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HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

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was to give a “sly history of the transaction, [Pringle's quarrel with Blackwood,] and the great literary battle that was to be fought." Hogg's own portion of the "Chaldee Manuscript" consisted of the first two chapters, part of the third, and part of the last. He suspected Lockhart, who was eminently sarcastic and personal, of having thrown in the pepper.

Words cannot adequately describe the dismay, astonishment, wrath and hatred which greeted the seventh number of Blackwood, containing the Chaldee Manuscript. There was a wild outcry, all through Edinburgh, before the Magazine had been one hour published. Not alone was the accusation of personality made, but it was declared that the interests of religion and society demanded the prosecution, with a view to the heavy punishment, of Mr. Blackwood, for having published "a ribald and profane parody upon the Bible." Greatly alarmed, Blackwood determined to withdraw the offensive article. He had actually issued only two hundred numbers of the Magazine. Every other copy that went out, was minus the " Chaldee," and, in the next number, which was published in November, 1817, there appeared the following very humble apology:

"The Editor has learned with regret, that an article in the first edition of last number, which was intended merely as a jeu d'esprit, has been construed so as to give offence to individuals justly entitled to respect and regard; he has on that account withdrawn it in the second edition, and can only add, that if what has happened could have been anticipated, the article in question certainly never would have appeared."

Some prosecutions were commenced, and Blackwood had to pay £1000, in costs and damages, in two years. More were threatened. The result was that, henceforth, Blackwood's Magazine became looked for, month after month, in the expectation of some other group of personalities. In due season, it must be confessed, this expectation duly obtained remarkable fruitage.

At this distance of time, when thirty-seven years have elapsed between the original publication of the Chaldee Manuscript and this notice of it, difficult would it be to point out a tithe of the personalities with which it literally abounded. To obtain even a sight of the article has been difficult. I searched all the national and public libraries in England and Scotland, where sets of Blackwood are kept, and never succeeded in meeting one containing the first (and suppressed) edition of No. VII., containing The Chaldee. A short time since, in New-York, I discovered a set of Blackwood containing the desiderated article,* and, as it is in itself, not only a literary curiosity, but is repeatedly referred to

* It was Mr. Evans, (of the firm of Evans & Dickerson, New-York,) who informed me that he possessed a complete set of Blackwood, with this suppressed article. On examination, I found that it was even as he said. Eventually, I purchased this set, but am not the less obliged to the polite courtesy of the vendors, which permitted me to make a copy of the article, some weeks before I had determined to obtain ownership of the valuable series.-M.

A*

in The Noctes, I shall reprint it, at the end of this narrative, with notes sufficient to indicate the principal persons therein referred to.

Soon after the publication of the Chaldee Manuscript, Wilson, Lockhart, Gillies and Hogg entered into very intimate relations with Blackwood. This list was speedily augmented. In 1818, the late Major Thomas Hamilton (subsequently known as author of "The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton," and "Men and Manners in America ") entered the corps as a volunteer. The following year witnessed the adhesion of Dr. Maginn, afterwards known, in Blackwood, as Morgan Odoherty. John Galt, the novelist, soon joined the band, and a very young versemaker (the late David Macbeth Moir) wrote a great deal for it under the Greek signature of A. But the actual conduct of the Magazine, which included correspondence with contributors, was wholly in Blackwood's hands. He was an excellent man of business, and the Magazine owed much of its success to him.

As early as February, 1818, probably induced by the bold personalities of the Chaldee Manuscript, the Magazine obtained an able, constant, and powerful contributor in the person of Timothy Tickler,-who figures, very extensively, as one of the dramatis persona of the Noctes. The real name of this writer was Robert Syme. John Wilson's mother was his sister. He was a Writer of the Signet, in extensive practice at Edinburgh, had considerable property, lived in a grand house in George's Square, and was, if all accounts be true, one of the greatest Tories in all broad Scotland. Hogg describes him as “an uncommonly fine-looking elderly gentleman, about seven feet high, and as straight as an arrow." He was a good violinist, also,—which strongly recommended him to Hogg. He wrote on a variety of topics in the Magazine, and always with marked ability.

At one time, it was a habit to review, in Blackwood, books which never had been published. In February, 1819, a notable instance of this occurred. There was a review, critical enough and rich in extracts, of a book professing to have been printed in Aberystwith, (a small watering-place in Wales,) and entitled "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, being the Substance of some familiar Communications concerning the present State of Scotland, written during a late Visit to that Country." A certain Dr. Peter Morris, of Pensharpe Hall, Aberystwith, was invented as the letter-writer. The extracts were piquant enough, and the allusions to persons and things said to be noticed in the book, were abundantly provoking. In the next Blackwood there was a further and fuller review. The result was that Lockhart was induced to complete "Peter's Letters," which Blackwood published, (as a second edition!) and it soon reached a third. Caustic, witty, earnest, personal, and fearless, "Peter's Letters” attracted great attention, and no slight animadversion. The author's name got known, and the Magazine gained much credit for having introduced Dr. Morris to the world.

Among the early contributors, in prose or verse, were "Sir Thomas Dick

HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

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Lauder, who afterwards wrote a graphic account of the Great Morayshire Floods in 1829; Dr. McCrie, the biographer of John Knox and Andrew Melvil ; Sir David Brewster; Wordsworth, the poet; Dr. Anster, of Dublin, whose translation of "Faust" is probably the best yet published; Coleridge; Galt, the Scottish novelist; the late William Gosnell, of Cork, author of "Daniel O'Rourke ;" J. J. Callanan, and J. D. Murphy, also natives of Cork, the first of whom will be remembered by his ballad of “Gougane Barra;" Bowles, the poet; Crofton Croker, author of “Irish Fairy Legends;" Richard B. Peake, the dramatist, whose "Magic Lay of the One Horse Chay" first appeared in Maga; Barry Cornwall; Gleig, author of "The Subaltern;" Professor George Dunbar, of Edinburgh University; Tennant, the Oriental scholar, author of “Anster Fair;" and Mr. Townshend, of Cork, who was garrulous and anecdotal under the signature of "Senex." I knew him in my youth, and regret that he did not publish his Recollections in extenso.

The first actual and out-of-the-ordinary article which showed that a new power had begun to breathe itself into the Magazine, appeared in the number for August, 1819, and was the commencement of the Ante-Noctes series called “Christopher in the Tent." It affected to describe the sayings and doings of the Editor and his contributors, while encamped, on the commencement of the shooting season, at the head of the river Dee, among the mountains of Aberdeenshire. A variety of fictitious, with a few actual personages, were introduced. There were Dr. Morris, Mr. Wastle, Odoherty, the Ettrick Shepherd, Tickler, Kempferhausen, and others, including Buller and Seward, (representatives of the two English Universities,) with Price and Tims, a couple of Cockney tourists. Nearly all these were creations of and in the Magazine. Not so, Dr. Scott, the Odontist of Glasgow, who is entitled to a distinct paragraph, as one of the Curiosities of Literature.

James Scott was a reality, described by Hogg as "a strange-looking, baldheaded, bluff little man, practising as a dentist in Edinburgh and Glasgow ; keeping a good house and hospitable table in both, and considered skilful." Of literature he was wholly ignorant, but Lockhart and others perpetually mystified him, publishing ballads and songs in his name, which, at last, he used to sing as his own, whenever he could get auditors. Pet phrases, allusions to particular incidents and persons, were so adroitly introduced into these pieces, that while his friends marvelled how he had contrived to appear a dull man for the preceding fifty years of his life-nobody discredited his claims to authorship. "The Lament for Captain Paton," one of Lockhart's best ballads, was put into Dr. Scott's mouth, in The Tent, and gained him so much reputation, that, on a visit to Liverpool, soon after, the Odontist actually was entertained at a public dinner, on the strength of his reputed connection with Blackwood! The wits of the Magazine even went to the length of announcing, among forthcoming works, "Lyrical Ballads, with a Dissertation on some

popular corruptions of Poetry; by James Scott, Esq. Two small volumes 12mo." He was anxious for the publication, and had even sat for his portrait, as a frontispiece.

The first section of "The Tent" was so popular, that the whole of the succeeding number (for September, 1819) was devoted to the continuation and conclusion, in two parts. Among the characters, real and imaginary, now brought forward, in addition to those already named, were Blackwood, John Ballantyne, (hit off to the life,) Francis Jeffrey, Professor McCulloch, Pringle and Cleghorn, (ex-editors of Blackwood,) Mrs. McWhirter and her husband, the erudite Dr. Parr, the Earl of Fife, the Duke and Duchess of Gordon, and Prince Leopold, now King of the Belgians! In fact, nearly three years before the actual commencement of the Noctes Ambrosianæ, here was the overture to that renowned series where wit and wisdom found a voice. As such, I have included it in this collection, of which it properly is at once an initiatory and integral portion. No part of Christopher in the Tent has ever before been published in America: as Coleridge would (and did) say, “It is as good as manuscript."

In October, 1830, in an article called "The Moors," there are some reminiscences of the imaginary proceedings in The Tent, in August and September, 1819. Wilson here lamented the death of the Odontist-paid a tribute to the evanished glory of Dr. Parr's wig-declared that Odoherty had been gathered to his fathers, and that his widow (Mrs. McWhirter) had applied for a pension, which the Wellington Ministry were likely to refuse, but which their successors would certainly grant,—and that Tims, though puny, was far from unwell, "and still engaged in polishing tea-spoons, and other plated articles, at a rate cheaper than travelling gipsies do horn." Wilson repeatedly writes from "The Tent," as witness his earliest and his latest articles in Maga.

There is something characteristic of his love of external nature, a passion which filled his mind while yet a boy, in the pertinacity with which, in his writings, he delights to traverse mountain and valley, to breast the deep waters of the dark and lonely tarn, to speed across the heathery moors, to follow the rapid river to its small source among the hills, to claim and make acquaintance with the free denizens of earth and air, to hold companionship with the humble shepherd in his turf-built shieling, far up among the clouds and sunshine, in the extensive tracks where thousands of sheep found food, and, at all times and seasons, to

"Look through Nature up to Nature's God."

If it be noticed that Christopher North-clarum et venerabile nomen !—is not actually designated as such, under "The Teut," my reply is the very sufficient one that, up to this time, the name had not been invented. The conductor of Blackwood had hitherto been represented as a sort of "stat nominis

HISTORY OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

xiii umbra," and was spoken of as "the veiled Editor." No doubt, the inconvenience of this want of individuality was felt. Therefore, on the back of the contents-page of Blackwood for September, 1819, appeared the following announcement among a variety of other (imaginary) "Books preparing for Publication," by Blackwood, of Edinburgh, and Cadell & Davies, of London : THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY of CHRISTOPHER NORTH, Esq., Editor of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, in 3 vols 8vo, with numerous engravings of men and things.

"Had any man the courage to write a full, candid, and unaffected account of what he himself has seen and thought-he could not fail to make the most interesting and instructive book in the world." KANT.

In the first volume of this work will be found a copious account of all the extraordinary scenes which occurred in Paris at the commencement of the Revolution, and of the wonderful escape of the Author shortly after the martyrdom of King Louis. The second is chiefly occupied with the political state of Scotland in the years immediately succeeding-and sketches of the many singular characters first about that time developed in this part of the island. The Author's travels into various countries of Europe, particularly Spain, Sicily, Germany, and Ireland-his return to Britain-and final establishment in the metropolis of Scotland-together with free and plain strictures on some recent transactions of a very uncommon nature, will bring the third volume to a conclusion.

The Author is not insensible to the very great boldness of the Work which he has thus undertaken to prepare for the public eye. The nature of those clamours which cannot fail to precede, attend, and follow, the publication of his Memoirs has been abundantly contemplated by him, and he has fairly made up his mind to endure them all. The age at which he has arrived is such as to convince him of the folly of either fearing or hoping much for himself. His only object and ambition is to produce an impartial narrative-and if he does so, he sees no reason to doubt that that narrative will be a KTHMA EZ AEI.

From this period, the eidolon called CHRISTOPHER NORTH, was the recognised editor of Blackwood. Here he alluded to his age as being far advanced. Judging from a subsequent statement in the Noctes, immortal North was born in December, 1755, which would make him 64, in The Tent; 67, when the Noctes commenced; and 80, when they were concluded. Of course, then, in June, 1849, when the Dies Boreales were commenced, North must have been 94, and must have reached the ripe age of 97, when the last was penned, in September, 1852.*

The first of the Noctes Ambrosiane was published in March, 1822. The interlocutors were North and Odoherty. In the preceding June, Dr. Maginn, who had become one of the most prolific, as he certainly was the most learned,

* Vide the article in Blackwood, for May, 1854, which gives this as the date of Wilson's last contribution.-M.

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