People love to be shocked! That explains the present circulation of Life. It explains, too, the clamor with which Edinburgh received the October number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1817. For the first time in periodical history, the reading public was actually thrilled and completely shocked! Edinburgh held up its hands in horror, looked pious, wagged its head—and bought up every number! It is a strange parallel, perhaps, Life and Blackwood’s,—yet not so strange. It is hard at first glance to understand how those yellow, musty old pages could have been so shocking which now seem to have lost all savor for the man in the street. But before we can appreciate just how shocking Blackwood’s Magazine was, or why, it will be necessary first to remember the Edinburgh of those days, and the men who thought and fought in those pages, and the then state of periodical literature.

When we call Blackwood’s the first real magazine it is by virtue of worth, not fact. There were numerous periodicals preceding and contemporary with it. Most of them have never been heard of by the average citizen, and no doubt oblivion is the kindest shroud to fold them in. The Monthly Review, founded in 1749, was the oldest. It ran till 1845 and is remembered chiefly for the fact that it had decided Whiggish leanings with a touch of the Nonconformist. The Critical Review, a Tory organ, ran from 1756 to 1817, the natal year of “Maga”, as Blackwood’s was fondly dubbed. The British Critic, 1793-1843, was a mouthpiece for High Church opinion; and The Christian Observer, 1802-1857, served the same purpose for the evangelicals. The Anti-Jacobin, 1797-98, was almost the only journal of the time where talent or wit appeared often enough not to be accidental, and it ran only eight months. The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731-1868, has come in for a small share of immortality, but could never aspire to be considered a “moulder of opinion”. It published good prose and verse, and articles of antiquarian and literary tone; its scholarship was fair. When this is said, all is said.

The Edinburgh Review and The Quarterly are the only two besides Blackwood’s which come down to the Twentieth Century with any degree of lasting fame. In 1755 had appeared the first Edinburgh Review “to be published every six months”. It survived only two numbers, being too radical and self-sufficient in certain philosophical and religious views for that day of orthodoxy. In October 1802 the first number of the Edinburgh Review and Critical Journal, a quarterly, appeared, which according to the advertisement in the first number was to be “distinguished for the selection rather than for the number of its articles”.3 Its aim was to enlighten and guide the public mind in the paths of literature, art, science, politics,—with perhaps a bit of emphasis on the words guide and politics. Francis Jeffrey, of whom Lockhart, later one of the leading lights of Blackwood’s, says, “It is impossible to conceive the existence of a more fertile, teeming intellect”,4 was the first editor and remained so until 1829. In the first number, October 1802, there were twenty-nine articles, contributed by Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Brougham, and Thomson, Murray and Hamilton. During its first three years the Review distinguished itself by adding such names to its list as Walter Scott, Playfair, John Allen, George Ellis, and Henry Hallam. With such pens supporting it, it would have been strange if it had not been readable. There was indeed an air of vitality and energy throughout, which distinguished it from any of its forerunners; it spoke as one having authority; and men turned as instinctively to Francis Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Review for final verdicts, as it never entered their heads to seriously consider the Gentleman’s Magazine or even the Quarterly.

This first number, October 1802, is as representative as any. Jeffrey wrote the first article, reviewing a book on the causes of the revolution by Mounier, late president of the French National Assembly. There was an article by Francis Horner on “The Paper Credit of Great Britain”; one by Brougham on “The Crisis in the Sugar Colonies”. Another by Jeffrey, a criticism of Southey’s “Thalaba”, indicates the young editor’s intention to live up to the motto of the Review:—“Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur—The Judge is damned when the offender is freed”. With Jeffrey anything new in the world of letters was taboo, and Southey he considered “a champion and apostle” of a school of poetry which was nothing if not new. Quoting him: “Southey is the first of these brought before us for judgment, and we cannot discharge our inquisitorial office conscientiously without pronouncing a few words upon the nature and tendency of the tenets he has helped to propagate”.5 Notice that Jeffrey uses the term “inquisitorial office”, therein pleading guilty to the very attitude of which Lockhart accused him, and in opposition to which in Blackwood’s Magazine he later took such a decided stand, offending how similarly, we are later to discover.

Lockhart admired Jeffrey and praised his talents; it was the use to which he put those talents that Lockhart assailed. The following words of Lockhart’s own, even though tinged with that exaggerated vindictiveness so characteristic of him, give a pretty fair idea of the attitude he and all the Blackwood group took against Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Review; and shows the spirit underlying the rivalry that took root before ever Blackwood’s Magazine existed and prevailed for ever after. “Endowed by nature with a keen talent for sarcasm (Jeffrey, that is) nothing could be more easy for him than to fasten, with the destructive effect of nonchalance upon a work which had perhaps been composed with much earnestness of thought on the part of the author.... The object of the critic, however, is by no means to assist those who read his critical lucubrations, to enter with more facility, or with better preparation into the thoughts or feelings or truths which his author endeavors to inculcate or illustrate. His object is merely to make the author look foolish; and he prostitutes his own fine talents, to enable the common herd”6—to look down upon the deluded author who is victim of the Review. This is what Lockhart considered Jeffrey to be doing, and he was not alone in his opinion. It is to be remembered, however, that Lockhart’s attitude was always more tense, keener, and a little more bitter than others’, yet his words better than any one else’s sound the keynote of the deadly opposition to the Review which “Maga” assumed from the first. Quoting him again, "The Edinburgh Review cared very little for what might be done, or might be hoped to be done, provided it could exercise a despotic authority in deciding on the merits of what was done. Nobody could ever regard this work as a great fostering-mother of the infant manifestations of intellectual and imaginative power. It was always sufficiently plain, that in all things its chief object was to support the credit of its own appearance. It praised only where praise was extorted—and it never praised even the highest efforts of contemporary genius in the spirit of true and genuine earnestness which might have been becoming”.7 Lockhart never quite forgave Jeffrey for failing instantly to recognize the genius of Wordsworth. He continues, of the Reviewers: “They never spoke out of the fulness of the heart in praising any one of our great living poets, the majesty of whose genius would have been quite enough to take away all ideas except those of prostrate respect”.8 Taking all of Lockhart’s impetuosity with a pinch of salt, the fact remains undeniably true that the Edinburgh assumed the patronizing air of bestowing rather than recognizing honor when it praised.

Among the builders of the Edinburgh Henry Brougham stands one of the foremost. In five years he contributed as many as eighty articles, an average of four each number, and it is said that he once wrote an entire number. He was capable of it! Brougham was a powerful politician, but unfortunately did not limit his contributions to political subjects. He wrote scientific, legal and literary papers as well, with the air of one whose mandates go undisputed. Undisputed they did go, too. In fact Brougham just escaped being a genius! He made a big splash in his own little world and age, but his fame has not outlived him. Another prominent contributor was Sydney Smith, a man of no small reputation as a humorist. He earnestly applied his talents to the forwarding of serious causes, and talents undoubtedly he had; but the wit of his style, according to the Hon. Arthur R. D. Elliot, erstwhile editor of the Review, its cleverness and jollity, prevented many from recognizing the genuine sincerity of his character.

By the end of 1806, Sir Walter Scott had contributed twelve articles in all, among them papers on Ellis’s “Early English Poets”, on Godwin’s “Life of Chaucer”, on Chatterton’s “Works”, on Froissart’s “Chronicles”. After 1806, he withdrew from the Review, and politics became the more prominent feature. No account of the Edinburgh Review has ever been given, written or told without including a remark of Jeffrey’s to Sir Walter Scott in a letter about this time. It would never do to omit it here! The remark is this: “The Review, in short, has but two legs to stand on. Literature, no doubt, is one of them: but its Right Leg is Politics.”9 Scott’s ideal was to keep it literary; and his break was on account of its excessive Whiggism. In Jeffrey’s mind, however, The Edinburgh Review was destined to save the nation! He championed the causes of Catholic emancipation, of popular education, prison reform, even some small degree of justice in Ireland, et cetera, all flavored, of course, with the saving grace of Whiggism.

Modern critics more than once have characterized Jeffrey as that “once-noted despot of letters”. But it is not fair only to be told that Jeffrey once said of Wordsworth’s Excursion, “This will never do!” That he considered the end of The Ode to Duty “utterly without meaning”; and that the Ode on Intimations of Immortality was “unintelligible”; that he ignored Shelley, and committed other like unpardonable sins. Those things are true and known and by them is he judged, but they are not all by which he should be judged by any means! There is no doubt in the world but what Jeffrey’s mind was cast in a superior mould. Lockhart himself has already testified there could not be “a more fertile, teeming intellect”. He was seldom, if ever, profound, we admit; but even the most grudging critic must grant him that large, speculative understanding and shrewd scrutiny so prominent in his compositions. Imagination, fancy, wit, sarcasm were his own, but not the warm and saving quality of humor. He was a great man and a brilliant criticiser, though hardly a great critic. The great critic is the true prophet and Jeffrey was no prophet. As late as 1829 in an article on Mrs. Hemans in the Edinburgh Review, he wrote: “Since the beginning of our critical career we have seen a vast deal of beautiful poetry pass into oblivion in spite of our feeble efforts to recall or retain it in remembrance. The tuneful quartos of Southey are already little better than lumber:—and the rich melodies of Keats and Shelley,—and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth,—and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe,—are melting fast from the field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into distance and dimness, except where they have been married to immortal music; and the blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride.”10 Herein he only redeems himself from his early condemnation of Wordsworth and Shelley and Southey, to damn himself irrevocably in our eyes again with his amazing lack of foresight! No! Jeffrey was no prophet. He had not the range of vision of the true critic, and “where there is no vision the people perish”. This was indeed an epitaph written a century ago for a grave not even yet in view. It must not be hastily concluded from this, however, that all the criticism in the Edinburgh Review was poor stuff. A vast amount of it was splendid work; the best output of the best minds of the time; and it was the one and only authentic and readable journal for years. This is corroborated by a statement of Sir Walter Scott’s in a letter to George Ellis: “No genteel family can pretend to be without the Edinburgh Review; because, independent of its politics, it gives the only valuable literary criticisms that can be met with.”11

But it was high time for a new periodical of opposite politics and fresh outlook; and in 1809 Gifford was established as editor of The Quarterly Review. Its four pillars were politics, literature, scholarship, and science; but its main purpose was to oppose the Edinburgh and create an intellectual nucleus for the rallying of the Tories. In October 1808 after plans were well on foot, Scott wrote to Gifford, prospective editor: “The real reason for instituting the new publication is the disgusting and deleterious doctrines with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages.”12 This of course was a reference to the political policies of the Edinburgh, yet the tone of the Quarterly was not to be one of political opposition only. Scott was eager for the success of the first number and wrote nearly a third of it himself. Later he busied himself to enlist the services of Southey and Rogers and Moore and Kirkpatrick Sharpe as contributors. Southey wrote altogether about one hundred articles on subjects varying from Lord Nelson to the Poor Laws. Scott himself contributed about thirty with his usual versatility of subject matter, all the way from fly fishing to Pepys’ Diary. In the issue for January 1817 he even reviewed “Tales of my Landlord” and “ventured to attribute them to the author of Waverley and Guy Mannering.”! John Wilson Croker, satirist, was another prominent contributor, narrow of mind and heart, intolerant of soul. He was an accurate and able “argu-fier” however, and one of the ruling genii in the politics of the Quarterly. In forty-five years he contributed something like two hundred and fifty-eight articles. Sir John Barrow, traveller and South African statesman, contributed much and copiously, multitudinous reviews and voyages, all in his unvarying “solid food” style and tone. Hallam and Sharon Turner wrote historical papers; Ugo Fosculo wrote on Italian classics. Such was the tone of the Quarterly. It took itself seriously, and was evidently always taken seriously. But no modern would consider those dim old pages of criticism as a criterion to the literature of that age. It was too heavy to be sensitive to new excellencies, too intent on upholding failing causes to recognize new ones. In truth, it was a periodical strangely unresponsive to artistic or literary excellence or attainment. By 1818 and 1819 its circulation was almost 14,000—practically the same as the Edinburgh Review; but the Quarterly never made the stir the Edinburgh did. Ellis spoke truth when he pronounced it, “Though profound, notoriously and unequivocally dull”.13 Gifford remained editor until 1824; then John Taylor Coleridge ascended the throne for two years, and after that, Lockhart.

Concerning the Scots Magazine which seemed to be dying a natural death about the time of the initial impulse of “Maga”, Lockhart writes: “It seems as if nothing could be more dull, trite and heavy than the bulk of this ancient work.”14 An occasional contribution by Hazlitt or Reynolds enlivened it a bit, but only served to emphasize in contrast the duller parts.

The name of Leigh Hunt can scarcely be omitted from this panorama, though here it is the journalist rather than the journal which attracts attention. At various times he edited various publications, ten in all, and all of them more or less short-lived and unsuccessful. Among them was the Reflector (1810-11), a quarterly which is remembered mainly because Hunt was its editor and Charles Lamb one of its contributors. Most noteworthy of his periodical projects was the Examiner, a newspaper which he began to edit (1808) for his brother, and continued to do so for the space of some thirteen years. It professed no political allegiance, but was enough outspoken in its radical views to land both Leigh Hunt and his brother in prison, after printing an article on the Prince Regent. Among other things of interest, it started a department of theatrical criticism; and on the whole, with men like Hazlitt and Lamb contributing, it could not escape being interesting. The Blackwood group later reacted to it and its editor as a bull does to a red rag, testifying at least that it was far from nondescript.

The London Magazine did not start until two years after Blackwood’s, and we will dismiss it with only a few words. It was a periodical fashioned after the sprightlier manner which Blackwood’s, too, strove to maintain. They were bitter rivals from the first; and as to which was the more bitter, the more stinging in its personalities, it would be hard to judge. At one time matters even reached such a pitch that John Scott, the London’s first editor, and Lockhart found it necessary to “meet on the sod”. The London put forth many fine things. In September 1821 it gave to the public “Confessions of an Opium Eater” by a certain Thomas De Quincey. A year later it offered “A Dissertation on Roast Pig” by an author then not so well known as now. A poem or two of one John Keats appeared in its pages; and when all is said, there is no doubt that the London Magazine did at times splendidly illumine the poetry of the age. It ran from 1820 to 1829.

Thus in brief was the periodical world. The quarterly reviews were avowedly pretentious, never amusing, not creative. Contents were limited to political articles, to pompous dissertations and reviews. There were no stories, no verse, nothing unbending, never a touch of fantasy. Their political flavor was the least of their sins. A touch of the Radical, the Whig or the Tory is a real contribution to the history of literature, wherein it inevitably involves great historic divisions of the thought of a nation concerning life and art. No. Our quarrel, like Blackwood’s, is on the ground of their rigidity. It is well to hold fast that which is good; but it is not well to insistently oppose and blind oneself and others to the changing order and the forward march of men and letters.

Knowing what we do of Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Review it is easy to comprehend what prompted Lockhart’s pen to say: “It is, indeed, a very deplorable thing to observe in what an absurd state of ignorance the majority of educated people in Scotland have been persuaded to keep themselves, concerning much of the best and truest literature of their own age, as well as of the ages that have gone by”.15... His quarrel is ours for the nonce, and to comprehend the spirit of “Maga” it is first necessary to comprehend the spirit which prompted much for which it is so rigorously criticised. Lockhart speaks of the “facetious and rejoicing ignorance” of the Reviewers. “I do not on my conscience believe”, says he in Peter’s Letters, “that there is one Whig in Edinburgh to whom the name of my friend Charles Lamb would convey any distinct or definite idea.... They do not know even the names of some of the finest poems our age has produced. They never heard of Ruth or Michael, or The Brothers or Hartleap Well, or the Recollections of Infancy or the Sonnets to Buonaparte. They do not know that there is such a thing as the description of a churchyard in The Excursion. Alas! how severely is their ignorance punished in itself”!16 Perhaps we can forgive the egotistic note in the following words, also from Peter’s Letters: “There is no work which has done so much to weaken the authority of the Edinburgh Review in such matters as Blackwood’s Magazine.”17 Blackwood’s is at least still readable which is more than can be said of most of its contemporaries. Though it did not, like the London, discover a Charles Lamb or a De Quincey, it did and does still overflow with the forging energy and ardent enthusiasms of youth. Besides the famous “Noctes Ambrosianae” for the most part attributed to John Wilson, it published good short stories, good papers by James Hogg, John Galt, and others, good verse, much generous as well as much vindictive criticism. It opened up new fields of interest: German, Italian and Norse letters, all hitherto but slightly touched upon. But we anticipate,—and must needs begin at the beginning.

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