plans into the hands of such a pair. But if he made a mistake, he soon made amends. Of the business arrangements between Blackwood and the two editors little of definite nature is known, except that the three were to be co-partners. Blackwood sustained the expense of publishing and printing; Pringle and Cleghorn supplied the material;—and the profits were to be divided! The editors expected £50 apiece per month, which seems unusual, considering that the circulation never exceeded 2500. It looks suspiciously probable that the early numbers were maintained at real financial loss to the publisher. There is no mention of paying contributors till later years. Very likely at that time writers were still above remuneration! The Edinburgh Review had done much to remedy this attitude, but a complete cure was not effected for some years to come.

The Prospectus of the infant journal is interesting. It was to be “A Repository of whatever may be supposed to be most interesting to general readers”.22 One strong point was to be an antiquarian repository; too, it was to criticise articles in other periodicals; it was to contain a “Register” of domestic and foreign events. Among other aims, one was entertainment. It was to be a miscellany of the original works of authors and poets; and what endears it to modern hearts above all things else, it was to be an open door for struggling young writers. By virtue of the anonymous nature of its contributions, this was made possible with no lessening of authority. The signatures in the early numbers were intended to be perplexing, and perplexing they remain to this day. But probably struggling young writers met with less encouragement at the hands of Pringle and Cleghorn than was William Blackwood’s original intention. Those two never went out of the way to drum up new material, while William Blackwood was a man alert and ever on the watch for another Walter Scott.

Several numbers passed along peacefully enough. As Mr. Lang puts it, “Nothing could be more blameless”. That was the trouble—it was too blameless! Blackwood might have forgiven a flagrant crime, but this negative and inoffensive monthly fell with a dull thud in comparison with his mounting expectations! He knew, none better, that a periodical of any appreciable merit must necessarily bring upon itself as much genuine censure as applause. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for April 1817 brought neither. The great day came for the first issue, evening followed, and Edinburgh went to bed unmoved. With his overwhelming desire and ambition to rival the Edinburgh Review and electrify Edinburgh city with a stimulating diet, it is not likely that he would observe with much composure the advent of this cherished scheme of his into the world, containing for its first long article23 six pages of “Memoirs of the Late Francis Horner, Esq., M. P.”, one of Jeffrey’s own right hand men!—or in finding in the department of “Periodical Works”,24 a statistical and more or less pleasant rehashment of the contents of the last Reviews. Francis Horner had ever been one of the mainstays of the Edinburgh; and though it was altogether fitting and proper that the death of an illustrious statesman should be commemorated, it is not likely that William Blackwood welcomed as the first article in the first number of his new magazine, a wholly unmitigated extolling of one whose past influence he hoped to erase. Though the publisher’s generous mind would be the last to begrudge him the due honor of such phrases as “highly gifted individual”, “eminent statesman”, and the like, it cannot be imagined that he rejoiced over the words “original and enlightened views”, “correct and elegant taste”, when it was his ardent purpose to prove the Edinburgh and its builders the opposite of enlightened, and the embodiment of poor taste and incompetent judgment!