principal contributor was William Taylor of Norwich who, during a period
of thirty years, supplied to the _Monthly Magazine_ and other
periodicals a series of 1,750 articles of remarkable quality. His
contributions gave the Magazine standing as a literary review. Hazlitt
accorded to Taylor the honor of writing the first reviews in the style
afterwards adopted by the Edinburgh Reviewers, which established their
reputations as original and impartial critics. He is remembered to-day
as the author of an unread _Historic Survey of German Poetry_ which was
vigorously assailed by Carlyle in the _Edinburgh Review_. The _New
Monthly Magazine_ was started in 1814 by Henry Colburn and Frederick
Shoberl in opposition to Phillips' magazine. Its first editors were Dr.
Watkins and Alaric A. Watts. At a later time Campbell, Bulwer, Theodore
Hook and Harrison Ainsworth successively assumed charge. Under such
capable direction the magazine naturally won a prominent place among the
periodicals of the day. During its later years the _New Monthly_ was
obscured by more ambitious ventures and came to an inglorious end in
1875--thirty-two years after the suspension of Phillips' _Monthly
Magazine_.

A most significant event in the history of the magazine was the founding
of the _Edinburgh Monthly Magazine_ in April, 1817, by William
Blackwood. The new magazine was projected to counteract the influence
of the _Edinburgh Review_, but under its first editors, James Cleghorn
and Thomas Pringle, it failed to win favor. After six numbers were
issued, a final disagreement between Blackwood and the editors resulted
in the withdrawal of the latter. The name of the monthly was changed to
_Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_--popularly _Blackwood's_ or "Maga"--and
henceforth until his death Blackwood was his own editor. John Wilson
(Christopher North) and John Gibson Lockhart, the most important of the
early contributors to _Blackwood's_, published in that famous seventh