LITERATURE. BLACK WOOD^ MAGAZINE. 159 



" I have not written so long a letter these three years. Pray let 



me hear that you are writing a review of Lord B for me in 



peace and felicity, and that you have resolved to dirty your fingers 

 no more with the quarrels of magazines and booksellers. God bless 

 you ! " Very truly yours, F. Jeffbey. 



>j 



My father's connection with BlackmoocVs Magazine was such as 

 to make it absolutely necessary, in any record of his life, to give 

 some account of the rise of this periodical, and of the circumstances 

 which led to his becoming so intimately associated with its history. 

 I shall endeavor to do so as briefly as I can. Fortunately, we are 

 now sufficiently removed by time from the controversies of those 

 exciting days, to look at them with perfect calmness, if not impar- 

 tiality ; with something of wonder, it may be, at the fierceness dis- 

 played in contests about things which, in our own more peacefid 

 times, are treated with at least the affectation of philosophic indiffer- 

 ence ; but also, with some admiration of the vigor manifested in 

 supporting what was heartily believed. It is, indeed, impossible 

 for us at this time to realize fully the state of feeling that prevailed 

 in the literature and politics of the years between 1810 and 1830. 

 We can hardly imagine why men, who at heart respected and liked 

 each other, should have found it necessary to hold no communion, 

 but, on the contrary, to wage bitter war because the one was an 

 admirer of the Prince Regent and Lord Castlereagh, the other a 

 supporter of Queen Caroline and Mr. Brougham. We cannot con- 

 ceive why a poet should be stigmatized as a base and detestable 

 character, merely because he was a Cockney and a Radical; nor 

 can we comprehend how gentlemen, aggrieved by articles in news- 

 papers or magazines, should have thought it necessary to the vin- 

 dication of then* honor, to horsewhip or shoot the printers or editors 

 of the publications in which such articles appeared. Yet in 1817, 

 and the following years, Ave find such to have been the state of 

 things in the capital of Scotland. Xot only was society actually less 

 civilized ; but politics, which now happily forms no barrier between 

 men of otherwise congenial minds, then constituted the one great 

 line of demarcation. You were either a Tory and a good man, or 



Whig and a rascal, and vice versa. Lf you were a Tory, and 

 wanted a place, it was the duty of all good Tories to stand by you ; 

 if you were a Whig, your chance was small; but its feebleness was 



