The first article in the number for May 1818 is a brief but strictly specific “Description of the Patent Kaleidoscope, Invented by Dr. Brewster”[143]. This issue too presented the first of a series entitled “The Craniologists Review”[144], No. I being a description of Napoleon’s head, supposedly by “a learned German”, a Doctor Ulric Sternstare, who may or may not have been a bona fide personage. One is apt to suspect, however, that these articles are by our young friend Lockhart. “Maga” owed many a nomme de plume to Lockhart’s German travels; the subject matter, craniology, is one of his own hobbies, as later revealed in Peter’s Letters; and the last sentence is more reminiscent of the young scamp than any “learned German”! The article concludes: “I think him a more amiable character than that vile toad Frederick of Prussia, who had no moral faculties on the top of his head; and he will stand a comparison with every conqueror, except Julius Caesar, who perhaps deserved better to be loved than any other person guilty of an equal proportion of mischief.”[145]
[143] Ibid., V. iii, p. 121
[144] Ibid., V. iii, p. 146
[145] Ibid., V. iii, p. 148
There is a gem of an article in Blackwood’s for July 1818, the fourth of a series of “Letters of Timothy Tickler to Eminent Literary Characters. Letter IV—To the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine”.[146] Timothy Tickler was an uncle of John Wilson’s, a Mr. Robert Sym; but it is doubtful whether Robert Sym was the author of many, if any, of the compositions laid at the door of the venerable Timothy. This Letter IV is professedly in answer to one from the editor of Blackwood’s. Obviously it is only another device, and a clever one, to discuss the merits of “Maga”, and make a stab at the Whigs and the Edinburgh Review. Old Timothy says, “You wish to have my free and candid opinion of your work in general, and I will now try to answer your queries in a satisfactory way. Your Magazine is far indeed from being a ‘faultless monster, which the world ne’er saw’; for it is full of faults, and most part of the world has seen it.... Just go on, gradually improving Number after Number, and you will make a fortune.”[147] Seeming criticism, then a sudden tooting of the Blackwood horn, seeming praise of Constable, then a flash and a dig, characterize the article throughout. He continues: “You go on to ask me what I think of Constable’s Magazine? Oh! my dear Editor, you are fishing for a compliment from old Timothy again!—I have seen nothing at all comparable to it during the last three score and ten years. Thank you, en passant, for the Numbers of it you have sent me. Almost anything does for our minister to read.”[148] He concludes thus: “I shall have an opportunity of writing you again soon ... when I hope to amuse you with certain old-fashioned whimsies of mine about the Whigs of Scotland, whom I see you like no more than myself.”[149]
[146] Ibid., V. iii, p. 461
[147] Same
[148] Ibid., V. iii, p. 461-2
This is followed by a very brief sketch of the “Important Discovery of Extensive Veins and Rocks of Chromate of Iron in the Shetland Islands”[149]; and this in turn by a “Notice of the Operations Undertaken to Determine the Figure of the Earth, by M. Biot, of the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1818”,[150] eleven pages in length, and though decidedly statistical, discursive and meditative enough in tone to interest more than the merely scientific reader.
[149] Ibid., V. iii, p. 463