“After this plain statement, Hogg must look extremely foolish. We shall next have him claiming the murder, likewise, I suppose; but he is totally incapable of either.”[77]
[77] Ibid., V. x, p. 49-50
It is altogether probable that Hogg’s frank avowal dismayed the men who had studied to keep its authorship secret for so many years, fearing lest the confession implicate his colleagues. At any rate, such vehement protestations as the above are to be eyed askance in the light of saner evidences. “Maga” was prone to go off on excursions of this kind; and William Blackwood had at last realized his dreamed-of Sensation! No doubt he knew the risk he took in publishing the Chaldee; but in the tumult which followed, he stood equal to every occasion. Hogg was not then in Edinburgh, and Wilson and Lockhart too thought it wise to leave town. The letters of the two latter to Blackwood during the days of the libel suits remind one of the tragic notes of boys of twelve a la penny dreadful! But Blackwood was firm and undisturbed through it all, disclaiming all responsibility himself, never disclosing a single name. The secret was safe and the success of “Maga” sure. In the November number, however, he saw fit to insert such statements as the following: “The Publisher is aware that every effort has been used to represent the admission into his Magazine of an article entitled “A Translation of a Chaldee Manuscript” as an offence worthy of being visited with a punishment that would involve in it his ruin as a Bookseller and Publisher. He is confident, however, that his conduct will not be thought by the Public to merit such a punishment, and to them he accordingly appeals.”[78]—And again, on a page by itself in the same November number appears the following statement: “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has been construed so as to give offence to Individuals justly entitled to respect and regard; he has on that account withdrawn it in the Second Edition, and can only add, that if what has happened could have been anticipated, the Article in question certainly never would have appeared.”[79]
[78] Ibid., V. ii, p. 1 of the introductory pages
[79] Ibid., V. ii, p. 129
Aside from the Chaldee, there were two other distinct and decided Sensations in this memorable number, both too well known to demand detailed attention. They were Wilson’s attack on Coleridge, “Observations on Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria”,[80] the leading article and a long one; and Lockhart’s paper “On the Cockney School of Poetry”[81]. The former is an inexcusable, ranting thing which concludes that Mr. Coleridge’s Literary Life strengthens every argument against the composition of such Memoirs”[82], ... that it exhibits “many mournful sacrifices of personal dignity, after which it seems impossible that Mr. Coleridge can be greatly respected either by the Public or himself.”[83] Such words were strong enough in their own day, but seem doubly presumptuous in the light of our present hero-worship,—especially as the article continues with verdicts like the following: “Considered merely in a literary point of view, the work is most execrable.... His admiration of Nature or of man,—we had almost said his religious feelings toward his God,—are all narrowed, weakened, and corrupted and poisoned by inveterate and diseased egotism.”...[84]
[80] Ibid., V. ii, p. 3
[81] Ibid., V. ii, p. 38
[82] Ibid., V. ii, p. 5
[83] Same