Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/251

215 WILLIAM BLA CKWOOt). 2 1 5 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. Lock- hart " 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 contri- butor, 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 impro- vising 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 per- fectly unmanageable ; and his writings bore every