Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

274 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
remember to do with my articles anything you choose ex-
cept abuse the writer of them, who is excessively thinskinned.
All the Magazines of last month except your own
are worthless.
I could write a page or two rather funny on Hogg's Romance,
but will not, if Mr L. is doing it or to do it. Though
averse to being cut up myself, I like to abuse my friends. But
this I would do with good-humour.
In the course of the year 1823 a new danger of an
action for libel seems to have threatened the Magazine
on the part of Leigh Hunt, whose former menace of
the same kind seems to have come to nothing. The
assaults upon the Cockney School had been going on
briskly from time to time, both sides being warmly
engaged. The special exasperation which occasioned
this renewed threat it is scarcely worth while to
record, for indeed it is difficult for an uninstructed
person to draw the line between the abuse which is
actionable and that which keeps outside the range of
law. Hunt's intention had been communicated as
before by the London agent — in this case Messrs
Cadell & Davies, who, like their predecessors, were
much troubled by the idea of being made parties in
a libel case.
John Wilson to W. Blackwood.
If this business of Hunt's annoys you, I am exceedingly
sorry, especially as it is an article of mine. Mr Cadell has long
wished, I think, to get quit of the Magazine, but that you know
best. Hunt's insolence is intolerable. The accursed scoundrel
has a thousand times called you a Blackguard by name [in the
' Liberal ' newspaper], and myself and Mr L, the same by impli-
cation, as all who write in your Magazine. I wish not to get
into contact with such a scoundrel, for it might possibly lead to