Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/266

230 230 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD. cess 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 author- ship 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. Lock- hart, 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 ex- pressions 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