Blackwood’s shop is described by Lockhart as “the only great lounging shop in the new Town of Edinburgh”[52]. A glimpse of the soil and lights and shades which nourished “Maga” cannot help but bring a warmer, more familiar comprehension of its character and the words it spake. Just as Park Street and the Shaw Memorial and the grave portraits of its departed builders color our own Atlantic Monthly, just so did 17 Princes Street tinge and permeate the magazine which grew up in its precincts. “The length of vista presented to one on entering the shop”, says Lockhart, “has a very imposing effect; for it is carried back, room after room, through various gradations of light and shadow, till the eye cannot trace distinctly the outline of any object in the furthest distance. 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 that important department of the concern is intrusted. Then you have an elegant oval saloon, lighted from the roof, where various groupes of loungers and literary dilettanti are engaged in looking at, or criticising among themselves, the publications just arrived by that day’s coach from town. In such critical colloquies the voice of the bookseller himself may ever and anon be heard mingling the broad and unadulterated notes of its Auld Reekie music; for unless occupied in the recesses of the premises with some other business, it is here that he has his station.”[53]
[52] J. G. Lockhart: Peter’s Letters, V. ii, p. 186
[53] Ibid., V. ii, p. 187
From this it is evident Blackwood’s ideal shop was realized, and that there did gather in his presence both those who wielded the pen and those who wished to, those who were critics and those who aspired to be. At these assemblies might often be found two young men, who, says Mrs. Oliphant, “would have been remarkable anywhere if only for their appearance and talk, had nothing more remarkable ever been developed in them”.[54] These two, of course, were John Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart. She continues: “Both of them were only too keen to see the ludicrous aspect of everything, and the age gave them an extraordinary licence in exposing it.”[55] This is an important note, the “extraordinary licence” of the age,—a straw eagerly grasped at!—corroborated, too, by Lord Cockburn[56] who testifies: “There was a natural demand for libel at this period.” It explains much that we would fain explain in the subsequent literary pranks of these same two youths. They were ready for anything; and more,—enthusiastically ready for anything. John Wilson was a giant, intellectually and physically, “a genial giant but not a mild one”[57]. Lockhart had already made some small reputation for himself as a caricaturist. Perhaps it was insight into their capacities which strengthened Blackwood’s disgust with the two mild gents in charge of his to-be-epoch-making organ! At any rate, it was to these two, Wilson especially, that he turned for the resuscitation of his dream.
[54] Mrs. Oliphant: Annals of a Publishing House, V. i, p. 101
[55] Ibid., V. i, p. 103
[56] Henry Thomas Cockburn, a Scottish judge
[57] Mrs. Oliphant: Annals of a Publishing House, V. i, p. 101
John Wilson is the one name most commonly associated with Blackwood’s, and with the exception of William Blackwood himself, perhaps the most important figure in its reconstruction. The name Christopher North was used in the earlier years by various contributors, but was soon appropriated by Wilson and is now almost exclusively associated with him. In the latter part of 1817 he became Blackwood’s right hand man. He has often been considered editor of “Maga”, but strictly speaking, no one but Blackwood ever was. After the experience with Pringle and Cleghorn, William Blackwood would naturally be wary of ever again entrusting full authority to anyone. He himself was always the guiding and ruling spirit, though never admittedly, or technically, editor.
It was “Maga” that gave John Wilson his first real literary opportunity. His gifts were critical rather than creative, and his most famous work is the collected “Noctes Ambrosianae” which began to run in the March number (1822) of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. He was one of the very first to praise Wordsworth; and though in general, far too superlative both in praise and blame to be considered dependable, a very great deal of his criticism holds good to the present hour. Along in the first days of Wordsworth’s career, Wilson proclaimed him, with Scott and Byron, “one of the three great master spirits of our day in the poetical world”. Lockhart, long his close friend and associate, writes thus: “He is a very warm, enthusiastic man, with most charming conversational talents, full of fiery imaginations, irresistible in eloquence, exquisite in humor when he talks ...; he is a most fascinating fellow, and a most kind-hearted, generous friend; but his fault is a sad one, a total inconsistency in his opinions concerning both men and things.... I ... believe him incapable of doing anything dishonorable either in literature or in any other way.”[58]