Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

CHAPTER IV.
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN.
ACTIONS FOR LIBEL—THE COCKNEY SCHOOL OF POETRY—LEIGH HUNT AND
HAZLITT ATTACKED — CHARACTERISTIC LETTERS FROM WILSON AND
LOCKHART — BLACKWOOD STANDS FIRM — HE SECURES THE COUNTE-
NANCE AND CO-OPERATION OF SCOTT—LETTERS FROM SCOTT—WILLIAM
LAIDLAW — SCOTT'S OPINION OF THE CHALDEE MANUSCRIPT — JOHN
MURRAY'S NOTION OP WHAT A MAGAZINE SHOULD BE—LOCKHART AND
WILSON'S JOINT-REPLY TO MURRAY—THEY CHALLENGE AN ANONYMOUS
ASSAILANT—BLACKWOOD REFUSES TO SELL 'DON JUAN.'
The effect of the new number was instantaneous and
extraordinary. There is next to nobody living now
who remembers personally the commotion and tumult
in Edinburgh over the Chaldee Manuscript, but many
still remember to have heard of it from their elders,
with such remains of the old excitement, amusement,
triumph, or wrath, which, fifty years later, it needed
only a word to recall, and which were almost incon-
ceivable in their warmth after so long an interval.
My mother was a fervent Liberal, and therefore com-
pletely opposed to ' Blackwood's Magazine ' ; also a
woman much out of the world, living in the country,
and but slenderly acquainted, I imagine, with the
subjects of the satire ; yet her laugh over it, and her
remembrance of it, made it familiar to me long before
VOL. I. I