Alice Mary Doane

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. 18 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 easy to imagine that the man 26 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. ”

“ 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 8 to save the nation! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 14 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. 65 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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”. ”

“ 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 11 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. 13
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 ”

“ 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 56 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. ”

“ 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 47 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. ”