WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
This active, energetic, and in every way remarkable man, who was not only the originator, proprietor, and purveyor, but the editor,—the actual and only editor,—of "Blackwood's Magazine," up to the day of his death, in 1834, has never been properly understood nor appreciated, either abroad or at home, owing to circumstances the public are unacquainted with.
While exercising despotic power, in all that concerned the management of that bold and saucy and at times unprincipled work, in all that concerned the management or the contributors, and never yielding even to "Old Christopher" himself, who passed for the editor, where any serious question sprang up, he was so careful to keep out of sight himself, and to thrust that old gentleman forward, upon all occasions,—a sort of myth, at the best,—a shadowy, mysterious personage, who deceived nobody, and whom all were glad enough to take on trust, well knowing that Professor Wilson was behind the mask,—that, up to this day, William Blackwood, the little, tough, wiry Scotch bookseller, with a big heart, and a pericardium of net-work,—interwoven steel springs,—has been regarded as the publisher and proprietor only, and Professor Wilson as the editor, and one who would suffer no interference with his prerogative, and "bear no brother near the throne."
To bring about this belief, Blackwood spared no expense of indirect assertion, and no outlay of incidental evidence. Never faltering in his first plan, and never foregoing an opportunity of strengthening the public delusion, what cared he for the reputation of editorship, so long as the great mystery paid? Walter Scott had already shown how profitably and safely such a game might be played, year after year, in the midst of the enemies' camp; and Blackwood was just the man to profit by such experience.
In the Life of Professor Wilson, by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon, edited here by Professor Mackenzie, there might be found enough to disabuse the public upon this point, if it were not read by the lamplight—or twilight—of long-cherished opinions.
But as Blackwood, the shrewd, sharp, wary Scotchman, always talked about "our worthy friend Christopher" as a real, and not a mythological personage,—as if, in short, he were himself and nobody else,—and never of Wilson but as one of the contributors, or as the author of "Margaret Lyndsay" or "The Isle of Palms," and then with a look or a smile which he never explained, and which nobody out of the charmed circle ever understood, no wonder the delusion was kept up to the last.
"All I can say," he once wrote me, while negotiating for more grist,—"all I can say is, that whatever is good in itself we are always happy to receive; the only difficulty is, that our worthy friend Christopher is a very absolute person, and therefore always judges for himself with regard to everything that is offered." Now this—considering that he himself, William Blackwood, was Christopher North, in spirit, if not in substance, and that he himself, and not Wilson, was the autocrat from whose judgment there was no appeal—might pass anywhere, I think, for one of the happiest examples of persevering, impudent mystification ever hazarded by a respectable man, while writing confidentially to another, and quite of a piece with the celebrated Chaldee manuscript.
And now for my acquaintance with the man himself. I was living in Baltimore. I had given up my editorships. I had forsworn poetry and story-telling, (on paper,) and had not only entered upon the profession of the law with encouraging success, but had begun to settle upon my lees.