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THELONDON MAGAZINE.
No XIII.JANUARY, 1821.Vol. III.
THE MOHOCKS.
We learn that Professor Leslie, of the
University of Edinburgh, has brought an action for damages against the publisher of Blackwood’s Magazine; and
we apprehend it is now most likely that this respectable
publication will be compelled to show its modest face in open court,—an exposure which it
has hitherto avoided by heavy secret payments to the parties it has injured.—The cause of
the action, and some of the circumstances attending it, are indeed highly characteristic. The
article of which the Professor complains,
is one signed “Olinthus Petre,
D.D.;” and it is dated from “Trinity College,
Dublin.” It forms the only reply Blackwood’s
Magazine has offered to the notice of it taken in our November number; and to the
charge, publicly stated against it, in an Edinburgh Journal, of having attached James Hogg’s name to papers he never wrote, and which were
calculated to do the poet serious injury. One might have expected that the Magazine itself
would have spoken out on this occasion: it seems to have concerned it so to do: setting the
motives and the ability of the attack out of the question, there were facts affirmed, which, if true, are sufficient to brand any periodical work to which
they may apply, with indelible infamy.—A letter from a correspondent on such a subject
does not seem sufficient: but, at the same time, it must be confessed, that certain advantages
attended this mode of reply of which the Editor might be happy to avail himself. A real
signature, with a real place of abode,—and that one of the seats of learning,—and,
in addition, a title vouching at once for the learning and religion of the
party,—must naturally be supposed to confer responsibility on the defence. The Magazine,
itself, the reader might be expected to say, does not choose to appear as an advocate in its
own cause; but here is a man of condition and piety, a Doctor of Divinity, a resident in a
college, the college of a metropolis, who steps forward in an honourable way to
say—“I have done part of what you blame in Blackwood’s
Magazine: I am prepared to avow it, for I have done it under a sense of duty; and as
no scandalous motive can attach to me, let the general justice of your charge against the
Magazine in which I have written, be judged of from this specimen!”
There would be much weight in this: a Doctor of Divinity residing in Trinity
College, Dublin, is likely to feel more for his own respectability than for the interests of an
Edinburgh Magazine: on questions of literary merit as to the writers, either in it, or any
contemporaneous periodical work, he may be supposed pretty impartial; and if he deliberately
puts his name and address to a severe accusation against an individual, holding a public office
of eminence and trust in one of the most famous of the British seats of learning, the first
presumption is inevitably against the person accused—for who, in the situation of a
Doctor of Divinity, would come openly forward to make such an attack, unless the case was one
of notorious crime?
Doctor Olinthus Petre, therefore, of Trinity College,
Dublin, would be able to do much more for Blackwood’s Magazine, with the public, than its Editor could
do for it: and so the Editor thought:—and so he made the
Doctor—manufactured him for the purpose! The D.D. has no existence
but inBlackwood’s
Magazine: Trinity College, Dublin, never heard of him! This letter is another
over act of that conspiracy against character and truth, carried on by means of fraud, which we
have made it our business to expose, which is now exposed, and which we trust will soon be
crushed. We say nothing of the nature of the motives by which we are actuated: if the facts as
we have stated them, the prima facie evidence is in
favour of these motives, for we have made out a strong and crying case of guilt, dangerous to
the public, disgraceful to literature, and provocative of the indignation of honourable minds.
If the writers in Blackwood’s Magazine possess talents for
satire and ridicule, let them exert these—but let them be fairly exerted. What we
complain of is, that, by a series of tricks and impositions, unknown to criticism and literary
discussion before their career, they have outraged private character, prostituted principle,
insulted decency, perverted truth, and exhibited a spectacle of venal and spiteful buffoonery
under the name of literature, to the corruption of taste, and the gratification of the worst
feelings. One of their chief means, in this unworthy vocation, has been to fabricate and forge
apparently real signatures. They have done this to give effect to some of their most malicious
stabs at reputation; knowing well that the public attention would be thus eminently excited to
their charges, and that more credit would be given to them, so recommended, than if they were
offered in the common language of periodical works. This deception is of itself sufficient to
establish the calumnious, venal, and malicious motive: it converts that, which might otherwise
have been deemed criticism, into a private wrong; it gives the injured parties a claim on
redress,—and throws distrust altogether upon professions and doctrines offered in the
tone of discussion.
The extraordinary usage of James Hogg’s
name in Blackwood’s Magazine, we fully
described in our last: it seems to combine more treachery towards the public, and the abused
individual, than any case of fraud we can recollect. The fabrication of Doctor Olinthus Petre is about as base. As it concerns
Professor Leslie, it seems to prove the malevolent motive of the attack upon him. As a mode of replying to us it is
beneath contempt: its formulation in falsehood renders it as nugatory as unmanly. The creature
who would adopt such an expedient, would not scruple to speak against his own conviction in
characterizing our writers; and we have absolute proof that he does so,—for one of those
to whom he contemptuously alludes, by a signature in our Magazine,—and the very articles
written by this gentleman for us, have been specified by
Blackwood’s people as the best in our
work! We mention this only to show the utter poltroonery of these men’s minds.
They are without even the shadow of an excuse to their own consciousness. They have not a
partition of any sort between them and infamy: it must come home hard upon them, even in the
secrecy of their own hearts. We have been told that Mr. John Gibson Lockhart, having been originally included
in the action now pending, has given it under his hand, that he is not the
Editor of the Magazine. The people of Edinburgh are not surprised at this denial: it
is well known there that Doctor
Morris, under the assumed name of Christopher
North, is the Editor of the work, and the author of its most malignant articles!
Would the Doctor have the baseness to make a similar denial? We believe he would; for all the
professions of a merry, careless temper, by which it has been attempted to characterize the
publication he conducts, have evidently been intended to cover an organized plan of fraud,
calumny, and cupidity. The cowardice which denies a perpetrated wrong, is the natural associate
of such qualities. Doctor Morris would deny just as firmly
as Mr. Lockhart.