Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/252

216 2 1 6 WILLIAM BLA CKWO OD. 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 respect- ing 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, how- ever, 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 Encyclopaedia " 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