LITERATURE. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. 181 



Cay, or James Wilson, or that queer, fat 'body,' Dr. Scott, and 

 sometimes on James and John Ballantyne, and Sam Anderson, and 

 poor Baxter. Then away I flew with the wonderful news to my 

 other associates, and if any remaiued incredulous, I swore the facts 

 down through them ; so that before I left Edinburgh I was ac- 

 counted the greatest liar that was in it except one."* The simple 

 Shepherd by and by found out that these conspirators had made up 

 their minds to act on O'Doherty's principle, of never denying any 

 thing they had not written, or ever acknowledging any thing they 

 had, He accordingly thought himself safe in thenceforth signing 

 his name to every thing he published. " But as soon," he says, " as 

 the rascals perceived this, they signed my name as fast as I did. 

 They then continued the incomparable JVoctes Ambrosiance for the 

 sole purpose of putting all the sentiments into the Shepherd's mouth 

 which they durst not avowedly say themselves, and these, too, often 

 applying to my best friends." f 



A single instance will show to what lengths this system of decep- 

 tion, for it can be called nothing else, was carried. In the articles 

 on Leigh Hunt, already mentioned, he was accused, among other 

 things, of having pestered his friend Hazlitt to review him in the 

 Edinburgh. Soon after — I find from Leigh Hunt's " Correspond- 

 ence," recently published — he wrote to Lord Jeffrey the letter given 

 below. J Which of the writers in Blackwood perpetrated this very 

 wicked joke I know not, but its point lay in the fact that Sir J. G. 

 Dalyell, with whose name so great a liberty had been taken, was 

 perhaps of all men then in Edinburgh the one who, as a good Whig, 

 regarded Blackwood's Magazine with most abhorrence. A cor- 



* Hogg's Memoirs. 



t Ibid. 



% " Dear Sir : — I trouble you with this, to say, that since my last I have been made acquainted 

 with the atrocious nonsense written about me in Macbicood's Magazine, and that nothing can 

 be falser than what is said respecting my having asked and pestered Mr. Hazlitt to write an articlo 

 upon my poem in the Edinburgh Eevieic. I never breathed a syllable to him on the subject, as 

 anybody who knows me would say for me at once, for I am reckoned, if any thing, somewhat 

 over fastidious and fantastic on such matters. I received last night a letter, signed John Erchorn 

 (Graham?) Dalyell, advocate, the author of which tells me at last that he is the writer of tho 

 article, and that he did not mean to attack my private character! He only attacked the bad prin- 

 ciples I evinced in my writings. Tou may conceive by this that this letter is a strange mixturo 

 of affected airs and real paltering. I have written this evening to Edinburgh, according to tho 

 signature, to ask whether Mr. Dalyell (if there is such a person) avows himself the author of the 

 letter. But I am taking up your time with these matters. I merely wished, in the first Instance, 

 to state what I have mentioned above. 



"Believe me, my dear sir, most sincerely yours, 



"13 Lisbon Grove, 1817." " Leigh Hunt. 



8 



