Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/279

 For a considerable time, Mr Blackwood had been of opinion that something like the same regeneration which the Edinburgh Review had given to periodical criticism, might be communicated to that species of miscellaneous literature which chiefly assumed the monthly form of publication. At this time, the Scots Magazine of his native city, which had never pretended to any merit above that of a correct register, was scarcely in any respect more flat and insipid than the publications of the same kind in London. It was reserved for the original and energetic mind of the subject of this memoir, to raise this department of popular literature from the humble state in which it had hitherto existed, or to which, when we recollect the labours of Johnson and Goldsmith, we may rather say it had sunk, and to place it on the eminence for which it was evidently fitted. The first number of Blackwood's Magazine appeared in April, 1817, and, though bearing more resemblance to preceding publications of the same kind than it afterwards assumed, the work was from the first acknowledged by the public to possess superior merit. The publishers of the elder magazines made an almost immediate, though indirect confession to this effect, by attempts to put new and more attractive faces upon their publications, and stimulate the lagging energies of those who conducted them. The two young men who were chiefly engaged upon the work of Mr Blackwood, having disagreed with him, were employed by Mr Constable to take the charge of the Scots Magazine, which he, like others in similar circumstances, was endeavouring to resuscitate from the slumbers of a century. Mr Blackwood was already more than independent of these gentlemen, in consequence of the aid which he was receiving from other quarters; but bitter feelings had nevertheless been engendered, and these found vent, through the fancy of some of his new contributors, in the celebrated article in the seventh number of his magazine, styled "Translation of a Chaldee Manuscript." In this jeu d'esprit, the circumstances of the late feud, and the efforts of Mr Constable to repair the fortunes of his ancient magazine, were thrown into a form the most burlesque that ever imagination conceived, though certainly with very little of the ill nature which the article unfortunately excited in the most of those who figured in it. In consequence of the painful feelings to which it gave rise, Mr Blackwood cancelled it from all the copies within his reach; and it is now, consequently, very rarely to be met with.

Blackwood's Magazine, as already hinted, had not been in progress for many months, before it obtained the support of new and unexpected talent. Mr John Wilson, already distinguished by his beautiful poetry, and Mr John G. Lockhart, whose more regular, though perhaps less brilliant genius has since found a fitting field in the management of the Quarterly Review, were at this time young men endeavouring to make their way at the Scottish bar. Having formed an attachment to Mr Blackwood, they threw into his literary repertory the overflowing bounties of two minds, such as rarely rise singly, and much more rarely together; and soon enchained the attention of the public to a series of articles not more remarkable for their ability, than for an almost unexampled recklessness of humour and severity of sarcasm. It is not to be denied that much offence was thus occasionally given to the feelings of individuals; but, in extenuation of any charge which can be rested on such grounds, it may be pointed out that, while Mr Blackwood had his own causes of complaint in the ungenerous hostility of several of his commercial brethren, the whimsical genius of his contributors had unquestionably found a general provocation in the overweening pretensions and ungracious deportment of several of their literary seniors, some of whom had, in their own youth, manifested equal causticity, with certainly no greater show of talent. To these excuses must be added the relative one of