Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE COCKNEY SCHOOL. 139
ought certainly to have known better, he threatens to
attack in turn "the younger and less important mem-
bers" of his so-called Cockney School, "the Shelleys,
the Keatses, and the Webbes." That Leigh Hunt
should be supposed by any one to be more important
than Shelley and Keats seems inconceivable : or
that these should be associated with the trumpery
pretensions of Cornelius Webbe. The critic of the
present day, who is still more cock-sure than our
young lions of the Magazine, and rarely so effective,
should take warning from such an extraordinary slip
as this.
However, these young lions took the matter lightly
enough, after the fashion of their age : though they
were without doubt a little frightened by the idea of
actions at law. They seem to have left Edinburgh
while the first blast of the storm was raging, finally
arriving, after various delays, in the Lake Country,
where Wilson had his
Windermere — leaving
well-known house Elleray, on
their publisher to bear the
brunt : who stood like a rock, writing letters to all
concerned, replying at once to indignant publishers,
injured authors, and severe lawyers, with a civility
and steadiness that never varied—and covering the
real culprits with his ample shield. We doubt that
he had probably some trouble too at home, and that
the wife of his bosom would not hesitate to point out
to him roundly the vexation into which his fine new
Magazine, over which he had been so elated, had
brought him, and what broken reeds were those
writers, for whom all her life Mrs Blackwood retained
an aggrieved contempt. The Magazine, however.