We have already, in our account of Archibald Constable, shown how deeply the brilliant writers—who for a while gave a bold literary supremacy to the northern capital—were indebted to the daring spirit and the generous purse of one Scottish publisher; we have here to follow the narrative of a rival’s life—a life at outset very similar, but soon diverging widely, and which, actuated by very different principles, and aiming at very different results, was destined to open the arena of literary struggle to those whom honest political feeling had for a moment rendered dumb and inactive.
William Blackwood was born at Edinburgh, on the 20th Nov., 1776, of parents in an humble position in life, who, however, with the honest endeavour of most of their class in the north, contrived to give him a very excellent elementary education. From his earliest days, William had exhibited a strong love for books, and at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to Bell and Bradfute, of his native city; nor, indeed, did his education suffer from this premature removal from school; there is much leisure in a bookseller’s shop, even for an industrious boy, and opportunity of more various reading than comes within the reach of many sixth-form scholars and university undergraduates. “It was here,” says an obituary notice, “that he had so largely stored his mind with reading of all sorts, but more especially with Scottish history and antiquities, that on establishing himself in business, his accomplishments attracted the notice of persons whose good opinion was distinction.” Before the expiry of his time, in 1797, he must also have displayed a talent for business life, for we find that he was immediately engaged by Messrs. Mundell & Co., then largely employed in the book trade at Edinburgh, to take the sole management of a branch house at Glasgow; and being thus, at the early age of twenty years, thrown almost entirely upon his own resources, and with his own judgment for his only guidance, he acquired that decision of character which distinguished him throughout after-life, and which was so instrumental in the fortunes of his house. In spite, however, of all his efforts, the firm of Mundell & Co. did not prosper at Glasgow—it was they, the reader may, perhaps, remember, who purchased the “Pleasures of Hope,” for only fifty printed copies of the work, from Campbell—and after his year’s service was over, he returned to Edinburgh, and re-entered the employment of Bell and Bradfute, with whom he remained for another year. In 1800, he entered into partnership with Mr. Ross, bookseller and bookseller’s auctioneer; but the auctioneering part of the business proved distasteful to him, and the old book trade presented a much more suitable field for his talents. With the energy of youth he started for London, and was initiated into the mysteries of bibliography by Mr. Cuthell, “famous,” as Nichols says, “for his catalogues.” Here he stayed for three years, and then, in 1804, came back to Edinburgh and opened an old-book shop, in South Bridge Street. For several years he almost confined his attention to the sale of rare and curious books, more especially those relating to the antiquities and early history of Scotland. His shop, like that of Constable, soon became a regular literary haunt, and he speedily acquired a reputation second to none of his own line in Edinburgh, and in the matter of catalogues, he rivalled Cuthell, his master; that one published in 1812 being the first in which the books were regularly classified, and “continues,” says Mr. Chambers, “to be an authority to the present day.” The old-book trade was at that time in its most flourishing condition, Dibdin was firing the minds of curiosity-seekers with a love for rare quartos and folios; Heber, and many more after his kind, were spending the main portion of their time, and the vast bulk of their fortunes, in the acquisition of immense libraries; and the old-booksellers of the day were making large incomes. Blackwood’s success by no means satisfied his ambition, but enabled him to enter the field of publishing as a rival to Constable, who was now at the height of his glory. As early as 1811, we find him bringing out “Kerr’s Voyages,” a work of considerable importance and expense, and which was shortly succeeded by Macrie’s “Life of Knox.”
Blackwood’s sojourn in London, and the credit attracted by his enterprising book-catalogues, led the way to his being appointed agent to several of the London booksellers, among others, to John Murray, and to them, conjointly, the tale of the “Black Dwarf” was offered when Scott considered it desirable to bring it out in other hands, and with a title-page apparently by another author. Blackwood wrote to say that, in his opinion, the unravelling of the end of the story might be improved, and offered to pay for cancelling the proofs. Gifford, too, to whom Murray had shown it, was of a like opinion. Scott differed most essentially; witness his letter to Ballantyne:—
“Dear James,
“I have received Blackwood’s impudent letter. G—— d—— his soul, tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive criticism. I’ll be cursed but this is the most impudent proposal that ever was made.”
This, of course, brought the proposal to a close for the time, though, as Lockhart says, “Scott did both know and appreciate Blackwood better in after times.”
Blackwood was now, from the profits of the old-book trade and the success of his own publishing ventures, in a fair way to success, and in 1816 he took the bold step of selling off all his old stock and migrating to Prince’s Street. “He took possession,” says Lockhart, in “Peter’s Letters,” “of a large and airy suite of rooms in Prince’s Street, which had formerly been occupied by a notable confectioner, and whose threshold was, therefore, familiar enough to all the frequenters of this superb promenade.... Stimulated, I suppose, by the example and success of John Murray, whose agent he is, he determined to make, if possible, Prince’s Street to the High Street, what the other had made Albemarle Street to the Row.” It was not without much forethought, we may be sure, that this step was undertaken, and the speedy establishment of the famous magazine clearly shows us what was the chief motive to such a venturous change.
The magazine literature of the day was wofully weak. The vitality with which Cave had endowed the Gentleman’s Magazine, had long since died away. No more such “hack-writers” as Johnson and Goldsmith came forward to enliven its pages, at the meagre payment of four guineas a sheet, and now it only—
Such was the type of English periodical literature, and the Scotch were certainly no better off. The Scots Magazine stood Constable, it is true, in good stead, but only as a nursery ground, from which writers might be trained for transplantation to a stronger soil. Vastly different was the condition of the rival quarterlies; but still, in Scotland at all events, the Edinburgh carried everything after its own desire. Wit the writers had in plenty—learning, too, and the gift of open-speaking; but to fairness, biassed as they were by party ties, they never laid the least claim, and yet all Edinburgh was enthralled by the opinions of the Edinburgh Review, for intellectual attainments at that time commanded for their possessors the leading place in the society of the Modern Athens, and, as the principles advocated in its pages were decidedly opposed to those of the existing administration, the success it indubitably had attained, the vast following it was gathering, not only irritated but alarmed the Scotch Tory party.
Of course, the actual inventorship of the new project is a disputed point, but the evidence seems to tell us that, however the idea of a new Conservative organ had been talked over in literary coteries (and what scheme has not been planned a thousand times before execution whenever literary men meet together?), the plan had long been entertained and spoken of by Blackwood; and, as he proceeded to carry it into execution, the scheme may to all intents and purposes be regarded as his own.
Two gentlemen were engaged—Pringle and Cleghorn—who had received their training in the enemy’s camp, as editors in chief, and with the assistance of Hogg, and the promised support of Scott and many other men of talent, the first number of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine was issued on All-Fools’ Day, 1817—an ominous day for Blackwood, for he soon discovered that the prophets he had summoned to curse, heaped blessings on the heads of his opponents. This first number differed but little from other periodicals of its class. Only half the space was devoted to original matter, and the very opening pages contained a panegyric upon Horner, then lately deceased, an Edinburgh Reviewer—a Whig, and not much else. “You can’t say too much about Sydney Smith and Brougham,” said Scott to Jeffrey; “but I will not admire your Horner. He always puts me in mind of Obadiah’s bull, who, although, as Father Shandy observed, he never produced a calf, went through his business with such a grave demeanour that he always maintained his credit in the parish.” Nor was this the worst. In No. 3 a violent defence of the Edinburgh was undertaken warmly. This was too much for Blackwood; he gave his editors notice of a coming change, and after much chaffering he was glad to pay £125 down, and get rid at once of them and the magazine; and—somewhat, doubtless, to his chagrin—they immediately returned to Constable and took charge of the Scots Magazine, which, under the title of Constable’s Edinburgh Magazine, made a futile effort to re-juvenate itself.
With the sixth number of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine had appeared a notice stating that “this work is now discontinued, this being the last number of it;” but in the following month, with an alteration in the title, it arose, Phœnix-like, from the ashes, and, as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, No. 7, created a sensation which has never perhaps been equalled. There was, to commence with, a monstrous list of all possible and impossible articles, chiefly threatened attacks upon the Edinburgh, then a violent attack upon their former defence of the Edinburgh Reviewer’s onslaught upon Burns and Wordsworth; but the great feature in No. 7 (No. 1 in reality of Blackwood) was the “Translation from an Ancient Caldee Manuscript,” in which the circumstances of the late feud, and Constable’s endeavours to repair the fortunes of his old magazine, and the resuscitation of “Maga”—the birth, that is, of the genuine “Maga”—are thrown into an allegorical burlesque.
“The two beasts (the two late editors), the lamb and the bear, came unto the man who was clothed in plain apparel, and stood in the door of his house; and his name was as if it had been the colour of ebony (Blackwood), and his number was the number of a maiden when the days of her virginity have expired (No. 17, Prince’s Street), ... and they said unto him, Give us of thy wealth, that we may eat and live, and thou shalt enjoy the fruits of our labour for a time, times or half a time.
“And he answered and said unto them, What will ye unto me whereunto I may employ you?
“And they proffered unto him a Book, and they said unto him, Take thou this, and give us a piece of money, that we may eat and drink and our souls may live.
“And we will put words into thy Book that shall astonish the children of thy people. And it shall be a light unto thy feet and a lamp unto thy path; it shall also bring bread to thy household, and a portion to thy maidens.
“And the man hearkened unto their voice, and he took their Book, and he gave them a piece of money, and they went away rejoicing in heart. And I heard a great noise, as if it had been the noise of many chariots, and of horsemen prancing upon their horses.
“But after many days they put no words in the Book, and the man was astonied, and waxed wroth, and 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.
“And the man wist not what for to do; and he called together the friends of his youth, and all those whose heart was as his heart, and he entreated them, and they put words into the Book; and it went abroad, and all the world wondered after the Book, and after the two beasts that had put such amazing words into the Book.
“Then the man who was crafty in counsel and cunning in all manner of work (Constable), when this man saw the Book, and beheld the things which were in the Book, he was troubled in spirit and much cast down.
“And he hated the Book and the two beasts that put words into the Book, for he judged according to the reports of men; nevertheless, the man was crafty in counsel, and more cunning than his fellows.
“And he said unto the two beasts, Come ye and put your trust under the shadow of my wings, and we will destroy the man whose name is as ebony and his Book.
“And the two beasts gave ear unto him, and they came over to him, and bowed down before him with their faces to the earth....
“Then was the man whose name is as ebony ‘sore dismayed,’ and appealed to the great magician who dwelleth by the old fastness hard by the river Jordan which is by the Border (to Walter Scott), and the magician opened his mouth and said, Lo! my heart wisheth thy good, and let the thing prosper which is in thy hands to do it.
“But thou seest that my hands are full of working, and my labour is great. For, lo! I have to feed all the people of my land, and none knoweth whence his food cometh, but each man openeth his mouth and my hand filleth it with pleasant things. (This is more than a shrewd guess of the authorship of the Waverley Novels.)
“Moreover, thine adversary also is of my familiars (Constable, his publisher).
“Yet be thou silent, peradventure will I help thee some little.”
Chapter II. shows us Blackwood gazing despondently from his inner chamber, when a veiled figure appears, who
“Gave unto the man in plain apparel a tablet containing the names of those upon whom he should call; and when he called they came, and whomsoever he asked he came....
“And the first which came was after the likeness of the beautiful leopard, from the valley of the palm-trees, whose going forth was comely as the greyhound, and his eyes like the lightning of fiery flame (Professor Wilson, author of the ‘Isle of Palms.’)...
“There came also from a far country, the scorpion which delighteth to sting the faces of men, that he might sting sorely the countenance of the man which is crafty, and of the two beasts (Lockhart).
“Also the great wild boar from the forest of Lebanon, and he roused up his spirit; and I saw him whetting his dreadful tusks for the battle” (James Hogg).
Then come Dr. Macrie, Sir William Hamilton, Arthur Mower, “and the hyæna that escheweth the light, and cometh forth at eventide to raise up and gnaw the bones of the dead, and it is as a riddle unto a vain man (Riddell, the legal antiquarian).
“And the beagle and the slowhound after their kind, and all the beasts of the field, more than could be numbered, they were so many.”
In Chapter III., Constable finds that the “bear” and the “lamb” are unprofitable servants, and he, too, calls for aid, but Jeffrey—“the familiar spirit unto whom he had sold himself”—Leslie, and Playfair—contributors to the Edinburgh—refuse to come. In Chapter IV., Constable does get aid from Macney Napier, and others.
“And when I saw them all gathered together, I said unto myself, Of a truth the man which is crafty hath many in his host, yet, think I, that scarcely will these be found sufficient against them which are in the gates of the man who is clothed in plain apparel....
“Verily the man which is crafty shall be defeated, and there shall not escape one to tell of his overthrow.
“And while I was yet speaking, the hosts drew near, and the city was moved; and my spirit failed within me, and I was sore afraid, and I turned to escape away.
“And he that was like unto the messenger of a king, said unto me, Cry: and I said, What shall I cry? for the day of vengeance is come upon all those that ruled the nation with a rod of iron.
“And I fled into an inner chamber to hide myself, and I heard a great tumult, but I wist not what it was.”
It is very hard for us now to duly appreciate the crushing effect of this Caldee manuscript.
It is certainly humorous, after a fashion now so prevalent in America, and undoubtedly witty.
Among the Edinburgh people of that time, when every man knew his neighbour, the effect was absolutely prodigious. A yell of despairing pain arose from one portion of the Whig party, who, if they had no administrative power in their hands, had hitherto held a patent of all literary ability; and from the other portion came an equally discordant cry, which eventually culminated in a fierce accusation of blasphemy and irreligion. Perhaps, however, the strongest test we can apply to the power of this galling squib is the fact that every title bestowed in its pages has “stuck” to the individual against whom it was directed.
Blackwood was alarmed at the commotion he had caused, withdrew the obnoxious article from the second edition, suppressed it in what he could of the first, and in the second number inserted the following announcement:—“The editor has learnt 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.” It was, however, too late, war had been declared to the knife, and Blackwood was nothing loath to continue the struggle.
“The conception of the Caldee MS.,” says Wilson’s son-in-law, Professor Ferrier, “and the first thirty-seven verses of Chapter I., are to be ascribed to the Ettrick Shepherd; the rest of the composition falls to be divided between Professor Wilson and Mr. Lockhart, in proportions which cannot now be determined.” Again, Mrs. Gordon tells us that this audacious squib was composed in her grandmother’s house, 23, Queen Street, where Wilson lived, “amid such shouts of laughter as made the ladies in the room above send to inquire and wonder what the gentlemen below were about;” and yet she adds, as if to protect her father from suspicion of a share in it, that she “cannot trace to her father’s hand any instance of unmanly attack, or one shade of real malignity.” Very probably not; but at the same time the fun of the squib is decidedly in Wilson’s favourite manner. “An old contributor to Blackwood,” who, in 1860, furnished a most interesting and full account of Maga and Blackwoodiana to the columns of the Bookseller, asserts, in reference to Hogg’s claim, “on the best authority (that of the man who did write it), that there is no foundation whatever for any such pretext. The hare was started by Wilson at one of those symposia which preceded and perhaps suggested the Noctes. The idea was caught up with avidity by Hogg, and some half-dozen verses were suggested by him on the ensuing day; but we are, we believe, correct in affirming that no part of his ébauche appeared in the original or any other draft of the article.” It is to be wished that this writer, whose article evidently exhibits personal knowledge, and, apart from a running attack upon Hogg, due impartiality, had, in putting forward a new version of the story, in contradiction to those already given, been enabled to give us the name of the writer, apparently, from the wording of the context, a new claimant.
Not only were Blackwood’s “enemies” discomforted, but even his friends were sore dismayed. The first number of Blackwood bore the imprint of John Murray, but the “Caldee MS.” caused him to withdraw his name, but after passing through the hands of three different London agents, the sixth again appeared under his countenance. This number, however, contained some unpalatable strictures on Gifford and the Quarterly Reviewers, and the Albemarle Street patronage was again withdrawn, only to be renewed in the eleventh number; but by the time it reached the seventeenth he washed his hands of it entirely, and in future it appeared without the ornamental appendage of any London bookseller’s name; the agency, distinctly one of sale only, was given to Cadell and Davies, who found it profitable enough to occupy the greater part of their attention. Cadell, naturally as nervous as Murray of giving, or being in any way instrumental in giving, offence, kept a stereotyped reply in readiness for any angry victim who rushed into his shop for redress—“I know nothing of the contents of the magazine; I am merely the carrier of a certain portion of its circulation to its English readers.”
From the commencement of the new series—from the foundation that is of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine—Blackwood’s fortunes and even the story of his life are inextricably bound up in the progress of the periodical; for he did not again, once he had got rid of Pringle and Cleghorne, entrust its charge and conduct to the care of any editor. For a long time Wilson was supposed to occupy the editorial chair. This supposition is treated in a letter, printed by his daughter: “Of Blackwood I am not the editor, although I believe I very generally got both the credit and discredit of being Christopher North. I am one of the chief writers, perhaps the chief writer, but never received one shilling from the proprietor, except for my own compositions. Being generally on the spot, I am always willing to give him my advice, and to supply such articles as are most wanted, when I have leisure.” “From an early period of its progress,” says Lockhart, speaking of Blackwood and the magazine, “it engrossed a very large share of his time; and though he scarcely ever wrote for its pages himself (three articles, we believe, he did contribute), the general management and arrangement of it, with the very extensive literary correspondence which this involved, and the constant superintendence of the press, would have been more than enough to occupy entirely any man but one of his first-rate energies.”
Before we follow up the chronicle of the life of Blackwood and its proprietor, it will be necessary to take a retrospective glance at the causes which rendered it possible to convert the snug, orthodox, and more than slightly Whiggish Edinburgh Monthly Magazine into the slashing, defiant, jovial, dare-devil of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. This change was chiefly due to the influence of two men, Wilson and Lockhart, who, together with Hogg, had, under the old régime, contributed all there was of wit and sparkle. With these three writers, and the promise of further support, Blackwood had changed his mind as to putting his ill-fated periodical to the untimely end he had announced; and we have seen something, and shall see more, as to how far this determination was justified by success. In the meantime, it is essential to know a little of these two men, to whom primarily all the success was due.
John Wilson, the great Tory champion, was descended, not from a county family, but from a wealthy Paisley manufacturer; and, after taking all possible prizes at Glasgow University, went to conquer fresh worlds at Oxford, where he not only won the Newdigate prize of £50 by one of the best prize poems extant, in fifty lines, but excelled in all sports, to which a magnificent frame, a temper universally good, a wild exuberance of animal spirits, and a thirsty love of adventure could contribute.
Strange tales are told of his Oxford escapades; of recess rambles with strolling players; of wanderings, when smitten by the charms of a gipsy-girl, for weeks together with her tribe; of sojournings as a waiter at a country inn, to be close to one of the fair waitresses.
However, his dreams of adventure were surrendered only after having planned an expedition to Timbuctoo, and he purchased an estate at Windermere, to be near the Lake school of poets, with whom he soon threw in his fortune. After the publication of the “Isle of Palms,” and the “City of the Plague,” he joined the Scotch Bar, and in the Parliament House struck up an acquaintance with another briefless barrister—Lockhart, seven years younger than himself.
John Gibbon Lockhart was also educated at Glasgow University, where gaining the “Snell” foundation, he was sent, at sixteen, to Balliol; after taking a first-class degree he travelled on the Continent, returning only when it was necessary to enter at Edinburgh as an advocate. Silent in private life, he found he could not speak at all in public; and many years afterwards, when making a speech at a farewell dinner, given in honour of his departure to undertake the editorship of the Quarterly, he broke down, as usual, and stuttered, “Gentlemen, you know I can’t make a speech; if I could, we shouldn’t be here.”
Briefless both, and both endowed with strong literary tastes, they became sworn friends, though Wilson, with his splendid physique, his loose-flowing yellow hair, his deep-blue eyes, his glowing imagination, his eloquent tongue, and his defiance of all precedent, was as opposite a being as well could be imagined to Lockhart, who, to borrow Wilson’s own words, had “an e’e like an eagle’s, and a sort of lauch about the screwed-up mouth o’ him that fules ca’d nae canny, for they couldna tholl the meaning o’t; and either set dumb-foundered, or pretended to be engaged to sooper, and slunk out o’ the room.”
With two such men as these it was little wonder that Blackwood resolved to continue the battle. The weapon, however, which had been so successfully used in the onslaught upon the Edinburgh Review became in the hands of young writers flushed with victory, instruments of aggression against those who had never offended; and, as it happened that the writers who were most personal in their attacks upon friend and foe alike were also the cleverest and most brilliant, Blackwood’s position became one of difficulty. Lockhart “who stung the faces of men”—and sometimes their hearts—cared little as to who his shafts were directed against so long as they were sharp and biting. Cameleon-like he appeared in a thousand different forms. Now as the “veiled editor” himself, now the Dr. Morris of “Peter’s Letters,” and now as Baron Lauerwinkel, stabbing his contemporaries under the guise of a German commentator. Against all the members of the “Cockney School,” a personal invective was habitually employed by him, at which in these calmer days of drier criticism we can only stand aghast. He says of Leigh Hunt, “The very concubine of so impure a wretch would be to be pitied; but, alas, for the wife of such a husband!”—and so forth.
In the February number of Maga a new contributor, Billy Maginn, made his first bow to the public as Mr. Ensign O’Doherty. Maginn was at this time a rollicking young Irishman of marvellous classical and literary acquirements, who at four-and-twenty had achieved the difficult honour of taking a degree of Doctor of Laws at Dublin, never before earned by one so young. He had a wonderful gift of improvising in either verse or prose, and his talents were so versatile, his reading, though desultory, so universal, that he could immediately treat any subject, no matter what, in a sparkling and dashing manner. When, however, under the influence of liquor, he was perfectly unmanageable; and his writings bore every stamp of his own character. One of his first squibs in Blackwood was a Latin version of “Chevy-chase,” which, in a foot-note expressed more than a doubt as to the Hebraical knowledge of Professor Leslie—an Edinburgh Reviewer who had recently been appointed to the University Chair of Philosophy. The enraged professor summoned the aid of the law. Blackwood accepted the challenge and inserted another article by Maginn, which stated that the professor “did not even know the alphabet of the tongue which he had the imprudence to pretend to criticise,” and charged him, in addition, of stealing his pet theories respecting heat, from an old volume of the “Philosophical Transactions.” The damages awarded amounted to £100, but as all the legal talent in Edinburgh was engaged in what was regarded as a party trial, the costs were unusually heavy. Nothing scared, however, Blackwood welcomed the writer to Edinburgh when he chose to cast off his incognita.
The magazine was thriving now, and circulated throughout the kingdom. Blackwood, busy as he was with its management, found time to push his general publishing business steadily forward. The issue of Brewster’s “Edinburgh Encyclopædia” was continued, and Lockhart’s talents were utilized beyond the pale of Maga. In 1818 Schlegel’s “History of Literature,” translated by Lockhart, was published; and in 1819 appeared Lockhart’s “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, by Dr. Peter Morris”—a series of sketches of all things Scotch, from which we extract an account of Blackwood and his shop:—
“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 this important department of the concern is entrusted. Then you have an elegant oval saloon, lighted from the roof, where various groups 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’s music; for, unless occupied in the recesses of the premises with some other business, it is here that he has his usual station. He is a nimble, active-looking man of middle age, and moves from one corner to another with great alacrity, and apparently under the influence of high animal spirits. His complexion is very sanguinous, but nothing can be more intelligent, keen, and sagacious than the expression of the physiognomy; above all the gray eyes and eye-brows, as full of locomotion as those of Catalani’s. The remarks he makes are in general extremely acute—much more so indeed than any other member of the trade I ever heard speak upon such topics. 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 assured was entirely his own)—and the subsequent energy with which he has supported it through every variety of good and evil fortune. It would be unfair to lay upon his shoulders any portion of the blame which any part of his book may have deserved; but it is impossible to deny that he is well entitled to whatever merit may be supposed to be due to the erection of a work founded in the main upon good principles, both political and religious, in a city where a work upon such principles must have been more wanted, and, at the same time, more difficult than in any other with which I am acquainted.”
On leaving the shop, Dr. Peter is taken to dine at “a house in the immediate neighbourhood, frequently alluded to in the magazine as the great haunt of his wits.” This was Ambrose’s, mentioned in the “Caldee MS.”—“as thou lookest to the road of Gabriel and the land of Ambrose.” At this favourite tavern, at the noctes cœnæque deum, was foreshadowed what was destined to be by far the most interesting portion of the earlier series of Blackwood.
The first trace we can find in the magazine of these famous réunions is in the number for August, 1819, where a work on military matter is reviewed by two different critics while enjoying their evening glasses at Ambrose’s. This was followed up next month by a paper which occupied the whole of the number, entitled “Christopher in the Tent”—a sketch, suppositious, of course, of a country expedition of the whole staff—full of rollicking humour and uproarious fun, with etchings by Lockhart and jokes by all.
In the following year, 1820, the first of Blackwood’s really classic novels appeared in the magazine. This was the “Ayrshire Legatees,” by John Galt; and the editor, quick to perceive talent and eager to retain it, published in rapid succession a series of tales and sketches by the modern Smollet.
This year, too, was an important one for both of the chief contributors. Lockhart, whose rising merits had long since attracted the attention of Scott, married the “Great Magician’s favourite daughter;” and Wilson, to the terror of half Edinburgh, became a candidate for the chair of Moral Philosophy at the University. Curious reports were spread of half true tales of youthful adventure, of bull-hunts by the shores of Windermere; of cock-fights in his own drawing-room; of a thousand escapades of one kind or another; and these were capped by a rumour that he was not very sound in either religion or morals; and even Tory counsellors shrunk from supporting a man who was said to be a fast liver and a free thinker. The Whigs started an excellent rival, Sir William Hamilton, and the contest was very keen. “I wad like to gie ye ma vote, Mr. Wulson,” said an Edinburgh magistrate, “but I’m feared. They say ye dunna expect to be saved by grace.” “I don’t know much about that, baillie; but if I am not saved by grace I am sure my works won’t save me.” “That’ll do, that’ll do; I’ll gie you my vote.” Others were of a like mind, for Wilson was a man whom to know was to love, and the election was secured.
Immediately after the election Wilson returned to Elleray to recruit; and here an event happened which not only shows his natural impetuosity, but which might have been of very serious consequence, and, as a version of the story has recently appeared in “Barham’s Life,” it may not be altogether out of place to give the correct version here.
Lord M——r and three Oxford friends, one of whom had just been ordained, had started in their own coach upon a rollicking tour homewards; their journey, even in those free-and-easy times, was marked by a blackguardism of conduct almost unparalleled.
At York they halted for a few days—few because the inhabitants would stand their presence no longer, and, after paying £150 for their hotel bills, and for the Vandalism they had committed in the town, they drove on to Windermere, and put up at the Ferry Hotel. Here they stayed for nearly four days, disporting themselves like Yahoos. Wilson, as is well known, was “Admiral of the Windermere Fleet,” and chanced, while they were in the neighbourhood, to hold a regatta, giving his friends a tea at Ullock’s Hotel, Bowness, when the amusements of the day were over.
Hither the travelling adventurers came by water; at the landing stage, however, one of the number, seeing a fisherman washing his nets in the lake, crept behind him, and with a shove and a hoarse laugh sent him into the water. Westmoreland blood is not easily cooled, and the peasant, seizing his attacker, ducked him within an inch of his life. Nothing daunted the other three proceeded to the hotel, and entered a room where tea was laid out for a large party; to knock the tray over, to pull the cloth off, to dance upon the tea-pot till it was flattened, and the crockery till it was smashed into a thousand smithereens, was, of course, only the work of an instant. Hearing the clatter, Mrs. Wilson hurried downstairs, and Lord M——r, mistaking her for the landlady, seized her by the neck, and tried to ravish a kiss. At this critical moment the Professor entered—one blow “from the shoulder” laid the noble lord at his feet; then, like a genuine old heathen warrior, placing one foot upon the neck of the prostrate wretch—“if you other two scoundrels are not out of this room in an instant, I’ll squeeze the man’s breath out of his body.” They heard—and fled. Wilson, in a fury of excitement, took boat to Belle Isle, and urged Mr. Curwen to act as his friend. Mr. Curwen represented that Lord M——r was utterly beneath contempt—that no professor of moral philosophy had ever been engaged in a cause of honour; that all his friends had been representing him as a quiet, orderly man—in fact, brought forward a thousand arguments which might have been of the utmost weight to a reasonable being—but not just at present to Wilson; he flung out of the room, crossed the lake, and sought a gallant naval officer, Captain Br——, who, a true Sir Lucius O’Trigger, said the matter was in good hands, and looked up his pistols. They adjourned to Elleray to wait the expected challenge: but on the evening of the following day, getting tired of inaction, they set out on a drive to see why the storm did not commence. Further search was endless. Lord M——r and his friends had taken to their coach and fled; they could not, however, get their horses out of the stables until they had paid an hotel bill of £120 and £20 to the landlord of Ullock’s Hotel for damages. Thus the affair ended happily, and Wilson was able to return peaceably to Edinburgh to fulfil his new duties.
Few men ever undertook so important a charge with so little preparation. “But there was,” says one who listened to him, “a genius in Wilson; there was grandeur in his conceptions, and true nobility in the tone and spirit of his lectures. I can compare them to nothing save the braying of the trumpet that sent a body of high-bred cavalry against the foe. ‘Charge! and charge home!’ Wilson’s action upon the better and more pure-minded of his pupils was pre-eminently beneficial. His lectures deeply influenced their characters for humanity, for unselfishness, for high and honourable resolve to fight the battle of life; like the old Danish hero ‘to dare nobly, to will strongly, and never to falter in the path of duty.’ Such was Wilson’s creed; and, till 1850, when he was found stricken down in his private room, ten minutes after the class hour, he astonished and delighted all that was intellectual in Edinburgh by these, aptly termed, ‘volcanic lectures on ethics.’”
Much work, however, had to be gone through before that date; his private fortune had been lost some years back by the failure of a house of business, and he was one of those men whom, the more work is thrown on them the more they are able to go through with.
In 1822 appeared the first specimen of his power as a novelist in the “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,” which went rapidly through edition after edition; and in the March of this year appeared also the first number of the Noctes Ambrosianæ—a curt dialogue between the editor and Ensign O’Doherty; it was not for seventeen numbers that Wilson, almost sorry, commenced that wonderful series that became one of the literary wonders of the day; and for thirteen years as Christopher North he continued to delight the world, and it is as Christopher North, in his shooting-jacket, with gun or fishing-rod, by the lochs or by the moors, amid the scenery which he has so marvellously limned, and the emotions to which he has given utterance, that he will be remembered to all time.
In 1824 we see that Carlyle gets his first pleasant encouragement in Maga, and Moir’s most famous production, the “Autobiography of Mansie Wauch,” appears. Moir—a young surgeon of only nineteen when he first appeared in the pages of the original Edinburgh Monthly Magazine—had at once attracted the attention of William Blackwood—“a man,” says Moir’s biographer, “of rare sagacity, courage, and persevering energy.” As “Delta,” in the pages of Maga, the popularity of Moir’s softer and sweeter pieces was very great; and when “Mansie” appeared, “there were districts,” says Aird again, “where country clubs, waiting impatiently for the magazine, met monthly as soon as it was issued, and had ‘Mansie’ read aloud by one of their number, amid explosions of congregated laughter.”
Lockhart, too, had since his marriage been wielding his pen as freely as ever. “Valerius” and “Adam Blair” had both been successful ventures for Blackwood; and were succeeded in 1822 by the “Spanish Ballads,” which have so much of the true ring of original poetry about them, that Lockhart’s friends always regretted that he did not devote his time more exclusively to the composition of some original poetical work. In 1825 the editorship of the Quarterly was offered him, and Blackwood lost one of his earliest and strongest supporters. Shortly after this the other satirical spirit of the periodical—Billy Maginn—also moved southward.
But Blackwood was too firmly established now to dread the loss of any single contributor save one. The famous Noctes were, in reality, only just commencing; and there it is that the character of the Ettrick Shepherd most shines—vicariously, however, for his popularity is chiefly due to the piquancy and vitality with which the genius of Wilson endowed him. Whatever is best in the national genius of Scotland, in humour, poetry, imagination, and fervour, are poured forth in the quaint and broad language of the Shepherd. But enough of the Noctes; are they not still familiar volumes upon the tables of all who read?
This year (1826), in which Blackwood was at the height of his success, was fatal, as we have before seen, to Constable; and with his failure disappeared for ever that rival to Maga, Constable’s Edinburgh Monthly Magazine.
In being thus minute in the history of the magazine, we can scarcely be said to be neglecting the history of its proprietor, for their careers were inextricably bound up together, and Blackwood looked upon it as a father might upon a darling son. In the exulting vanity of his success, he was induced, about 1825, to print for private circulation, an alphabetical list of contributors, and sent Wilson a proof, who, by way of remonstrance, dashed in the names of such celebrities as Omai the Otaheitan, and Pius VII., with the names of some of the most egregious fools and mountebanks he had ever met with, and returned it to the printer, who duly furnished Blackwood with a revise; and the absurd incongruity of the names showed him the incautious impropriety of which he had been guilty. Two impressions only were reserved, one for Blackwood and one for the professor.
As an editor, the punctuality and alacrity with which he acknowledged the communications of his contributors was wonderful; “and,” says the “Old Contributor,” “along with the mail coach copy of the magazine, or by an early post after its publication, came a letter to each contributor, full of shrewd hints for his future guidance, and often, not merely suggesting the subject for a future paper, but indicating with delicate hesitation the mode in which he fancied it might be discussed with the best advantage.... The ‘pudding’ was invariably associated with praise. At the head or foot of the welcome missive was a cheque for your article, the amount of which was not carved and patted like a pound of butter, into exact weight, but measured with no penurious hand.... He hated a cockney as Johnson hated a Scotsman, and considered all writers on this side the border, who did not contribute to Maga, as falling within this category.”
In 1827, Blackwood brought out two books, which were alike only in achieving, each of them, a vast popularity. One was “The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton,” by Captain Hamilton, and the other “The Course of Time,” by Pollok, a Scottish, if not a British, classic. The Edinburgh Encyclopædia was continued till its final completion in eighteen quarto volumes, and not the least important of his publishing successes was the reproduction of the chief distinct works of Wilson, Lockhart, Hogg, Moir, Galt, and other writers connected with the magazine. He also continued to the close of his career, to carry on an extensive trade in retail bookselling.
In addition to these heavy labours, he still found opportunity during some of the best years of his life to take a prominent part in the affairs of the city of Edinburgh, for which he was twice a magistrate, “and in that capacity,” says Lockhart, “distinguished himself by an intrepid zeal in the reform of burgh management, singularly in contrast with his avowed sentiments respecting constitutional reform.” Here he often exhibited in the conduct of debate and the management of less vigorous minds, a very rare degree of tact and sagacity.
To return to the magazine. After Lockhart and Maginn left Edinburgh, the bitterly personal tone by which it had been so frequently disfigured, was almost entirely dropped; and this negative fact, aided by the positive one of the great popularity of the Noctes, raised the circulation immensely.
In 1826, an early Elleray friend of Wilson’s, De Quincey, “the opium-eater,” began to discourse of things German in the pages of Maga; and in 1830, the “Diary of a Late Physician” was commenced. This, one of the most successful works of modern fiction, had, Warren tells us, “been offered successively to the conductors of three leading magazines in London, and rejected as ‘unsuitable for their pages,’ and ‘not likely to interest the public.’... I have this morning been referring to nearly fifty letters which he (Blackwood) wrote to me during the publication of the first fifteen chapters of his ‘Diary.’ The perusal of them occasioned me lively emotion. All of them evidence the remarkable tact and energy with which he conducted his magazine.... He was a man of strong intellect, of great personal sagacity, of unrivalled energy and industry, of high and inflexible honour in every transaction, great or small, that I ever heard of his being concerned in.”
Contemporary with the publication of the “Diary,” was that of the successful books “Tom Cringle’s Log” and “Sir Frizzle Pumpkin’s Nights at Mess,” the first by Michael Scott, and the second by the Reverend Mr. White. In May, 1832, appeared Wilson’s review of Mr. Tennyson’s first volume; in which the affectations of Mr. Tennyson’s earlier writings were ridiculed, but his more worthy pieces were praised in no niggardly terms. At the moment Mr. Tennyson was irritated, but his anger soon evaporated in some not very pungent lines to “Rusty, Crusty Christopher,” which he has long since seen fit to suppress; and, eventually, he exhibited a due acknowledgment of the truth of Wilson’s criticism, by removing several pieces and altering others. “Stoddart and Aytoun,” writes Wilson in this same review, “he of the ‘Death Wake’ and he of ‘Poland,’ are graciously regarded by old Christopher; and their volume—presentation copies—have been placed among the essays of those gifted youths, of whom, in riper years, much may be confidently predicted of fair and good”—a sentence worth quoting, when it is remembered that Aytoun afterwards married Wilson’s daughter, and in a few years occupied his position in the pages of Maga itself.
In 1833, Blackwood was still full of schemes and enterprises; he commenced the publication of Alison’s “History of Europe.” Only the first two volumes were published, and then not altogether successfully, when Blackwood was stricken down by a mortal disease, a tumour in the groin, which, in a weary illness of four months, exhausted his physical energies, but left his temper calm and unruffled, and his intellect vigorous to the last. He was attended by Moir—the sweet-toned “Delta” of his magazine—who had another dying patient scarce a hundred yards off. This was Galt, who had been personally estranged from Blackwood by rough advice and strictures as to one of his stories. Now, however, that they lay dying so near each to each, the old friendliness returned, and Moir bore pleasant messages and hopeful wishes from one bedside to another. They never met again. Galt lingered on for years, but Blackwood died on the 10th of September, 1834, in the fifty-seventh year of his age.
We have already given his character as described by those who knew him best, and it were idle to add any weaker testimony.
He left a widow and a family of seven sons and two daughters, many of them very young; and the management of the business devolved upon the two elder, Robert and Alexander, who had for some years been associated with their father.
Until 1845, these gentlemen were at the head of the flourishing business, and with such a start they could not fail to succeed. The magazine, in spite of all rivals, continued to be as great a favourite as ever, though in a year or so after the death of the elder Blackwood, Wilson withdrew almost entirely from its pages, and his position was eventually occupied by his son-in-law, Professor Aytoun. Many new contributors, without distinction of sect or party, were added to the staff; and even Douglas Jerrold and Walter Savage Landor—ultra-radicals, both—were made free of its pages. John Sterling, “our new contributor,” as Wilson fondly called him, fully retained the old reputation for deliciously sparkling poems and essays; and Lord Lytton, in the “Poems and Ballads of Schiller,” kept alive the cosmopolitan spirit of poetry inaugurated by Lockhart. In 1845, Alexander Blackwood died, and was shortly afterwards followed by his brother, when John, the third son, the present proprietor of the business and the present editor of Blackwood, who was born in 1818, succeeded. So popular had Maga become in the colonies, and more especially in the United States, that a reprint of it was regularly published there every month. Mr. John Blackwood took counsel with the American lawyers, obtained an American contributor, and then threatened the Yankee publisher with all the terrors of the law, if the number were pirated as usual—a successful step, for ever since that date a tribute tithe has been regularly paid for the right of republication. A branch house was started in London; the firm was also increased by the return from India of William Blackwood, who was a major in the Indian army.
In 1848 Lord Lytton commenced the “Caxtons,” and novel after novel from his pen appeared in Maga to be anonymously successful even to the day of his death. For a period of twenty-five years, some of the finest novels and life-pictures in the language have made their first way to public favour through the medium of the magazine; and Mrs. Oliphant and George Eliot owed their first encouragement to the discernment of Mr. John Blackwood. That Maga is still facile princeps of the monthly literature is evident enough even from a bare mention of latest ventures, from the talent of “Earl’s Dene” and the wit of the “Battle of Dorking.”
Alison’s “History of Europe” very soon proved its worth in the eyes of the public; and among other more recent successes of the house we may mention the novels of George Eliot, particularly “Middlemarsh,” which came out in an altogether novel form.
As we shall not have another chance of returning to modern magazine literature, we may not inappropriately close the chapter with a short account of one or two of the most successful of the high-class publications.
It was not to be expected that the marvellous success of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine would be allowed to pass unchallenged. The honour as well as the fortunes of the Southron publishers forbade it. In 1820, the London Magazine, a name borrowed from an old and defunct periodical, was established by Baldwin, Craddock, and Joy, under the editorship of John Scott, formerly of the Champion newspaper. Many men of talent joined the staff, but Scott’s old colleague, Wainwright, afterwards infamous as the insurance murderer, aided and abetted his chief in a series of very offensive personal articles. In two or three of them a fierce attack was made upon Sir Walter Scott, as being a mere pretender to the authorship of the Waverley Novels (which, as Scott was doing his utmost to hide his light under a bushel, was scarcely called for); and in addition to this the writers made an onslaught on all who were supposed to be connected with Blackwood or his magazine. Lockhart, with all the sensitiveness of your true satirist, called immediately for an apology, and was evaded by a demand that he should first disavow his connection with Blackwood. This was out of the question, and Mr. Christie, to whom Lockhart had entrusted negotiations, feeling that Scott was shuffling, and that he himself was being trifled with, let drop some expressions on his own account calculated to give offence. A meeting was arranged. Christie fired down the field, but Scott, not perceiving this, aimed deliberately at his opponent, but missed his mark. Christie, seeing his adversary again prepare to fire in his direction, did not a second time waste his powder, and the result was that Scott was mortally wounded.
Dreadful as was the catastrophe, and the sensation it made at the time, it tended to soften the asperities of the press, and was instrumental in bringing a better spirit to critical discussion.
After Mr. Scott’s death, the proprietorship of the London Magazine was transferred to Taylor and Hessay, the poetical publishers. The first of these gentlemen was the original proclaimer of Francis as the author of the “Letters of Junius;” the second will ever be remembered for his kindliness to John Keats. Mindful of the success of Blackwood, they retained the editorship in their own hands, and, again like him, were most liberal in their payments—a pound a page for prose, and two pounds for verse, was the honarium of ordinary contributors; Charles Lamb receiving, very fitly, two or three times that amount. It is Charles Lamb’s name that is now most intimately connected with the London Magazine, for here it was that the famous “Essays of Elia” first appeared. Among the other contributors we find many celebrated names; Hazlitt furnished all the articles upon the drama, Mr. Carlyle contributed the “Life and Writings of Schiller” to the last three volumes, and here De Quincey first published his “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” filled with the weirdest fancies and the loveliest word-pictures in our literature. Here, too, Tom Hood fleshed his maiden sword; and among the other writers we find the names of Keats, Landor, Hartley Coleridge, Barry Cornwall, and Bowring. Such an array of talent did not, however, avail, without steady editorial skill, to win a wide popularity, and in 1825 the publication was suspended.
We have seen that Maginn had accompanied Lockhart to the south. In 1827 the Standard newspaper was founded, and he was installed in the editorial chair, where for some seven or eight years he drew £500 a year. His unrivalled facility in dashing off slashing articles upon any subject, quickly raised his income to eighteen or nineteen hundred; but his ever-increasing habits of intemperance rendered regularity of work impossible. Together with Lockhart and other writers, he planned a London monthly rival to Blackwood, and in 1829 an East India merchant of the name of Fraser was found willing to make the necessary advances, and Fraser’s Magazine was started. An editor was kept to correct the proofs, and to go to prison, as occasion might require; but Maginn contributed a large proportion of the first three numbers, and was virtually the manager. Hogg, who, as Wilson said, had made a perfect stye of every magazine in the kingdom, was invited up to town. Its rollicking tone, untempered by any genuine humour, was wofully overdone, and smacked of the reeking laughter of the pothouse. Maginn, having no one to direct his shafts, attacked every one right and left, and selected a series of literary and political butts for continuous practice, among whom were Professor Wilson, Tom Campbell, and Lord Ellesmere, who were insulted in the most audacious manner; and language and criticism like this gave constant rise to cudgellings, law-suits, and duels. Maginn, however, had plenty of courage—was as reckless with his pistol as his pen. Captain Berkeley having called at the office, seen Fraser, and horsewhipped him for a libel, was challenged by the writer of it—Maginn—who, sobered down for the moment, stood his fire for three rounds with the utmost nonchalance. In spite of the humour of Thackeray and the philosophy of Carlyle, lately admitted to its pages, Fraser’s Magazine was commercially not successful until Maginn and Hogg were banished from the staff. When, however, it got into better hands, and led a cleanlier life, an ample field was found for its circulation.
Thackeray, whom we mentioned above, was instrumental in effecting a thorough change in periodical literature. When under his direction, the Cornhill was started, to give for a shilling all that had before been given for two shillings and sixpence, the bookselling world was incredulous of success, and the book-buying world scarcely hopeful. More than 100,000 copies of the first number were sold, and as soon as it was seen that a vastly wide-spread circulation is infinitely more valuable than a narrower sphere at a much higher rate, a crowd of other shilling magazines were produced, among which it is enough to mention Temple Bar, London Society, Macmillan’s, Belgravia, and a score of others, some of which were doubtless successful, but many more or less ephemeral. One detrimental fact has of course arisen from such a multiplicity of organs; the available talent of the day, such as it is, cannot now be concentrated. The same curse haunts the theatre; at present one “star” is as much as the greediest can expect on one stage.