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60 purchased the formers' share in it, took over the magazine himself, and, to make matters clear, gave it his name; thus in October of the same year the first number of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine appeared. From a quiet and unobtrusive 'Miscellany' the magazine developed into a strongly partisan periodical, with a brilliant array of young contributors, determined to oppose the Edinburgh Review régime with all its might, and not afraid to speak its mind respecting the literary gods of the day. Every month some one came under the lash; Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and many others were dealt with in terms unmeasured in their severity, and in the very first number appeared the famous 'Chaldee Manuscript' which made the hair of Edinburgh society stand on end with horror. In spite of the immoderate expression of its opinions, the magazine flourished—it was fresh and novel, and much genius was enlisted in writing for its pages. The editor's identity was always matter for conjecture; but though the contributors included a number of distinguished men, such as Mackenzie, De Quincey, Hogg, Fraser Tytler, and Jameson, there were two names which were always associated with the periodical—those of John Gibson Lockhart and Ferrier's uncle and father-in-law, John Wilson. The latter in particular was often held to be the real editor whom everyone was so anxious to discover, but this belief has been emphatically denied. Although the management might appear to be in the control of a triumvirate, Blackwood himself kept the supreme power in his hands, whatever he might at times find it politic to lead outsiders to infer.

When Ferrier began to write for it in 1838, Blackwood's Magazine was not of course the same fiery publication of