Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

"TO MAKE A SPOON OR SPOIL A HORN." 115
indomitable resolution, right or wrong, to win or lose
all, whatever it might cost him—is a most curious
and interesting one. William Blackwood was too
sagacious and too completely a man of his world not
to know exactly what effect the Chaldee Manuscript
would produce. If the fun went to his head, as
to the heads of the others who produced it, it never
did so sufficiently to make him unaware of the risk he
was running—that risk which was his alone, which
would not touch those dashing daring young men any
more than any other excellent joke would do. We
cannot doubt for a moment that he knew what he was
about. He was not a man to be carried off his feet at
such a critical moment—or rather he permitted him-
self to be carried off his feet, casting prudence to the
winds, by the inspiration of that other kind of pru-
dence which sometimes sees it the wisest thing to set
everything on the turn of a balance, and
" put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all."
There is nothing that has been more commented on
and wondered at than the immense effect produced
by a piece of remote local satire, which could only be
comprehended by those who knew the people, the
scene, and to some degree even the circumstances of
the extraordinary jeu d'esprit with which the new
series began. But it is clear, for one thing, that the
opinion of London and the world—almost convertible
phrases nowadays, and the chief, almost the only, aim
of literature and literary ambition—did not occur at
all to these young men. It was for Edinburgh they
wrote, and of Edinburgh they thought, which is a