Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

168 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
tell ; but at all events he seems to have recovered his
composure, and to have made no more remonstrances
for the moment. We hold our breath to hear that
there was ever a question of the Magazine losing the
familiar name which has been a household word for
so many years : but this is the only mention of such
an idea that is to be found. We cannot imagine
the possibility of Blackwood, who had stood like a
rock against all assaults, and to whom perhaps Mr
Murray's support was not so essential as was supposed
in London, consenting to such a step : and Scott, we
may be sure, would never have advised such an in-
vasion of any man's rights. Murray, however, seems
to have been satisfied. He was delighted with the
Magazine for October 1818, the beginning of the
second year, and there is a little bustle of activity in
his next letter in respect to some contributors whom
he believed he might be able to secure. Frere is
mentioned, and Sir James Mackintosh, whom, how-
ever, he cannot ask at the moment on account of the
attacks on the ' Edinburgh Keview.' We imagine
that his correspondents were not particularly anxious
for his help in this way. They knew their own affairs
and trusted their own men.
There is rather a comical incident here in the story,
which shows that our two young persons, though per-
fectly capable of throwing dust in the eyes of the
great London publisher, were only after all very
young men still (for Wilson though over thirty was
always a boy at heart), and not without a little char-
acteristic silliness of their own. Amid the storm of
literary missiles which flew about, a pamphlet of
unusual virulence, called " Hypocrisy Unveiled and