number the clever _Chaldee Manuscript_--an audacious satire upon the
original editors, the rival publisher Constable, the _Edinburgh Review_
and various literary personages under a thinly veiled allegory in
apocalyptic style. It at once attracted wide attention (including a
costly action for libel within a fortnight) and was suppressed in the
second impression of the number. The same number of _Blackwood's_ set
the precedent for the subsequent critical vituperation that made the
magazine notorious. It contained an abusive article on Coleridge's
_Biographia Literaria_ and the first of a series of virulent attacks on
"The Cockney School of Poetry." Much of the literary criticism in the
first few volumes is inexcusably brutal; fortunately, _Blackwood's_ soon
became less rampant in its critical outbursts. The coöperation of James
Hogg and the ill-fated Maginn introduced new articles of varied
interest, particularly the witty letters and the parodies of "Ensign
O'Doherty." Wilson's _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ became a characteristic feature
of _Blackwood's_; John Galt and Susan Ferrier won popularity among the
novel readers of the day; and in the trenchant literary criticism of
Lockhart, Wilson, Hogg and their confrères an equally high standard was
maintained.

After the death of the elder Blackwood in 1834, the management of the
magazine passed to his sons successively. John Blackwood, the sixth son,
enjoyed the distinction of "discovering" George Eliot and beginning, by
the publication of her _Scenes of Clerical Life_ in 1857, a relationship
that was both pleasant and profitable to the firm. A few years earlier
appeared the first contributions of another remarkable literary
woman--Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, whose association with _Blackwood's_
lasted over forty years. Her history of the house of Blackwood was
published in the year of her death (1897).