Professing to be of no party in politics, but to set forth the literature of the day in an independent and gentleman-like style, and having the stamp of hoary eld, and the connexion of the foremost bookseller of the Athens to recommend and push it into notice, one would suppose that the Edinburgh Magazine would be elegant in its structure, and extensive in its circulation. But it is neither the one nor the other. When I was in the Athens, the reputed editor was one of those miserable and pretending quacks who can write nothing, and whose taste and opinion are not worth a single straw,—a fellow, who would indeed pretend to an intimacy with the illustrious men both of England and of Scotland, but who never, by any chance, could have been in company with one of them; and who had been appointed to this miserable editorship, because nobody who could write a single page, or give a sensible opinion upon a single book or subject, could be found, that would have any thing to do with it.
The great success of the Edinburgh Review tempted the cupidity of other booksellers; and, as there was no possibility of contending with it in the same class of writing, or on the same side of politics, a journal of a novel description, not only in the Athens, but in the world generally, was begun. The celebrity of the Review, and the superiority of the Whig advocates, had given a Whig bias, at least as far as speech was concerned, to all the young lawyers of any spirit and pretensions. To so great a degree had this been carried, that even the sons of the most super-ultra devotees to the existing system spoke against sinecures, and hinted that there were such things as the rights of the people. Great alarm was the consequence; because the holders of office found that they would be spoiled of their honours and emoluments through the liberality of their own children. The fear was, no doubt, groundless; for had they taken themselves as a test of patriotism, they would have found that office and emolument are not things of such feeble power. But they were alarmed, and cast about to devise means for reclaiming the wandering boys back to the good old and profitable path. There was a sort of simultaneous movement on the part of the boys themselves. They had taken up the Whig song, just because it was the popular one at the time; and they had looked for a share of that public approbation and renown, which had for a considerable time been bestowed upon the more illustrious of the Whigs. But they were disappointed: either they had made an undue estimate of their own powers, or the demands already established upon this approbation and renown were as great as it could bear. Considering the quarter whence these unnatural infants of place came, they were probably suspected,—at any rate, they were left for a few years, dancing attendance at the heels of the Whigs, in a neglect more contemptuous and complete than was wise in the one party, or fair toward the other.
This happened just about the time when there was a sort of movement against the Whigs on the part of the Tories, and a sort of movement from them on the part of the people. An appetite was, in short, created, which called for food different from the sapless husk of the Edinburgh Magazine, and the hard and political fare of the Review. Various causes conspired to give body to this appetite; and Blackwood’s Magazine was the thing produced. Still the party would not have had courage actually to start that Magazine; for there was a sort of belief afloat, that anybody, who would venture to publish in the Athens that which was not Whig, would fail, and anybody who would attack the Whigs would be mauled for his pains. The Magazine was started by very plain and unpretending—at any rate, unwarlike Athenian men of letters. They had a misunderstanding with Blackwood; he got rid of them, and the Athens began to taste the racy productions of the Tory press. Even this cannot be reckoned an Athenian production; for England and Ireland had to be ransacked ere contributors could found, and even yet, Blackwood, with the aid of his brother the bailie, is editor.
When a sufficient number of those who, as was supposed, would not be kept back either by moral or by literary scruples, had been collected together, the campaign was commenced. At first, they seemed to have only two objects in view,—the vilification of all persons who were supposed to be either directly or indirectly connected with the Whigs, more especially with the Edinburgh Review; and a disposition to boast of their own debauchery, immorality, and want of principle, in order to disarm any one who might attack them upon that ground.
Slander, especially if it be levelled against persons whom the vulgar account it boldness to attack, and couched in careless and indifferent terms, is always sure to please somebody; and, from what I saw and heard, there are no people to whom it is more agreeable than to certain parties in the Athens. Accordingly, those opinions which, for half an age, the people of the Athens had been taught to receive, without so much as questioning their soundness, were turned into burlesque and ribaldry; and those persons to whom they had been accustomed to look up with respect and veneration, were ridiculed and abused. As those opinions and those persons were alike obnoxious to the ruling faction in the Athens—though that faction had never ventured to express its dislike—they received the new style of writing with no common degree of delight and gratitude. Themselves and their cause had been so long and so severely cudgelled and exposed, that they had given up all hopes of having any thing said in their favour. Therefore, they regarded the productions of those, who took up that line of conduct merely because it was the only one in which they had even a chance of success, as hearty and devoted champions; and the writers, finding that they met with more patronage, and patronage which promised to lead to more advantageous results than they had calculated, became more and more decidedly partisans, and waxed more bold and barefaced in their attacks. A coarse and clumsy imitation of the biblical style, which would have passed unnoticed, but for its local applications, and its gross personality, gave very general offence, and for that reason procured them a notoriety which otherwise they would probably never have obtained; and some cruel insinuations against a venerable personage whom the whole country had looked up to as a model, both of a man and of a philosopher, were believed to give him so much pain, when the decay of nature had all but put an end to a long career of usefulness and celebrity, that they fancied no one was too low or too high for feeling their attacks.
It must be allowed that both novelty and talent were displayed in those productions,—at least in some of them. The style and manner were altogether new: a sort of virgin-soil, as it were, had been turned up for culture; and though by far the greater portion of its produce was weeds, and weeds too of the rankest description, yet they had all the vigour and greenness of a first crop. Periodical writing had for a long time consisted of abstract disquisitions, or tales which had no decided locality, or connexion with individual and existing character; and whatever may have been the practices of the writers, they kept up a regular show of sobriety and morality in their writings. But the writers of Blackwood’s Journal not only seasoned their productions with unsparing personality, but affected to be adepts in debauchery, and pretended to keep no secrets from their readers, even in the most unseemly of their carousals. Having manufactured ideal names and characters for themselves, they treated these in the most unceremonious manner; and this, in some measure, took off the edge of that indignation which otherwise would have been felt at their treatment of real characters. More than any thing, they succeeded; and success is generally received as the test not only of ability, but of a good cause, in literature as well as in war. If Blackwood’s Magazine had never got into considerable circulation, the writers in it would have been regarded as miserable and malicious rebels from the honest cause of literature; but as they were in so far successful, they obtained in some degree the renown of heroes.
Among those writers there were, unquestionably, some of talents far superior to what may be supposed the average of those who contribute to ordinary magazines; and though these for a time took part in the ribald practices of the publication, and were pleased for a season with that eclât which such practices are supposed to afford; yet still, new in what might be considered as the most blamable perversions of their talents, there were gleams of a better spirit, and promises that they could not always follow the same course. That some of the best of them have already done so, is apparent from the altered spirit of the later numbers, in which there is an attempt at the same external appearance, but a visible paucity in spirit; and the probability is that, ere long, Blackwood’s Magazine, which has always had a considerable portion of its articles from London, will gradually derive its supplies more and more from that quarter, or dwindle to the same inanity as its monthly brother of the Athens.
Indeed, the whole tenor of Blackwood is of a description which cannot be permanent. It offers no principle upon which the mind of an unprejudiced and independent man can dwell at the time, and as little to which any body can refer afterwards for the purpose of obtaining information. Personality, if bold, daring,—or, to use one of its own terms, blackguard enough, is sure to make a noise at the time; but its interest is short in proportion to its intensity. For the philosophic discussion of any one subject, for the establishing of any one principle in science, in morals, or in politics, or for any one addition to the stock of human information, it is in vain to look back at the book; and though people talk about it (and they talk less and less about every successive number,) at the period of its appearance, it may be supposed to pass of necessity into the same speedy oblivion as the animosities or whims by which it was produced; and that future men will have no more desire to know how written slander was managed in the days of Blackwood, than they have at present to know in what terms the ladies of Billingsgate rated each other when the Tower of London was a seat of royalty.
Some may indeed suppose, that as this species of writing is not kept back by any inflexibility of principle from bending round all the sinuosities, and accommodating itself to all the crooked paths of corruption, it will continue to find enough of support from the official men of the Athens, and their coadjutors and underlings throughout Scotland; this, however, is by no means the case. Those persons have no love for literature of any description: their deeds are such as will not bear any kind of light, and the whole of their hopes are centred in the one circumstance of the public’s being kept in ignorance of what they are doing. Like criminals under trial, their only chance is in an attempt to shake the credibility of the witnesses against them; and if they attempt a direct defence of themselves, it is sure to render their offences more palpable, and their condemnation more certain. So long as public opinion remains, and the whole appearances of the times give promise that it will continue to gather strength rather than to decay—it is a tribunal to which none but those who have a wish to stand well with the public will be disposed to appeal; and therefore, how much soever the official men of the Athens may have been gratified by the attempts which the writers in Blackwood have made to traduce their political opponents, and turn them into ridicule, there is nothing at which they would be so much alarmed, or indeed have so much cause to be alarmed, as an attempt at their own justification, even in the same pages. As long as such writers as those in Blackwood confine themselves to personal attacks in the offensive way, so long will they not be dreaded or disliked by that party of which they endeavour to hold themselves out as the champions; but the moment that they depart from this offensive mode of personal warfare, and take a single position upon the real ground in dispute, from that moment the whole of their batteries, whether they will or not, must be turned against those whom they affect to defend. Thus, though they may have been useful in effecting a momentary distraction of public attention, they neither have, nor can they overturn a single principle of those against whom their ribaldry is directed, nor establish one for those whom they call their friends.
There is another thing against their permanence. Men, whether official or not, are never fond of having that brought prominently forward in which themselves do not excel. Now if one were to pitch upon the very weakest point—the blank as it were in the official men of Scotland, and of the Athens, that upon which one would pitch would be literature. The civic part of them, from their education, their associates, and the whole tenour of their lives, can neither love a book, nor, indeed, know any thing about it; and if the opposition and liberal men of the Athens, who after all are by very much the majority, are utterly unable or unwilling to support even one literary man, it is not to be supposed that the other party who are fewer in number, and ever fearful of exposure, can have more ability or more disposition. No doubt, such of the writers for Blackwood as know the extreme barrenness of the ruling men in the Athens, in all matters of taste and information, and the more fond and forcible predilection which they have for dining in taverns and carousing in ale-houses, and who have marked that those ears which are deaf as their kindred clay to every voice of elegance or of criticism, are open as their mouths for a dinner, or their hands for a bribe, when grossness usurps the place of taste, and ribaldry comes in the stead of science,—no doubt those writers have risked a hope in supplying husks for the Athenian swine; but though the deeds have been immoral, the remembrance of them will not be immortal; and though there may always be a few that, seeking their chief pleasure, and finding their only renown in their own debauchery, are pleased to see deeds worthless as their own,