John Gibbon Lockhart was also educated at Glasgow University, where gaining the “Snell” foundation, he was sent, at sixteen, to Balliol; after taking a first-class degree he travelled on the Continent, returning only when it was necessary to enter at Edinburgh as an advocate. Silent in private life, he found he could not speak at all in public; and many years afterwards, when making a speech at a farewell dinner, given in honour of his departure to undertake the editorship of the Quarterly, he broke down, as usual, and stuttered, “Gentlemen, you know I can’t make a speech; if I could, we shouldn’t be here.”
Briefless both, and both endowed with strong literary tastes, they became sworn friends, though Wilson, with his splendid physique, his loose-flowing yellow hair, his deep-blue eyes, his glowing imagination, his eloquent tongue, and his defiance of all precedent, was as opposite a being as well could be imagined to Lockhart, who, to borrow Wilson’s own words, had “an e’e like an eagle’s, and a sort of lauch about the screwed-up mouth o’ him that fules ca’d nae canny, for they couldna tholl the meaning o’t; and either set dumb-foundered, or pretended to be engaged to sooper, and slunk out o’ the room.”
With two such men as these it was little wonder that Blackwood resolved to continue the battle. The weapon, however, which had been so successfully used in the onslaught upon the Edinburgh Review became in the hands of young writers flushed with victory, instruments of aggression against those who had never offended; and, as it happened that the writers who were most personal in their attacks upon friend and foe alike were also the cleverest and most brilliant, Blackwood’s position became one of difficulty. Lockhart “who stung the faces of men”—and sometimes their hearts—cared little as to who his shafts were directed against so long as they were sharp and biting. Cameleon-like he appeared in a thousand different forms. Now as the “veiled editor” himself, now the Dr. Morris of “Peter’s Letters,” and now as Baron Lauerwinkel, stabbing his contemporaries under the guise of a German commentator. Against all the members of the “Cockney School,” a personal invective was habitually employed by him, at which in these calmer days of drier criticism we can only stand aghast. He says of Leigh Hunt, “The very concubine of so impure a wretch would be to be pitied; but, alas, for the wife of such a husband!”—and so forth.
In the February number of Maga a new contributor, Billy Maginn, made his first bow to the public as Mr. Ensign O’Doherty. Maginn was at this time a rollicking young Irishman of marvellous classical and literary acquirements, who at four-and-twenty had achieved the difficult honour of taking a degree of Doctor of Laws at Dublin, never before earned by one so young. He had a wonderful gift of improvising in either verse or prose, and his talents were so versatile, his reading, though desultory, so universal, that he could immediately treat any subject, no matter what, in a sparkling and dashing manner. When, however, under the influence of liquor, he was perfectly unmanageable; and his writings bore every stamp of his own character. One of his first squibs in Blackwood was a Latin version of “Chevy-chase,” which, in a foot-note expressed more than a doubt as to the Hebraical knowledge of Professor Leslie—an Edinburgh Reviewer who had recently been appointed to the University Chair of Philosophy. The enraged professor summoned the aid of the law. Blackwood accepted the challenge and inserted another article by Maginn, which stated that the professor “did not even know the alphabet of the tongue which he had the imprudence to pretend to criticise,” and charged him, in addition, of stealing his pet theories respecting heat, from an old volume of the “Philosophical Transactions.” The damages awarded amounted to £100, but as all the legal talent in Edinburgh was engaged in what was regarded as a party trial, the costs were unusually heavy. Nothing scared, however, Blackwood welcomed the writer to Edinburgh when he chose to cast off his incognita.
The magazine was thriving now, and circulated throughout the kingdom. Blackwood, busy as he was with its management, found time to push his general publishing business steadily forward. The issue of Brewster’s “Edinburgh Encyclopædia” was continued, and Lockhart’s talents were utilized beyond the pale of Maga. In 1818 Schlegel’s “History of Literature,” translated by Lockhart, was published; and in 1819 appeared Lockhart’s “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, by Dr. Peter Morris”—a series of sketches of all things Scotch, from which we extract an account of Blackwood and his shop:—
“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 this important department of the concern is entrusted. Then you have an elegant oval saloon, lighted from the roof, where various groups 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’s music; for, unless occupied in the recesses of the premises with some other business, it is here that he has his usual station. He is a nimble, active-looking man of middle age, and moves from one corner to another with great alacrity, and apparently under the influence of high animal spirits. His complexion is very sanguinous, but nothing can be more intelligent, keen, and sagacious than the expression of the physiognomy; above all the gray eyes and eye-brows, as full of locomotion as those of Catalani’s. The remarks he makes are in general extremely acute—much more so indeed than any other member of the trade I ever heard speak upon such topics. The shrewdness and decision of the man can, however, stand in need of no testimony beyond what his own conduct has afforded—above all in the establishment of his magazine (the conception of which I am assured was entirely his own)—and the subsequent energy with which he has supported it through every variety of good and evil fortune. It would be unfair to lay upon his shoulders any portion of the blame which any part of his book may have deserved; but it is impossible to deny that he is well entitled to whatever merit may be supposed to be due to the erection of a work founded in the main upon good principles, both political and religious, in a city where a work upon such principles must have been more wanted, and, at the same time, more difficult than in any other with which I am acquainted.”
On leaving the shop, Dr. Peter is taken to dine at “a house in the immediate neighbourhood, frequently alluded to in the magazine as the great haunt of his wits.” This was Ambrose’s, mentioned in the “Caldee MS.”—“as thou lookest to the road of Gabriel and the land of Ambrose.” At this favourite tavern, at the noctes cœnæque deum, was foreshadowed what was destined to be by far the most interesting portion of the earlier series of Blackwood.
The first trace we can find in the magazine of these famous réunions is in the number for August, 1819, where a work on military matter is reviewed by two different critics while enjoying their evening glasses at Ambrose’s. This was followed up next month by a paper which occupied the whole of the number, entitled “Christopher in the Tent”—a sketch, suppositious, of course, of a country expedition of the whole staff—full of rollicking humour and uproarious fun, with etchings by Lockhart and jokes by all.
In the following year, 1820, the first of Blackwood’s really classic novels appeared in the magazine. This was the “Ayrshire Legatees,” by John Galt; and the editor, quick to perceive talent and eager to retain it, published in rapid succession a series of tales and sketches by the modern Smollet.
This year, too, was an important one for both of the chief contributors. Lockhart, whose rising merits had long since attracted the attention of Scott, married the “Great Magician’s favourite daughter;” and Wilson, to the terror of half Edinburgh, became a candidate for the chair of Moral Philosophy at the University. Curious reports were spread of half true tales of youthful adventure, of bull-hunts by the shores of Windermere; of cock-fights in his own drawing-room; of a thousand escapades of one kind or another; and these were capped by a rumour that he was not very sound in either religion or morals; and even Tory counsellors shrunk from supporting a man who was said to be a fast liver and a free thinker. The Whigs started an excellent rival, Sir William Hamilton, and the contest was very keen. “I wad like to gie ye ma vote, Mr. Wulson,” said an Edinburgh magistrate, “but I’m feared. They say ye dunna expect to be saved by grace.” “I don’t know much about that, baillie; but if I am not saved by grace I am sure my works won’t save me.” “That’ll do, that’ll do; I’ll gie you my vote.” Others were of a like mind, for Wilson was a man whom to know was to love, and the election was secured.