Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

LITERARY EXPEDITIONS. 197
had violently attacked the Magazine. This, however,
raised no great grievance or complaint, for in the
unusual instances when " hawks " do " pike out hawks'
een," the spectators are generally too thankful to see
their arms turned against each other to interfere, and
the newspaper was baited by the Magazine under the
form of a mad bull, with lively illustrations and to
the general delight. The Cockney School also replied
at intervals, with much splutter of returning musketry
from the ' Examiner ' and other papers devoted to
that school in London, and there were renewed threats
of actions from Hunt and Hazlitt, from time to time,
but no further harm done. I do not know by whom
the idea of a series of papers, in which the affairs of
the world, the characteristics of the party, and things
in general, should be treated in the imaginary talk of
a number of half-fictitious persons, was first conceived.
It was, however, begun some time before the day of
the ' Noctes,' whether tentatively or accidentally, by
the record of a sort of literary picnic and expedition
to the Kirk of Shotts, and by a further and more pro-
longed excursion, in which the members of the brother-
hood, after their rambles or their sport, met in a Tent,
and discussed over their toddy every subject in earth
and heaven. The same idea, with a difference, had
already been used in a series of letters, professedly
by Timothy Tickler, which was the pseudonym of one
of the older men of the brotherhood, Mr Robert
Sym, the uncle of John Wilson, who afterwards became
one of the most notable figures in the * Noctes.'
I do not imagine, however, that either the letters of
Timothy or his after-utterances in the ' Noctes ' were
actually from his hand, though he had a small share