Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE MYSTIC THREE. 233
to the laughter of the world had the case not been his
own—which was a very weak point with the wits of
the period. They loved to goad and sting their neigh-
bours, often into outbursts of fury ; but they could
not bear any touch upon themselves.
Nothing could be more ludicrous than to describe
the gay band of young authors as " miscreants whose
outrages in print have for the last four years desolated
private society in Edinburgh, interrupted the course
of friendship, and ruined the harmony of social inter-
course," unless it was the solemn but out-of-date state-
liness of the warlike response, the medieval formality
of the counter-check quarrelsome, and all the rest.
But the laughter is hushed when this antiquated farce
ends in the sacrifice of a man's life, especially when
an entirely innocent person is brought in to take the
vicarious weight of such a quarrel upon him. The
whole matter was looked upon with distress and pain,
but also at first with something of that fictitious
admiration of an " afiair of honour " which still lin-
gered in men's minds, in the circle in Edinburgh.
The reader is in a position to know how true to fact
(if also at the same time a little untrue in sentiment)
was the denial finally extracted from Lockhart of
being editor or part editor of ' Blackwood's Magazine.'
It was perfectly true, in so far that he was in no point
of view the last authority, and that he never was a
salaried editor deriving payment for his work as such,
except for the very brief period of Murray's influence
(if then), when his position was little more than nomi-
nal ;
but that he was one of the mystic Three who
presided over everything in the Magazine cannot be
doubted. Mr Blackwood preserved his Veto and his