Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE LESLIE TRIAL. 179
on which it was founded contained no personal
mockery Hke that poured on the head of the latter
unfortunate person. " Going out of his path to
recommend an impious work," casting " an ignorant
sarcasm on the language of the Bible," being "an
object of suspicion to those who hold the Scriptures in
honour,"—these were the libels upon which the action
was brought. Also that the sufferer had been called
an Enfant perdu (triumphantly proved from the French
dictionary to mean only Skirmisher). The injured
person claimed X5000 damages for his wounded repu-
tation. The jury gave him £100. Such a case could
not, we imagine, stand for a moment nowadays, or
else Biblical critics must have lost many a chance
of salving their injured feelings. But small as the
damages were, the defence in such a case is never
uncostly ; and this substantial loss was added to the
many other troubles of the Magazine during the
first stormy ten years of its life. This is now the
mythic period, the heroic age of its history. The
rights and the wrongs, once so fiercely contend-
ing, have died away into silence. Youth plays the
same or very similar pranks around us at the present
time in many papers and magazines ; but we miss
the boyish laughter, the redeeming element of fun,
which was in so much of it. The young critics of
' Blackwood,' in the exuberance of their mischievous
fancy, had not the portentous gravity which is so
general now.