in view. It must not be hastily concluded from this, however, that
+all the criticism in the _Edinburgh Review_ was poor stuff. A vast
+amount of it was splendid work; the best output of the best minds of
+the time; and it was the one and only authentic and readable journal
+for years. This is corroborated by a statement of Sir Walter Scott’s in
+a letter to George Ellis: “No genteel family can pretend to be without
+the _Edinburgh Review_; because, independent of its politics, it gives
+the only valuable literary criticisms that can be met with.”[11]
+
+[10] Elton: _A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830_, V. i, p. 390
+
+[11] _Cambridge History of English Literature_, V. xii, p. 164
+
+But it was high time for a new periodical of opposite politics and
+fresh outlook; and in 1809 Gifford was established as editor of
+_The Quarterly Review_. Its four pillars were politics, literature,
+scholarship, and science; but its main purpose was to oppose the
+_Edinburgh_ and create an intellectual nucleus for the rallying of the
+Tories. In October 1808 after plans were well on foot, Scott wrote to
+Gifford, prospective editor: “The real reason for instituting the new
+publication is the disgusting and deleterious doctrines with which
+the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages.”[12] This of
+course was a reference to the political policies of the _Edinburgh_,
+yet the tone of the _Quarterly_ was not to be one of political
+opposition only. Scott was eager for the success of the first number
+and wrote nearly a third of it himself. Later he busied himself to
+enlist the services of Southey and Rogers and Moore and Kirkpatrick
+Sharpe as contributors. Southey wrote altogether about one hundred
+articles on subjects varying from Lord Nelson to the Poor Laws. Scott
+himself contributed about thirty with his usual versatility of subject
+matter, all the way from fly fishing to Pepys’ Diary. In the issue for
+January 1817 he even reviewed “Tales of my Landlord” and “ventured to
+attribute them to the author of Waverley and Guy Mannering.”! John
+Wilson Croker, satirist, was another prominent contributor, narrow
+of mind and heart, intolerant of soul. He was an accurate and able
+“argu-fier” however, and one of the ruling genii in the politics of
+the _Quarterly_. In forty-five years he contributed something like
+two hundred and fifty-eight articles. Sir John Barrow, traveller and
+South African statesman, contributed much and copiously, multitudinous
+reviews and voyages, all in his unvarying “solid food” style and tone.
+Hallam and Sharon Turner wrote historical papers; Ugo Fosculo wrote
+on Italian classics. Such was the tone of the _Quarterly_. It took
+itself seriously, and was evidently always taken seriously. But no
+modern would consider those dim old pages of criticism as a criterion
+to the literature of that age. It was too heavy to be sensitive to new
+excellencies, too intent on upholding failing causes to recognize new
+ones. In truth, it was a periodical strangely unresponsive to artistic
+or literary excellence or attainment. By 1818 and 1819 its circulation
+was almost 14,000--practically the same as the _Edinburgh Review_;
+but the _Quarterly_ never made the stir the _Edinburgh_ did. Ellis
+spoke truth when he pronounced it, “Though profound, notoriously and
+unequivocally dull”.[13] Gifford remained editor until 1824; then John
+Taylor Coleridge ascended the throne for two years, and after that,
+Lockhart.
+
+[12] _Cambridge History of English Literature_, V. xii, p. 165
+
+[13] _Cambridge History of English Literature_, V. xii, p. 166
+
+Concerning the _Scots Magazine_ which seemed to be dying a natural
+death about the time of the initial impulse of “Maga”, Lockhart
+writes: “It seems as if nothing could be more dull, trite and heavy
+than the bulk of this ancient work.”[14] An occasional contribution by
+Hazlitt or Reynolds enlivened it a bit, but only served to emphasize in
+contrast the duller parts.
+
+[14] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 227
+
+The name of Leigh Hunt can scarcely be omitted from this panorama,
+though here it is the journalist rather than the journal which attracts
+attention. At various times he edited various publications, ten in all,
+and all of them more or less short-lived and unsuccessful. Among them
+was the _Reflector_ (1810-11), a quarterly which is remembered mainly
+because Hunt was its editor and Charles Lamb one of its contributors.
+Most noteworthy of his periodical projects was the _Examiner_, a
+newspaper which he began to edit (1808) for his brother, and continued
+to do so for the space of some thirteen years. It professed no
+political allegiance, but was enough outspoken in its radical views
+to land both Leigh Hunt and his brother in prison, after printing
+an article on the Prince Regent. Among other things of interest, it
+started a department of theatrical criticism; and on the whole, with
+men like Hazlitt and Lamb contributing, it could not escape being
+interesting. The Blackwood group later reacted to it and its editor
+as a bull does to a red rag, testifying at least that it was far from
+nondescript.
+
+The _London Magazine_ did not start until two years after
+_Blackwood’s_, and we will dismiss it with only a few words. It was a
+periodical fashioned after the sprightlier manner which _Blackwood’s_,
+too, strove to maintain. They were bitter rivals from the first; and as
+to which was the more bitter, the more stinging in its personalities,
+it would be hard to judge. At one time matters even reached such a
+pitch that John Scott, the _London’s_ first editor, and Lockhart found
+it necessary to “meet on the sod”. The _London_ put forth many fine
+things. In September 1821 it gave to the public “Confessions of an
+Opium Eater” by a certain Thomas De Quincey. A year later it offered
+“A Dissertation on Roast Pig” by an author then not so well known as
+now. A poem or two of one John Keats appeared in its pages; and when
+all is said, there is no doubt that the _London Magazine_ did at times
+splendidly illumine the poetry of the age. It ran from 1820 to 1829.
+
+Thus in brief was the periodical world. The quarterly reviews were
+avowedly pretentious, never amusing, not creative. Contents were
+limited to political articles, to pompous dissertations and reviews.
+There were no stories, no verse, nothing unbending, never a touch of
+fantasy. Their political flavor was the least of their sins. A touch of
+the Radical, the Whig or the Tory is a real contribution to the history
+of literature, wherein it inevitably involves great historic divisions
+of the thought of a nation concerning life and art. No. Our quarrel,
+like _Blackwood’s_, is on the ground of their rigidity. It is well to
+hold fast that which is good; but it is not well to insistently oppose
+and blind oneself and others to the changing order and the forward
+march of men and letters.
+
+Knowing what we do of Jeffrey and the _Edinburgh Review_ it is easy
+to comprehend what prompted Lockhart’s pen to say: “It is, indeed, a
+very deplorable thing to observe in what an absurd state of ignorance
+the majority of educated people in Scotland have been persuaded to
+keep themselves, concerning much of the best and truest literature of
+their own age, as well as of the ages that have gone by”.[15]... His
+quarrel is ours for the nonce, and to comprehend the spirit of “Maga”
+it is first necessary to comprehend the spirit which prompted much for
+which it is so rigorously criticised. Lockhart speaks of the “facetious
+and rejoicing ignorance” of the Reviewers. “I do not on my conscience
+believe”, says he in Peter’s Letters, “that there is one Whig in
+Edinburgh to whom the name of my friend Charles Lamb would convey
+any distinct or definite idea.... They do not know even the names of
+some of the finest poems our age has produced. They never heard of
+_Ruth_ or _Michael_, or _The Brothers_ or _Hartleap Well_, or the
+_Recollections of Infancy_ or the _Sonnets to Buonaparte_. They do not
+know that there is such a thing as the description of a churchyard
+in _The Excursion_. Alas! how severely is their ignorance punished in
+itself”![16] Perhaps we can forgive the egotistic note in the following
+words, also from Peter’s Letters: “There is no work which has done
+so much to weaken the authority of the _Edinburgh Review_ in such
+matters as _Blackwood’s Magazine_.”[17] _Blackwood’s_ is at least still
+readable which is more than can be said of most of its contemporaries.
+Though it did not, like the _London_, discover a Charles Lamb or a De
+Quincey, it did and does still overflow with the forging energy and
+ardent enthusiasms of youth. Besides the famous “Noctes Ambrosianae”
+for the most part attributed to John Wilson, it published good short
+stories, good papers by James Hogg, John Galt, and others, good verse,
+much generous as well as much vindictive criticism. It opened up new
+fields of interest: German, Italian and Norse letters, all hitherto but
+slightly touched upon. But we anticipate,--and must needs begin at the
+beginning.
+
+[15] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 141
+
+[16] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 142, 143
+
+[17] Ibid. V. ii, p. 144
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_Genesis_
+
+
+We are told that William Blackwood grew impatient of “humdrum
+bookselling”, and considering the spirited character of the man, it
+is easy to believe. That hardly explains the whole truth concerning
+the origin of “Maga”, however. The history of _Blackwood’s Edinburgh
+Magazine_ might almost be considered the history of the struggle
+between two rival booksellers, Mr. Constable and William Blackwood.
+The personality of the man William Blackwood is no less interesting
+than the personality of his magazine, and indeed, his was the spirit
+which colored the periodical from start to finish. His energy and
+acumen were of the sort which leave their mark on all they touch.
+To know William Blackwood means to see his vigorous, unwearying
+figure through and behind every page. Lockhart knew him as well as
+any, and it is his able portraiture that follows: “He is a nimble
+active-looking man of middle-age, and moves about from one corner to
+another with great alacrity, and apparently under the influence of
+high animal spirits. His complexion is very sanguineous, but nothing
+can be more intelligent, keen and sagacious than the expression of the
+whole physiognomy, above all, the grey eyes and eyebrows as full of
+locomotion as those of Catalini. The remarks he makes are in general
+extremely acute.... The shrewdness and decision of the man can,
+however, stand in need of no testimony beyond what his own conduct has
+afforded--above all, in the establishment of his Magazine,--(the
+conception of which I am convinced was entirely his own), and the
+subsequent energy with which he has supported it through every
+variety of good and evil fortune.”[18] Lockhart was in a position to
+know the true character of the man, for these words were written two
+years after his own first connection with William Blackwood and his
+periodical. Again, he describes the publisher as “a man of strong
+talents, and though without anything that could be called learning,
+of very respectable information, ... acute, earnest, eminently
+zealous in whatever he put his hand to; upright, honest, sincere and
+courageous”.[19] This was William Blackwood, and it is small wonder
+such a man should grow weary of “humdrum bookselling”.
+
+[18] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 188
+
+[19] A. Lang: _Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart_, V. i, p. 121
+
+_Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_ was the result of more stringent
+stimuli, however, than the restlessness of its founder. It was
+necessary that the sentiments of those opposed to Jeffrey and the
+_Edinburgh Review_ should have a medium of expression. Blackwood
+considered the _Quarterly_ “too ponderous, too sober, dignified and
+middle-aged”[20] to frustrate the influence of the _Edinburgh_. It was
+not stimulating, in other words, and the present day agrees with him.
+His ideal was a magazine “more nimble, more frequent, more familiar”.
+But not least among the many stirrings of mind and brain which gave
+rise to “Maga” was Blackwood’s disappointment over the loss of the
+Waverley series. The honesty and courage of the man need no other
+evidence than the fact that he criticised “The Black Dwarf” and even
+suggested a different ending. Scott, of course, would have none of his
+meddling, and transferred his future dealings to Constable, publisher
+of the despised _Edinburgh Review_, and the _Scots Magazine_, which was
+at that moment more or less insignificant. It is evident that Blackwood
+did not take pains to seek out any specious circumlocution in his
+criticism, and the idea that any man should criticise the Great Wizard
+of the North brings a catch to the breath and a tingling down one’s
+spinal column!
+
+[20] Mrs. Oliphant: _Annals of a Publishing House_, V. i, p. 97
+
+There is no doubt that the politics, the conceit, the unappreciative
+and at times irreligious tone of the _Edinburgh Review_ were the main
+reasons for the bitter hatred of the _Blackwood_ writers; but there is
+less doubt that thus to lose the Waverley series was a last incendiary
+straw to William Blackwood. He immediately set about putting in action
+the plans which had been smouldering so long.
+
+In April 1817 appeared the first number of _Blackwood’s Edinburgh
+Magazine_. There seems to be a general understanding among
+bibliographers that the first numbers were known as the “Edinburgh
+Monthly Magazine”. According to the old volumes themselves, however,
+only the second number, the issue for May 1817, went by this title,
+the initial number and all the rest bearing the heading, _Blackwood’s
+Edinburgh Magazine_.[21] Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn were the first
+joint editors, it was probably through James Hogg, known to us as the
+Ettrick Shepherd, that Blackwood first met these two men. If either
+of them could boast any literary pretensions, it was the younger,
+Thomas Pringle. He was from Hogg’s country, and Blackwood thought he
+divined in him the making of just such another “rustic genius” as Hogg.
+Cleghorn, former editor of the _Farmers’ Magazine_, was evidently a
+stick! It is difficult to conceive how William Blackwood, with his
+gift of insight, could give over the conduct of his pet plans into the
+hands of such a pair. But if he made a mistake, he soon made amends.
+Of the business arrangements between Blackwood and the two editors
+little of definite nature is known, except that the three were to
+be co-partners. Blackwood sustained the expense of publishing and
+printing; Pringle and Cleghorn supplied the material;--and the profits
+were to be divided! The editors expected £50 apiece per month, which
+seems unusual, considering that the circulation never exceeded 2500.
+It looks suspiciously probable that the early numbers were maintained
+at real financial loss to the publisher. There is no mention of paying
+contributors till later years. Very likely at that time writers were
+still _above_ remuneration! The _Edinburgh Review_ had done much to
+remedy this attitude, but a complete cure was not effected for some
+years to come.
+
+[21] See _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. i
+
+The Prospectus of the infant journal is interesting. It was to be
+“A Repository of whatever may be supposed to be most interesting
+to general readers”.[22] One strong point was to be an antiquarian
+repository; too, it was to criticise articles in other periodicals; it
+was to contain a “Register” of domestic and foreign events. Among other
+aims, one was entertainment. It was to be a miscellany of the original
+works of authors and poets; and what endears it to modern hearts
+above all things else, it was to be an open door for struggling young
+writers. By virtue of the anonymous nature of its contributions, this
+was made possible with no lessening of authority. The signatures in
+the early numbers were intended to be perplexing, and perplexing they
+remain to this day. But probably struggling young writers met with less
+encouragement at the hands of Pringle and Cleghorn than was William
+Blackwood’s original intention. Those two never went out of the way to
+drum up new material, while William Blackwood was a man alert and ever
+on the watch for another Walter Scott.
+
+[22] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. i, p. 2
+
+Several numbers passed along peacefully enough. As Mr. Lang puts it,
+“Nothing could be more blameless”. That was the trouble--it was _too_
+blameless! Blackwood might have forgiven a flagrant crime, but this
+negative and inoffensive monthly fell with a dull thud in comparison
+with his mounting expectations! He knew, none better, that a periodical
+of any appreciable merit must necessarily bring upon itself as much
+genuine censure as applause. _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_ for April
+1817 brought neither. The great day came for the first issue, evening
+followed, and Edinburgh went to bed unmoved. With his overwhelming
+desire and ambition to rival the _Edinburgh Review_ and electrify
+Edinburgh city with a stimulating diet, it is not likely that he would
+observe with much composure the advent of this cherished scheme of his
+into the world, containing for its first long article[23] six pages of
+“Memoirs of the Late Francis Horner, Esq., M. P.”, one of Jeffrey’s
+own right hand men!--or in finding in the department of “Periodical
+Works”,[24] a statistical and more or less pleasant rehashment of
+the contents of the last _Reviews_. Francis Horner had ever been one
+of the mainstays of the _Edinburgh_; and though it was altogether
+fitting and proper that the death of an illustrious statesman should
+be commemorated, it is not likely that William Blackwood welcomed as
+the first article in the first number of his new magazine, a wholly
+unmitigated extolling of one whose past influence he hoped to erase.
+Though the publisher’s generous mind would be the last to begrudge him
+the due honor of such phrases as “highly gifted individual”, “eminent
+statesman”, and the like, it cannot be imagined that he rejoiced over
+the words “original and enlightened views”, “correct and elegant
+taste”, when it was his ardent purpose to prove the _Edinburgh_ and
+its builders the opposite of enlightened, and the embodiment of poor
+taste and incompetent judgment!
+
+[23] Ibid., V. i, p. 3
+
+[24] Ibid., V. i, p. 81
+
+This same first number contains seven pages of discourse on “The
+Sculpture of the Greeks”[25], and the relation of Greek art to the
+environment in which it grew up,--all very learned and interesting, to
+be sure. There is a brief article on the “Present State of the City of
+Venice”[26], condensed and unromantic enough to grace a Travellers’
+Guide. If Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn had been anyone else but Messrs.
+Pringle and Cleghorn, they might have indulged the public with a
+thrill or two on such a subject as the city of Venice; but never a
+thrill do we get from cover to cover! The article which follows is
+“on the Constitution and Moral Effects of Banks for the Savings of
+Industry”[27]; and there are others of similar tone: “Observations
+on the Culture of the Sugar Cane in the United States”[28], “The
+Craniological Controversy”[29], “The Proposed Establishment of a
+Foundling Hospital in Edinburgh”[30], and the like. One short article,
+“An Account of the American Steam Frigate”[31], is still of genuine
+interest, attributing the conception of the invention to a “most
+ingenious and enterprising citizen”, Robert Fulton, Esq. It describes
+with naive emphasis the successful trip “to the ocean, eastward
+of Sandy Hook, and back again, a distance of fifty-three miles, in
+eight hours and twenty minutes. A part of this time she had the tide
+against her, and had no assistance whatever from the sails.”[32] It
+is known that the signature Zeta was used in the early numbers, by
+more than one person; but “Remarks on Greek Tragedy”[33], a criticism
+of Aeschylus’ _Prometheus_, signed Zeta, Mr. Lang attributes without
+hesitation to Lockhart. “Tales and Anecdotes of Pastoral Life”[34]
+and “Notices Concerning the Scottish Gypsies”[35] were also among the
+“Original Communications”, as the first division of the magazine was
+called. The former is perhaps the one attempt in the whole number at
+that sprightly nimble manner which was Blackwood’s aim. The second is a
+long article of some sixteen pages, delving back into the early history
+of the Egyptian pilgrims, quoting copiously from “Guy Mannering”, and
+referring familiarly to Walter Scott, and Mr. Fairburn and James Hogg.
+Both of these articles were continued in several subsequent numbers.
+
+[25] Ibid., V. i, p. 9
+
+[26] Ibid., V. i, p. 16
+
+[27] Ibid., V. i, p. 17
+
+[28] Ibid., V. i, p. 25
+
+[29] Ibid., V. i, p. 35
+
+[30] Ibid., V. i, p. 38
+
+[31] Ibid., V. i, p. 30
+
+[32] Ibid., V. i, p. 32
+
+[33] Ibid., V. i, p. 39
+
+[34] Ibid., V. i, p. 22
+
+[35] Ibid., V. i, p. 43
+
+In another department of the contents, entitled “Select Extracts”,
+there are two articles: an “Account of Colonel Beaufoy’s Journey to
+the Summit of Mount Blanc”[36] and the “Account of the Remarkable
+Case of Margaret Lyall, Who continued in a State of Sleep nearly Six
+Weeks”[37], both very readable, which is a good deal when all is
+said. The Antiquarian Reportory contained six articles as antiquated
+as one could wish, all the way from a “Grant of the Lands of Kyrkenes
+by Macbeth, son of Finlach”[38] to a “Mock Poem upon the Expedition
+of the Highland Host”[39]. The Original Poetry department contained
+three poems, none of them startling. The third one, the shortest, is
+by far the best, bearing the title “Verses”[40]. They were written
+in honor of the entry of the Allies into Paris, 1814; and bear the
+unmistakable brand and seal of James Hogg, with his ardent song for
+“Auld Scotland!--land o’ hearts the wale!” ...
+
+    “Land hae I bragged o’ thine an’ thee,
+    Even when thy back was at the wa’;
+    An’ thou my proudest sang sall be,
+    As lang as I hae breath to draw.”
+
+[36] Ibid., V. i, p. 59
+
+[37] Ibid., V. i, p. 61
+
+[38] Ibid., V. i, p. 65
+
+[39] Ibid., V. i, p. 69
+
+[40] Ibid., V. i, p. 72
+
+Next comes the “Review of New Publications”, devoting three pages to
+Dr. Thomas Chalmers’ “Discourses on the Christian Revelation”[41],
+concluding with the words: “If a few great and original minds,
+like that of Dr. Chalmers, should arise to advocate the cause of
+Christianity, it would no longer be the fashion to exalt the triumphs
+of reason and of science.”[42] The other reviews were of “Harold, the
+Dauntless; a Poem. By the Author of ‘The Bridal of Triermain’”[43], of
+“Armota, a Fragment”[44], and “Stories for Children, selected from the
+History of England”[45]. Of what came under the heading, Periodical
+Works, we have already spoken. Then followed “Literary and Scientific
+Intelligence”[46], notices of works preparing for publication in
+Edinburgh and London, and the monthly list of new publications in the
+same two cities. There is a page of French books, published since
+January 1817. After that the Monthly Register of foreign intelligence,
+proceedings of Parliament, the British Chronicle, commercial and
+agricultural reports for the month, a meteorological table, and two
+pages of births, marriages and deaths, complete the number for April
+1817.
+
+[41] Ibid., V. i, p. 73
+
+[42] Ibid., V. i, p. 75
+
+[43] Ibid., V. i, p. 76
+
+[44] Ibid., V. i, p. 78
+
+[45] Ibid., V. i, p. 79
+
+[46] Ibid., V. i, P. 85
+
+Mr. Lang was right when he called it “blameless”; and it is not
+surprising that Blackwood made some suggestions in regard to the second
+number. We know that his suggestions were not cordially received by
+Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn, and it appears equally probable that they
+were not acted upon. The second issue, May 1817, is no more resilient
+and has gained no more momentum than its predecessor. The contents
+are cast in the same mould: an “Account of Mr. Ruthven’s Printing
+Press”[47], another on the “Method of Engraving on Stone”[48], and
+“Anecdotes of Antiquaries”[49], and the like.
+
+[47] Ibid., V. i, p. 125
+
+[48] Ibid., V. i, p. 128
+
+[49] Ibid., V. i, p. 136
+
+If Blackwood was disappointed over the first number, he was irritated
+at the second; but when a third of no more vital aspect appeared, his
+patience gave way, and Pringle and Cleghorn had to go! It is easy to
+imagine that the man who did not hesitate to criticise the “Black
+Dwarf” would not be overawed by the two mild gentlemen in charge of
+his pet scheme. William Blackwood’s ideal had indeed been to startle
+the world with a periodical which in modern terms we would call a
+“live wire”. And now with the magazine actually under way, it is not
+likely that a man of his stamp would sit by unperturbed, and watch one
+insignificant number after another greet an unresponsive public. After
+the appearance of the third number, he gave three months’ notice to
+Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn, which somewhat excited those gentlemen,
+but was none the less final. They had done all they could to evade
+Blackwood’s “interest in the literary part of his business”, and
+intended to keep the publisher “in his place”. William Blackwood was
+not made that way, however.
+
+He himself illuminates the situation in a letter to his London agents,
+Baldwin, Craddock and Company, dated July 23, 1817[50].
+
+[50] Mrs. Oliphant: _Annals of a Publishing House_, V. i, p. 104
+
+“I am sorry to inform you that I have been obliged to resolve upon
+stopping the Magazine with No. 6. I have been much disappointed in
+my editors, who have done little in the way of writing or procuring
+contributions. Ever since the work began I have had myself almost the
+whole burden of procuring contributions, which by great exertions
+I got from my own friends, while at the same time I had it not in
+my power to pay for them, as by our agreement the editors were
+to furnish me with the whole of the material, for which and their
+editorial labors they were to receive half of the profits of the work.
+I found this would never do, and that the work would soon sink, as I
+could not permit my friends (who have in fact made the work what it
+is) to go on in this way for any length of time.... I gave a notice,
+according to our agreement, that the work would close at the period
+specified in it--three months. Instead, however, of Pringle acting in
+the friendly way he professed, he joined Cleghorn, and without giving
+any explanation, they concluded a bargain with Constable and Company,
+by which I understand they take charge of their (Constable’s) ‘Scot’s
+Magazine’ as soon as mine stops.”
+
+“It is not of the least consequence to me losing them, as they were
+quite unfit for what they undertook.... I have, however, made an
+arrangement with a gentleman of first-rate talents by which I will
+begin a new work of very superior kind. I mention this to you, however,
+in the strictest confidence, as I am not at liberty yet to say anything
+more particularly about it.... My editors have very dishonestly made it
+known to a number of people that we stop at the sixth number. This will
+interfere a little with our sale here, but I hope not with you.”
+
+The editors wrangled at great length, but Blackwood’s mind was made up,
+and as we see by the foregoing letter, already launching new plans
+and busy with them. A letter to Pringle and Cleghorn, gives us the
+first hint of John Wilson’s connection with the magazine (other than
+mere contributor), and shows the tone of finality with which Blackwood
+could treat what was to him a settled subject:
+
+“As you have now an interest directly opposite to mine, I hope you
+will not think it unreasonable that I should be made acquainted with
+the materials which you intend for this number. It occurs to me it
+would save all unpleasant discussion if you were inclined to send the
+different articles to Mr. John Wilson, who has all along taken so deep
+an interest in the magazine. I do not wish to offer my opinion with
+regard to the fitness or unfitness of any article, but I should expect
+that you would be inclined to listen to anything which Mr. Wilson
+might suggest. He had promised me the following articles: Account of
+Marlowe’s Edward II, Argument in the Case of the Dumb Woman lately
+before the Court, Vindication of Wordsworth, Reviews of Lament of
+Tasso, Poetical Epistles and Spencer’s Tour. His furnishing these or
+even other articles will, however, depend upon the articles you have
+got and intend to insert.”
+
+“I beg to assure you that it is my most anxious wish to have the whole
+business settled speedily and as amicably as possible.”[51]
+
+[51] Ibid., V. i, p. 106
+
+Here exit the prologue; and the real show begins with _Blackwood’s
+Edinburgh Magazine_ for October 1817. To attract attention was
+Blackwood’s first aim; interest once aroused, he did not worry over
+maintaining it. Of that he felt assured. Respectability, mediocrity
+were taboo! By respectability is inferred that prudent, cautious,
+dead-alive respectability whose backbone (such as it has) is fear of
+public censure!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_Dramatis Personae_
+
+
+One of Blackwood’s aims in life was to make 17 Princes Street a
+literary rendez-vous; and indeed the background and atmosphere of
+“Maga”, and the men who gathered round it, are perhaps as fascinating
+and absorbing as the magazine itself!
+
+Blackwood’s shop is described by Lockhart as “the only great lounging
+shop in the new Town of Edinburgh”[52]. A glimpse of the soil and
+lights and shades which nourished “Maga” cannot help but bring a
+warmer, more familiar comprehension of its character and the words
+it spake. Just as Park Street and the Shaw Memorial and the grave
+portraits of its departed builders color our own _Atlantic Monthly_,
+just so did 17 Princes Street tinge and permeate the magazine which
+grew up in its precincts. “The length of vista presented to one on
+entering the shop”, says Lockhart, “has a very imposing effect; for it
+is carried back, room after room, through various gradations of light
+and shadow, till the eye cannot trace distinctly the outline of any
+object in the furthest distance. First, there is as usual, a spacious
+place set apart for retail-business, and a numerous detachment of young
+clerks and apprentices, to whose management that important department
+of the concern is intrusted. Then you have an elegant oval saloon,
+lighted from the roof, where various groupes of loungers and literary
+dilettanti are engaged in looking at, or criticising among themselves,
+the publications just arrived by that day’s coach from town. In such
+critical colloquies the voice of the bookseller himself may ever and
+anon be heard mingling the broad and unadulterated notes of its Auld
+Reekie music; for unless occupied in the recesses of the premises with
+some other business, it is here that he has his station.”[53]
+
+[52] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 186
+
+[53] Ibid., V. ii, p. 187
+
+From this it is evident Blackwood’s ideal shop was realized, and
+that there did gather in his presence both those who wielded the
+pen and those who wished to, those who were critics and those who
+aspired to be. At these assemblies might often be found two young
+men, who, says Mrs. Oliphant, “would have been remarkable anywhere
+if only for their appearance and talk, had nothing more remarkable
+ever been developed in them”.[54] These two, of course, were John
+Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart. She continues: “Both of them were
+only too keen to see the ludicrous aspect of everything, and the
+age gave them an extraordinary licence in exposing it.”[55] This is
+an important note, the “extraordinary licence” of the age,--a straw
+eagerly grasped at!--corroborated, too, by Lord Cockburn[56] who
+testifies: “There was a natural demand for libel at this period.” It
+explains much that we would fain explain in the subsequent literary
+pranks of these same two youths. They were ready for anything; and
+more,--enthusiastically ready for anything. John Wilson was a giant,
+intellectually and physically, “a genial giant but not a mild one”[57].
+Lockhart had already made some small reputation for himself as a
+caricaturist. Perhaps it was insight into their capacities which
+strengthened Blackwood’s disgust with the two mild gents in charge of
+his to-be-epoch-making organ! At any rate, it was to these two, Wilson
+especially, that he turned for the resuscitation of his dream.
+
+[54] Mrs. Oliphant: _Annals of a Publishing House_, V. i, p. 101
+
+[55] Ibid., V. i, p. 103
+
+[56] Henry Thomas Cockburn, a Scottish judge
+
+[57] Mrs. Oliphant: _Annals of a Publishing House_, V. i, p. 101
+
+John Wilson is the one name most commonly associated with
+_Blackwood’s_, and with the exception of William Blackwood himself,
+perhaps the most important figure in its reconstruction. The
+name Christopher North was used in the earlier years by various
+contributors, but was soon appropriated by Wilson and is now almost
+exclusively associated with him. In the latter part of 1817 he became
+Blackwood’s right hand man. He has often been considered editor of
+“Maga”, but strictly speaking, no one but Blackwood ever was. After the
+experience with Pringle and Cleghorn, William Blackwood would naturally
+be wary of ever again entrusting full authority to anyone. He himself
+was always the guiding and ruling spirit, though never admittedly, or
+technically, editor.
+
+It was “Maga” that gave John Wilson his first real literary
+opportunity. His gifts were critical rather than creative, and his most
+famous work is the collected “Noctes Ambrosianae” which began to run
+in the March number (1822) of _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_. He was
+one of the very first to praise Wordsworth; and though in general, far
+too superlative both in praise and blame to be considered dependable, a
+very great deal of his criticism holds good to the present hour. Along
+in the first days of Wordsworth’s career, Wilson proclaimed him, with
+Scott and Byron, “one of the three great master spirits of our day in
+the poetical world”. Lockhart, long his close friend and associate,
+writes thus: “He is a very warm, enthusiastic man, with most charming
+conversational talents, full of fiery imaginations, irresistible
+in eloquence, exquisite in humor when he talks ...; he is a most
+fascinating fellow, and a most kind-hearted, generous friend; but his
+fault is a sad one, a total inconsistency in his opinions concerning
+both men and things.... I ... believe him incapable of doing anything
+dishonorable either in literature or in any other way.”[58]
+
+[58] A. Lang: _Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart_, V. i, p. 93
+
+It was the pen of John Gibson Lockhart, however, almost as wholly as
+Wilson’s which insured the success of the magazine; and Blackwood was
+as eager to enlist Lockhart into his services as Wilson. Like Wilson,
+too, “Maga” was Lockhart’s opportunity! He had given early promise as
+a future critic. Elton says he wrote “sprightly verse and foaming
+prose”. From 1817 to 1830 he was not only one of the invaluable
+supporters of “Maga”, but one of its rare _lights_! In announcing the
+marriage of his daughter to Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott said: “To a
+young man of uncommon talents, indeed of as promising a character as
+I know”.[59] His gift for caricature colored his writings. His was a
+mind and eye and genius for the comic. His satire was that keen and
+bitter piercing satire which all are ready to recognize as talent, but
+few are ready to forgive if once subjected to it. But there was little
+malice behind it ever. Much of what he wrote has been condemned for its
+bitter, and often personal, import. But Lockhart was only twenty-three
+at the time of his first connection with the magazine--and what is
+more, “constitutionally a mocker”. All is well with his serious work,
+but according to Mr. Lang, the “Imp of the Perverse” was his ruling
+genius! Others say, “as a practitioner in the gentle art of making
+enemies, Lockhart excelled”,[60] and that he possessed the “native gift
+of insolence”[61]. They are strong words, not wholly without cause, and
+illustrate the attitude of many minds towards his work; yet perhaps
+they only go to prove that he began to write responsible articles too
+young, and was allowed entirely too free a swing.
+
+[59] Ibid., V. i, p. 230
+
+[60] J. H. Millar: _A Literary History of Scotland_, p. 517
+
+[61] Same
+
+The story of James Hogg is by far the most fascinating of those
+connected with _Blackwood’s_; and in a later series of articles in
+that magazine on these first three stars, the writer says: “Hogg
+was undoubtedly the most remarkable. For his was an untaught and
+self-educated genius, which shone with rare though fitful lustre
+in spite of all disadvantages, and surmounted obstacles that were
+seemingly insuperable.”[62] It is difficult to ascertain his exact
+relations with the magazine. One thing at least is certain,--he
+contributed much. Wilson and Lockhart found great joy in “drawing” him,
+and Hogg was kept wavering between vexation and pride “at occupying
+so much space in the most popular periodical of the day”.[63] As
+Saintsbury puts it, he was at once the “inspiration, model, and butt of
+_Blackwood’s Magazine_”[64]. But indeed the shepherd drawn so cleverly
+in the Noctes “was not”, his daughter testifies, “the Shepherd of
+Ettrick, or the man James Hogg”. And in all justice to him, there can
+be no doubt that he is totally misrepresented therein.
+
+[62] _Memorials of James Hogg_, p. 11
+
+[63] J. H. Millar: _A Literary History of Scotland_, p. 530
+
+[64] Saintsbury: _Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860_, p. 37
+
+His poetry is his only claim upon the world. It was the one thing
+dearest to his own heart, and the one thing for which he claimed or
+craved distinction or recognition of any kind. The heart warms to
+this youth with his dreams and aspirations, brain teeming with poems
+years before he learned to write. As might be expected from a man
+whose own grandfather had conversed with fairies, in Hogg’s poetry
+the supernatural is close to the natural world. He is reported once
+to have said to his friend Sir Walter Scott: “Dear Sir Walter! Ye can
+never suppose that I belang to your School o’ Chivalry! Ye are the
+king o’ that school, but I’m the king o’ the Mountain and Fairy School,
+which is a far higher ane nor yours.”[65] This “sublime egotism” is
+not displeasing in one whose heart and soul was wrapt up in an earnest
+belief in and reverence for his art. It is the egotism of a deep nature
+which scorns to hide its talents in the earth. James Hogg spoke to the
+heart of Scotland, and was proud and content in so doing.
+
+[65] _Memorials of James Hogg_, p. x
+
+To all appearances Blackwood was now the centre of a group after his
+own heart! With these three as a nucleus, others of considerable talent
+joined the circle. Talent, wit, keen and zealous minds were theirs,
+with enough fervor and intrepidity of spirit to guarantee that “Maga”
+would never again pass unnoticed. Henceforth there was sensation
+enough to satisfy even the heart of a William Blackwood! Whatever
+accusations were afterwards levelled at “Maga” (and they were many) no
+one could again accuse it of being either dull or uninteresting--the
+one unpardonable sin of book or magazine! The last thing that “Maga”
+wished to be was neutral! Better to offend than be only “inoffensive”;
+better to raise a rumpus than grow respectable! And from October 1817
+on, “respectable” is the last word anyone thought of applying to
+_Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_First Years of “Maga”_
+
+
+With its new grip on life in October 1817, the editorial notice of
+Blackwood’s omitted any profession of a new prospectus. It reads: “In
+place of a formal Prospectus, we now lay before our Readers the titles
+of some of the articles which we have either already received, or which
+are in preparation by our numerous correspondents.” Follows some two
+pages or more of titles alluring and otherwise, whereupon the notice
+continues: “The Public will observe, from the above list of articles,
+that we intend our Magazine to be a Depository of Miscellaneous
+Information and Discussion. We shall admit every Communication of
+Merit, whatever may be the opinion of the writer, on Literature,
+Poetry, Philosophy, Statistics, Politics, Manners, and Human Life....
+We invite all intelligent persons ... to lay their ideas before the
+world in our Publication; and we only reserve to ourselves the right
+of commenting upon what we do not approve.”[66] That right was always
+reserved, and there was never any hesitancy on the part of any of them
+in acting thereon, as the magazine itself testifies.
+
+[66] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. ii, p. 2
+
+A short paragraph of “Notices to Correspondents”[67] following the
+editorial notice, is of more than casual interest. Its flavor is
+shown by the following:--
+
+“The communication of Lupus is not admissible. D. B.’s Archaeological
+Notices are rather heavy. We are obliged to our worthy Correspondent
+M. for his History of ‘Bowed David’, but all the anecdotes of that
+personage are incredibly stupid, so let his bones rest in peace.... We
+have received an interesting Note enclosing a beautiful little Poem,
+from Mr. Hector Macneil ... and need not say how highly we value his
+communication.... Duck-lane, a Town Eclogue, by Leigh Hunt--and the
+Innocent Incest by the same gentleman, are under consideration; their
+gross indecency must however be washed out. If we have been imposed
+upon by some wit, these compositions will not be inserted. Mr. James
+Thomson, private secretary for the charities of the Dukes of York
+and Kent, is, we are afraid, a very bad Poet, nor can the Critical
+Opinions of the Princes of the Blood Royal be allowed to influence
+ours.... Reason has been given for our declining to notice various
+other communications.” Many of the contributors, probably most of them,
+received personal letters; in fact, this paragraph does not appear in
+every number.
+
+[67] Same
+
+This number, _The_ number of _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, the
+startling and blood-curdling number of October 1817, contained
+among other sensations, the Chaldee Manuscript, supposedly from the
+“Bibliotheque Royale” (Salle 2, No. 53, B. A. M. M.)--in reality a
+clever and scathing piece of satire couched in Biblical language,
+which spared no one of note in the whole town of Edinburgh, and written
+by heaven knows whom! Its interest was strictly local, dealing with
+Edinburgh and Edinburgh personalities, written with the Edinburgh
+public in view; but its fame spread like wild fire! Like Byron,
+_Blackwood’s Magazine_ woke up one morning to find itself grown famous
+over night! As Mrs. Oliphant puts it: “Edinburgh woke up with a roar
+of laughter, with a shout of delight, with convulsions of rage and
+offense”. Its fame involved, however, not only the clamor of Edinburgh,
+but instant recognition throughout the kingdom. Result? Libel actions,
+challenges to duels, lawsuits, and--the suppression of the Chaldee
+Manuscript. Its fame has come down to the present day, but one peep at
+it involves carfare to the British Museum!
+
+This amazing piece of literature seems innocent enough at first glance;
+and in truth it was what people read _into_ it rather than what they
+read _in_ it that made all the trouble. Quoting from it:
+
+“I looked, and behold a man clothed in plain apparel stood in the door
+of his house: and I saw his name ... and his name was as it had been
+the color of ebony, and his number was as the number of a maiden--(17
+Princes Street, of course)....
+
+“And I turned my eyes, and behold two beasts came from the lands of
+the borders of the South; and when I saw them I wondered with great
+admiration.... And they came unto the man ... and they said unto him,
+Give us of thy wealth, that we may eat and live ... and they proffered
+him a Book; and they said unto him, Take Thou this and give us a sum
+of money, ... and we will put words into the Book that will astonish
+the children of thy people.... And the man hearkened unto their voice,
+and he took the Book and gave them a piece of money, and they went away
+rejoicing in their hearts.... But after many days they put no words in
+the Book; and the man was astonished and waxed wroth, and he said unto
+them, What is this that ye have done unto me, and how shall I answer
+those to whom I am engaged? And they said, what is that to us? See thou
+to that.”[68]
+
+[68] Mrs. Oliphant: _Annals of a Publishing House_, V. i, p. 119-20
+
+All this seems innocent tomfoolery enough--pure parody on our friend
+Ebony, and the two beasts Pringle and Cleghorn who “put no words in
+the Book”. But that was not all, Constable and the _Edinburgh Review_
+figured prominently; and Sir Walter Scott who, we are told, “almost
+choked with laughter”, and Wilson and Lockhart and Hogg.
+
+“There lived also a man that was _crafty_ in council ... and he had a
+notable horn in his forehead with which he ruled the nations. And I saw
+the horn that it had eyes, and a mouth speaking great things, and it
+magnified itself ... and it cast down the truth to the ground and it
+practised and prospered.”[69]
+
+[69] Ibid., V. i, p. 121
+
+Constable never outlived this name of the Crafty and the reputation of
+the _Edinburgh Review_ for “magnifying itself” lives to the present
+day. “The beautiful leopard from the valley of the palm-trees” (meaning
+Wilson) “called from a far country the Scorpion which delighted to
+sting the faces of men”, (Lockhart, of course) “that he might sting
+sorely the countenance of the man that is crafty, and of the two beasts.
+
+“And he brought down the great wild boar from the forest of Lebanon
+and he roused up his spirits and I saw him whittling his dreadful
+tusks for the battle.”[70] This last is James Hogg. There were others.
+Walter Scott was the “great Magician which has his dwelling in the
+old fastness hard by the river Jordan, which is by the Border”[71] to
+whom Constable, the Crafty, appealed for advice. Francis Jeffrey was
+“a familiar spirit unto whom he (the Crafty) had sold himself”.[72]
+The attack on the Rev. Prof. Playfair, later so sincerely deplored in
+_Peter’s Letters_, reads in part thus: “He also is of the seed of the
+prophets, and ministered in the temple while he was yet young; but
+he went out and became one of the scoffers”[73]--in other words, one
+of the Edinburgh Reviewers! The spirit of prophecy seems indeed to
+have been upon the writer of the Chaldee, for it ends--appropriately,
+thus: “I fled into an inner chamber to hide myself, and I heard a great
+tumult, but I wist not what it was.”[74] The great tumult was heard, to
+be sure, and the authors fled to be safe.
+
+[70] Ibid., V. i, p. 123
+
+[71] Ibid., V. i, p. 122
+
+[72] A. Lang: _Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart_, V. i, p. 161
+
+[73] Same
+
+[74] Same
+
+Just who wrote the Chaldee will never be known; but all indications
+are that the idea and first draft were James Hogg’s, and that it was
+touched up and completed by Wilson and Lockhart, with the aid, or
+rather with the suggestions and approval of William Blackwood.
+
+The number for August 1821 contains the first of a series of “Familiar
+Epistles to Christopher North, From an Old Friend with a New Face.”[75]
+Letter I deals with Hogg’s Memoirs. This is anticipating a bit,
+anticipating some four years, in fact, but is nevertheless apropos of
+our discussion of the Chaldee. Just who the Old Friend with a New Face
+was would be hard to judge. Mr. Lang has surmised him to be either
+Lockhart or De Quincey. It is a lively bit of work, worthy the wit
+of either, but the sentences do not feel like Lockhart’s. That both
+these men were friends of Hogg, encourages one to hope that the biting
+sarcasm of the thing was its own excuse for being, and came not from
+the heart. Such was ever the tone of “Maga”, however; and none can deny
+that once begun the article _must_ be read! Excerpts follow: “Of all
+speculations in the way of printed paper, I should have thought the
+most hopeless to have been ‘a Life of James Hogg, by himself’. Pray who
+wishes to know anything about his life? ...
+
+“It is no doubt undeniable that the political state of Europe is not so
+interesting as it was some years ago. But still I maintain that there
+was no demand for the Life of James Hogg.... At all events, it ought
+not to have appeared before the Life of Buonaparte.”[76]
+
+[75] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. x, p. 43
+
+[76] Same
+
+But to come again to our Chaldee Manuscript, the correspondent says
+concerning Hogg’s claim to its authorship: “There is a bouncer!--The
+Chaldee Manuscript!--Why, no more did he write the Chaldee Manuscript
+than the five books of Moses.... I presume that Mr. Hogg is also the
+author of Waverley.--He may say so if he chooses.... It must be a
+delightful thing to have such fancies as these in one’s noodle;--but
+on the subject of the Chaldee Manuscript, let me now speak the truth.
+You yourself, Kit ... and myself, Blackwood and a reverend gentleman
+of this city alone know the perpetrator. It was the same person who
+murdered Begbie!”--Begbie, by the way, was a bank porter, whose murder
+was one of the never solved mysteries of Edinburgh. “It was a disease
+with him to excite 'public emotion’. With respect to his murdering
+Begbie ... all at once it entered his brain, that, by putting him to
+death in a sharp and clever and mysterious manner ... the city of
+Edinburgh would be thrown into a ferment of consternation, and there
+would be no end of ‘public emotion’.... The scheme succeeded to a
+miracle.... Mr. ---- wrote the Chaldee Manuscript precisely on the same
+principle.... It was the last work of the kind of which I have been
+speaking, that he lived to finish. He confessed it and the murder the
+day before he died, to the gentleman specified, and was sufficiently
+penitent....
+
+“After this plain statement, Hogg must look extremely foolish. We shall
+next have him claiming the murder, likewise, I suppose; but he is
+totally incapable of either.”[77]
+
+[77] Ibid., V. x, p. 49-50
+
+It is altogether probable that Hogg’s frank avowal dismayed the men
+who had studied to keep its authorship secret for so many years,
+fearing lest the confession implicate his colleagues. At any rate,
+such vehement protestations as the above are to be eyed askance in the
+light of saner evidences. “Maga” was prone to go off on excursions of
+this kind; and William Blackwood had at last realized his dreamed-of
+Sensation! No doubt he knew the risk he took in publishing the Chaldee;
+but in the tumult which followed, he stood equal to every occasion.
+Hogg was not then in Edinburgh, and Wilson and Lockhart too thought
+it wise to leave town. The letters of the two latter to Blackwood
+during the days of the libel suits remind one of the tragic notes
+of boys of twelve a la penny dreadful! But Blackwood was firm and
+undisturbed through it all, disclaiming all responsibility himself,
+never disclosing a single name. The secret was safe and the success
+of “Maga” sure. In the November number, however, he saw fit to insert
+such statements as the following: “The Publisher is aware that every
+effort has been used to represent the admission into his Magazine of an
+article entitled “A Translation of a Chaldee Manuscript” as an offence
+worthy of being visited with a punishment that would involve in it his
+ruin as a Bookseller and Publisher. He is confident, however, that his
+conduct will not be thought by the Public to merit such a punishment,
+and to them he accordingly appeals.”[78]--And again, on a page by
+itself in the same November number appears the following statement:
+“The Editor has learned with regret that an Article in the First
+Edition of last Number, which was intended merely as a _jeu d’esprit_,
+has been construed so as to give offence to Individuals justly entitled
+to respect and regard; he has on that account withdrawn it in the
+Second Edition, and can only add, that if what has happened could have
+been anticipated, the Article in question certainly never would have
+appeared.”[79]
+
+[78] Ibid., V. ii, p. 1 of the introductory pages
+
+[79] Ibid., V. ii, p. 129
+
+Aside from the Chaldee, there were two other distinct and decided
+Sensations in this memorable number, both too well known to
+demand detailed attention. They were Wilson’s attack on Coleridge,
+“Observations on Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria”,[80] the leading
+article and a long one; and Lockhart’s paper “On the Cockney School
+of Poetry”[81]. The former is an inexcusable, ranting thing which
+concludes that Mr. Coleridge’s Literary Life strengthens every argument
+against the composition of such Memoirs”[82], ... that it exhibits
+“many mournful sacrifices of personal dignity, after which it seems
+impossible that Mr. Coleridge can be greatly respected either by
+the Public or himself.”[83] Such words were strong enough in their
+own day, but seem doubly presumptuous in the light of our present
+hero-worship,--especially as the article continues with verdicts like
+the following: “Considered merely in a literary point of view, the
+work is most execrable.... His admiration of Nature or of man,--we had
+almost said his religious feelings toward his God,--are all narrowed,
+weakened, and corrupted and poisoned by inveterate and diseased
+egotism.”...[84]
+
+[80] Ibid., V. ii, p. 3
+
+[81] Ibid., V. ii, p. 38
+
+[82] Ibid., V. ii, p. 5
+
+[83] Same
+
+[84] Same
+
+This was a sin for which “Maga” later atoned by repeated tributes to
+his genius, to his poetry and its beauty in many subsequent numbers
+of the periodical. Lockhart two years afterwards spoke of it as “a
+total departure from the principles of the Magazine”[85]--“a specimen
+of the very worst kind of spirit which the Magazine professed to
+be fighting in the _Edinburgh Review_.”[86] “This is indeed the only
+one of the various sins of this Magazine for which I am at a loss to
+discover--not an apology--but a motive. If there be any man of grand
+and original genius alive at this moment in Europe, such a man is
+Mr. Coleridge.”[87] And two months after this paper, in the issue
+for December 1817 appeared a “Letter to the Reviewer of Coleridge’s
+Biographia Literaria”, beginning with the words: “To be blind to our
+failings and alive to our prejudices, is the fault of almost every one
+of us.... It is the same with me, the same with Mr. Coleridge, and
+it is, I regret to state it, the same with his reviewer!”[88]... And
+this writer, who signs, himself J. S., sums up his valiant defense,
+declaring “it is from a love I have for generous and fair criticism,
+and a hate to everything which appears personal and levelled against
+the man and not his subject--and your writing is glaringly so--that
+I venture to draw daggers with a reviewer. You have indeed imitated,
+with not a little of its power and ability, the worst manner of the
+_Edinburgh Review_ critics. Forgetting ... that freedom of remark does
+not exclude the kind and courteous style, you have entirely sunk the
+courteousness in the virulency of it.”[89] Thus “Maga” redeemed itself
+and Coleridge was avenged.
+
+[85] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 218
+
+[86] Same
+
+[87] Same
+
+[88] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. ii, p. 285-6
+
+[89] Ibid., V. ii, p. 287
+
+As for the third of the three articles which best illustrate the
+whoopla-spirit of this new venture, Lockhart’s paper “On the Cockney
+School of Poetry”, all is said when we say it was the first of a
+series of corrosive and scurrilous articles directed against Leigh
+Hunt in particular, and Hazlitt and Webbe, and in general, the
+“younger and less important members” of that school, “The Shelley’s
+and the Keatses”! Modern critics! Beware how you cast stones at our
+Percy Smith’s and Reggie Brown’s! Says our young friend Lockhart in
+this article that Leigh Hunt is “a man of little education. He knows
+absolutely nothing of Greek, almost nothing of Latin”[90] ... and
+so forth and so on. He cannot “utter a dedication, or even a note,
+without betraying the _Shibboleth_ of low birth and low habits. He is
+the ideal of a Cockney poet.... He has never seen any mountain higher
+than Highgate-hill, nor reclined by any streams more pastoral than the
+Serpentine River. But he is determined to be a poet eminently rural,
+and he rings the changes--till one is sick of him, on the beauties of
+the different ‘high views’ which he has taken of God and nature, in
+the course of some Sunday dinner parties at which he has assisted in
+the neighborhood of London.... As a vulgar man is perpetually laboring
+to be genteel--in like manner the poetry of this man is always on the
+stretch to be grand.”[91]
+
+[90] Ibid., V. ii, p. 38
+
+[91] Ibid., V. ii, p. 39
+
+This is just a taste of what is in reality very clever stuff. The
+subject of approbation or disapprobation had best be omitted. At any
+rate “Maga” “started something”, for the term “Cockney School” was
+taken up by the major and minor Reviews and nearly every daily paper
+of England and Scotland. What Wilson said later (1832) in a review of
+Tennyson’s poems, characterizes the _Blackwood_ attitude toward the
+Cockneys from the first: “Were the Cockneys to be to church, we should
+be strongly tempted to break the Sabbath.”[92] Whatever our evaluation
+of this sort of criticism, the admission perhaps saves the reputation
+of Lockhart and other _Blackwood_ critics! Their opposition was more a
+matter of principle than of judgment.
+
+[92] J. H. Millar: _A Literary History of Scotland_, p. 506
+
+The rest of the contents of the October 1817 number are interesting
+and lively, though it must be admitted scarcely so startling as this
+famous triad. A discussion of the “Curious Meteorological Phenomena
+Observed in Argyleshire”[93] reads interestingly and rapidly, and is
+of sufficient weight to save the magazine from flying away altogether!
+“Analytical Essays on the Early English Dramatists, No. II., Marlowe’s
+Edward II”[94] is the work of John Wilson, and bears the stamp of his
+outpouring of appreciation and enthusiasm. Another article, “On the
+Optical Properties of Mother-of-Pearl, etc.”[95] seems to be a purely
+scientific offering, and so far as the writer can judge, presumably
+accurate and just as it should be. Page 47 bears side by side, a tender
+little “Elegy” of James Hogg’s and a poem in honor of the Ettrick
+Shepherd and his songs by John Wilson. “Strictures on the Edinburgh
+Review”[96] and “Remarks on the Quarterly Review”[97] are two articles
+one would scarcely go to sleep over.
+
+[93] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. ii, p. 18
+
+[94] Ibid., V. ii, p. 21
+
+[95] Ibid., V. ii, p. 33
+
+[96] Ibid., V. ii, p. 41
+
+[97] Ibid., V. ii, p. 57
+
+There are other papers in this same issue which time will not allow
+even brief mention. It is easy to picture the great publisher when the
+new copies first arrived, crisp and new with the smell of printers’ ink
+upon them. There was no despair, no disappointment this time, but the
+eager palpitation and anxiety of the parent, solicitous but equally
+certain of the success of his child! A letter penned in haste to John
+Wilson before ever “Maga” was seen by public eye betrays better than
+any polite effusion could have done, the genuine emotion of the man.
+
+  “John Wilson, Esq.
+  Queen Street
+
+  October 20, 1817
+
+My dear Sir,--As in duty bound I send you the first complete copy I
+have got of the Magazine. I also beg you will do me the favor to accept
+of the enclosed. It is unnecessary for me to say how much and how
+deeply I am indebted to you, and I shall only add that by the success
+of the Magazine (for which I shall be wholly indebted to you) I hope to
+be able to offer you something more worthy of your acceptance.--I am,
+dear Sir,
+
+  Yours very truly,
+  W. Blackwood”[98]
+
+[98] Mrs. Oliphant: _Annals of a Publishing House_, V. i, p. 127
+
+Mrs. Oliphant draws a pretty picture, which reveals better perhaps
+than some more erudite account, the mental state of William Blackwood
+the night before “Maga” was offered to the world. “He went into his
+house, where all the children ... rushed out with clamor and glee to
+meet their father, who, for once in his excitement, took no notice of
+them, but walked straight to the drawing room, where his wife, not
+excitable, sat in her household place, busy no doubt for her fine
+family; and coming into the warm glow of the light, threw down the
+precious Magazine at her feet. ‘There is that that will give you what
+is your due--what I always wished you to have’, he said, with the
+half-sobbing laugh of the great crisis. She gave him a characteristic
+word, half-satirical, as was her way, not outwardly moved.... Sometimes
+he called her a wet blanket when she thus damped his ardor,--but not, I
+think, that night.”[99]
+
+[99] Same
+
+It might easily be guessed that after the sudden bursting into glory
+of the October number, the same high level would be difficult to
+sustain. But although subsequent numbers boast no Chaldee to convulse
+or enrage the town, the popularity of “Maga” seems never again to
+lag. The November number begins properly enough. The afore-mentioned
+apology and explanation of the Chaldee introduced it to the watchful
+waiters, impatient to ascertain what a second issue would bring forth.
+The first long article, nine and a half pages, “On the Pulpit Eloquence
+of Scotland”[100], very thoughtful, very serious, very earnest, in
+tone, thanks God that Scotland has been blessed with the heavenly
+visitation of her well loved preacher, Dr. Chalmers, and extols and
+praises and appreciates the man, “like an angel in a dream”. The second
+article continues the learned discussion “On the Optical Properties
+of Mother-of-Pearl”[101]. The third is John Wilson’s famous review of
+Byron’s “Lament of Tasso”[102], wherein says he “There is one Poem in
+which he (Byron) has almost wholly laid aside all remembrance of the
+darker and stormier passions; in which the tone of his spirit and his
+voice at once is changed, and where he who seemed to care only for
+agonies, and remorse, and despair, and death, and insanity, in all
+their most appalling forms, shews that he has a heart that can feed
+on the purest sympathies of our nature, and deliver itself up to the
+sorrows, the sadness and the melancholy of humbler souls.”[103]
+
+[100] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. ii, p. 131
+
+[101] Ibid., V. ii, p. 140
+
+[102] Ibid., V. ii, p. 142
+
+[103] Ibid., V. ii, p. 143
+
+The lighter tone again asserts itself in “Letters of An Old Bachelor,
+No. 1.”[104], who waxes indignant over French opinion concerning
+English ladies! He quotes a certain French writer who represents “the
+dress of the English ladies” as mere imitation of the French, only
+“all ridicule and exaggeration. 'Does a French lady, for instance, put
+a flower in her hair--the heads of the English ladies are immediately
+covered with the whole shop of a bouquetière. Does a French lady
+put on a feather ... in this country--nothing but feathers is to be
+seen!’ This, of course”, says the old bachelor in all earnestness, “is
+all a vile slander”[105],--although he must admit having seen heads
+covered with flowers, and “ladies wearing _quite as many_ feathers
+as were becoming.”[106] He resents too that a French priest should
+accuse English ladies of having bad teeth. “Is he ignorant”, he would
+know, “that young ladies by applying to Mr. Scott, the dentist, may
+be supplied with a single tooth for the small sum of two guineas,
+while dowagers may be accommodated with a complete set of the _most
+beautiful_ teeth, made from the tusks of the hippopotamus ... for
+a very trifling consideration? In fact, it is quite astonishing,
+to see the fine teeth of all our female acquaintances;... And yet
+this abominable priest has the impudence to talk of bad teeth!”[107]
+Besides, “what ladies of any nation”, says he, “play so charmingly the
+pianoforte?”[108]
+
+[104] Ibid., V. ii, p. 192
+
+[105] Ibid., V. ii, p. 193
+
+[106] Same
+
+[107] Same
+
+[108] Ibid., V. ii, p. 194
+
+This little skit is followed by the second installment “On the Cockney
+School of Poetry”[109],--this time that well known and scandalous
+handling of Hunt’s “Story of Rimini”,--Lockhart’s again, of course.
+This was the article whose turbulent discussion of the moral depravity
+of Leigh Hunt threw Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, then Blackwood’s London
+agents, into such a state of pious horror. They evidently feared
+getting mixed up in anything livelier than antiquarian projects, and
+threatened to withdraw their name. The articles on the Cockney School
+went merrily on, however; and so did Baldwin and Cradock even until
+July 1818. No doubt they found it a paying proposition!
+
+[109] Same
+
+Sir Walter Scott tried to wean both Wilson and Lockhart away from
+“that mother of mischief”[110] as he termed the magazine. According to
+Mr. Lang, he “disapproved (though he chuckled over it) the reckless
+extravagance of juvenile satire”. But it is easy to comprehend how “a
+chuckle” from Sir Walter would be the last incentive to curb their
+literary abandon. Blackwood worked long for the support of Scott,
+knowing well what it would mean to “Maga”. A semblance of support, at
+least, he secured through his patronage of Scott’s favorite, William
+Laidlaw, whose agricultural chronicles ran for a time as one of
+the regular features. Scott even contributed an occasional article
+himself from time to time, which, though anonymous, could not escape
+recognition. Probably he never attained a very cordial affection for
+the publisher, and it is well known that he disapproved of much that
+“Maga” said and did, yet outwardly he professed neutrality between
+_Constable’s_ and _Blackwood’s_; and in a letter to William Laidlaw,
+February 1818, while “Maga” was still in its youth, his verdict is not
+vindictive. “Blackwood is rather in a bad pickle just now--sent to
+Coventry by the trade, as the booksellers call themselves and all about
+the parody of the two beasts. Surely these gentlemen think themselves
+rather formed of porcelain clay than of common potters’ ware. Dealing
+in satire against all others, their own dignity suffers so cruelly from
+an ill-imagined joke! If B. had good books to sell, he might set them
+all at defiance. His Magazine does well and beats Constable’s; but we
+will talk of this when we meet.”[111]
+
+[110] A. Lang: _Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart_, V. i, p. 193
+
+[111] J. G. Lockhart: _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, V. v, p. 268
+
+Continuing the panorama, the issue for February 1818 contains three
+pages of notes “To Correspondents”, of which several deserve mention:
+“We have no objection to insert Z.’s Remarks on Mr. Hazlitt’s Lectures,
+after our present Correspondent’s Notices are completed. If Mr. Hazlitt
+uttered personalities against the Poets of the Lake School, he reviled
+those who taught him all he knows about poetry.” This same issue was
+then starting a series of articles entitled “Notices of a Course of
+Lectures on English Poetry, by W. Hazlitt”.[112] With no personal
+comment, they give the gist of Hazlitt’s lectures at the Surrey
+Institution in London. The first article covers the lectures on “Poetry
+in General”[113], “On Chaucer and Spenser”[114], and “On Shakespeare
+and Milton”[115]. These papers ran for several months, and the promised
+Remarks of Z. do not appear in any recognizable form unless the paper
+“Hazlitt Cross-Questioned”[116] in the August issue (1818) is the
+awaited article. It is presented in the form of eight questions, the
+first: “Did you, or did you not, in the course of your late Lectures
+on Poetry, infamously vituperate and sneer at the character of Mr.
+Wordsworth--I mean his personal character; his genius even you dare not
+deny?”[117] Again--“Do you know the difference between Milton’s Latin
+and Milton’s Greek?”[118] and--“Did you not insinuate in an essay on
+Shakespeare ... that Desdemona was a lewd woman, and after that dare
+to publish a book on Shakespeare?”[119] The eighth question closes the
+article: “Do you know the Latin for a goose?”[120]
+
+[112] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. ii, p. 556
+
+[113] Same
+
+[114] Ibid., V. ii, p. 558
+
+[115] Ibid., V. ii, p. 560
+
+[116] Ibid., V. iii, p. 550
+
+[117] Same
+
+[118] Ibid., V. iii, p. 551
+
+[119] Same
+
+[120] Ibid., V. iii, p. 552
+
+But to return to our notes “To Correspondents” in February 1818, there
+remains one or two others of especial interest as illustrating the
+attitude these notes assumed. For instance: “Can C. C. believe it
+possible to pass off on us for an original composition, an extract
+from so popular a work as Mrs. Grant’s Essay on the Superstitions
+of the Highlands? May his plagiarisms, however, always be from works
+equally excellent.” Another: “The foolish parody which has been sent us
+is inadmissible for two reasons; first, because it is malevolent; and
+secondly, because it is dull.” We are inclined to think the latter was
+the decisive reason.
+
+This same issue includes the first contribution of a man who
+was henceforth to wield an important pen in the make-up of the
+magazine--one William Maginn. He was a brilliant writer, and a
+reckless, and contributed copiously. Some one has characterized him
+as “a perfectly ideal magazinist”. The article, “Some Account of the
+Life and Writings of Ensign and Adjutant Odoherty, Late of the 99th
+Regiment”[121], well reveals the serio-comic tone of his work which was
+so popular. Ensign Odoherty was destined to fill many a future page. In
+fact, Maginn was “a find”!
+
+[121] Ibid., V. ii, p. 562
+
+Quoting from this article: “One evening ... I had the misfortune,
+from some circumstances here unnecessary to mention, to be conveyed
+for a night’s lodging to the watch-house in Dublin. I had there the
+good fortune to meet Mr. Odoherty, who was likewise a prisoner. He
+was seated on a wooden stool, before a table garnished with a great
+number of empty pots of porter.... With all that urbanity of manner by
+which he was distinguished, he asked me ‘to take a sneaker of his
+swipes’.”[122] This is the Ensign Odoherty of whom it is said “Never
+was there a man more imbued with the very soul and spirit of poetry....
+Cut off in the bloom of his years, ere the fair and lovely blossoms of
+his youth had time to ripen into the golden fruit by which the autumn
+of his days would have been beautified and adorned,”[123]--etc.--“His
+wine ... was never lost on him, and, towards the conclusion of the
+third bottle he was always excessively amusing.”[124] The writer offers
+one or two specimens of Odoherty’s poetry, among them verses to a lady
+to whom he never declared himself. “This moving expression of passion”,
+we are told, “appears to have produced no effect on the obdurate fair
+one, who was then fifty-four years of age, with nine children, and
+a large jointure, which would certainly have made a very convenient
+addition to the income of Mr. Odoherty.”[125] On being appointed to
+an ensigncy in the West Indies, he sailed for Jamaica with a certain
+Captain Godolphin, and has left a charming poetical record of the trip,
+of which the following will sufficiently impress the reader:
+
+    “The captain’s wife, she sailed with him, this circumstance I heard of her,
+    Her brimstone breath, ‘twas almost death to come within a yard of her;
+    With fiery nose, as red as rose, to tell no lies I’ll stoop,
+    She looked just like an admiral with a lantern at his poop.”[126]
+
+The whole poem is not quoted, but the latter part of it gives an
+account “of how Mrs. Godolphin was killed by a cannon ball lodging in
+her stomach”[127], as well as other pathetic and moving events. In
+describing the rest of the stanzas, however, Maginn assures us, “It
+is sufficient to say they are fully equal to the preceding, and are
+distinguished by the same quaintness of imagination.”[128]!
+
+[122] Ibid., V. ii, p. 563
+
+[123] Ibid., V. ii, p. 562
+
+[124] Ibid., V. ii, p. 564
+
+[125] Ibid., V. ii, p. 566
+
+[126] Same
+
+[127] Same
+
+[128] Same
+
+This article is followed by “Notices of the Acted Drama in
+London”[129], the second of a series of sixteen articles which ran
+regularly, January 1818 to June 1820.[130] These are decidedly
+interesting,--even thrilling, if such a term may be employed,--in that
+they approach with contemporary assurance names which dramatic legend
+bids the present day revere:--Mr. Kean, Mrs. Siddons, Miss O’Neil,
+Mr. C. Kemble, and others. The first of these articles (January 1818)
+states: “our fixed opinions are few;” ... but continues further that
+one of these fixed opinions is that “it would be better for all the
+world if he (Shakespeare) could be thought of as a poet only--not as
+a writer of acting dramas. If it had not been for Mr. Kean, we should
+never have desired to see a play of Shakespeare’s acted again.”[131] As
+for Desdemona,
+
+“The gentle lady married to the Moor!--
+
+“If we had been left to ourselves we could have fancied her anything
+or anybody we liked, and have changed the fancy at our will. But, as
+it is, she is nothing to us but a slim young lady, in white satin,
+walking about on the boards of a Theatre.”[132] The writer of this
+article furthermore reminds the public: “we shall ... always have more
+to say on five minutes of genius, than on five hours of dulness.”[133]
+And--“It would also be desirable for both parties, if our Edinburgh
+readers would not forget that we write from London, and our London
+ones that we write for Edinburgh.”[134] The second installment,
+February 1818, of these dramatic notices, comes down to more specific
+criticisms.--“Perhaps we were more disgusted by this revived play, the
+Point of Honour, than we should otherwise have been, from being obliged
+to sit, and see, and hear Miss O’Neil’s delightful voice and looks cast
+away upon it.--Though they have chosen to call it a play, it is one
+of that herd of Gallo-Germanic monsters which have visited us of late
+years, under the name of Melo-Dramas;... It makes the ladies in the
+galleries and dress-boxes shed those maudlin tears that always flow
+when weak nerves are over-excited.”[135]
+
+[129] Ibid., V. ii, p. 567
+
+[130] Ibid., V. ii-vii
+
+[131] Ibid., V. ii, p. 428
+
+[132] Same
+
+[133] Ibid., V. ii, p. 429
+
+[134] Same
+
+[135] Ibid., V. ii, p. 567
+
+Needless to say, the whole tone of the magazine was not of this light
+and popular kind. Much that it published was heavy, some of it dry.
+All the preceding gives in general the atmosphere of what ensured
+the success of the budding “Maga”. It continued in this manner, but
+ever mingling the steady, the serious, the grave, with the lively
+and the scandalous. For instance in the number for April 1818 we
+find an article “On the Poor Laws of England; and Answers to Queries
+Transmitted by a Member of Parliament, with a View to Ascertaining the
+Scottish System”[136],--some four pages or more of serious discussion.
+In the same number appears “Letters on the Present State of Germany,
+Letter I”[137], earnestly setting forth the causes of discontent in
+Germany, acknowledging into the bargain, that “the triumph of human
+intellect over the sway of despotism was never made more manifest than
+it has been within the last fifty years among the Germans”[138], and
+concluding with a paragraph from our modern point of view more than
+interesting: “If the Germans have a Revolution, it will, I hope and
+trust, be calm and rational, when compared with that of the French.
+Its precursors have not been, as in France, ridicule, raillery,
+derision, impiety; but sober reflection, Christian confidence, and
+manly resolutions, gathered and confirmed by the experience of
+many sorrowful years. The sentiment is so universally diffused--so
+seriously established--so irresistible in its unity,--that I confess
+I should be greatly delighted, but not very much astonished, to
+hear of the mighty work being accomplished almost without resistance,
+and entirely without outrage.”[139] This number likewise includes an
+article discussing the “Effect of Farm Overseers on the Morals of Farm
+Servants”[140], another called “Dialogues on Natural Religion”[141],
+and a “Hospital Scene in Portugal. (Extracted from the Journal of a
+British Officer, in a series of Letters to a Friend)”[142], a graphic
+description which spares no horrible detail or opportunity for the
+pathetic.
+
+[136] Ibid., V. iii, p. 9
+
+[137] Ibid., V. iii, p. 24
+
+[138] Ibid., V. iii, p. 25
+
+[139] Ibid., V. iii, p. 29
+
+[140] Ibid., V. iii, p. 83
+
+[141] Ibid., V. iii, p. 90
+
+[142] Ibid., V. iii, p. 87
+
+The first article in the number for May 1818 is a brief but strictly
+specific “Description of the Patent Kaleidoscope, Invented by Dr.
+Brewster”[143]. This issue too presented the first of a series
+entitled “The Craniologists Review”[144], No. I being a description
+of Napoleon’s head, supposedly by “a learned German”, a Doctor Ulric
+Sternstare, who may or may not have been a _bona fide_ personage. One
+is apt to suspect, however, that these articles are by our young friend
+Lockhart. “Maga” owed many a _nomme de plume_ to Lockhart’s German
+travels; the subject matter, craniology, is one of his own hobbies,
+as later revealed in _Peter’s Letters_; and the last sentence is more
+reminiscent of the young scamp than any “learned German”! The article
+concludes: “I think him a more amiable character than that vile toad
+Frederick of Prussia, who had no moral faculties on the top of his
+head; and he will stand a comparison with every conqueror, except
+Julius Caesar, who perhaps deserved better to be loved than any other
+person guilty of an equal proportion of mischief.”[145]
+
+[143] Ibid., V. iii, p. 121
+
+[144] Ibid., V. iii, p. 146
+
+[145] Ibid., V. iii, p. 148
+
+There is a gem of an article in _Blackwood’s_ for July 1818, the
+fourth of a series of “Letters of Timothy Tickler to Eminent Literary
+Characters. Letter IV--To the Editor of _Blackwood’s Magazine_”.[146]
+Timothy Tickler was an uncle of John Wilson’s, a Mr. Robert Sym;
+but it is doubtful whether Robert Sym was the author of many, if
+any, of the compositions laid at the door of the venerable Timothy.
+This Letter IV is professedly in answer to one from the editor of
+_Blackwood’s_. Obviously it is only another device, and a clever
+one, to discuss the merits of “Maga”, and make a stab at the Whigs
+and the _Edinburgh Review_. Old Timothy says, “You wish to have my
+free and candid opinion of your work in general, and I will now try
+to answer your queries in a satisfactory way. Your Magazine is far
+indeed from being a ‘faultless monster, which the world ne’er saw’;
+for it is full of faults, and most part of the world has seen it....
+Just go on, gradually improving Number after Number, and you will
+make a fortune.”[147] Seeming criticism, then a sudden tooting of the
+Blackwood horn, seeming praise of Constable, then a flash and a dig,
+characterize the article throughout. He continues: “You go on to ask
+me what I think of Constable’s Magazine? Oh! my dear Editor, you are
+fishing for a compliment from old Timothy again!--I have seen nothing
+at all comparable to it during the last three score and ten years.
+Thank you, _en passant_, for the Numbers of it you have sent me. Almost
+anything does for our minister to read.”[148] He concludes thus: “I
+shall have an opportunity of writing you again soon ... when I hope to
+amuse you with certain old-fashioned whimsies of mine about the Whigs
+of Scotland, whom I see you like no more than myself.”[149]
+
+[146] Ibid., V. iii, p. 461
+
+[147] Same
+
+[148] Ibid., V. iii, p. 461-2
+
+This is followed by a very brief sketch of the “Important Discovery
+of Extensive Veins and Rocks of Chromate of Iron in the Shetland
+Islands”[149]; and this in turn by a “Notice of the Operations
+Undertaken to Determine the Figure of the Earth, by M. Biot, of the
+Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1818”,[150] eleven pages in length, and
+though decidedly statistical, discursive and meditative enough in tone
+to interest more than the merely scientific reader.
+
+[149] Ibid., V. iii, p. 463
+
+[150] Same
+
+The less said about the poetry in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ the better.
+Most of it is pretty poor stuff. It is strange, with men like
+Wordsworth and Coleridge and Byron living, that “Maga” should print
+such feeble verse--all the more strange when those responsible for
+the periodical were such venerators of intellectual power and so ably
+appreciative. The Wordsworthian influence is largely reflected in
+much of the _Blackwood_ verse, in fact the Wordsworthian love for
+the simple and the commonplace is reflected to such an extent that
+it assumes the aspect of the commonplace run to seed. Of course,
+opposition to the Cockney School was pure principle on the part of
+the magazine; and no matter what fine poetry “the Shelley’s and
+the Keatses” produced, “Maga” must per necessity say nay! With the
+exception of some of the verse of James Hogg, and occasional bits like
+the anonymous “To My Dog”[151] in the issue for January 1818, there
+is practically nothing to hold one spellbound. There is a good deal
+of satiric verse on the order of that by “Ensign Odoherty”, already
+sampled. The first twelve volumes of the magazine contain much lengthy
+and serious verse bearing the signature Δ, whom we know to have been
+David M. Moir, “The amiable Delta” of the Blackwood group. His poetry
+takes no hold upon us of the present hour, but strangely enough, men
+like Tennyson, Jeffrey, Lockhart, found it praiseworthy, and even
+Wordsworth. It must be of some value if Wordsworth praised it who was
+not often known to show interest in any poetry but his own.
+
+[151] Ibid., V. ii, p. 378
+
+The number for March 1822 began the “Noctes Ambrosianae”[152], which
+continued till February 1835[153]. These papers are too well known to
+demand much mention here. Suffice it to say that during their career,
+they were the most popular and eagerly read feature of all periodical
+literature of the time.
+
+[152] Ibid., V. xi, p. 369
+
+[153] Ibid., V. xi-xxxvii
+
+In July 1820, Lockhart reviewed Washington Irving’s “Knickerbocker’s
+History of New York”[154]. All mention of such papers as “Extracts
+from Mr. Wastle’s Diary”, which made its first appearance in March
+1820[155], can scarcely be omitted. It is the Mr. Wastle of _Peter’s
+Letters_ whom Lockhart makes responsible for this series, which, like
+the compositions of Timothy Tickler, is but another device for merry
+making over local events and persons.
+
+[154] Ibid., V. vii, p. 360
+
+[155] Ibid., V. vi, p. 688
+
+Interesting reviews of now famous books, wholesale massacre of now
+worshipped men, sweeping conclusions historical and political, among
+them at times such momentous verdicts as appeared in May 1819, that “no
+great man can have a small nose”[156]--such marked the progress and
+reputation of the magazine. Whether we feel we can exalt wholly and
+unreservedly _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, we can at least heartily
+agree with Lockhart when he says: “I think the valuable part of The
+Materials is so great as to furnish no inconsiderable apology for the
+mixture of baser things.”[157] Moreover, it did more to counteract the
+influence of the _Edinburgh Review_ than any other periodical living or
+dead.[158]
+
+[156] Ibid., V. v, p. 159
+
+[157] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 225
+
+[158] This discussion makes no pretense at finality. Treatment herein
+has been cursory and suggestive, not exhaustive. A vast and fruitful
+field remains untouched.
+
+
+
+
+_Bibliography_
+
+
+Biography and Criticism
+
+Cambridge History of English Literature, V. xii, 6. New York
+and Cambridge, 1916
+
+Douglas, Sir George. The Blackwood Group. Edinburgh, 1897
+
+Elton, Oliver. A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830.
+V. i, 13. London, 1912
+
+Encyclopedia Britannica, eleventh edition. Article on
+“The Periodical Press after 1800” by
+H. R. Tedder
+
+Lang, Andrew. Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart. 2 vols.
+London, 1897
+
+Lockhart, John Gibson. Life of Sir Walter Scott, V. v, Edinburgh,
+1902-3
+
+   "        "    "   . Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk. 3 vols.
+Edinburgh, 1819
+
+Memorials of James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd, by his Daughter,
+Mrs. Garden. London, 1903
+
+Millar, J. H. A Literary History of Scotland. New York, 1903
+
+Oliphant, M. O. Annals of a Publishing House. William
+Blackwood and His Sons. V. i. Edinburgh
+and London, 1897-8
+
+Saintsbury, G. Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860.
+New York, 1895
+
+
+Works
+
+Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Vols. i-xiv. Edinburgh
+and London, 1817-23
+
+Hogg, James. The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd. Prose and
+Poetry. Ed. Rev. Thomas Thomson.
+London, 1869
+
+Maginn, William. Miscellanies, Prose and Verse. 2 vols.
+London, 1885
+
+Wilson, John. Works. Ed. Prof. Ferrier. 12 vols.
+Edinburgh, 1855-8
+
+
+[Transcriber’s Note:
+
+Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Early History of Blackwood's Edinburgh
+Magazine, by Alice Mary Doane
+
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+    Early History of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
+Early History of Blackwood’s Edinburgh MagazineEARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, by Alice Mary Doane. -- a Project Gutenberg eBook
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Early History of Blackwood's Edinburgh
+Magazine, by Alice Mary Doane
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Early History of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
+
+Author: Alice Mary Doane
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2015 [EBook #50343]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg"
+alt="" />
+<p class="copy">The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_i">i</span></p>
+
+<h1>
+EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE<br />
+
+<span class="medium">BY<br />
+
+ALICE MARY DOANE<br />
+A. B. Earlham College, 1914<br />
+
+THESIS<br />
+
+Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the<br />
+
+Degree of<br />
+
+MASTER OF ARTS<br />
+
+IN ENGLISH<br />
+
+IN<br />
+
+THE GRADUATE SCHOOL<br />
+
+OF THE<br />
+
+UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS<br />
+
+1917</span>
+</h1>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ii">ii</span></p>
+
+<div class="table">
+<h2 id="UNIVERSITY_OF_ILLINOIS">UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GRADUATE SCHOOL</h3>
+
+<span class="table">
+<span class="antiqua">June 1</span> 191<span class="antiqua">7</span><br />
+<br />
+I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION<br />
+BY <span class="antiqua">Mary Alice Doane</span><br />
+ENTITLED <span class="antiqua">Early History of Blackwood’s Magazine</span><br />
+<br />
+------------------------------------------------------<br />
+BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE<br />
+DEGREE OF <span class="antiqua">Master of Arts in English</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="antiqua">Jacob Zeitlin</span><br />
+In Charge of Thesis<br />
+<br />
+<span class="antiqua">Frank W Scott</span><br />
+Head of Department<br />
+<br />
+Recommendation concurred in:<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</a><br />
+<br />
+--------------------  }  Committee<br />
+--------------------  }  on<br />
+--------------------  }  Final Examination<a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</a><br />
+</span>
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">1</a>
+Required for doctor’s degree but not for master’s.</p></div><br />
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">iii</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#I">I</a></td>
+    <td><a href="#I">Introduction</a></td>
+    <td>p. 1-15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#II">II.</a></td>
+    <td><a href="#II">Genesis</a></td>
+    <td>p. 16-29</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#III">III.</a></td>
+    <td><a href="#III">Dramatis Personae</a></td>
+    <td>p. 30-36</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"><a href="#IV">IV.</a></td>
+    <td><a href="#IV">First Years of “Maga”</a></td>
+    <td>p. 37-67</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td><a href="#Bibliography">Bibliography</a></td>
+    <td>p. 68-69</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">1</span></p>
+
+<p class="ph1">EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE</p>
+
+<h2 id="I">I<br />
+
+<i>Introduction</i><a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</a></h2>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">2</a>
+The information in this chapter is taken from the following:
+Oliver Elton: <i>A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830</i>
+(Arnold, London, 1912) V. i, ch. 13
+<br />
+<i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i> (Cambridge, 1916)
+V. xii, ch. 6
+<br />
+John Gibson Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk</i>
+(Edinburgh, 1819) V. i, ii</p></div>
+
+<p>People love to be shocked! That explains the
+present circulation of <i>Life</i>. It explains, too, the clamor with
+which Edinburgh received the October number of <i>Blackwood’s
+Edinburgh Magazine</i> in 1817. For the first time in periodical
+history, the reading public was actually thrilled and completely
+shocked! Edinburgh held up its hands in horror, looked pious,
+wagged its head&mdash;and bought up every number! It is a strange
+parallel, perhaps, <i>Life</i> and <i>Blackwood’s</i>,&mdash;yet not so strange.
+It is hard at first glance to understand how those yellow,
+musty old pages could have been so shocking which now seem to
+have lost all savor for the man in the street. But before we
+can appreciate just how shocking <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i> was, or
+why, it will be necessary first to remember the Edinburgh of
+those days, and the men who thought and fought in those pages,
+and the then state of periodical literature.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">2</span></p>
+
+<p>When we call <i>Blackwood’s</i> the first <i>real</i> magazine it
+is by virtue of worth, not fact. There were numerous periodicals
+preceding and contemporary with it. Most of them have never
+been heard of by the average citizen, and no doubt oblivion is
+the kindest shroud to fold them in. The <i>Monthly Review</i>, founded
+in 1749, was the oldest. It ran till 1845 and is remembered
+chiefly for the fact that it had decided Whiggish leanings
+with a touch of the Nonconformist. <i>The Critical Review</i>, a Tory
+organ, ran from 1756 to 1817, the natal year of “Maga”, as
+<i>Blackwood’s</i> was fondly dubbed. <i>The British Critic</i>, 1793-1843,
+was a mouthpiece for High Church opinion; and <i>The Christian
+Observer</i>, 1802-1857, served the same purpose for the evangelicals.
+<i>The Anti-Jacobin</i>, 1797-98, was almost the only journal of the
+time where talent or wit appeared often enough not to be accidental,
+and it ran only eight months. <i>The Gentleman’s Magazine</i>,
+1731-1868, has come in for a small share of immortality, but
+could never aspire to be considered a “moulder of opinion”. It
+published good prose and verse, and articles of antiquarian and
+literary tone; its scholarship was fair. When this is said,
+all is said.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Edinburgh Review</i> and <i>The Quarterly</i> are the
+only two besides <i>Blackwood’s</i> which come down to the Twentieth
+Century with any degree of lasting fame. In 1755 had appeared
+the first <i>Edinburgh Review</i> “to be published every six months”.
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span>
+It survived only two numbers, being too radical and self-sufficient
+in certain philosophical and religious views for that day of
+orthodoxy. In October 1802 the first number of the <i>Edinburgh
+Review and Critical Journal</i>, a quarterly, appeared, which according
+to the advertisement in the first number was to be “distinguished
+for the selection rather than for the number of its
+articles”.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</a> Its aim was to enlighten and guide the public mind
+in the paths of literature, art, science, politics,&mdash;with perhaps
+a bit of emphasis on the words <i>guide</i> and <i>politics</i>. Francis
+Jeffrey, of whom Lockhart, later one of the leading lights of
+<i>Blackwood’s</i>, says, “It is impossible to conceive the existence
+of a more fertile, teeming intellect”,<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> was the first editor
+and remained so until 1829. In the first number, October 1802,
+there were twenty-nine articles, contributed by Sydney Smith,
+Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Brougham, and Thomson, Murray and Hamilton.
+During its first three years the <i>Review</i> distinguished
+itself by adding such names to its list as Walter Scott, Playfair,
+John Allen, George Ellis, and Henry Hallam. With such pens
+supporting it, it would have been strange if it had not been
+readable. There was indeed an air of vitality and energy throughout,
+which distinguished it from any of its forerunners; it spoke
+as one having authority; and men turned as instinctively to
+Francis Jeffrey and the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> for final verdicts, as
+it never entered their heads to seriously consider the <i>Gentleman’s
+Magazine</i> or even the <i>Quarterly</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">3</a>
+<i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i>, V. xii, ch. 6, p. 157</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">4</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 61</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">4</span></p>
+
+<p>This first number, October 1802, is as representative
+as any. Jeffrey wrote the first article, reviewing a book
+on the causes of the revolution by Mounier, late president of
+the French National Assembly. There was an article by Francis
+Horner on “The Paper Credit of Great Britain”; one by Brougham
+on “The Crisis in the Sugar Colonies”. Another by Jeffrey, a
+criticism of Southey’s “Thalaba”, indicates the young editor’s
+intention to live up to the motto of the <i>Review</i>:&mdash;“<i>Judex damnatur
+cum nocens absolvitur</i>&mdash;The Judge is damned when the offender is
+freed”. With Jeffrey anything new in the world of letters was
+taboo, and Southey he considered “a champion and apostle” of a
+school of poetry which was nothing if not new. Quoting him:
+“Southey is the first of these brought before us for judgment,
+and we cannot discharge our inquisitorial office conscientiously
+without pronouncing a few words upon the nature and tendency of
+the tenets he has helped to propagate”.<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">5</a> Notice that Jeffrey
+uses the term “inquisitorial office”, therein pleading guilty to
+the very attitude of which Lockhart accused him, and in opposition
+to which in <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i> he later took such a decided
+stand, offending how similarly, we are later to discover.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">5</a>
+<i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i>, V. xii, ch. 6, p. 159</p></div>
+
+<p>Lockhart admired Jeffrey and praised his talents; it
+was the use to which he put those talents that Lockhart assailed.
+The following words of Lockhart’s own, even though tinged with
+that exaggerated vindictiveness so characteristic of him, give
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">5</span>
+a pretty fair idea of the attitude he and all the Blackwood
+group took against Jeffrey and the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>; and shows
+the spirit underlying the rivalry that took root before ever
+<i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i> existed and prevailed for ever after.
+“Endowed by nature with a keen talent for sarcasm (Jeffrey, that
+is) nothing could be more easy for him than to fasten, with the
+destructive effect of nonchalance upon a work which had perhaps
+been composed with much earnestness of thought on the part of
+the author.... The object of the critic, however, is by no
+means to assist those who read his critical lucubrations, to
+enter with more facility, or with better preparation into the
+thoughts or feelings or truths which his author endeavors to
+inculcate or illustrate. His object is merely to make the author
+look foolish; and he prostitutes his own fine talents, to enable
+the common herd”<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">6</a>&mdash;to look down upon the deluded author who is
+victim of the <i>Review</i>. This is what Lockhart considered Jeffrey
+to be doing, and he was not alone in his opinion. It is to be
+remembered, however, that Lockhart’s attitude was always more
+tense, keener, and a little more bitter than others’, yet his
+words better than any one else’s sound the keynote of the
+deadly opposition to the <i>Review</i> which “Maga” assumed from the
+first. Quoting him again, "<i>The Edinburgh Review</i> cared very
+little for what might be done, or might be hoped to be done,
+provided it could exercise a despotic authority in deciding on
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">6</span>
+the merits of what <i>was</i> done. Nobody could ever regard this
+work as a great fostering-mother of the infant manifestations
+of intellectual and imaginative power. It was always sufficiently
+plain, that in all things its chief object was to support
+the credit of its own appearance. It praised only where praise
+was extorted&mdash;and it never praised even the highest efforts of
+contemporary genius in the spirit of true and genuine earnestness
+which might have been becoming”.<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> Lockhart never quite forgave
+Jeffrey for failing instantly to recognize the genius of Wordsworth.
+He continues, of the Reviewers: “They never spoke out
+of the fulness of the heart in praising any one of our great
+living poets, the majesty of whose genius would have been quite
+enough to take away all ideas except those of prostrate respect”.<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">8</a>
+Taking all of Lockhart’s impetuosity with a pinch of salt, the
+fact remains undeniably true that the <i>Edinburgh</i> assumed the
+patronizing air of bestowing rather than recognizing honor when
+it praised.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">6</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 130</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">7</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 207</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">8</a>
+Ibid, V. ii, p. 208</p></div>
+
+<p>Among the builders of the <i>Edinburgh</i> Henry Brougham
+stands one of the foremost. In five years he contributed as
+many as eighty articles, an average of four each number, and it
+is said that he once wrote an entire number. He was capable of
+it! Brougham was a powerful politician, but unfortunately did
+not limit his contributions to political subjects. He wrote
+scientific, legal and literary papers as well, with the air of
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span>
+one whose mandates go undisputed. Undisputed they did go,
+too. In fact Brougham just escaped being a genius! He made a
+big splash in his own little world and age, but his fame has
+not outlived him. Another prominent contributor was Sydney
+Smith, a man of no small reputation as a humorist. He earnestly
+applied his talents to the forwarding of serious causes, and
+talents undoubtedly he had; but the wit of his style, according
+to the Hon. Arthur R. D. Elliot, erstwhile editor of the <i>Review</i>,
+its cleverness and jollity, prevented many from recognizing the
+genuine sincerity of his character.</p>
+
+<p>By the end of 1806, Sir Walter Scott had contributed
+twelve articles in all, among them papers on Ellis’s “Early
+English Poets”, on Godwin’s “Life of Chaucer”, on Chatterton’s
+“Works”, on Froissart’s “Chronicles”. After 1806, he withdrew
+from the <i>Review</i>, and politics became the more prominent feature.
+No account of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> has ever been given, written
+or told without including a remark of Jeffrey’s to Sir Walter
+Scott in a letter about this time. It would never do to omit it
+here! The remark is this: “The <i>Review</i>, in short, has but two
+legs to stand on. Literature, no doubt, is one of them: but
+its <i>Right Leg</i> is Politics.”<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> Scott’s ideal was to keep it literary;
+and his break was on account of its excessive Whiggism.
+In Jeffrey’s mind, however, <i>The Edinburgh Review</i> was destined
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span>
+to save the nation! He championed the causes of Catholic
+emancipation, of popular education, prison reform, even some
+small degree of justice in Ireland, et cetera, all flavored, of
+course, with the saving grace of Whiggism.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">9</a>
+Elton: <i>A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830</i>. V. i, p. 387</p></div>
+
+<p>Modern critics more than once have characterized
+Jeffrey as that “once-noted despot of letters”. But it is not
+fair only to be told that Jeffrey once said of Wordsworth’s
+Excursion, “This will never do!” That he considered the end of
+The Ode to Duty “utterly without meaning”; and that the Ode on
+Intimations of Immortality was “unintelligible”; that he ignored
+Shelley, and committed other like unpardonable sins. Those things
+are true and known and by them is he judged, but they are not <i>all</i>
+by which he should be judged by any means! There is no doubt
+in the world but what Jeffrey’s mind was cast in a superior
+mould. Lockhart himself has already testified there could not
+be “a more fertile, teeming intellect”. He was seldom, if ever,
+profound, we admit; but even the most grudging critic must grant
+him that large, speculative understanding and shrewd scrutiny so
+prominent in his compositions. Imagination, fancy, wit, sarcasm
+were his own, but not the warm and saving quality of humor. He
+was a great man and a brilliant criticiser, though hardly a great
+critic. The great critic is the true prophet and Jeffrey was no
+prophet. As late as 1829 in an article on Mrs. Hemans in the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i>, he wrote: “Since the beginning of our critical
+career we have seen a vast deal of beautiful poetry pass into
+oblivion in spite of our feeble efforts to recall or retain it
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span>
+in remembrance. The tuneful quartos of Southey are already
+little better than lumber:&mdash;and the rich melodies of Keats
+and Shelley,&mdash;and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth,&mdash;and
+the plebeian pathos of Crabbe,&mdash;are melting fast from the
+field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his
+poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into
+distance and dimness, except where they have been married to
+immortal music; and the blazing star of Byron himself is receding
+from its place of pride.”<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> Herein he only redeems himself
+from his early condemnation of Wordsworth and Shelley and
+Southey, to damn himself irrevocably in our eyes again with his
+amazing lack of foresight! No! Jeffrey was no prophet. He
+had not the range of vision of the true critic, and “where
+there is no vision the people perish”. This was indeed an
+epitaph written a century ago for a grave not even yet in view.
+It must not be hastily concluded from this, however, that all
+the criticism in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> was poor stuff. A vast
+amount of it was splendid work; the best output of the best
+minds of the time; and it was the one and only authentic and
+readable journal for years. This is corroborated by a statement
+of Sir Walter Scott’s in a letter to George Ellis: “No genteel
+family can pretend to be without the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>; because,
+independent of its politics, it gives the only valuable literary
+criticisms that can be met with.”<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">11</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">10</a>
+Elton: <i>A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830</i>, V. i, p. 390</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">11</a>
+<i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i>, V. xii, p. 164</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span></p>
+
+<p>But it was high time for a new periodical of
+opposite politics and fresh outlook; and in 1809 Gifford was
+established as editor of <i>The Quarterly Review</i>. Its four
+pillars were politics, literature, scholarship, and science;
+but its main purpose was to oppose the <i>Edinburgh</i> and create
+an intellectual nucleus for the rallying of the Tories. In
+October 1808 after plans were well on foot, Scott wrote to
+Gifford, prospective editor: “The real reason for instituting
+the new publication is the disgusting and deleterious doctrines
+with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages.”<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">12</a>
+This of course was a reference to the political policies of
+the <i>Edinburgh</i>, yet the tone of the <i>Quarterly</i> was not to be one
+of political opposition only. Scott was eager for the success
+of the first number and wrote nearly a third of it himself.
+Later he busied himself to enlist the services of Southey and
+Rogers and Moore and Kirkpatrick Sharpe as contributors. Southey
+wrote altogether about one hundred articles on subjects varying
+from Lord Nelson to the Poor Laws. Scott himself contributed
+about thirty with his usual versatility of subject matter, all
+the way from fly fishing to Pepys’ Diary. In the issue for
+January 1817 he even reviewed “Tales of my Landlord” and “ventured
+to attribute them to the author of Waverley and Guy
+Mannering.”! John Wilson Croker, satirist, was another prominent
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span>
+contributor, narrow of mind and heart, intolerant of soul.
+He was an accurate and able “argu-fier” however, and one of
+the ruling genii in the politics of the <i>Quarterly</i>. In forty-five
+years he contributed something like two hundred and fifty-eight
+articles. Sir John Barrow, traveller and South African
+statesman, contributed much and copiously, multitudinous
+reviews and voyages, all in his unvarying “solid food” style
+and tone. Hallam and Sharon Turner wrote historical papers;
+Ugo Fosculo wrote on Italian classics. Such was the tone of
+the <i>Quarterly</i>. It took itself seriously, and was evidently
+always taken seriously. But no modern would consider those
+dim old pages of criticism as a criterion to the literature of
+that age. It was too heavy to be sensitive to new excellencies,
+too intent on upholding failing causes to recognize new ones.
+In truth, it was a periodical strangely unresponsive to artistic
+or literary excellence or attainment. By 1818 and 1819 its
+circulation was almost 14,000&mdash;practically the same as the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i>; but the <i>Quarterly</i> never made the stir the
+<i>Edinburgh</i> did. Ellis spoke truth when he pronounced it, “Though
+profound, notoriously and unequivocally dull”.<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">13</a> Gifford
+remained editor until 1824; then John Taylor Coleridge ascended
+the throne for two years, and after that, Lockhart.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">12</a>
+<i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i>, V. xii, p. 165</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">13</a>
+<i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i>, V. xii, p. 166</p></div>
+
+<p>Concerning the <i>Scots Magazine</i> which seemed to be
+dying a natural death about the time of the initial impulse of
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span>
+“Maga”, Lockhart writes: “It seems as if nothing could be
+more dull, trite and heavy than the bulk of this ancient
+work.”<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">14</a> An occasional contribution by Hazlitt or Reynolds
+enlivened it a bit, but only served to emphasize in contrast
+the duller parts.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">14</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 227</p></div>
+
+<p>The name of Leigh Hunt can scarcely be omitted from
+this panorama, though here it is the journalist rather than the
+journal which attracts attention. At various times he edited
+various publications, ten in all, and all of them more or less
+short-lived and unsuccessful. Among them was the <i>Reflector</i>
+(1810-11), a quarterly which is remembered mainly because
+Hunt was its editor and Charles Lamb one of its contributors.
+Most noteworthy of his periodical projects was the <i>Examiner</i>,
+a newspaper which he began to edit (1808) for his brother, and
+continued to do so for the space of some thirteen years. It
+professed no political allegiance, but was enough outspoken in
+its radical views to land both Leigh Hunt and his brother in
+prison, after printing an article on the Prince Regent. Among
+other things of interest, it started a department of theatrical
+criticism; and on the whole, with men like Hazlitt and Lamb
+contributing, it could not escape being interesting. The
+Blackwood group later reacted to it and its editor as a bull
+does to a red rag, testifying at least that it was far from
+nondescript.
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span></p>
+
+<p>The <i>London Magazine</i> did not start until two years
+after <i>Blackwood’s</i>, and we will dismiss it with only a few words.
+It was a periodical fashioned after the sprightlier manner
+which <i>Blackwood’s</i>, too, strove to maintain. They were bitter
+rivals from the first; and as to which was the more bitter, the
+more stinging in its personalities, it would be hard to judge.
+At one time matters even reached such a pitch that John Scott,
+the <i>London’s</i> first editor, and Lockhart found it necessary to
+“meet on the sod”. The <i>London</i> put forth many fine things. In
+September 1821 it gave to the public “Confessions of an Opium
+Eater” by a certain Thomas De Quincey. A year later it offered
+“A Dissertation on Roast Pig” by an author then not so well
+known as now. A poem or two of one John Keats appeared in its
+pages; and when all is said, there is no doubt that the <i>London
+Magazine</i> did at times splendidly illumine the poetry of the
+age. It ran from 1820 to 1829.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in brief was the periodical world. The quarterly
+reviews were avowedly pretentious, never amusing, not creative.
+Contents were limited to political articles, to pompous dissertations
+and reviews. There were no stories, no verse, nothing
+unbending, never a touch of fantasy. Their political flavor
+was the least of their sins. A touch of the Radical, the Whig
+or the Tory is a real contribution to the history of literature,
+wherein it inevitably involves great historic divisions of the
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span>
+thought of a nation concerning life and art. No. Our quarrel,
+like <i>Blackwood’s</i>, is on the ground of their rigidity. It is
+well to hold fast that which is good; but it is not well to
+insistently oppose and blind oneself and others to the changing
+order and the forward march of men and letters.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing what we do of Jeffrey and the <i>Edinburgh
+Review</i> it is easy to comprehend what prompted Lockhart’s pen
+to say: “It is, indeed, a very deplorable thing to observe in
+what an absurd state of ignorance the majority of educated
+people in Scotland have been persuaded to keep themselves, concerning
+much of the best and truest literature of their own
+age, as well as of the ages that have gone by”.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">15</a>... His
+quarrel is ours for the nonce, and to comprehend the spirit of
+“Maga” it is first necessary to comprehend the spirit which
+prompted much for which it is so rigorously criticised. Lockhart
+speaks of the “facetious and rejoicing ignorance” of the
+Reviewers. “I do not on my conscience believe”, says he in
+Peter’s Letters, “that there is one Whig in Edinburgh to whom
+the name of my friend Charles Lamb would convey any distinct or
+definite idea.... They do not know even the names of some
+of the finest poems our age has produced. They never heard of
+<i>Ruth</i> or <i>Michael</i>, or <i>The Brothers</i> or <i>Hartleap Well</i>, or the <i>Recollections
+of Infancy</i> or the <i>Sonnets to Buonaparte</i>. They do not
+know that there is such a thing as the description of a churchyard
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span>
+in <i>The Excursion</i>. Alas! how severely is their ignorance
+punished in itself”!<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">16</a> Perhaps we can forgive the egotistic
+note in the following words, also from Peter’s Letters:
+“There is no work which has done so much to weaken the authority
+of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> in such matters as <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>.”<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">17</a>
+<i>Blackwood’s</i> is at least still readable which is more than can
+be said of most of its contemporaries. Though it did not, like
+the <i>London</i>, discover a Charles Lamb or a De Quincey, it did and
+does still overflow with the forging energy and ardent enthusiasms
+of youth. Besides the famous “Noctes Ambrosianae” for the most
+part attributed to John Wilson, it published good short stories,
+good papers by James Hogg, John Galt, and others, good verse,
+much generous as well as much vindictive criticism. It opened
+up new fields of interest: German, Italian and Norse letters, all
+hitherto but slightly touched upon. But we anticipate,&mdash;and
+must needs begin at the beginning.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">15</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 141</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">16</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 142, 143</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">17</a>
+Ibid. V. ii, p. 144</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span></p>
+
+<h2 id="II">II<br />
+
+<i>Genesis</i></h2>
+
+<p>We are told that William Blackwood grew impatient
+of “humdrum bookselling”, and considering the spirited character
+of the man, it is easy to believe. That hardly explains the
+whole truth concerning the origin of “Maga”, however. The history
+of <i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i> might almost be considered the
+history of the struggle between two rival booksellers, Mr. Constable
+and William Blackwood. The personality of the man William
+Blackwood is no less interesting than the personality of his magazine,
+and indeed, his was the spirit which colored the periodical
+from start to finish. His energy and acumen were of the sort
+which leave their mark on all they touch. To know William Blackwood
+means to see his vigorous, unwearying figure through and behind
+every page. Lockhart knew him as well as any, and it is his
+able portraiture that follows: “He is a nimble active-looking man
+of middle-age, and moves about from one corner to another with
+great alacrity, and apparently under the influence of high animal
+spirits. His complexion is very sanguineous, but nothing can be
+more intelligent, keen and sagacious than the expression of the
+whole physiognomy, above all, the grey eyes and eyebrows as
+full of locomotion as those of Catalini. The remarks he makes
+are in general extremely acute.... The shrewdness and decision of
+the man can, however, stand in need of no testimony beyond what
+his own conduct has afforded&mdash;above all, in the establishment
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span>
+of his Magazine,&mdash;(the conception of which I am convinced was
+entirely his own), and the subsequent energy with which he has
+supported it through every variety of good and evil fortune.”<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">18</a>
+Lockhart was in a position to know the true character of the
+man, for these words were written two years after his own first
+connection with William Blackwood and his periodical. Again, he
+describes the publisher as “a man of strong talents, and though
+without anything that could be called learning, of very respectable
+information, ... acute, earnest, eminently zealous in
+whatever he put his hand to; upright, honest, sincere and courageous”.<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">19</a>
+This was William Blackwood, and it is small wonder such
+a man should grow weary of “humdrum bookselling”.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">18</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 188</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">19</a>
+A. Lang: <i>Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart</i>, V. i, p. 121</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i> was the result of
+more stringent stimuli, however, than the restlessness of its
+founder. It was necessary that the sentiments of those opposed
+to Jeffrey and the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> should have a medium of
+expression. Blackwood considered the <i>Quarterly</i> “too ponderous,
+too sober, dignified and middle-aged”<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">20</a> to frustrate the influence
+of the <i>Edinburgh</i>. It was not stimulating, in other words, and the
+present day agrees with him. His ideal was a magazine “more
+nimble, more frequent, more familiar”. But not least among the
+many stirrings of mind and brain which gave rise to “Maga” was
+Blackwood’s disappointment over the loss of the Waverley series.
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span>
+The honesty and courage of the man need no other evidence
+than the fact that he criticised “The Black Dwarf” and even
+suggested a different ending. Scott, of course, would have none
+of his meddling, and transferred his future dealings to Constable,
+publisher of the despised <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, and the <i>Scots Magazine</i>,
+which was at that moment more or less insignificant. It
+is evident that Blackwood did not take pains to seek out any
+specious circumlocution in his criticism, and the idea that any
+man should criticise the Great Wizard of the North brings a
+catch to the breath and a tingling down one’s spinal column!</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">20</a>
+Mrs. Oliphant: <i>Annals of a Publishing House</i>, V. i, p. 97</p></div>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that the politics, the conceit,
+the unappreciative and at times irreligious tone of the <i>Edinburgh
+Review</i> were the main reasons for the bitter hatred of the
+<i>Blackwood</i> writers; but there is less doubt that thus to lose
+the Waverley series was a last incendiary straw to William Blackwood.
+He immediately set about putting in action the plans
+which had been smouldering so long.</p>
+
+<p>In April 1817 appeared the first number of <i>Blackwood’s
+Edinburgh Magazine</i>. There seems to be a general understanding
+among bibliographers that the first numbers were known
+as the “Edinburgh Monthly Magazine”. According to the old
+volumes themselves, however, only the second number, the
+issue for May 1817, went by this title, the initial number and
+all the rest bearing the heading, <i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>.<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">21</a>
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span>
+Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn were the first joint
+editors, it was probably through James Hogg, known to us as the
+Ettrick Shepherd, that Blackwood first met these two men. If
+either of them could boast any literary pretensions, it was
+the younger, Thomas Pringle. He was from Hogg’s country, and
+Blackwood thought he divined in him the making of just such
+another “rustic genius” as Hogg. Cleghorn, former editor of
+the <i>Farmers’ Magazine</i>, was evidently a stick! It is difficult
+to conceive how William Blackwood, with his gift of insight,
+could give over the conduct of his pet plans into the hands
+of such a pair. But if he made a mistake, he soon made amends.
+Of the business arrangements between Blackwood and the two
+editors little of definite nature is known, except that the
+three were to be co-partners. Blackwood sustained the expense
+of publishing and printing; Pringle and Cleghorn supplied the
+material;&mdash;and the profits were to be divided! The editors
+expected &pound;50 apiece per month, which seems unusual, considering
+that the circulation never exceeded 2500. It looks suspiciously
+probable that the early numbers were maintained at real financial
+loss to the publisher. There is no mention of paying contributors
+till later years. Very likely at that time writers were
+still <i>above</i> remuneration! The <i>Edinburgh Review</i> had done much
+to remedy this attitude, but a complete cure was not effected
+for some years to come.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">21</a>
+See <i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, V. i</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span></p>
+
+<p>The Prospectus of the infant journal is interesting.
+It was to be “A Repository of whatever may be supposed to be
+most interesting to general readers”.<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">22</a> One strong point was to
+be an antiquarian repository; too, it was to criticise articles
+in other periodicals; it was to contain a “Register” of domestic
+and foreign events. Among other aims, one was entertainment.
+It was to be a miscellany of the original works of authors and
+poets; and what endears it to modern hearts above all things
+else, it was to be an open door for struggling young writers.
+By virtue of the anonymous nature of its contributions, this
+was made possible with no lessening of authority. The signatures
+in the early numbers were intended to be perplexing, and perplexing
+they remain to this day. But probably struggling young
+writers met with less encouragement at the hands of Pringle
+and Cleghorn than was William Blackwood’s original intention.
+Those two never went out of the way to drum up new material,
+while William Blackwood was a man alert and ever on the watch
+for another Walter Scott.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">22</a>
+<i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, V. i, p. 2</p></div>
+
+<p>Several numbers passed along peacefully enough.
+As Mr. Lang puts it, “Nothing could be more blameless”. That
+was the trouble&mdash;it was <i>too</i> blameless! Blackwood might have
+forgiven a flagrant crime, but this negative and inoffensive
+monthly fell with a dull thud in comparison with his mounting
+expectations! He knew, none better, that a periodical of any
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span>
+appreciable merit must necessarily bring upon itself as much
+genuine censure as applause. <i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>
+for April 1817 brought neither. The great day came for the
+first issue, evening followed, and Edinburgh went to bed unmoved.
+With his overwhelming desire and ambition to rival the <i>Edinburgh
+Review</i> and electrify Edinburgh city with a stimulating diet, it
+is not likely that he would observe with much composure the
+advent of this cherished scheme of his into the world, containing
+for its first long article<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> six pages of “Memoirs of the
+Late Francis Horner, Esq., M. P.”, one of Jeffrey’s own right
+hand men!&mdash;or in finding in the department of “Periodical
+Works”,<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">24</a> a statistical and more or less pleasant rehashment of
+the contents of the last <i>Reviews</i>. Francis Horner had ever been
+one of the mainstays of the <i>Edinburgh</i>; and though it was altogether
+fitting and proper that the death of an illustrious statesman
+should be commemorated, it is not likely that William Blackwood
+welcomed as the first article in the first number of his
+new magazine, a wholly unmitigated extolling of one whose past
+influence he hoped to erase. Though the publisher’s generous
+mind would be the last to begrudge him the due honor of such
+phrases as “highly gifted individual”, “eminent statesman”, and
+the like, it cannot be imagined that he rejoiced over the words
+“original and enlightened views”, “correct and elegant taste”,
+when it was his ardent purpose to prove the <i>Edinburgh</i> and its
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span>
+builders the opposite of enlightened, and the embodiment of
+poor taste and incompetent judgment!</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">23</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 3</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">24</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 81</p></div>
+
+<p>This same first number contains seven pages of
+discourse on “The Sculpture of the Greeks”<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">25</a>, and the relation
+of Greek art to the environment in which it grew up,&mdash;all very
+learned and interesting, to be sure. There is a brief article
+on the “Present State of the City of Venice”<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">26</a>, condensed and
+unromantic enough to grace a Travellers’ Guide. If Messrs.
+Pringle and Cleghorn had been anyone else but Messrs. Pringle
+and Cleghorn, they might have indulged the public with a thrill
+or two on such a subject as the city of Venice; but never a
+thrill do we get from cover to cover! The article which
+follows is “on the Constitution and Moral Effects of Banks for
+the Savings of Industry”<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">27</a>; and there are others of similar tone:
+“Observations on the Culture of the Sugar Cane in the United
+States”<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">28</a>, “The Craniological Controversy”<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">29</a>, “The Proposed
+Establishment of a Foundling Hospital in Edinburgh”<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">30</a>, and the
+like. One short article, “An Account of the American Steam
+Frigate”<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">31</a>, is still of genuine interest, attributing the conception
+of the invention to a “most ingenious and enterprising
+citizen”, Robert Fulton, Esq. It describes with naive emphasis
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span>
+the successful trip “to the ocean, eastward of Sandy Hook, and
+back again, a distance of fifty-three miles, in eight hours
+and twenty minutes. A part of this time she had the tide against
+her, and had no assistance whatever from the sails.”<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">32</a> It is
+known that the signature Zeta was used in the early numbers,
+by more than one person; but “Remarks on Greek Tragedy”<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">33</a>, a
+criticism of Aeschylus’ <i>Prometheus</i>, signed Zeta, Mr. Lang
+attributes without hesitation to Lockhart. “Tales and Anecdotes
+of Pastoral Life”<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">34</a> and “Notices Concerning the Scottish Gypsies”<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">35</a>
+were also among the “Original Communications”, as the first
+division of the magazine was called. The former is perhaps the
+one attempt in the whole number at that sprightly nimble manner
+which was Blackwood’s aim. The second is a long article of
+some sixteen pages, delving back into the early history of the
+Egyptian pilgrims, quoting copiously from “Guy Mannering”, and
+referring familiarly to Walter Scott, and Mr. Fairburn and James
+Hogg. Both of these articles were continued in several subsequent
+numbers.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">25</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 9</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">26</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 16</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">27</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 17</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">28</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 25</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">29</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 35</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">30</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 38</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">31</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 30</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">32</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 32</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">33</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 39</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">34</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 22</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">35</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 43</p></div>
+
+<p>In another department of the contents, entitled
+“Select Extracts”, there are two articles: an “Account of Colonel
+Beaufoy’s Journey to the Summit of Mount Blanc”<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">36</a> and the
+“Account of the Remarkable Case of Margaret Lyall, Who continued
+in a State of Sleep nearly Six Weeks”<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">37</a>, both very readable, which
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span>
+is a good deal when all is said. The Antiquarian Reportory
+contained six articles as antiquated as one could wish, all the
+way from a “Grant of the Lands of Kyrkenes by Macbeth, son of
+Finlach”<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">38</a> to a “Mock Poem upon the Expedition of the Highland
+Host”<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">39</a>. The Original Poetry department contained three poems,
+none of them startling. The third one, the shortest, is by
+far the best, bearing the title “Verses”<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">40</a>. They were written
+in honor of the entry of the Allies into Paris, 1814; and bear
+the unmistakable brand and seal of James Hogg, with his ardent
+song for “Auld Scotland!&mdash;land o’ hearts the wale!” ...</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Land hae I bragged o’ thine an’ thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even when thy back was at the wa’;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An’ thou my proudest sang sall be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As lang as I hae breath to draw.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">36</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 59</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">37</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 61</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">38</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 65</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">39</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 69</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">40</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 72</p></div>
+
+<p>Next comes the “Review of New Publications”, devoting three
+pages to Dr. Thomas Chalmers’ “Discourses on the Christian
+Revelation”<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">41</a>, concluding with the words: “If a few great and
+original minds, like that of Dr. Chalmers, should arise to
+advocate the cause of Christianity, it would no longer be the
+fashion to exalt the triumphs of reason and of science.”<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">42</a>
+The other reviews were of “Harold, the Dauntless; a Poem. By
+the Author of ‘The Bridal of Triermain’”<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">43</a>, of “Armota, a
+Fragment”<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">44</a>, and “Stories for Children, selected from the History
+of England”<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">45</a>. Of what came under the heading, Periodical
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span>
+Works, we have already spoken. Then followed “Literary and
+Scientific Intelligence”<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">46</a>, notices of works preparing for
+publication in Edinburgh and London, and the monthly list of
+new publications in the same two cities. There is a page of
+French books, published since January 1817. After that the
+Monthly Register of foreign intelligence, proceedings of Parliament,
+the British Chronicle, commercial and agricultural reports
+for the month, a meteorological table, and two pages of births,
+marriages and deaths, complete the number for April 1817.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">41</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 73</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">42</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 75</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">43</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 76</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">44</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 78</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">45</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 79</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">46</a>
+Ibid., V. i, P. 85</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Lang was right when he called it “blameless”;
+and it is not surprising that Blackwood made some suggestions in
+regard to the second number. We know that his suggestions were
+not cordially received by Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn, and it
+appears equally probable that they were not acted upon. The
+second issue, May 1817, is no more resilient and has gained no
+more momentum than its predecessor. The contents are cast in
+the same mould: an “Account of Mr. Ruthven’s Printing Press”<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">47</a>,
+another on the “Method of Engraving on Stone”<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">48</a>, and “Anecdotes
+of Antiquaries”<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">49</a>, and the like.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">47</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 125</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">48</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 128</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">49</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 136</p></div>
+
+<p>If Blackwood was disappointed over the first
+number, he was irritated at the second; but when a third of no
+more vital aspect appeared, his patience gave way, and Pringle
+and Cleghorn had to go! It is easy to imagine that the man
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span>
+who did not hesitate to criticise the “Black Dwarf” would not
+be overawed by the two mild gentlemen in charge of his pet
+scheme. William Blackwood’s ideal had indeed been to startle
+the world with a periodical which in modern terms we would call
+a “live wire”. And now with the magazine actually under way, it
+is not likely that a man of his stamp would sit by unperturbed,
+and watch one insignificant number after another greet an unresponsive
+public. After the appearance of the third number, he
+gave three months’ notice to Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn, which
+somewhat excited those gentlemen, but was none the less final.
+They had done all they could to evade Blackwood’s “interest in
+the literary part of his business”, and intended to keep the
+publisher “in his place”. William Blackwood was not made that
+way, however.</p>
+
+<p>He himself illuminates the situation in a letter to
+his London agents, Baldwin, Craddock and Company, dated July
+23, 1817<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">50</a>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">50</a>
+Mrs. Oliphant: <i>Annals of a Publishing House</i>, V. i, p. 104</p></div>
+
+<p>“I am sorry to inform you that I have been obliged
+to resolve upon stopping the Magazine with No. 6. I have been
+much disappointed in my editors, who have done little in the
+way of writing or procuring contributions. Ever since the work
+began I have had myself almost the whole burden of procuring
+contributions, which by great exertions I got from my own friends,
+while at the same time I had it not in my power to pay for them,
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span>
+as by our agreement the editors were to furnish me with the
+whole of the material, for which and their editorial labors they
+were to receive half of the profits of the work. I found this
+would never do, and that the work would soon sink, as I could
+not permit my friends (who have in fact made the work what it
+is) to go on in this way for any length of time.... I gave
+a notice, according to our agreement, that the work would close
+at the period specified in it&mdash;three months. Instead, however,
+of Pringle acting in the friendly way he professed, he joined
+Cleghorn, and without giving any explanation, they concluded
+a bargain with Constable and Company, by which I understand they
+take charge of their (Constable’s) ‘Scot’s Magazine’ as soon
+as mine stops.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not of the least consequence to me losing
+them, as they were quite unfit for what they undertook....
+I have, however, made an arrangement with a gentleman of first-rate
+talents by which I will begin a new work of very superior
+kind. I mention this to you, however, in the strictest confidence,
+as I am not at liberty yet to say anything more particularly
+about it.... My editors have very dishonestly made it
+known to a number of people that we stop at the sixth number.
+This will interfere a little with our sale here, but I hope
+not with you.”</p>
+
+<p>The editors wrangled at great length, but Blackwood’s
+mind was made up, and as we see by the foregoing letter,
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span>
+already launching new plans and busy with them. A letter to
+Pringle and Cleghorn, gives us the first hint of John Wilson’s
+connection with the magazine (other than mere contributor), and
+shows the tone of finality with which Blackwood could treat what
+was to him a settled subject:</p>
+
+<p>“As you have now an interest directly opposite to
+mine, I hope you will not think it unreasonable that I should be
+made acquainted with the materials which you intend for this
+number. It occurs to me it would save all unpleasant discussion
+if you were inclined to send the different articles to Mr. John
+Wilson, who has all along taken so deep an interest in the magazine.
+I do not wish to offer my opinion with regard to the
+fitness or unfitness of any article, but I should expect that you
+would be inclined to listen to anything which Mr. Wilson might
+suggest. He had promised me the following articles: Account of
+Marlowe’s Edward II, Argument in the Case of the Dumb Woman
+lately before the Court, Vindication of Wordsworth, Reviews of
+Lament of Tasso, Poetical Epistles and Spencer’s Tour. His
+furnishing these or even other articles will, however, depend
+upon the articles you have got and intend to insert.”</p>
+
+<p>“I beg to assure you that it is my most anxious
+wish to have the whole business settled speedily and as amicably
+as possible.”<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">51</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">51</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 106</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span></p>
+
+<p>Here exit the prologue; and the real show begins
+with <i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i> for October 1817. To attract
+attention was Blackwood’s first aim; interest once aroused,
+he did not worry over maintaining it. Of that he felt assured.
+Respectability, mediocrity were taboo! By respectability is
+inferred that prudent, cautious, dead-alive respectability whose
+backbone (such as it has) is fear of public censure!
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2 id="III">III<br />
+
+<i>Dramatis Personae</i></h2>
+
+<p>One of Blackwood’s aims in life was to make
+17 Princes Street a literary rendez-vous; and indeed the background
+and atmosphere of “Maga”, and the men who gathered round
+it, are perhaps as fascinating and absorbing as the magazine
+itself!</p>
+
+<p>Blackwood’s shop is described by Lockhart as
+“the only great lounging shop in the new Town of Edinburgh”<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">52</a>.
+A glimpse of the soil and lights and shades which nourished
+“Maga” cannot help but bring a warmer, more familiar comprehension
+of its character and the words it spake. Just as Park
+Street and the Shaw Memorial and the grave portraits of its
+departed builders color our own <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, just so did
+17 Princes Street tinge and permeate the magazine which grew up
+in its precincts. “The length of vista presented to one on
+entering the shop”, says Lockhart, “has a very imposing effect;
+for it is carried back, room after room, through various gradations
+of light and shadow, till the eye cannot trace distinctly
+the outline of any object in the furthest distance. First, there
+is as usual, a spacious place set apart for retail-business, and
+a numerous detachment of young clerks and apprentices, to whose
+management that important department of the concern is intrusted.
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span>
+Then you have an elegant oval saloon, lighted from the roof,
+where various groupes of loungers and literary dilettanti are
+engaged in looking at, or criticising among themselves, the
+publications just arrived by that day’s coach from town. In
+such critical colloquies the voice of the bookseller himself
+may ever and anon be heard mingling the broad and unadulterated
+notes of its Auld Reekie music; for unless occupied in the
+recesses of the premises with some other business, it is here
+that he has his station.”<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">53</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">52</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 186</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">53</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 187</p></div>
+
+<p>From this it is evident Blackwood’s ideal shop was
+realized, and that there did gather in his presence both those
+who wielded the pen and those who wished to, those who were
+critics and those who aspired to be. At these assemblies might
+often be found two young men, who, says Mrs. Oliphant, “would
+have been remarkable anywhere if only for their appearance and
+talk, had nothing more remarkable ever been developed in them”.<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">54</a>
+These two, of course, were John Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart.
+She continues: “Both of them were only too keen to see the
+ludicrous aspect of everything, and the age gave them an extraordinary
+licence in exposing it.”<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">55</a> This is an important note,
+the “extraordinary licence” of the age,&mdash;a straw eagerly
+grasped at!&mdash;corroborated, too, by Lord Cockburn<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">56</a> who testifies:
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span>
+“There was a natural demand for libel at this period.” It
+explains much that we would fain explain in the subsequent
+literary pranks of these same two youths. They were ready for
+anything; and more,&mdash;enthusiastically ready for anything. John
+Wilson was a giant, intellectually and physically, “a genial
+giant but not a mild one”<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">57</a>. Lockhart had already made some
+small reputation for himself as a caricaturist. Perhaps it was
+insight into their capacities which strengthened Blackwood’s
+disgust with the two mild gents in charge of his to-be-epoch-making
+organ! At any rate, it was to these two, Wilson especially,
+that he turned for the resuscitation of his dream.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">54</a>
+Mrs. Oliphant: <i>Annals of a Publishing House</i>, V. i, p. 101</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">55</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 103</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">56</a>
+Henry Thomas Cockburn, a Scottish judge</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">57</a>
+Mrs. Oliphant: <i>Annals of a Publishing House</i>, V. i, p. 101</p></div>
+
+<p>John Wilson is the one name most commonly associated
+with <i>Blackwood’s</i>, and with the exception of William Blackwood
+himself, perhaps the most important figure in its reconstruction.
+The name Christopher North was used in the earlier years by
+various contributors, but was soon appropriated by Wilson and
+is now almost exclusively associated with him. In the latter part
+of 1817 he became Blackwood’s right hand man. He has often been
+considered editor of “Maga”, but strictly speaking, no one but
+Blackwood ever was. After the experience with Pringle and
+Cleghorn, William Blackwood would naturally be wary of ever
+again entrusting full authority to anyone. He himself was
+always the guiding and ruling spirit, though never admittedly,
+or technically, editor.
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span></p>
+
+<p>It was “Maga” that gave John Wilson his first real
+literary opportunity. His gifts were critical rather than creative,
+and his most famous work is the collected “Noctes Ambrosianae”
+which began to run in the March number (1822) of <i>Blackwood’s
+Edinburgh Magazine</i>. He was one of the very first to
+praise Wordsworth; and though in general, far too superlative
+both in praise and blame to be considered dependable, a very great
+deal of his criticism holds good to the present hour. Along in
+the first days of Wordsworth’s career, Wilson proclaimed him, with
+Scott and Byron, “one of the three great master spirits of our
+day in the poetical world”. Lockhart, long his close friend and
+associate, writes thus: “He is a very warm, enthusiastic man,
+with most charming conversational talents, full of fiery imaginations,
+irresistible in eloquence, exquisite in humor when he
+talks ...; he is a most fascinating fellow, and a most kind-hearted,
+generous friend; but his fault is a sad one, a total
+inconsistency in his opinions concerning both men and things....
+I ... believe him incapable of doing anything dishonorable either
+in literature or in any other way.”<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">58</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">58</a>
+A. Lang: <i>Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart</i>, V. i, p. 93</p></div>
+
+<p>It was the pen of John Gibson Lockhart, however,
+almost as wholly as Wilson’s which insured the success of the
+magazine; and Blackwood was as eager to enlist Lockhart into his
+services as Wilson. Like Wilson, too, “Maga” was Lockhart’s
+opportunity! He had given early promise as a future critic.
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span>
+Elton says he wrote “sprightly verse and foaming prose”.
+From 1817 to 1830 he was not only one of the invaluable supporters
+of “Maga”, but one of its rare <i>lights</i>! In announcing
+the marriage of his daughter to Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott
+said: “To a young man of uncommon talents, indeed of as promising
+a character as I know”.<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">59</a> His gift for caricature colored his
+writings. His was a mind and eye and genius for the comic.
+His satire was that keen and bitter piercing satire which all
+are ready to recognize as talent, but few are ready to forgive
+if once subjected to it. But there was little malice behind it
+ever. Much of what he wrote has been condemned for its bitter,
+and often personal, import. But Lockhart was only twenty-three
+at the time of his first connection with the magazine&mdash;and
+what is more, “constitutionally a mocker”. All is well with
+his serious work, but according to Mr. Lang, the “Imp of the
+Perverse” was his ruling genius! Others say, “as a practitioner
+in the gentle art of making enemies, Lockhart excelled”,<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">60</a> and
+that he possessed the “native gift of insolence”<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">61</a>. They are
+strong words, not wholly without cause, and illustrate the
+attitude of many minds towards his work; yet perhaps they only
+go to prove that he began to write responsible articles too
+young, and was allowed entirely too free a swing.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">59</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 230</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">60</a>
+J. H. Millar: <i>A Literary History of Scotland</i>, p. 517</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">61</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>The story of James Hogg is by far the most fascinating
+of those connected with <i>Blackwood’s</i>; and in a later series
+of articles in that magazine on these first three stars, the
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span>
+writer says: “Hogg was undoubtedly the most remarkable. For
+his was an untaught and self-educated genius, which shone with
+rare though fitful lustre in spite of all disadvantages, and
+surmounted obstacles that were seemingly insuperable.”<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">62</a> It is
+difficult to ascertain his exact relations with the magazine.
+One thing at least is certain,&mdash;he contributed much. Wilson
+and Lockhart found great joy in “drawing” him, and Hogg was
+kept wavering between vexation and pride “at occupying so much
+space in the most popular periodical of the day”.<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">63</a> As Saintsbury
+puts it, he was at once the “inspiration, model, and butt
+of <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>”<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">64</a>. But indeed the shepherd drawn so
+cleverly in the Noctes “was not”, his daughter testifies,
+“the Shepherd of Ettrick, or the man James Hogg”. And in all
+justice to him, there can be no doubt that he is totally misrepresented
+therein.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">62</a>
+<i>Memorials of James Hogg</i>, p. 11</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">63</a>
+J. H. Millar: <i>A Literary History of Scotland</i>, p. 530</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">64</a>
+Saintsbury: <i>Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860</i>, p. 37</p></div>
+
+<p>His poetry is his only claim upon the world. It
+was the one thing dearest to his own heart, and the one thing for
+which he claimed or craved distinction or recognition of any
+kind. The heart warms to this youth with his dreams and aspirations,
+brain teeming with poems years before he learned to write.
+As might be expected from a man whose own grandfather had conversed
+with fairies, in Hogg’s poetry the supernatural is close
+to the natural world. He is reported once to have said to his
+friend Sir Walter Scott: “Dear Sir Walter! Ye can never suppose
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span>
+that I belang to your School o’ Chivalry! Ye are the king o’
+that school, but I’m the king o’ the Mountain and Fairy School,
+which is a far higher ane nor yours.”<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">65</a> This “sublime egotism”
+is not displeasing in one whose heart and soul was wrapt up
+in an earnest belief in and reverence for his art. It is the
+egotism of a deep nature which scorns to hide its talents in
+the earth. James Hogg spoke to the heart of Scotland, and
+was proud and content in so doing.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">65</a>
+<i>Memorials of James Hogg</i>, p. x</p></div>
+
+<p>To all appearances Blackwood was now the centre of
+a group after his own heart! With these three as a nucleus,
+others of considerable talent joined the circle. Talent, wit,
+keen and zealous minds were theirs, with enough fervor and
+intrepidity of spirit to guarantee that “Maga” would never again
+pass unnoticed. Henceforth there was sensation enough to satisfy
+even the heart of a William Blackwood! Whatever accusations
+were afterwards levelled at “Maga” (and they were many) no one
+could again accuse it of being either dull or uninteresting&mdash;the
+one unpardonable sin of book or magazine! The last thing
+that “Maga” wished to be was neutral! Better to offend than be
+only “inoffensive”; better to raise a rumpus than grow respectable!
+And from October 1817 on, “respectable” is the last
+word anyone thought of applying to <i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>!
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2 id="IV">IV<br />
+
+<i>First Years of “Maga”</i></h2>
+
+<p>With its new grip on life in October 1817, the
+editorial notice of Blackwood’s omitted any profession of a new
+prospectus. It reads: “In place of a formal Prospectus, we now
+lay before our Readers the titles of some of the articles which
+we have either already received, or which are in preparation by
+our numerous correspondents.” Follows some two pages or more of
+titles alluring and otherwise, whereupon the notice continues:
+“The Public will observe, from the above list of articles, that
+we intend our Magazine to be a Depository of Miscellaneous Information
+and Discussion. We shall admit every Communication of
+Merit, whatever may be the opinion of the writer, on Literature,
+Poetry, Philosophy, Statistics, Politics, Manners, and Human
+Life.... We invite all intelligent persons ... to lay their
+ideas before the world in our Publication; and we only reserve to
+ourselves the right of commenting upon what we do not approve.”<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">66</a>
+That right was always reserved, and there was never any hesitancy
+on the part of any of them in acting thereon, as the magazine
+itself testifies.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">66</a>
+<i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, V. ii, p. 2</p></div>
+
+<p>A short paragraph of “Notices to Correspondents”<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">67</a>
+following the editorial notice, is of more than casual interest.
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span>
+Its flavor is shown by the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“The communication of Lupus is not admissible.
+D. B.’s Archaeological Notices are rather heavy. We are obliged
+to our worthy Correspondent M. for his History of ‘Bowed
+David’, but all the anecdotes of that personage are incredibly
+stupid, so let his bones rest in peace.... We have received an
+interesting Note enclosing a beautiful little Poem, from Mr. Hector
+Macneil ... and need not say how highly we value his communication....
+Duck-lane, a Town Eclogue, by Leigh Hunt&mdash;and the
+Innocent Incest by the same gentleman, are under consideration;
+their gross indecency must however be washed out. If we have
+been imposed upon by some wit, these compositions will not be
+inserted. Mr. James Thomson, private secretary for the charities
+of the Dukes of York and Kent, is, we are afraid, a very bad Poet,
+nor can the Critical Opinions of the Princes of the Blood Royal
+be allowed to influence ours.... Reason has been given for our
+declining to notice various other communications.” Many of the
+contributors, probably most of them, received personal letters;
+in fact, this paragraph does not appear in every number.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">67</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>This number, <i>The</i> number of <i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh
+Magazine</i>, the startling and blood-curdling number of October
+1817, contained among other sensations, the Chaldee Manuscript,
+supposedly from the “Bibliotheque Royale” (Salle 2, No. 53, B.
+A. M. M.)&mdash;in reality a clever and scathing piece of satire
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span>
+couched in Biblical language, which spared no one of note in
+the whole town of Edinburgh, and written by heaven knows whom!
+Its interest was strictly local, dealing with Edinburgh and
+Edinburgh personalities, written with the Edinburgh public in
+view; but its fame spread like wild fire! Like Byron, <i>Blackwood’s
+Magazine</i> woke up one morning to find itself grown famous over
+night! As Mrs. Oliphant puts it: “Edinburgh woke up with a
+roar of laughter, with a shout of delight, with convulsions of
+rage and offense”. Its fame involved, however, not only the
+clamor of Edinburgh, but instant recognition throughout the
+kingdom. Result? Libel actions, challenges to duels, lawsuits,
+and&mdash;the suppression of the Chaldee Manuscript. Its fame has
+come down to the present day, but one peep at it involves carfare
+to the British Museum!</p>
+
+<p>This amazing piece of literature seems innocent
+enough at first glance; and in truth it was what people read <i>into</i>
+it rather than what they read <i>in</i> it that made all the trouble.
+Quoting from it:</p>
+
+<p>“I looked, and behold a man clothed in plain apparel
+stood in the door of his house: and I saw his name ... and his
+name was as it had been the color of ebony, and his number was
+as the number of a maiden&mdash;(17 Princes Street, of course)....</p>
+
+<p>“And I turned my eyes, and behold two beasts came
+from the lands of the borders of the South; and when I saw them
+I wondered with great admiration.... And they came
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span>
+unto the man ... and they said unto him, Give us of thy
+wealth, that we may eat and live ... and they proffered him
+a Book; and they said unto him, Take Thou this and give us a
+sum of money, ... and we will put words into the Book that will
+astonish the children of thy people.... And the man hearkened unto
+their voice, and he took the Book and gave them a piece of
+money, and they went away rejoicing in their hearts.... But
+after many days they put no words in the Book; and the man
+was astonished and waxed wroth, and he said unto them, What is
+this that ye have done unto me, and how shall I answer those to
+whom I am engaged? And they said, what is that to us? See
+thou to that.”<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">68</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">68</a>
+Mrs. Oliphant: <i>Annals of a Publishing House</i>, V. i, p. 119-20</p></div>
+
+<p>All this seems innocent tomfoolery enough&mdash;pure
+parody on our friend Ebony, and the two beasts Pringle and Cleghorn
+who “put no words in the Book”. But that was not all,
+Constable and the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> figured prominently; and
+Sir Walter Scott who, we are told, “almost choked with laughter”,
+and Wilson and Lockhart and Hogg.</p>
+
+<p>“There lived also a man that was <i>crafty</i> in council ...
+and he had a notable horn in his forehead with which he
+ruled the nations. And I saw the horn that it had eyes, and
+a mouth speaking great things, and it magnified itself ... and
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span>
+it cast down the truth to the ground and it practised and
+prospered.”<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">69</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">69</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 121</p></div>
+
+<p>Constable never outlived this name of the Crafty
+and the reputation of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> for “magnifying itself”
+lives to the present day. “The beautiful leopard from the
+valley of the palm-trees” (meaning Wilson) “called from a far
+country the Scorpion which delighted to sting the faces of men”,
+(Lockhart, of course) “that he might sting sorely the countenance
+of the man that is crafty, and of the two beasts.</p>
+
+<p>“And he brought down the great wild boar from the
+forest of Lebanon and he roused up his spirits and I saw him
+whittling his dreadful tusks for the battle.”<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">70</a> This last is
+James Hogg. There were others. Walter Scott was the “great
+Magician which has his dwelling in the old fastness hard by the
+river Jordan, which is by the Border”<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">71</a> to whom Constable, the
+Crafty, appealed for advice. Francis Jeffrey was “a familiar
+spirit unto whom he (the Crafty) had sold himself”.<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">72</a> The attack
+on the Rev. Prof. Playfair, later so sincerely deplored in <i>Peter’s
+Letters</i>, reads in part thus: “He also is of the seed of the
+prophets, and ministered in the temple while he was yet young;
+but he went out and became one of the scoffers”<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">73</a>&mdash;in other
+words, one of the Edinburgh Reviewers! The spirit of prophecy
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span>
+seems indeed to have been upon the writer of the Chaldee, for
+it ends&mdash;appropriately, thus: “I fled into an inner chamber
+to hide myself, and I heard a great tumult, but I wist not
+what it was.”<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">74</a> The great tumult was heard, to be sure, and the
+authors fled to be safe.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">70</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 123</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">71</a>
+Ibid., V. i, p. 122</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">72</a>
+A. Lang: <i>Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart</i>, V. i, p. 161</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">73</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">74</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>Just who wrote the Chaldee will never be known;
+but all indications are that the idea and first draft were James
+Hogg’s, and that it was touched up and completed by Wilson and
+Lockhart, with the aid, or rather with the suggestions and approval
+of William Blackwood.</p>
+
+<p>The number for August 1821 contains the first of
+a series of “Familiar Epistles to Christopher North, From an
+Old Friend with a New Face.”<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">75</a> Letter I deals with Hogg’s
+Memoirs. This is anticipating a bit, anticipating some four
+years, in fact, but is nevertheless apropos of our discussion
+of the Chaldee. Just who the Old Friend with a New Face was
+would be hard to judge. Mr. Lang has surmised him to be either
+Lockhart or De Quincey. It is a lively bit of work, worthy the
+wit of either, but the sentences do not feel like Lockhart’s.
+That both these men were friends of Hogg, encourages one to
+hope that the biting sarcasm of the thing was its own excuse
+for being, and came not from the heart. Such was ever the tone
+of “Maga”, however; and none can deny that once begun the article
+<i>must</i> be read! Excerpts follow: “Of all speculations in the way
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span>
+of printed paper, I should have thought the most hopeless to
+have been ‘a Life of James Hogg, by himself’. Pray who wishes
+to know anything about his life? ...</p>
+
+<p>“It is no doubt undeniable that the political state
+of Europe is not so interesting as it was some years ago. But
+still I maintain that there was no demand for the Life of James
+Hogg.... At all events, it ought not to have appeared before
+the Life of Buonaparte.”<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">76</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">75</a>
+<i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, V. x, p. 43</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">76</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>But to come again to our Chaldee Manuscript, the
+correspondent says concerning Hogg’s claim to its authorship:
+“There is a bouncer!&mdash;The Chaldee Manuscript!&mdash;Why, no more
+did he write the Chaldee Manuscript than the five books of
+Moses.... I presume that Mr. Hogg is also the author of
+Waverley.&mdash;He may say so if he chooses.... It must be a delightful
+thing to have such fancies as these in one’s noodle;&mdash;but
+on the subject of the Chaldee Manuscript, let me now speak the
+truth. You yourself, Kit ... and myself, Blackwood and a
+reverend gentleman of this city alone know the perpetrator.
+It was the same person who murdered Begbie!”&mdash;Begbie, by the
+way, was a bank porter, whose murder was one of the never solved
+mysteries of Edinburgh. “It was a disease with him to excite
+'public emotion’. With respect to his murdering Begbie ... all
+at once it entered his brain, that, by putting him to death in
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span>
+a sharp and clever and mysterious manner ... the city of
+Edinburgh would be thrown into a ferment of consternation, and
+there would be no end of ‘public emotion’.... The scheme succeeded
+to a miracle.... Mr. &mdash;&mdash; wrote the Chaldee Manuscript
+precisely on the same principle.... It was the last work of
+the kind of which I have been speaking, that he lived to
+finish. He confessed it and the murder the day before he died,
+to the gentleman specified, and was sufficiently penitent....</p>
+
+<p>“After this plain statement, Hogg must look extremely
+foolish. We shall next have him claiming the murder, likewise,
+I suppose; but he is totally incapable of either.”<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">77</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">77</a>
+Ibid., V. x, p. 49-50</p></div>
+
+<p>It is altogether probable that Hogg’s frank avowal
+dismayed the men who had studied to keep its authorship secret
+for so many years, fearing lest the confession implicate his
+colleagues. At any rate, such vehement protestations as the
+above are to be eyed askance in the light of saner evidences.
+“Maga” was prone to go off on excursions of this kind; and
+William Blackwood had at last realized his dreamed-of Sensation!
+No doubt he knew the risk he took in publishing the Chaldee;
+but in the tumult which followed, he stood equal to every occasion.
+Hogg was not then in Edinburgh, and Wilson and Lockhart
+too thought it wise to leave town. The letters of the two latter
+to Blackwood during the days of the libel suits remind one of
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span>
+the tragic notes of boys of twelve a la penny dreadful!
+But Blackwood was firm and undisturbed through it all, disclaiming
+all responsibility himself, never disclosing a single name.
+The secret was safe and the success of “Maga” sure. In the
+November number, however, he saw fit to insert such statements
+as the following: “The Publisher is aware that every effort
+has been used to represent the admission into his Magazine of
+an article entitled “A Translation of a Chaldee Manuscript”
+as an offence worthy of being visited with a punishment that
+would involve in it his ruin as a Bookseller and Publisher. He
+is confident, however, that his conduct will not be thought by
+the Public to merit such a punishment, and to them he accordingly
+appeals.”<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">78</a>&mdash;And again, on a page by itself in the same
+November number appears the following statement: “The Editor
+has learned with regret that an Article in the First Edition of
+last Number, which was intended merely as a <i>jeu d’esprit</i>, has
+been construed so as to give offence to Individuals justly
+entitled to respect and regard; he has on that account withdrawn
+it in the Second Edition, and can only add, that if what has
+happened could have been anticipated, the Article in question
+certainly never would have appeared.”<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">79</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">78</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 1 of the introductory pages</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">79</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 129</p></div>
+
+<p>Aside from the Chaldee, there were two other distinct
+and decided Sensations in this memorable number, both too well
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span>
+known to demand detailed attention. They were Wilson’s attack
+on Coleridge, “Observations on Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria”,<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">80</a>
+the leading article and a long one; and Lockhart’s paper “On
+the Cockney School of Poetry”<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">81</a>. The former is an inexcusable,
+ranting thing which concludes that Mr. Coleridge’s Literary
+Life strengthens every argument against the composition of
+such Memoirs”<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">82</a>, ... that it exhibits “many mournful sacrifices
+of personal dignity, after which it seems impossible that Mr.
+Coleridge can be greatly respected either by the Public or himself.”<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">83</a>
+Such words were strong enough in their own day, but
+seem doubly presumptuous in the light of our present hero-worship,&mdash;especially
+as the article continues with verdicts like the following:
+“Considered merely in a literary point of view, the work
+is most execrable.... His admiration of Nature or of man,&mdash;we
+had almost said his religious feelings toward his God,&mdash;are all
+narrowed, weakened, and corrupted and poisoned by inveterate and
+diseased egotism.”...<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">84</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">80</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 3</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">81</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 38</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">82</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 5</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">83</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">84</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>This was a sin for which “Maga” later atoned by
+repeated tributes to his genius, to his poetry and its beauty
+in many subsequent numbers of the periodical. Lockhart two
+years afterwards spoke of it as “a total departure from the principles
+of the Magazine”<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">85</a>&mdash;“a specimen of the very worst kind of
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span>
+spirit which the Magazine professed to be fighting in the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i>.”<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">86</a> “This is indeed the only one of the
+various sins of this Magazine for which I am at a loss to discover&mdash;not
+an apology&mdash;but a motive. If there be any man of
+grand and original genius alive at this moment in Europe, such
+a man is Mr. Coleridge.”<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">87</a> And two months after this paper,
+in the issue for December 1817 appeared a “Letter to the Reviewer
+of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria”, beginning with the
+words: “To be blind to our failings and alive to our prejudices,
+is the fault of almost every one of us.... It is the same
+with me, the same with Mr. Coleridge, and it is, I regret to
+state it, the same with his reviewer!”<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">88</a>... And this writer,
+who signs, himself J. S., sums up his valiant defense, declaring
+“it is from a love I have for generous and fair criticism, and
+a hate to everything which appears personal and levelled against
+the man and not his subject&mdash;and your writing is glaringly so&mdash;that
+I venture to draw daggers with a reviewer. You have indeed
+imitated, with not a little of its power and ability, the worst
+manner of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> critics. Forgetting ... that
+freedom of remark does not exclude the kind and courteous style,
+you have entirely sunk the courteousness in the virulency of
+it.”<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">89</a> Thus “Maga” redeemed itself and Coleridge was avenged.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">85</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 218</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">86</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">87</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">88</a>
+<i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, V. ii, p. 285-6</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">89</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 287</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span></p>
+
+<p>As for the third of the three articles which
+best illustrate the whoopla-spirit of this new venture, Lockhart’s
+paper “On the Cockney School of Poetry”, all is said
+when we say it was the first of a series of corrosive and
+scurrilous articles directed against Leigh Hunt in particular,
+and Hazlitt and Webbe, and in general, the “younger and less
+important members” of that school, “The Shelley’s and the
+Keatses”! Modern critics! Beware how you cast stones at
+our Percy Smith’s and Reggie Brown’s! Says our young friend
+Lockhart in this article that Leigh Hunt is “a man of little
+education. He knows absolutely nothing of Greek, almost nothing
+of Latin”<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">90</a> ... and so forth and so on. He cannot “utter a
+dedication, or even a note, without betraying the <i>Shibboleth</i>
+of low birth and low habits. He is the ideal of a Cockney
+poet.... He has never seen any mountain higher than Highgate-hill,
+nor reclined by any streams more pastoral than the Serpentine
+River. But he is determined to be a poet eminently rural,
+and he rings the changes&mdash;till one is sick of him, on the
+beauties of the different ‘high views’ which he has taken of
+God and nature, in the course of some Sunday dinner parties
+at which he has assisted in the neighborhood of London.... As
+a vulgar man is perpetually laboring to be genteel&mdash;in like
+manner the poetry of this man is always on the stretch to be
+grand.”<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">91</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">90</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 38</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">91</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 39</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span></p>
+
+<p>This is just a taste of what is in reality very
+clever stuff. The subject of approbation or disapprobation
+had best be omitted. At any rate “Maga” “started something”,
+for the term “Cockney School” was taken up by the major and
+minor Reviews and nearly every daily paper of England and
+Scotland. What Wilson said later (1832) in a review of Tennyson’s
+poems, characterizes the <i>Blackwood</i> attitude toward the
+Cockneys from the first: “Were the Cockneys to be to church,
+we should be strongly tempted to break the Sabbath.”<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">92</a> Whatever
+our evaluation of this sort of criticism, the admission perhaps
+saves the reputation of Lockhart and other <i>Blackwood</i> critics!
+Their opposition was more a matter of principle than of
+judgment.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">92</a>
+J. H. Millar: <i>A Literary History of Scotland</i>, p. 506</p></div>
+
+<p>The rest of the contents of the October 1817 number
+are interesting and lively, though it must be admitted scarcely
+so startling as this famous triad. A discussion of the
+“Curious Meteorological Phenomena Observed in Argyleshire”<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">93</a>
+reads interestingly and rapidly, and is of sufficient weight
+to save the magazine from flying away altogether! “Analytical
+Essays on the Early English Dramatists, No. II., Marlowe’s
+Edward II”<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">94</a> is the work of John Wilson, and bears the stamp of
+his outpouring of appreciation and enthusiasm. Another article,
+“On the Optical Properties of Mother-of-Pearl, etc.”<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">95</a> seems to
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span>
+be a purely scientific offering, and so far as the writer
+can judge, presumably accurate and just as it should be. Page
+47 bears side by side, a tender little “Elegy” of James Hogg’s
+and a poem in honor of the Ettrick Shepherd and his songs
+by John Wilson. “Strictures on the Edinburgh Review”<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">96</a> and
+“Remarks on the Quarterly Review”<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">97</a> are two articles one would
+scarcely go to sleep over.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">93</a>
+<i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, V. ii, p. 18</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">94</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 21</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">95</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 33</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">96</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 41</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">97</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 57</p></div>
+
+<p>There are other papers in this same issue which
+time will not allow even brief mention. It is easy to picture
+the great publisher when the new copies first arrived, crisp
+and new with the smell of printers’ ink upon them. There was
+no despair, no disappointment this time, but the eager palpitation
+and anxiety of the parent, solicitous but equally certain
+of the success of his child! A letter penned in haste to
+John Wilson before ever “Maga” was seen by public eye betrays
+better than any polite effusion could have done, the genuine
+emotion of the man.</p>
+
+<p style="width: 100%" class="table">
+<span class="trow">“John Wilson, Esq.</span>
+<span class="trow">
+<span class="tcell">Queen Street</span>
+<span class="tcell tdr">October 20, 1817</span>
+</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>My dear Sir,&mdash;As in duty bound I send you the first complete
+copy I have got of the Magazine. I also beg you will do me
+the favor to accept of the enclosed. It is unnecessary for me
+to say how much and how deeply I am indebted to you, and I shall
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span>
+only add that by the success of the Magazine (for which I shall
+be wholly indebted to you) I hope to be able to offer you something
+more worthy of your acceptance.&mdash;I am, dear Sir,</p>
+
+<p class="table">
+<span class="trow">Yours very truly,</span>
+<span style="text-indent: 4em" class="trow">W. Blackwood”<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">98</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">98</a>
+Mrs. Oliphant: <i>Annals of a Publishing House</i>, V. i, p. 127</p></div>
+
+<p>Mrs. Oliphant draws a pretty picture, which
+reveals better perhaps than some more erudite account, the
+mental state of William Blackwood the night before “Maga”
+was offered to the world. “He went into his house, where all
+the children ... rushed out with clamor and glee to meet their
+father, who, for once in his excitement, took no notice of
+them, but walked straight to the drawing room, where his wife,
+not excitable, sat in her household place, busy no doubt for
+her fine family; and coming into the warm glow of the light,
+threw down the precious Magazine at her feet. ‘There is that
+that will give you what is your due&mdash;what I always wished
+you to have’, he said, with the half-sobbing laugh of the great
+crisis. She gave him a characteristic word, half-satirical,
+as was her way, not outwardly moved.... Sometimes he called her
+a wet blanket when she thus damped his ardor,&mdash;but not, I
+think, that night.”<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">99</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">99</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>It might easily be guessed that after the sudden
+bursting into glory of the October number, the same high level
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span>
+would be difficult to sustain. But although subsequent numbers
+boast no Chaldee to convulse or enrage the town, the popularity
+of “Maga” seems never again to lag. The November number begins
+properly enough. The afore-mentioned apology and explanation
+of the Chaldee introduced it to the watchful waiters, impatient
+to ascertain what a second issue would bring forth. The first
+long article, nine and a half pages, “On the Pulpit Eloquence
+of Scotland”<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">100</a>, very thoughtful, very serious, very earnest, in
+tone, thanks God that Scotland has been blessed with the
+heavenly visitation of her well loved preacher, Dr. Chalmers,
+and extols and praises and appreciates the man, “like an angel
+in a dream”. The second article continues the learned discussion
+“On the Optical Properties of Mother-of-Pearl”<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">101</a>. The
+third is John Wilson’s famous review of Byron’s “Lament of
+Tasso”<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">102</a>, wherein says he “There is one Poem in which he
+(Byron) has almost wholly laid aside all remembrance of the
+darker and stormier passions; in which the tone of his spirit
+and his voice at once is changed, and where he who seemed to
+care only for agonies, and remorse, and despair, and death, and
+insanity, in all their most appalling forms, shews that he has
+a heart that can feed on the purest sympathies of our nature,
+and deliver itself up to the sorrows, the sadness and the
+melancholy of humbler souls.”<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">103</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">100</a>
+<i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, V. ii, p. 131</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">101</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 140</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">102</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 142</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">103</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 143</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span></p>
+
+<p>The lighter tone again asserts itself in “Letters
+of An Old Bachelor, No. 1.”<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">104</a>, who waxes indignant over French
+opinion concerning English ladies! He quotes a certain French
+writer who represents “the dress of the English ladies” as mere
+imitation of the French, only “all ridicule and exaggeration.
+'Does a French lady, for instance, put a flower in her hair&mdash;the
+heads of the English ladies are immediately covered with the
+whole shop of a bouqueti&egrave;re. Does a French lady put on a
+feather ... in this country&mdash;nothing but feathers is to be
+seen!’ This, of course”, says the old bachelor in all earnestness,
+“is all a vile slander”<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">105</a>,&mdash;although he must admit having
+seen heads covered with flowers, and “ladies wearing <i>quite as
+many</i> feathers as were becoming.”<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">106</a> He resents too that a
+French priest should accuse English ladies of having bad teeth.
+“Is he ignorant”, he would know, “that young ladies by applying
+to Mr. Scott, the dentist, may be supplied with a single tooth
+for the small sum of two guineas, while dowagers may be accommodated
+with a complete set of the <i>most beautiful</i> teeth, made
+from the tusks of the hippopotamus ... for a very trifling consideration?
+In fact, it is quite astonishing, to see the fine
+teeth of all our female acquaintances;... And yet this abominable
+priest has the impudence to talk of bad teeth!”<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">107</a> Besides,
+“what ladies of any nation”, says he, “play so charmingly the
+pianoforte?”<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">108</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">104</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 192</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">105</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 193</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">106</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">107</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">108</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 194</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span></p>
+
+<p>This little skit is followed by the second installment
+“On the Cockney School of Poetry”<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">109</a>,&mdash;this time that well
+known and scandalous handling of Hunt’s “Story of Rimini”,&mdash;Lockhart’s
+again, of course. This was the article whose turbulent
+discussion of the moral depravity of Leigh Hunt threw
+Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, then Blackwood’s London agents, into
+such a state of pious horror. They evidently feared getting
+mixed up in anything livelier than antiquarian projects, and
+threatened to withdraw their name. The articles on the Cockney
+School went merrily on, however; and so did Baldwin and Cradock
+even until July 1818. No doubt they found it a paying proposition!</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">109</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>Sir Walter Scott tried to wean both Wilson and
+Lockhart away from “that mother of mischief”<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">110</a> as he termed the
+magazine. According to Mr. Lang, he “disapproved (though he
+chuckled over it) the reckless extravagance of juvenile satire”.
+But it is easy to comprehend how “a chuckle” from Sir Walter
+would be the last incentive to curb their literary abandon.
+Blackwood worked long for the support of Scott, knowing well
+what it would mean to “Maga”. A semblance of support, at
+least, he secured through his patronage of Scott’s favorite,
+William Laidlaw, whose agricultural chronicles ran for a time
+as one of the regular features. Scott even contributed an
+occasional article himself from time to time, which, though
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span>
+anonymous, could not escape recognition. Probably he never
+attained a very cordial affection for the publisher, and it
+is well known that he disapproved of much that “Maga” said and
+did, yet outwardly he professed neutrality between <i>Constable’s</i>
+and <i>Blackwood’s</i>; and in a letter to William Laidlaw, February
+1818, while “Maga” was still in its youth, his verdict is not
+vindictive. “Blackwood is rather in a bad pickle just now&mdash;sent
+to Coventry by the trade, as the booksellers call themselves
+and all about the parody of the two beasts. Surely these gentlemen
+think themselves rather formed of porcelain clay than of
+common potters’ ware. Dealing in satire against all others,
+their own dignity suffers so cruelly from an ill-imagined joke!
+If B. had good books to sell, he might set them all at defiance.
+His Magazine does well and beats Constable’s; but we will talk
+of this when we meet.”<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">111</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">110</a>
+A. Lang: <i>Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart</i>, V. i, p. 193</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">111</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Life of Sir Walter Scott</i>, V. v, p. 268</p></div>
+
+<p>Continuing the panorama, the issue for February
+1818 contains three pages of notes “To Correspondents”, of
+which several deserve mention: “We have no objection to insert
+Z.’s Remarks on Mr. Hazlitt’s Lectures, after our present Correspondent’s
+Notices are completed. If Mr. Hazlitt uttered
+personalities against the Poets of the Lake School, he reviled
+those who taught him all he knows about poetry.” This same
+issue was then starting a series of articles entitled “Notices
+of a Course of Lectures on English Poetry, by W. Hazlitt”.<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">112</a>
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span>
+With no personal comment, they give the gist of Hazlitt’s
+lectures at the Surrey Institution in London. The first
+article covers the lectures on “Poetry in General”<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">113</a>, “On
+Chaucer and Spenser”<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">114</a>, and “On Shakespeare and Milton”<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">115</a>. These
+papers ran for several months, and the promised Remarks of
+Z. do not appear in any recognizable form unless the paper
+“Hazlitt Cross-Questioned”<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">116</a> in the August issue (1818) is the
+awaited article. It is presented in the form of eight questions,
+the first: “Did you, or did you not, in the course of your
+late Lectures on Poetry, infamously vituperate and sneer at
+the character of Mr. Wordsworth&mdash;I mean his personal character;
+his genius even you dare not deny?”<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">117</a> Again&mdash;“Do you know the
+difference between Milton’s Latin and Milton’s Greek?”<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">118</a> and&mdash;“Did
+you not insinuate in an essay on Shakespeare ... that
+Desdemona was a lewd woman, and after that dare to publish a
+book on Shakespeare?”<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">119</a> The eighth question closes the article:
+“Do you know the Latin for a goose?”<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">120</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">112</a>
+<i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, V. ii, p. 556</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">113</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">114</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 558</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">115</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 560</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">116</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 550</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">117</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">118</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 551</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">119</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">120</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 552</p></div>
+
+<p>But to return to our notes “To Correspondents”
+in February 1818, there remains one or two others of especial
+interest as illustrating the attitude these notes assumed.
+For instance: “Can C. C. believe it possible to pass off on
+us for an original composition, an extract from so popular a
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span>
+work as Mrs. Grant’s Essay on the Superstitions of the Highlands?
+May his plagiarisms, however, always be from works
+equally excellent.” Another: “The foolish parody which
+has been sent us is inadmissible for two reasons; first, because
+it is malevolent; and secondly, because it is dull.” We are
+inclined to think the latter was the decisive reason.</p>
+
+<p>This same issue includes the first contribution of
+a man who was henceforth to wield an important pen in the make-up
+of the magazine&mdash;one William Maginn. He was a brilliant
+writer, and a reckless, and contributed copiously. Some one
+has characterized him as “a perfectly ideal magazinist”. The
+article, “Some Account of the Life and Writings of Ensign and
+Adjutant Odoherty, Late of the 99th Regiment”<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">121</a>, well reveals
+the serio-comic tone of his work which was so popular. Ensign
+Odoherty was destined to fill many a future page. In fact,
+Maginn was “a find”!</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">121</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 562</p></div>
+
+<p>Quoting from this article: “One evening ... I had
+the misfortune, from some circumstances here unnecessary to
+mention, to be conveyed for a night’s lodging to the watch-house
+in Dublin. I had there the good fortune to meet Mr.
+Odoherty, who was likewise a prisoner. He was seated on a wooden
+stool, before a table garnished with a great number of empty
+pots of porter.... With all that urbanity of manner by which he
+was distinguished, he asked me ‘to take a sneaker of his
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span>
+swipes’.”<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">122</a> This is the Ensign Odoherty of whom it is said
+“Never was there a man more imbued with the very soul and
+spirit of poetry.... Cut off in the bloom of his years,
+ere the fair and lovely blossoms of his youth had time to
+ripen into the golden fruit by which the autumn of his days
+would have been beautified and adorned,”<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">123</a>&mdash;etc.&mdash;“His
+wine ... was never lost on him, and, towards the conclusion
+of the third bottle he was always excessively amusing.”<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">124</a>
+The writer offers one or two specimens of Odoherty’s poetry,
+among them verses to a lady to whom he never declared himself.
+“This moving expression of passion”, we are told, “appears
+to have produced no effect on the obdurate fair one, who was
+then fifty-four years of age, with nine children, and a large
+jointure, which would certainly have made a very convenient
+addition to the income of Mr. Odoherty.”<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">125</a> On being appointed
+to an ensigncy in the West Indies, he sailed for Jamaica with
+a certain Captain Godolphin, and has left a charming poetical
+record of the trip, of which the following will sufficiently
+impress the reader:
+
+<span class="table">
+<span class="trow">“The captain’s wife, she sailed with him, this circumstance I heard of her,<br /></span>
+<span class="trow">Her brimstone breath, ‘twas almost death to come within a yard of her;<br /></span>
+<span class="trow">With fiery nose, as red as rose, to tell no lies I’ll stoop,<br /></span>
+<span class="trow">She looked just like an admiral with a lantern at his poop.”<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">126</a><br /></span>
+</span>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span>
+
+The whole poem is not quoted, but the latter part of it gives
+an account “of how Mrs. Godolphin was killed by a cannon
+ball lodging in her stomach”<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">127</a>, as well as other pathetic and
+moving events. In describing the rest of the stanzas, however,
+Maginn assures us, “It is sufficient to say they are fully
+equal to the preceding, and are distinguished by the same quaintness
+of imagination.”<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">128</a>!</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">122</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 563</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">123</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 562</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">124</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 564</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">125</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 566</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">126</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">127</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">128</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>This article is followed by “Notices of the Acted
+Drama in London”<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">129</a>, the second of a series of sixteen articles
+which ran regularly, January 1818 to June 1820.<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">130</a> These are
+decidedly interesting,&mdash;even thrilling, if such a term may be
+employed,&mdash;in that they approach with contemporary assurance
+names which dramatic legend bids the present day revere:&mdash;Mr.
+Kean, Mrs. Siddons, Miss O’Neil, Mr. C. Kemble, and others.
+The first of these articles (January 1818) states: “our fixed
+opinions are few;” ... but continues further that one of these
+fixed opinions is that “it would be better for all the world
+if he (Shakespeare) could be thought of as a poet only&mdash;not
+as a writer of acting dramas. If it had not been for Mr.
+Kean, we should never have desired to see a play of Shakespeare’s
+acted again.”<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">131</a> As for Desdemona,</p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The gentle lady married to the Moor!&mdash;</span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“If we had been left to ourselves we could have fancied her
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">60</span>
+anything or anybody we liked, and have changed the fancy at
+our will. But, as it is, she is nothing to us but a slim
+young lady, in white satin, walking about on the boards of a
+Theatre.”<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">132</a> The writer of this article furthermore reminds
+the public: “we shall ... always have more to say on five
+minutes of genius, than on five hours of dulness.”<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">133</a> And&mdash;“It
+would also be desirable for both parties, if our Edinburgh
+readers would not forget that we write from London, and our
+London ones that we write for Edinburgh.”<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">134</a> The second installment,
+February 1818, of these dramatic notices, comes down to
+more specific criticisms.&mdash;“Perhaps we were more disgusted
+by this revived play, the Point of Honour, than we should otherwise
+have been, from being obliged to sit, and see, and hear
+Miss O’Neil’s delightful voice and looks cast away upon it.&mdash;Though
+they have chosen to call it a play, it is one of that
+herd of Gallo-Germanic monsters which have visited us of late
+years, under the name of Melo-Dramas;... It makes the
+ladies in the galleries and dress-boxes shed those maudlin
+tears that always flow when weak nerves are over-excited.”<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">135</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">129</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 567</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">130</a>
+Ibid., V. ii-vii</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">131</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 428</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">132</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">133</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 429</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">134</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">135</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 567</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span></p>
+
+<p>Needless to say, the whole tone of the magazine
+was not of this light and popular kind. Much that it published
+was heavy, some of it dry. All the preceding gives in general
+the atmosphere of what ensured the success of the budding “Maga”.
+It continued in this manner, but ever mingling the steady, the
+serious, the grave, with the lively and the scandalous. For
+instance in the number for April 1818 we find an article “On
+the Poor Laws of England; and Answers to Queries Transmitted by
+a Member of Parliament, with a View to Ascertaining the Scottish
+System”<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">136</a>,&mdash;some four pages or more of serious discussion. In
+the same number appears “Letters on the Present State of Germany,
+Letter I”<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">137</a>, earnestly setting forth the causes of discontent
+in Germany, acknowledging into the bargain, that “the triumph of
+human intellect over the sway of despotism was never made more
+manifest than it has been within the last fifty years among the
+Germans”<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">138</a>, and concluding with a paragraph from our modern point
+of view more than interesting: “If the Germans have a Revolution,
+it will, I hope and trust, be calm and rational, when compared
+with that of the French. Its precursors have not been, as in
+France, ridicule, raillery, derision, impiety; but sober
+reflection, Christian confidence, and manly resolutions, gathered
+and confirmed by the experience of many sorrowful years. The
+sentiment is so universally diffused&mdash;so seriously established&mdash;so
+irresistible in its unity,&mdash;that I confess I should be
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span>
+greatly delighted, but not very much astonished, to hear of
+the mighty work being accomplished almost without resistance,
+and entirely without outrage.”<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">139</a> This number likewise includes
+an article discussing the “Effect of Farm Overseers on the
+Morals of Farm Servants”<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">140</a>, another called “Dialogues on Natural
+Religion”<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">141</a>, and a “Hospital Scene in Portugal. (Extracted from
+the Journal of a British Officer, in a series of Letters to
+a Friend)”<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">142</a>, a graphic description which spares no horrible
+detail or opportunity for the pathetic.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">136</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 9</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">137</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 24</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">138</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 25</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">139</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 29</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">140</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 83</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">141</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 90</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">142</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 87</p></div>
+
+<p>The first article in the number for May 1818 is
+a brief but strictly specific “Description of the Patent Kaleidoscope,
+Invented by Dr. Brewster”<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">143</a>. This issue too presented
+the first of a series entitled “The Craniologists Review”<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">144</a>,
+No. I being a description of Napoleon’s head, supposedly by “a
+learned German”, a Doctor Ulric Sternstare, who may or may not
+have been a <i>bona fide</i> personage. One is apt to suspect, however,
+that these articles are by our young friend Lockhart.
+“Maga” owed many a <i>nomme de plume</i> to Lockhart’s German travels;
+the subject matter, craniology, is one of his own hobbies, as
+later revealed in <i>Peter’s Letters</i>; and the last sentence is
+more reminiscent of the young scamp than any “learned German”!
+The article concludes: “I think him a more amiable character than
+that vile toad Frederick of Prussia, who had no moral faculties
+on the top of his head; and he will stand a comparison with
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span>
+every conqueror, except Julius Caesar, who perhaps deserved
+better to be loved than any other person guilty of an equal
+proportion of mischief.”<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">145</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">143</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 121</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">144</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 146</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">145</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 148</p></div>
+
+<p>There is a gem of an article in <i>Blackwood’s</i> for
+July 1818, the fourth of a series of “Letters of Timothy Tickler
+to Eminent Literary Characters. Letter IV&mdash;To the Editor
+of <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>”.<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">146</a> Timothy Tickler was an uncle of
+John Wilson’s, a Mr. Robert Sym; but it is doubtful whether
+Robert Sym was the author of many, if any, of the compositions
+laid at the door of the venerable Timothy. This Letter IV is
+professedly in answer to one from the editor of <i>Blackwood’s</i>.
+Obviously it is only another device, and a clever one, to discuss
+the merits of “Maga”, and make a stab at the Whigs and
+the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. Old Timothy says, “You wish to have my
+free and candid opinion of your work in general, and I will
+now try to answer your queries in a satisfactory way. Your
+Magazine is far indeed from being a ‘faultless monster, which
+the world ne’er saw’; for it is full of faults, and most part of
+the world has seen it.... Just go on, gradually improving
+Number after Number, and you will make a fortune.”<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">147</a> Seeming
+criticism, then a sudden tooting of the Blackwood horn, seeming
+praise of Constable, then a flash and a dig, characterize the
+article throughout. He continues: “You go on to ask me what I
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span>
+think of Constable’s Magazine? Oh! my dear Editor, you are
+fishing for a compliment from old Timothy again!&mdash;I have
+seen nothing at all comparable to it during the last three
+score and ten years. Thank you, <i>en passant</i>, for the Numbers
+of it you have sent me. Almost anything does for our minister
+to read.”<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">148</a> He concludes thus: “I shall have an opportunity
+of writing you again soon ... when I hope to amuse you with
+certain old-fashioned whimsies of mine about the Whigs of
+Scotland, whom I see you like no more than myself.”<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">149</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">146</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 461</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">147</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">148</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 461-2</p></div>
+
+<p>This is followed by a very brief sketch of the
+“Important Discovery of Extensive Veins and Rocks of Chromate
+of Iron in the Shetland Islands”<a href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">149</a>; and this in turn by a
+“Notice of the Operations Undertaken to Determine the Figure of
+the Earth, by M. Biot, of the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1818”,<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">150</a>
+eleven pages in length, and though decidedly statistical, discursive
+and meditative enough in tone to interest more than the
+merely scientific reader.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">149</a>
+Ibid., V. iii, p. 463</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">150</a>
+Same</p></div>
+
+<p>The less said about the poetry in <i>Blackwood’s
+Magazine</i> the better. Most of it is pretty poor stuff. It is
+strange, with men like Wordsworth and Coleridge and Byron
+living, that “Maga” should print such feeble verse&mdash;all the
+more strange when those responsible for the periodical were
+such venerators of intellectual power and so ably appreciative.
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span>
+The Wordsworthian influence is largely reflected in much of
+the <i>Blackwood</i> verse, in fact the Wordsworthian love for the
+simple and the commonplace is reflected to such an extent that
+it assumes the aspect of the commonplace run to seed. Of
+course, opposition to the Cockney School was pure principle
+on the part of the magazine; and no matter what fine poetry
+“the Shelley’s and the Keatses” produced, “Maga” must per
+necessity say nay! With the exception of some of the verse
+of James Hogg, and occasional bits like the anonymous “To My
+Dog”<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">151</a> in the issue for January 1818, there is practically
+nothing to hold one spellbound. There is a good deal of
+satiric verse on the order of that by “Ensign Odoherty”,
+already sampled. The first twelve volumes of the magazine
+contain much lengthy and serious verse bearing the signature
+Δ, whom we know to have been David M. Moir, “The amiable
+Delta” of the Blackwood group. His poetry takes no hold
+upon us of the present hour, but strangely enough, men like
+Tennyson, Jeffrey, Lockhart, found it praiseworthy, and even
+Wordsworth. It must be of some value if Wordsworth praised
+it who was not often known to show interest in any poetry
+but his own.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">151</a>
+Ibid., V. ii, p. 378</p></div>
+
+<p>The number for March 1822 began the “Noctes
+Ambrosianae”<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">152</a>, which continued till February 1835<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">153</a>. These
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span>
+papers are too well known to demand much mention here. Suffice
+it to say that during their career, they were the most
+popular and eagerly read feature of all periodical literature
+of the time.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">152</a>
+Ibid., V. xi, p. 369</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">153</a>
+Ibid., V. xi-xxxvii</p></div>
+
+<p>In July 1820, Lockhart reviewed Washington Irving’s
+“Knickerbocker’s History of New York”<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">154</a>. All mention
+of such papers as “Extracts from Mr. Wastle’s Diary”, which
+made its first appearance in March 1820<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">155</a>, can scarcely be
+omitted. It is the Mr. Wastle of <i>Peter’s Letters</i> whom Lockhart
+makes responsible for this series, which, like the compositions
+of Timothy Tickler, is but another device for merry
+making over local events and persons.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="label">154</a>
+Ibid., V. vii, p. 360</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="label">155</a>
+Ibid., V. vi, p. 688</p></div>
+
+<p>Interesting reviews of now famous books, wholesale
+massacre of now worshipped men, sweeping conclusions historical
+and political, among them at times such momentous verdicts
+as appeared in May 1819, that “no great man can have a
+small nose”<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">156</a>&mdash;such marked the progress and reputation of the
+magazine. Whether we feel we can exalt wholly and unreservedly
+<i>Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine</i>, we can at least heartily
+agree with Lockhart when he says: “I think the valuable
+part of The Materials is so great as to furnish no inconsiderable
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span>
+apology for the mixture of baser things.”<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">157</a> Moreover, it
+did more to counteract the influence of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>
+than any other periodical living or dead.<a id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">158</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="label">156</a>
+Ibid., V. v, p. 159</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="label">157</a>
+J. G. Lockhart: <i>Peter’s Letters</i>, V. ii, p. 225</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158" class="label">158</a>
+This discussion makes no pretense at finality. Treatment
+herein has been cursory and suggestive, not exhaustive.
+A vast and fruitful field remains untouched.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span></p>
+
+<h2 id="Bibliography"><i>Bibliography</i></h2>
+
+<h3>Biography and Criticism</h3>
+
+<p class="hang">Cambridge History of English Literature, V. xii, 6. New York
+and Cambridge, 1916</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Douglas, Sir George. The Blackwood Group. Edinburgh, 1897</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Elton, Oliver. A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830.
+V. i, 13. London, 1912</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Encyclopedia Britannica, eleventh edition. Article on
+“The Periodical Press after 1800” by
+H. R. Tedder</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Lang, Andrew. Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart. 2 vols.
+London, 1897</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Lockhart, John Gibson. Life of Sir Walter Scott, V. v, Edinburgh,
+1902-3</p>
+
+<p class="hang"><span class="p1">”</span><span class="p2">”</span><span class="p3">”</span>. Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk. 3 vols.
+Edinburgh, 1819</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Memorials of James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd, by his Daughter,
+Mrs. Garden. London, 1903</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Millar, J. H. A Literary History of Scotland. New York, 1903</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Oliphant, M. O. Annals of a Publishing House. William
+Blackwood and His Sons. V. i. Edinburgh
+and London, 1897-8</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Saintsbury, G. Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860.
+New York, 1895</p>
+
+<h3>Works</h3>
+
+<p class="hang">Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Vols. i-xiv. Edinburgh
+and London, 1817-23
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span></p>
+
+<p class="hang">Hogg, James. The Works of The Ettrick Shepherd. Prose and
+Poetry. Ed. Rev. Thomas Thomson.
+London, 1869</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Maginn, William. Miscellanies, Prose and Verse. 2 vols.
+London, 1885</p>
+
+<p class="hang">Wilson, John. Works. Ed. Prof. Ferrier. 12 vols.
+Edinburgh, 1855-8</p>
+
+<div class="transnote">
+
+<h3>Transcriber’s Note:</h3>
+
+<p>Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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