Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

250 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
make my statement look absurd enough by the reprint of his
songs. After that I am dumb.
As to Sir W. S., I shall just tell you one fact. Aristophanes
Mitchell, one of ' Maga's ' staunchest admirers, wrote to me that
he had given up taking her in, and would never again look at
her, solely in consequence of what appeared in one of the
' Noctes ' about Sir Walter, whom he never saw. If a stranger
feels like this, what must friends have done. There is no need
to tell me that my friend meant no harm. I know him too
well even to have dreamt of that. But rashness may, and
sometimes does, produce serious mischief between friends, and
I dreaded the effect in the present broken condition of Sir
W.'s health and spirits. And now let there be no angry recol-
lection between us. I am sure nothing of the kind will ever
be done again in * Maga ' ; and I tried, in as far as she was
concerned, to make up for my little skit by a compliment to
the ' Noctes ' in the next number of the ' Quarterly.'
Here, however, is a bit of denunciation in the old
slashing tone, aimed at a perfectly legitimate opponent
and leader of the opposite side ; against whom—since
the days when it was little more than a youthful
bicker, and every long -armed lad threw the most
stinging ball he could carry from the Blackwood side
to all others—it had been the most natural thing in
the world to volley every projectile that came to hand.
But Lord Brougham was, throughout his career, one
of the men whom nobody loved, and every harsh thing
seemed natural when said of him—a painful but probably
never quite undeserved fate. The occasion was
the introduction of the Reform Bill :
J. G. Lochhart to W. Blackwood.
—
Oct. 8, 1831,
Brougham's speech was four hours long: the greater part
dull, cold, heavy, and tautologous to a wonder: insolent to
intolerability in the placarding of characters on all persons he