Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 65, March, 1863

The power and personality which thus early characterized the magazine were its leading features in after-years. Wilson and Lockhart became at once its chief contributors,—Wilson especially writing for its columns, with the most extraordinary profusion, on all conceivable topics, in prose and verse, for more than thirty years. By these articles he became known beyond his own circle, and on these his fame must ultimately rest. His daughter points to them with pride, and unhesitatingly expresses the opinion that they in themselves are a sufficient answer to all who doubt whether the great powers of their author ever found adequate expression. We are unable to agree with her. Able and brilliant as these articles unquestionably were, we cannot think that such glimpses and fragments—or, in fact, all the relics left by their author—furnish results at all commensurate with the man. Though Maga increased his immediate reputation, we think it diminished his lasting fame, by leading him to scatter, instead of concentrating his remarkable powers on some one great work. Scott and other great authorities saw so much native genius in Wilson, that they often said that it lay in him to become the first man of his time, though they feared that his eccentricities and lack of steadiness might prove fatal to his success.

Though never really the editor of "Blackwood," Wilson was from the first its guiding spirit,—the leaven that leavened the whole lump. The way in which he threw himself into his work he described as follows:—"We love to do our work by fits and starts. We hate to keep fiddling away, an hour or two at a time, at one article for weeks. So off with our coat, and at it like a blacksmith. When we once get the way of it, hand over hip, we laugh at Vulcan and all his Cyclops. From nine of the morning till nine at night, we keep hammering away at the metal, iron or gold, till we produce a most beautiful article. A biscuit and a glass of Madeira, twice or thrice at the most,—and then to a well-won dinner. In three days, gentle reader, have We, Christopher North, often produced a whole magazine,—a most splendid number. For the next three weeks we were as idle as a desert, and as vast as an antre,—and thus on we go, alternately laboring like an ant, and relaxing in the sunny air like a dragon-fly, enamored of extremes." Of all his contributions, we think the "Noctes Ambrosianae" give by far the best idea of their author. They are perfectly characteristic throughout, though singularly various. Every mood of the man is apparent; and hardly anything is touched which is not adorned. Their pages reveal in turn the poet, the philosopher, the scholar, and the pugilist. Though continued during thirteen years, their freshness does not wither. To this day we find the series delightful reading: we can always find something to our taste, whether we crave fish, flesh, or fowl. Whether we lounge in the sanctum, or roam over the moors, we feel the spirit of Christopher always with us.

It has been attempted, on Wilson's behalf, to excuse the fierce criticism and violent personality of Maga in its early days, on the plea that his influence over that periodical was less then than afterwards,—and that, as his control increased, the bitterness decreased. This is a special plea which cannot be allowed. The magazine was moulded, from the beginning, more by Wilson than by all others. If personalities had been offensive to him, they would not have been inserted, except in a limited degree. Lockhart, it is true, was far more bitter, but his influence was less. He could never have been successful in running counter to Wilson. Besides, though Wilson's nominal power might have been greater in the control of the magazine in later years, it was virtually but little, if at all, increased. The fact is, these onslaughts were perfectly congenial to his nature at that time.

His young blood made him impetuous, passionate, and fond of extremes,—perhaps unduly so. He was a warm lover, and a strong, though not malignant, hater,—and consequently deliberately made himself the fiercest of partisans. It was all pure fun with him, though it was death to the victims. He dearly loved to have a cut at the Cockneys, and was never happier than when running a tilt à l'outrance with what seemed to be a sham. Still, he felt no ill-will, and could see nothing wrong in the matter. We are entirely disposed, even in reference to this period of his life, to accept the honest estimate which he made of himself, as "free from jealousy, spite, envy, and uncharitableness." When the fever of his youth had been somewhat cooled by time, his feelings and opinions naturally became more moderate, and his expression of them less violent. In his early days, when his mother heard of his having written an article for the "Edinburgh Review," she said, "John, if you turn Whig, this house is no longer big enough for us both." But his Toryism then was quite as good as hers. By-and-by, as party became less, and friendship more, he entertained at his house the leading Whigs, and admitted them to terms of intimacy. Even his daughter was allowed to marry a Whig. And in 1852 the old man hobbled out to give his vote for Macaulay the Whig, as representative in Parliament of the good town of Edinburgh. Conceive of such a thing in 1820! All this was but the gradual toning-down of a strong character by time and experience. "Blackwood" naturally exhibited some of the results of the change.

Much allowance must be made for the altered spirit of the times. A generation or two ago, there was everywhere far more of rancor and less of decorum in the treatment of politics and criticism than would now be tolerated. All the world permitted and expected strong partisanship, bitter personality, and downright abuse. They would have called our more sober reticence by the name of feebleness: their truculence we stigmatize as slander and Billingsgate. Wilson was an extremist in everything; yet he strained but a point or two beyond his fellows. When the tide of party began gradually to subside, he fell with it. Mrs. Gordon has given a very correct picture of the state of things in those days:—

"It is impossible for us, at this time, to realize fully the state of feeling that prevailed in the literature and politics of the years between 1810 and 1830. We can hardly imagine why men who at heart respected and liked each other should have found it necessary to hold no communion, but, on the contrary, to wage bitter war, because the one was an admirer of the Prince Regent and Lord Castlereagh, the other a supporter of Queen Caroline and Mr. Brougham. We cannot conceive why a poet should be stigmatized as a base and detestable character, merely because he was a Cockney and a Radical; nor can we comprehend how gentlemen, aggrieved by articles in newspapers and magazines, should have thought it necessary to the vindication of their honor to horsewhip or shoot the printers or editors of the publications. Yet in 1817 and the following years such was the state of things in the capital of Scotland…. You were either a Tory and a good man, or a Whig and a rascal, and vice versa . If you were a Tory and wanted a place, it was the duty of all good Tories to stand by you; if you were a Whig, your chance was small; but its feebleness was all the more a reason why you should be proclaimed a martyr, and all your opponents profligate mercenaries." But parties changed, and men changed with them. It was a Whig ministry which gave Wilson, in 1852, a pension of two hundred pounds.

Mrs. Gordon has praised her father as "the beau-ideal of what a critic should be, whose judgments will live as parts of literature, and not merely talk about it." That these so-called judgments are worthy to live, and will live, we fully believe; yet we could never think him a model critic, or even a great one. Though not deficient in analytic power, he wanted the judicial faculty. He could create, but he could not weigh coolly and impartially what was created. His whole make forbade it. He was impatient, passionate, reckless, furious in his likes and dislikes. His fervid enthusiasm for one author dictated a splendid tribute to a friend; while an irrational prejudice against another called out a terrific diatribe against a foe. In either case, there might be "thoughts that breathe and words that burn"; still, there was but little of true criticism. The matchless papers on Spenser and Homer represent one class, and the articles on Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt the other. While the former exhibit the tender sympathy of a poet and the enthusiasm of a scholar, the latter reveal the uncompromising partisan, swinging the hangman's cord, and brandishing the scourge of scorpions. Of the novelist's three kinds of criticism—"the slash, the tickle, and the plaster"—he recognized and employed only the two extremes. Neither in criticism nor in the conduct of life was Ovid's " Medio tutissimus ibis " ever a rule for him. In the "Noctes" for June, 1823, some of his characteristics are wittily set forth, with some spice of caricature, in a mock defiance given to Francis Jeffrey, "King of Blue and Yellow," by the facetious Maginn, under his pseudonym of Morgan Odoherty: —"Christopher, by the grace of Brass, Editor of Blackwood's and the Methodist Magazines; Duke of Humbug, of Quiz, Puffery, Cutup, and Slashandhackaway; Prince Paramount of the Gentlemen of the Press, Lord of the Magaziners, and Regent of the Reviewers; Mallet of Whiggery, and Castigator of Cockaigne; Count Palatine of the Periodicals; Marquis of the Holy Poker; Baron of Balaam and Blarney; and Knight of the most stinging Order of the Nettle."