This is just a taste of what is in reality very clever stuff. The subject of approbation or disapprobation had best be omitted. At any rate “Maga” “started something”, for the term “Cockney School” was taken up by the major and minor Reviews and nearly every daily paper of England and Scotland. What Wilson said later (1832) in a review of Tennyson’s poems, characterizes the Blackwood attitude toward the Cockneys from the first: “Were the Cockneys to be to church, we should be strongly tempted to break the Sabbath.”[92] Whatever our evaluation of this sort of criticism, the admission perhaps saves the reputation of Lockhart and other Blackwood critics! Their opposition was more a matter of principle than of judgment.
[92] J. H. Millar: A Literary History of Scotland, p. 506
The rest of the contents of the October 1817 number are interesting and lively, though it must be admitted scarcely so startling as this famous triad. A discussion of the “Curious Meteorological Phenomena Observed in Argyleshire”[93] reads interestingly and rapidly, and is of sufficient weight to save the magazine from flying away altogether! “Analytical Essays on the Early English Dramatists, No. II., Marlowe’s Edward II”[94] is the work of John Wilson, and bears the stamp of his outpouring of appreciation and enthusiasm. Another article, “On the Optical Properties of Mother-of-Pearl, etc.”[95] seems to be a purely scientific offering, and so far as the writer can judge, presumably accurate and just as it should be. Page 47 bears side by side, a tender little “Elegy” of James Hogg’s and a poem in honor of the Ettrick Shepherd and his songs by John Wilson. “Strictures on the Edinburgh Review”[96] and “Remarks on the Quarterly Review”[97] are two articles one would scarcely go to sleep over.
[93] Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, V. ii, p. 18
[94] Ibid., V. ii, p. 21
[95] Ibid., V. ii, p. 33
[96] Ibid., V. ii, p. 41
[97] Ibid., V. ii, p. 57
There are other papers in this same issue which time will not allow even brief mention. It is easy to picture the great publisher when the new copies first arrived, crisp and new with the smell of printers’ ink upon them. There was no despair, no disappointment this time, but the eager palpitation and anxiety of the parent, solicitous but equally certain of the success of his child! A letter penned in haste to John Wilson before ever “Maga” was seen by public eye betrays better than any polite effusion could have done, the genuine emotion of the man.
“John Wilson, Esq. Queen Street October 20, 1817