Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

32 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
relations of the publishers of that period, taking share
in each other's enterprises, and setting their hopes
of fortune on the same touch of good or evil chance,
were very close ones, and perhaps, like blood-relation-
ship, less conducive to peace than the more independent
inter-position of men standing each on his own
ground ; but the intercourse between these new
associates was for some time most cordial and
friendly. Murray hastened to communicate to
Blackwood the wonderful terms upon which he stood
with Byron, who was the great glory of London, as
Scott was of Edinburgh ; and when Blackwood in
his turn had the triumph of securing, if but tempo-
rarily, the author of ' Waverley,' he made a point of
procuring for his correspondent a share in that much-
coveted honour. The curious intrigues, conspiracies,
checks and counter-checks of these changing com-
binations of publishers, scarcely as yet assuming that
name—for they all call themselves booksellers—may
be perceived in the records of the Murrays and
the Constables, already published. There can be
no doubt that the politics of the ' Edinburgh Re-
view,' for instance, were obnoxious to many of its
readers and even to some of its writers, and that
Murray had long contemplated the establishment
of a rival Beview. But it was the fact that the
* Edinburgh,' having been confided to him as its
London publisher, was then summarily taken out of
his hands by the establishment by the Constables
of a branch of their business in London, which sharply
decided him to lose no time in setting up that other
a periodical very anxiously and carefully ushered into
the world, but which did not command the sudden
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