This amazing piece of literature seems innocent enough at first glance; and in truth it was what people read into it rather than what they read in it that made all the trouble. Quoting from it:
“I looked, and behold a man clothed in plain apparel stood in the door of his house: and I saw his name ... and his name was as it had been the color of ebony, and his number was as the number of a maiden—(17 Princes Street, of course)....
“And I turned my eyes, and behold two beasts came from the lands of the borders of the South; and when I saw them I wondered with great admiration.... And they came unto the man ... and they said unto him, Give us of thy wealth, that we may eat and live ... and they proffered him a Book; and they said unto him, Take Thou this and give us a sum of money, ... and we will put words into the Book that will astonish the children of thy people.... And the man hearkened unto their voice, and he took the Book and gave them a piece of money, and they went away rejoicing in their hearts.... But after many days they put no words in the Book; and the man was astonished and waxed wroth, and he said unto them, What is this that ye have done unto me, and how shall I answer those to whom I am engaged? And they said, what is that to us? See thou to that.”[68]
[68] Mrs. Oliphant: Annals of a Publishing House, V. i, p. 119-20
All this seems innocent tomfoolery enough—pure parody on our friend Ebony, and the two beasts Pringle and Cleghorn who “put no words in the Book”. But that was not all, Constable and the Edinburgh Review figured prominently; and Sir Walter Scott who, we are told, “almost choked with laughter”, and Wilson and Lockhart and Hogg.
“There lived also a man that was crafty in council ... and he had a notable horn in his forehead with which he ruled the nations. And I saw the horn that it had eyes, and a mouth speaking great things, and it magnified itself ... and it cast down the truth to the ground and it practised and prospered.”[69]
[69] Ibid., V. i, p. 121
Constable never outlived this name of the Crafty and the reputation of the Edinburgh Review for “magnifying itself” lives to the present day. “The beautiful leopard from the valley of the palm-trees” (meaning Wilson) “called from a far country the Scorpion which delighted to sting the faces of men”, (Lockhart, of course) “that he might sting sorely the countenance of the man that is crafty, and of the two beasts.
“And he brought down the great wild boar from the forest of Lebanon and he roused up his spirits and I saw him whittling his dreadful tusks for the battle.”[70] This last is James Hogg. There were others. Walter Scott was the “great Magician which has his dwelling in the old fastness hard by the river Jordan, which is by the Border”[71] to whom Constable, the Crafty, appealed for advice. Francis Jeffrey was “a familiar spirit unto whom he (the Crafty) had sold himself”.[72] The attack on the Rev. Prof. Playfair, later so sincerely deplored in Peter’s Letters, reads in part thus: “He also is of the seed of the prophets, and ministered in the temple while he was yet young; but he went out and became one of the scoffers”[73]—in other words, one of the Edinburgh Reviewers! The spirit of prophecy seems indeed to have been upon the writer of the Chaldee, for it ends—appropriately, thus: “I fled into an inner chamber to hide myself, and I heard a great tumult, but I wist not what it was.”[74] The great tumult was heard, to be sure, and the authors fled to be safe.
[70] Ibid., V. i, p. 123