One of Blackwood’s aims in life was to make 17 Princes Street a literary rendez-vous; and indeed the background and atmosphere of “Maga”, and the men who gathered round it, are perhaps as fascinating and absorbing as the magazine itself!

Blackwood’s shop is described by Lockhart as “the only great lounging shop in the new Town of Edinburgh”52. A glimpse of the soil and lights and shades which nourished “Maga” cannot help but bring a warmer, more familiar comprehension of its character and the words it spake. Just as Park Street and the Shaw Memorial and the grave portraits of its departed builders color our own Atlantic Monthly, just so did 17 Princes Street tinge and permeate the magazine which grew up in its precincts. “The length of vista presented to one on entering the shop”, says Lockhart, “has a very imposing effect; for it is carried back, room after room, through various gradations of light and shadow, till the eye cannot trace distinctly the outline of any object in the furthest distance. First, there is as usual, a spacious place set apart for retail-business, and a numerous detachment of young clerks and apprentices, to whose management that important department of the concern is intrusted. Then you have an elegant oval saloon, lighted from the roof, where various groupes of loungers and literary dilettanti are engaged in looking at, or criticising among themselves, the publications just arrived by that day’s coach from town. In such critical colloquies the voice of the bookseller himself may ever and anon be heard mingling the broad and unadulterated notes of its Auld Reekie music; for unless occupied in the recesses of the premises with some other business, it is here that he has his station.”53

From this it is evident Blackwood’s ideal shop was realized, and that there did gather in his presence both those who wielded the pen and those who wished to, those who were critics and those who aspired to be. At these assemblies might often be found two young men, who, says Mrs. Oliphant, “would have been remarkable anywhere if only for their appearance and talk, had nothing more remarkable ever been developed in them”.54 These two, of course, were John Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart. She continues: “Both of them were only too keen to see the ludicrous aspect of everything, and the age gave them an extraordinary licence in exposing it.”55 This is an important note, the “extraordinary licence” of the age,—a straw eagerly grasped at!—corroborated, too, by Lord Cockburn56 who testifies: “There was a natural demand for libel at this period.” It explains much that we would fain explain in the subsequent literary pranks of these same two youths. They were ready for anything; and more,—enthusiastically ready for anything. John Wilson was a giant, intellectually and physically, “a genial giant but not a mild one”57. Lockhart had already made some small reputation for himself as a caricaturist. Perhaps it was insight into their capacities which strengthened Blackwood’s disgust with the two mild gents in charge of his to-be-epoch-making organ! At any rate, it was to these two, Wilson especially, that he turned for the resuscitation of his dream.

John Wilson is the one name most commonly associated with Blackwood’s, and with the exception of William Blackwood himself, perhaps the most important figure in its reconstruction. The name Christopher North was used in the earlier years by various contributors, but was soon appropriated by Wilson and is now almost exclusively associated with him. In the latter part of 1817 he became Blackwood’s right hand man. He has often been considered editor of “Maga”, but strictly speaking, no one but Blackwood ever was. After the experience with Pringle and Cleghorn, William Blackwood would naturally be wary of ever again entrusting full authority to anyone. He himself was always the guiding and ruling spirit, though never admittedly, or technically, editor.

It was “Maga” that gave John Wilson his first real literary opportunity. His gifts were critical rather than creative, and his most famous work is the collected “Noctes Ambrosianae” which began to run in the March number (1822) of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. He was one of the very first to praise Wordsworth; and though in general, far too superlative both in praise and blame to be considered dependable, a very great deal of his criticism holds good to the present hour. Along in the first days of Wordsworth’s career, Wilson proclaimed him, with Scott and Byron, “one of the three great master spirits of our day in the poetical world”. Lockhart, long his close friend and associate, writes thus: “He is a very warm, enthusiastic man, with most charming conversational talents, full of fiery imaginations, irresistible in eloquence, exquisite in humor when he talks ...; he is a most fascinating fellow, and a most kind-hearted, generous friend; but his fault is a sad one, a total inconsistency in his opinions concerning both men and things.... I ... believe him incapable of doing anything dishonorable either in literature or in any other way.”58

It was the pen of John Gibson Lockhart, however, almost as wholly as Wilson’s which insured the success of the magazine; and Blackwood was as eager to enlist Lockhart into his services as Wilson. Like Wilson, too, “Maga” was Lockhart’s opportunity! He had given early promise as a future critic. Elton says he wrote “sprightly verse and foaming prose”. From 1817 to 1830 he was not only one of the invaluable supporters of “Maga”, but one of its rare lights! In announcing the marriage of his daughter to Lockhart, Sir Walter Scott said: “To a young man of uncommon talents, indeed of as promising a character as I know”.59 His gift for caricature colored his writings. His was a mind and eye and genius for the comic. His satire was that keen and bitter piercing satire which all are ready to recognize as talent, but few are ready to forgive if once subjected to it. But there was little malice behind it ever. Much of what he wrote has been condemned for its bitter, and often personal, import. But Lockhart was only twenty-three at the time of his first connection with the magazine—and what is more, “constitutionally a mocker”. All is well with his serious work, but according to Mr. Lang, the “Imp of the Perverse” was his ruling genius! Others say, “as a practitioner in the gentle art of making enemies, Lockhart excelled”,60 and that he possessed the “native gift of insolence”61. They are strong words, not wholly without cause, and illustrate the attitude of many minds towards his work; yet perhaps they only go to prove that he began to write responsible articles too young, and was allowed entirely too free a swing.

The story of James Hogg is by far the most fascinating of those connected with Blackwood’s; and in a later series of articles in that magazine on these first three stars, the writer says: “Hogg was undoubtedly the most remarkable. For his was an untaught and self-educated genius, which shone with rare though fitful lustre in spite of all disadvantages, and surmounted obstacles that were seemingly insuperable.”62 It is difficult to ascertain his exact relations with the magazine. One thing at least is certain,—he contributed much. Wilson and Lockhart found great joy in “drawing” him, and Hogg was kept wavering between vexation and pride “at occupying so much space in the most popular periodical of the day”.63 As Saintsbury puts it, he was at once the “inspiration, model, and butt of Blackwood’s Magazine”64. But indeed the shepherd drawn so cleverly in the Noctes “was not”, his daughter testifies, “the Shepherd of Ettrick, or the man James Hogg”. And in all justice to him, there can be no doubt that he is totally misrepresented therein.

His poetry is his only claim upon the world. It was the one thing dearest to his own heart, and the one thing for which he claimed or craved distinction or recognition of any kind. The heart warms to this youth with his dreams and aspirations, brain teeming with poems years before he learned to write. As might be expected from a man whose own grandfather had conversed with fairies, in Hogg’s poetry the supernatural is close to the natural world. He is reported once to have said to his friend Sir Walter Scott: “Dear Sir Walter! Ye can never suppose that I belang to your School o’ Chivalry! Ye are the king o’ that school, but I’m the king o’ the Mountain and Fairy School, which is a far higher ane nor yours.”65 This “sublime egotism” is not displeasing in one whose heart and soul was wrapt up in an earnest belief in and reverence for his art. It is the egotism of a deep nature which scorns to hide its talents in the earth. James Hogg spoke to the heart of Scotland, and was proud and content in so doing.

To all appearances Blackwood was now the centre of a group after his own heart! With these three as a nucleus, others of considerable talent joined the circle. Talent, wit, keen and zealous minds were theirs, with enough fervor and intrepidity of spirit to guarantee that “Maga” would never again pass unnoticed. Henceforth there was sensation enough to satisfy even the heart of a William Blackwood! Whatever accusations were afterwards levelled at “Maga” (and they were many) no one could again accuse it of being either dull or uninteresting—the one unpardonable sin of book or magazine! The last thing that “Maga” wished to be was neutral! Better to offend than be only “inoffensive”; better to raise a rumpus than grow respectable! And from October 1817 on, “respectable” is the last word anyone thought of applying to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine!