Early History of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

								

decided Whiggish leanings with a touch of the Nonconformist. The
Critical Review, a Tory organ, ran from 1756 to 1817, the natal year
of “Maga”, as Blackwood’s was fondly dubbed. The British Critic,
1793-1843, was a mouthpiece for High Church opinion; and The Christian
Observer, 1802-1857, served the same purpose for the evangelicals.
The Anti-Jacobin, 1797-98, was almost the only journal of the time
where talent or wit appeared often enough not to be accidental, and
it ran only eight months. The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731-1868, has
come in for a small share of immortality, but could never aspire to be
considered a “moulder of opinion”. It published good prose and verse,
and articles of antiquarian and literary tone; its scholarship was
fair. When this is said, all is said.
The Edinburgh Review and The Quarterly are the only two besides
Blackwood’s which come down to the Twentieth Century with any degree
of lasting fame. In 1755 had appeared the first Edinburgh Review
“to be published every six months”. It survived only two numbers,
being too radical and self-sufficient in certain philosophical and
religious views for that day of orthodoxy. In October 1802 the first
number of the Edinburgh Review and Critical Journal, a quarterly,
appeared, which according to the advertisement in the first number was
to be “distinguished for the selection rather than for the number of
its articles”.[3] Its aim was to enlighten and guide the public mind
in the paths of literature, art, science, politics,--with perhaps a
bit of emphasis on the words guide and politics. Francis Jeffrey,
of whom Lockhart, later one of the leading lights of Blackwood’s,
says, “It is impossible to conceive the existence of a more fertile,
teeming intellect”,[4] was the first editor and remained so until 1829.
In the first number, October 1802, there were twenty-nine articles,
contributed by Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Brougham, and
Thomson, Murray and Hamilton. During its first three years the Review
distinguished itself by adding such names to its list as Walter Scott,
Playfair, John Allen, George Ellis, and Henry Hallam. With such pens
supporting it, it would have been strange if it had not been readable.
There was indeed an air of vitality and energy throughout, which
distinguished it from any of its forerunners; it spoke as one having
authority; and men turned as instinctively to Francis Jeffrey and
the Edinburgh Review for final verdicts, as it never entered their
heads to seriously consider the Gentleman’s Magazine or even the
Quarterly.
[3] Cambridge History of English Literature, V. xii, ch. 6, p. 157
[4] J. G. Lockhart: Peter’s Letters, V. ii, p. 61
This first number, October 1802, is as representative as any.
Jeffrey wrote the first article, reviewing a book on the causes of
the revolution by Mounier, late president of the French National