This year (1826), in which Blackwood was at the height of his success, was fatal, as we have before seen, to Constable; and with his failure disappeared for ever that rival to Maga, Constable’s Edinburgh Monthly Magazine.
In being thus minute in the history of the magazine, we can scarcely be said to be neglecting the history of its proprietor, for their careers were inextricably bound up together, and Blackwood looked upon it as a father might upon a darling son. In the exulting vanity of his success, he was induced, about 1825, to print for private circulation, an alphabetical list of contributors, and sent Wilson a proof, who, by way of remonstrance, dashed in the names of such celebrities as Omai the Otaheitan, and Pius VII., with the names of some of the most egregious fools and mountebanks he had ever met with, and returned it to the printer, who duly furnished Blackwood with a revise; and the absurd incongruity of the names showed him the incautious impropriety of which he had been guilty. Two impressions only were reserved, one for Blackwood and one for the professor.
As an editor, the punctuality and alacrity with which he acknowledged the communications of his contributors was wonderful; “and,” says the “Old Contributor,” “along with the mail coach copy of the magazine, or by an early post after its publication, came a letter to each contributor, full of shrewd hints for his future guidance, and often, not merely suggesting the subject for a future paper, but indicating with delicate hesitation the mode in which he fancied it might be discussed with the best advantage.... The ‘pudding’ was invariably associated with praise. At the head or foot of the welcome missive was a cheque for your article, the amount of which was not carved and patted like a pound of butter, into exact weight, but measured with no penurious hand.... He hated a cockney as Johnson hated a Scotsman, and considered all writers on this side the border, who did not contribute to Maga, as falling within this category.”
In 1827, Blackwood brought out two books, which were alike only in achieving, each of them, a vast popularity. One was “The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton,” by Captain Hamilton, and the other “The Course of Time,” by Pollok, a Scottish, if not a British, classic. The Edinburgh Encyclopædia was continued till its final completion in eighteen quarto volumes, and not the least important of his publishing successes was the reproduction of the chief distinct works of Wilson, Lockhart, Hogg, Moir, Galt, and other writers connected with the magazine. He also continued to the close of his career, to carry on an extensive trade in retail bookselling.
In addition to these heavy labours, he still found opportunity during some of the best years of his life to take a prominent part in the affairs of the city of Edinburgh, for which he was twice a magistrate, “and in that capacity,” says Lockhart, “distinguished himself by an intrepid zeal in the reform of burgh management, singularly in contrast with his avowed sentiments respecting constitutional reform.” Here he often exhibited in the conduct of debate and the management of less vigorous minds, a very rare degree of tact and sagacity.
To return to the magazine. After Lockhart and Maginn left Edinburgh, the bitterly personal tone by which it had been so frequently disfigured, was almost entirely dropped; and this negative fact, aided by the positive one of the great popularity of the Noctes, raised the circulation immensely.
In 1826, an early Elleray friend of Wilson’s, De Quincey, “the opium-eater,” began to discourse of things German in the pages of Maga; and in 1830, the “Diary of a Late Physician” was commenced. This, one of the most successful works of modern fiction, had, Warren tells us, “been offered successively to the conductors of three leading magazines in London, and rejected as ‘unsuitable for their pages,’ and ‘not likely to interest the public.’... I have this morning been referring to nearly fifty letters which he (Blackwood) wrote to me during the publication of the first fifteen chapters of his ‘Diary.’ The perusal of them occasioned me lively emotion. All of them evidence the remarkable tact and energy with which he conducted his magazine.... He was a man of strong intellect, of great personal sagacity, of unrivalled energy and industry, of high and inflexible honour in every transaction, great or small, that I ever heard of his being concerned in.”
Contemporary with the publication of the “Diary,” was that of the successful books “Tom Cringle’s Log” and “Sir Frizzle Pumpkin’s Nights at Mess,” the first by Michael Scott, and the second by the Reverend Mr. White. In May, 1832, appeared Wilson’s review of Mr. Tennyson’s first volume; in which the affectations of Mr. Tennyson’s earlier writings were ridiculed, but his more worthy pieces were praised in no niggardly terms. At the moment Mr. Tennyson was irritated, but his anger soon evaporated in some not very pungent lines to “Rusty, Crusty Christopher,” which he has long since seen fit to suppress; and, eventually, he exhibited a due acknowledgment of the truth of Wilson’s criticism, by removing several pieces and altering others. “Stoddart and Aytoun,” writes Wilson in this same review, “he of the ‘Death Wake’ and he of ‘Poland,’ are graciously regarded by old Christopher; and their volume—presentation copies—have been placed among the essays of those gifted youths, of whom, in riper years, much may be confidently predicted of fair and good”—a sentence worth quoting, when it is remembered that Aytoun afterwards married Wilson’s daughter, and in a few years occupied his position in the pages of Maga itself.
In 1833, Blackwood was still full of schemes and enterprises; he commenced the publication of Alison’s “History of Europe.” Only the first two volumes were published, and then not altogether successfully, when Blackwood was stricken down by a mortal disease, a tumour in the groin, which, in a weary illness of four months, exhausted his physical energies, but left his temper calm and unruffled, and his intellect vigorous to the last. He was attended by Moir—the sweet-toned “Delta” of his magazine—who had another dying patient scarce a hundred yards off. This was Galt, who had been personally estranged from Blackwood by rough advice and strictures as to one of his stories. Now, however, that they lay dying so near each to each, the old friendliness returned, and Moir bore pleasant messages and hopeful wishes from one bedside to another. They never met again. Galt lingered on for years, but Blackwood died on the 10th of September, 1834, in the fifty-seventh year of his age.
We have already given his character as described by those who knew him best, and it were idle to add any weaker testimony.