Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE COEONATION NUMBER. 505
from town, he continued for some time as editor
or manager of the 'Leeds Intelligencer,' one of the
oldest of contemporary newspapers. Here we find
him stronger than ever in business tactics, and the
need of pushing the Magazine, through the unpaid
advertisement by quotation in the Provincial press,
with which he had a large connection. The following
letter is dated from Leeds, Nov. 8, 1822. This was
at the time of the king's visit to Scotland, when the
country, as is well known, with Sir Walter Scott at
her head, had gone wildly out of her wits with loyalty,
and the First Gentleman in Europe had received such
a reception as would not have been unworthy of the
wisest and best monarch in the world. Blackwood
shared the general passion, and commemorated the
event in his own way with that mingled daring and
calculation which best answers success. He published
another second number almost simultaneously with
the first, which he called the Coronation number,
and in which he embodied the frantic loyalty of the
moment, and in so doing carried off triumphantly an
accumulation of articles which perhaps on their own
merits would not have taken the first place. This
experiment has never been tried in periodical liter-
ature (not newspaper) but by himself. It was on this
subject that Watts addressed him :
Your king's visit made an extraordinary noise all over the
kingdom, but especially in London, where it was received with
perfect enthusiasm by the ' Times,' and approbation by the
moderate Whigs. The leading article in that number was a
most splendid piece of writing. All I could do was to write off
and get a few extracts into several of the Provincial papers,
—the Cornwall, Chester, Devonshire, Staffordshire, Liverpool,
—