There were then two young advocates walking the Parliament House in search of briefs. These were John Wilson (Christopher North) and John Gibson Lockhart (afterwards editor of the Quarterly). Both were West-countrymen—Wilson, the son of a wealthy Paisley manufacturer, and Lockhart, the son of the minister of Cambusnethan, in Lanarkshire—and both had received the best of educations, Wilson, the robust Christian, having carried off the Newdigate prize at Oxford, and Lockhart, having gained the Snell foundation at Glasgow, was sent to Balliol, and took a first class in classics in 1813. These, with Dr. Maginn—under the sobriquet of "Morgan O'Dogherty,"—Hogg—the Ettrick Shepherd,—De Quincey—the Opium-eater,—Thomas Mitchell, and others, were the principal writers in Blackwood.
No. 7, the first of the new series, created an unprecedented stir in Edinburgh. It came out on October 1, 1817, and sold very rapidly, but after 10,000 had been struck off it was suppressed, and could be had neither for love nor money. The cause of this sudden attraction was an article headed "Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript," purporting to be an extract from some newly discovered historical document, every paragraph of which contained a special hit at some particular person well known in Edinburgh society. There was very little ill-nature in it; at least, nothing like the amount which it excited in those who were, or imagined themselves to be, caricatured in it. Constable, the "Crafty," and Pringle and Cleghorn, editors of the Edinburgh Magazine, as well as Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review, came in for their share of burlesque description.
Among the persons delineated in the article were the publisher of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, whose name "was as it had been, the colour of Ebony": indeed the name of Old Ebony long clung to the journal. The principal writers of the article were themselves included in the caricature. Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, was described as "the great wild boar from the forest of Lebanon, and he roused up his spirit, and I saw him whetting his dreadful tusks for the battle." Wilson was "the beautiful leopard," and Lockhart "the scorpion,"—names which were afterwards hurled back at them with interest. Walter Scott was described as "the great magician who dwelleth in the old fastness, hard by the river Jordan, which is by the Border." Mackenzie, Jameson, Leslie, Brewster, Tytler, Alison, M'Crie, Playfair, Lord Murray, the Duncans—in fact, all the leading men of Edinburgh were hit off in the same fashion.
Mrs. Garden, in her "Memorials of James Hogg," says that "there is no doubt that Hogg wrote the first draft; indeed, part of the original is still in the possession of the family…. Some of the more irreverent passages were not his, or were at all events largely added to by others before publication." [Footnote: Mrs. Garden's "Memorials of James Hogg," p. 107.] In a recent number of Blackwood it is said that:
"Hogg's name is nearly associated with the Chaldee Manuscript. Of course he claimed credit for having written the skit, and undoubtedly he originated the idea. The rough draft came from his pen, and we cannot speak with certainty as to how it was subsequently manipulated. But there is every reason to believe that Wilson and Lockhart, probably assisted by Sir William Hamilton, went to work upon it, and so altered it that Hogg's original offspring was changed out of all knowledge." [Footnote: Blackwood's Magazine, September 1882, pp. 368-9.]
The whole article was probably intended as a harmless joke; and the persons indicated, had they been wise, might have joined in the laugh or treated the matter with indifference. On the contrary, however, they felt profoundly indignant, and some of them commenced actions in the Court of Session for the injuries done to their reputation.
The same number of Blackwood which contained the "Translation from an
Ancient Chaldee Manuscript," contained two articles, one probably by
Wilson, on Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria," the other, signed "Z," by
Lockhart, being the first of a series on "The Cockney School of Poetry."
They were both clever, but abusive, and exceedingly personal in their
allusions.
Murray expostulated with Blackwood on the personality of the articles. He feared lest they should be damaging to the permanent success of the journal. Blackwood replied in a long letter, saying that the journal was prospering, and that it was only Constable and his myrmidons who were opposed to it, chiefly because of its success.
In August 1818, Murray paid £1,000 for a half share in the magazine, and from this time he took a deep and active interest in its progress, advising Blackwood as to its management, and urging him to introduce more foreign literary news, as well as more scientific information. He did not like the idea of two editors, who seem to have taken the management into their own hands.
Subsequent numbers of Blackwood contained other reviews of "The Cockney School of Poetry": Leigh Hunt, "the King of the Cockneys," was attacked in May, and in August it was the poet Keats who came under the critic's lash, four months after Croker's famous review of "Endymion" in the Quarterly. [Footnote: It was said that Keats was killed by this brief notice, of four pages, in the Quarterly; and Byron, in his "Don Juan," gave credit to this statement: