Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

150 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
There were various opinions as to the propriety of
publishing this. The Editor^ took his own way,
and I cannot interfere with him. When you have
leisure I hope you will do me the honour to tell me
how you like any of the articles."
Not having apparently any immediate reply from
Scott, whose support was so important, Blackwood
wrote again shortly after to Laidlaw, hoping thus to
have an expression of his patron's views. Laidlaw
himself would seem to have praised the number, in
which his own contributions filled a humble place.
W. Blackwood to W. Laidlaw.
29«A October 1817.
I am truly happy you are so much pleased with this number.
I intended to have had the pleasure of seeing you either
yesterday or to-day, and therefore thought it needless to write.
I have, however, been much occupied by disagreeable discus-
sions, in consequence of the hue and cry attempted to be
raised by Constable and his adherents against me on account
of the article entitled Chaldee MSS. No one can regret more
than I do that this article appeared. After I saw it in proof,
I did everything I could to prevent it, and at last succeeded in
getting the Editor to leave it out. In the course of a day,
however, he changed his mind, and determined that it should
be in. I was therefore placed in a terrible dilemma ; and as I
must have stopped the Magazine if I did not allow the Editor
to have his own way, I was obliged to submit. I was in hopes
it would have been laughed over as a cruel joke enough, but
that it would soon have been forgot, there is so much excellent
^ This title is often but vaguely given to some undiscoverable person in
the early days of the Magazine, the convenient partner who was always
responsible and ever regrettably inclined to take his own way. As a
matter of fact the Magazine was, as might be said officially, in commission,
with a governing body of three, no individual of which was supreme,
though the publisher lamented the self-will of the Editor, and the Editor
vituperated with much force the obstinacy of the publisher.