THE MOHOCK MAGAZINE. What starting hole can'st thou now find out, to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?-1st Part Henry IV. We return quickly to this subject, because we wish to have soon done with it. Such discussions are not those we most like; but what we have taken in hand to do, we mean to perform effectually; after which, the public being completely in possession of the case, we shall hold ourselves discharged from the unpleasant task of watching, and exposing what may be termed the INFAMOUS SCOTCH HOAX.* The publication in question *Not that we mean to baulk our pleasant co-adjutors, who have announced to us their intention of trying a turn with Blackwood's Men. We are desired to promise as follows I. The Reekie School-(as a companion to the " Cockney School")—by Z., Ncs. 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. &c. II. Sketches of Professor Wilson's first course of Lectures, by Philo-Veritas. These papers will be excessively interesting, we are told, and we believe it. III. Doctor Morris's Vision of the Horns-with the Seer's interpretation of the same -clearly foretelling his recent aecident from the Black-bull—in the manner of the Chaldee MS. IV. Private Letters on the above subjects that have passed between the Black-bull and Mr. Blackwood-with a note of law expenses. V. Conversations on Art, held by the Amateurs in Prince's-street, Edinburgh. 1. On "A Portrait of the Emperor of the Mohocks," by that great master of design, John Gibson Lockart, Esq. The artist's genius, as evinced in this piece, has been so admired in Edinburgh, that he has been actually confounded with its subject; and he is now generally, we understand, complimented with the royal title of EMPEROR OF THE MOHOCKS! The motto to this piece is taken from the Spectator, No. 324: "The Mohock-club, is a name borrowed, it seems, from a sort of cannibals 2. On "The Dilettanti Society in the Isle of Palms," a Landscape, with 4. On "The Assassin,”—a sombre piece-by Doctor Morris-intended for Mr. 5. On "The Shepherd's Dog Ill Treated," an affecting picture by that excellent Scotch artist, James Hogg. Wilkie might be proud of this piece. The valuable beast has here got into very bad hands. A parcel of mischievous heartless scoundrels have tied a cannister to his tail, with which the abused creature runs full speed, as if it naturally belonged to him, instead of turning upon his tormentors, and shewing his teeth, which would soon set all to rights. Some of the crowd pity the animal, but more ridicule him, in consequence of the clatter of the cannister; and the fellows who have been guilty of this act of cruelty, are plainly seen to be laughing and enjoying the joke to themselves, while they are professing to others to admire the dog whom they have thus disgraced. Every friend to humanity, and to the noble qualities of a truly noble creature, must feel the greatest interest in this picture; and we fervently hope that the meritorious artist may be roused by the praise he has received, to exemplify his talents in treating a more gratifying subject. Let him next repre cannot be more aptly denominated; a Hoax (a word of late origin) being a laughing lie, in which the fraud is more apparent than the pleasantry, and the joke consists almost entirely of mischief. This species of wit is of recent invention: yet it is nothing but an extension of the class of what are called practical jests. The Mohocks, of whom we read in the Spectator, shone amazingly in these: they ludicrously insulted the women in the streets, crippled children, and maimed the defenceless generally. They flourished for a time:--their "irregularities," were as popular as those of Blackwood's Magazine, and were excused in much the same way, till at length it was hinted to the public that these merry fellows were malignant scoundrels, without either honour or courage; that their jokes were the outrages of ruffians, and their attempt to laugh them off an insult to decency. The public quickly took the hint, and the Mohocks soon fell into disrepute Iand decline. Their successors were 66 a feeble folk" in comparison: they went about the streets knocking at doors, and running away when the servant came with the candle: some times they ventured to steal a blind man's dog from him;-they have even dared to pull off an old gentleman's wig, and have exquisitely withdrawn a lady's chair from under her, as she was going to sit down. It is within our own day that the Hoaxer has taken the place of these wags, and introduced an improvement in their practice. He is more cunning, and more mischievous; his pleasantry, too, is as certain not to fail of its effect, and makes no greater demand on mental resources. Any one who can hide a pair of spectacles, or blacken a face when its owner is asleep, or make wry mouths behind a person who is speaking on a serious subject, need not be afraid to attempt hoaxing. It is a hoax, for instance, to tell a man that he has pimples on his face when it happens to be clear, as Blackwood's men have done to Mr.. Hazlitt: this is a hoax, and surely nothing can be more easy of execution. It is a hoax to astonish a gentleman of clean and rather careful habits, by exclaiming that his hair is greasy, though it bears the appearance of holding pomatum in horror: this Blackwood's men have done ta sent The Shepherd's Dog" himself again"-ranging his native hills proudly and freely, or attending his flocks sagaciously and kindly,, or basking by the farmer's ingle side, an image of fidelity and of pastoral beauty. These Critical Conversations will be continued through a much longer series than the above; but it is unnecessary at present to anticipate more of the subjects. VI. An Historical and Genealogical Paper on the ancient and respectable Family of the BLACKS,-full of biographical anecdotes and sentimental reflections. The author is a profound man in such matters, and undertakes to shew the exact degrees of relationship which exist between the various branches of the BLACKS-such as the BLACK-legs, the BLACK-guards, and the BLACK-woods. He clearly proves that Ebony and his Editors, though honourably come, have not any right to claim descent from the BLACK Prince, that young Mars of men,"-as some shallow persons have supposed from the shop being in Prince's-street. He shews, incontestably as we think, that the dark blood in their veins flows from a very different source "Dark as Erebus-let no such man be trusted" is their family motto, he says,—and sufficiently distinguishes them from the ich dien branch. Referring to the name Ebony, as recently bestowed, and used by us a few lines back, he disputes its propriety with much show of learning, and suggests that the Upas, or poison tree of Java, which is black-hearted, would supply the appropriate appellation. Perhaps, however, this may be thought a little pedantic. He avails himself of Doctor Morris's famous conversation with that brunette, the Hottentot-Venus, on their family affairs (an accurate account of which has never before been published) to give authority, or at least plausibility, to many of his statements, and vindicates Mr. Warren, and Messrs. Day and Martin, Blackingmakers, from having any hand in the preparation of the articles for the Blackwood Magazine. This is the whole list which has been sent to us; and we accordingly announce the above Papers, of which some idea may be formed from the accompanying e..plarations,as intended for progressive publication. Mr. Haydon, and this is a genuine hoax-clever but not difficult. It is a better hoax still to swear that this is fair criticism on the artist and the author, and to protest solemnly that they have "no personal feelings in regard to these persons, good or bad, --and have never even seen one of their faces!" All this has been done by Blackwood's men in their 42d No.and this is carrying the hoar to its last and highest degree of impudent fraud. It is a hoax to write false letters with real signatures, for the purpose of throwing ridicule and dislike on the persons whose names are forged, to injure them in their interests, and hurt them in their feelings: and this, too, Blackwood's men have performed, to a pitch of outrage on individual claims, which goes nigh to pursuade us, that the press is, in its abuse, a nuisance too offensive to be compensated for by any benefit in its power to render society under respectable management. Further, and lastly, it is a hoax, almost as laughable as assassination itself, to tell falsehoods, and provoke honest indignation, under the assumed name of an excellent, meritorious, and inoffensive individual, totally unconcerned in the mischief,-which is solely intended to gratify the mercenary and malicious designs of the hoaxer, at the expence of the fame and the interests of one whom he appears to treat as his friend, and for whose welfare he pro- fesses to be anxious! This is taking the cruelest and most unmanly advantage of a defenceless situation that can be conceived: and this is a hoax which Blackwood's men have prac tised on poor Hogg, the delightful Shepherd Poet-whose bonnie Kilmen nie, and delicate dedication to Lady Anne Scott of Buccleugh, have inspired feelings in his favour, that warm into angry scorn at this dastardly attempt to degrade and injure a man whose poetical genius is a jewel of the first water in the national crown of honour. This is a matter, however, on which we shall afterwards remark at greater length. Blackwood's Magazine, therefore, may fairly be complimented with the title of THE INFAMOUS SCOTCH HOAX; and it will be admitted in finitely to outshine the Stock Exchange Hoax of pillory fame. These are assertions, however, that ought not to be made in language at all akin to that of levity; for they must heap indelible disgrace, either on the persons against whom they are directed, or on us by whom they are hazarded. We accept and acknowledge the responsibility thus conveyed ; and challenge attention to the facts we are about to bring forward, as not only sufficient to prove the substantial truth of our allegations, but adequate to warrant the favourable presumption we claim for our motives in undertaking this task of exposure. We do most seriously and sincerely declare, that we have been induced to write these articles solely by the indignation rising and swelling in our minds at the still-renewed spectacle of outrage, hypocrisy, and fraud, which the succeeding Numbers of Mr. Blackwood's Publication present. Long impunity, or, at least, insufficient exposure, from whatever cause proceeding, has at length converted what was at first but a system of provocation, into a downright system of terror. We know for a fact, and dare contradiction, that Blackwood has openly vaunted of holding to grateful behaviour an individual who had been first abused, and then defended by the same writer in his Magazine: "if he is not duly respectful, we have more for him from the same hund!" Such is the triumph of Scotch toryism over Scotch whiggism in Blackwood! A few more such victories will be sufficient to disgrace it for ever. It is impossible, almost, to conceive any one species of deceit, of unfair aggression, of the violation of all the rules of proper criticism, of individual persecution, of false pretension, and audacious boasting, falling within the range of literary profligacy, which the writers in this publication do not habitually practice. It has been their aim, from its very commencement, -as we observed in our last paper under this head, to excite the public expectation and attention, by the perpetration of gross wrongs, affecting the honour of literature, and the peace of individuals. In their endeavours to do this, they have not restricted themselves to the malignancy of satire, and the bitterness of personal invective; but, with these, they have coupled a duplicity and treachery, as mean and grovelling as their scurrili◄ ty has been foul and venomous.Three times within the space of very little more than two years, have they been compelled to pay, to injured individuals, heavy forfeitures, for calumnies uttered against private character, and to the detriment of private interests; AND IN NO ONE OF THESE THREE HAVE THEY ATTEMPTED DEFENCE OR JUSTIFICATION OF ANY KIND! No attempt has been made by them, in any of these cases, to show mistake or misconception; nor have they once dared to stand boldly on the honesty of their strictures, and vindicate manfully what they had uttered rancorously. No,-in each of these instances, the offence has been flagrant and scandalous, and the penalty has been paid, quietly and unresistingly. In two of them, wilful malice was apparent beyond contradiction, and the means taken to gratify it were still more disgraceful than the intention. In the first, bodily infirmity was alluded to, amidst a heap of slanders and indecencies, which were afterwards apologised for in the lump, and have been since repeated in detail. In the second, wilful falsehood, as well as wilful malice, stood barefacedly exposed: the writer of the queries addressed to Mr. Hazlitt, affirmed, under the guise of an interrogation, what he could not but know was untrue,-nay totally without foundation of any kind—and, when called to account for this, he acknowledged the lie by silently paying its forfeit! This writer, who assumed the mask of a correspondent, is now known to be Mr. Blackwood's principal Editor-not the gentleman who has been recently withdrawn from the Magazine to Moral Philosophy-but Doctor Morris,*-the individual who has been obliged, the other day, to pay (being the third penalty) four hundred pounds to a wantonly injured tradesman, and whose hand, it is now well understood, has thrown most of the envenomed darts, launched against character and feeling from the quarter in question. Nothing in the annals of disgraceful publication can be quoted to equal the course of conduct pursued by this man, in his capacity of Editor. While he has been uttering these calumnies, and paying these penalties, he has forged testi monials from living and celebrated men to the merits of his Magazine, which he has published with their names at full, trusting to the very audacity of the measure to escape detection, or, at least, exposure. We have lately seen him giving, as from a private letter from Goethe, a sentence of clumsy German! After writing, as the first fruits of his Editorship, a most virulent and offensive libel against Mr. Coleridge, in which the "grinning and idiot self-complacency". of that gentleman is talked of; in which he is described as having exposed himself "dead drunk in the house of a Brummagem Patriot "after all this, he has found means to draw, for once, a private and civil letter from the object of these indecent aspersions; and this letter, contrary to the usage of gentlemen, he has published in his Magazine, without the writer's consent, and, as we have reason to know, very much to the writer's displeasure. It appears, then, that either way is indifferent to this person: if the letters are written, confidence is violated in their publication; if they are not written, they are fabricated for that purpose. This is the man who wrote a book, under a feigned name and character, to praise and puff his Magazine, and its management. Writing usually in a convenient tone of burlesque, he balances his falsehoods between the few who will take them as jokes, and the thousands who are likely to believe them in credulity;-equally deceiving both, for the apparent joke is Dospite or sordidness in sober gravity. Every word of the affected extravaganza is deeply and seriously calculated, with reference to its object, which is either to plunder or to assassinate. He will drop from an evident exaggeration to what bears the semblance of a meek and drily stated fact, and the lie will be lurking in the latter, with its poisonous sting, to which the former was merely intended as a treacherous decoy. The long article in his last Number, is altogether constructed on this principle.— Its only merit is effrontery: it is this which gives to it a certain effect of gaiety, and causes it to be read with some degree of interest.-We defy any one to extract from it a His alias is well known. single sentence that possesses any striking excellence, either in style or point, independently of the quality we have just named. It is like the conversation of some Irishmen we have met with: take away the impudence of its manner, and all its zest is gone. The pleasantry consists, not in saying things that few could say, but things that few would say. It has a sort of spouting-club readiness about it; a brazen selfpossession; a quickness which is the result of moral indifference; an overbearing bustle, which it attempts to make pass for natural strength. Its ease is insolence; and if it succeeds in shedding an air of ridicule over its subjects, it does this in the general abandonment it makes of respect and respectability. The writer shares the degradation he inflicts; and even the reader is made to feel, that he is lowering himself, for the moment, to the level of a disposition which he must despise. Such are its attractions:-its objects are to deceive and injure. There is not one rhodomontade throughout its twenty pages, that does not inflict an assassin's stab from under the mask of a buffoon. The statement of the comparative sales of the Reviews and Magazines is arranged and proportioned to aggravate private injuries, which the unprincipled writer has already inflicted. What he says of Constable's Magazine, and the Edinburgh Review, is maliciously false; what he says of Black wood's Magazine is palpably and impudently so. What he says of the conduct of that work is an attempt to play the fool with his own dishonour. What he says of Mr. Murray is in the teeth of the fact. Mr. Murray himself expunged his name from Blackwood's title page, because he found that there is a degree of infamy which even tory politics cannot carry off-that is to say, not in London-in Edinburgh it may be otherwise. Mr. Murray had the reputation of a respectable man, and that of the most distinguished publisher of the day to sustain: his name is connected with the chief literary honours of the present time, and he could not, therefore, suffer it to be attached to the foulest literary nuisance. He heard disgust and abhorrence of the calumnies of Blackwood's Magazine expressed by every honourable indivi dual, without distinction of politics. He may be, and we believe he is, rather a warm party man himself but he is not sordid, he is not false, he is not callous to shame. On the contrary, we believe him to be as sincere in his opinions as a man, as, by the general acknowledgment of all who have had any transactions with him, he is liberal, spirited, and upright in his conduct as a publisher. His first connection with Blackwood's work may be traced to party-feeling: the Quarterly Review is a vehement tory publication; Blackwood took the same line, and this gained him a footing for a time in Albemarle-street: but it was not for long: Mr. Murray, it is understood, soon became disgusted with what he saw, and alarmed at what he heard,—and on the arrival of a bale of calumny from the North, weightier and darker even than ordinary, he proceeded, in a very summary way, to withdraw his name from the infamy, by tearing off the old title page, and printing a new one with the necessary alteration. Mr. Murray acted on this occasion with the promptitude of one who sets store by his character, and sees it endangered;-yet, while we cannot but congratulate him on his decision, we own we shall be mortified by it, if it turn out that Sir Walter Scott has no such sensibility on the subject! This eminent individual is known to have written some things for the Magazine in question; he is suspected to have written others: it is certain that several offensive articles have been composed under his roof; and the nuisance has now become too deadly to allow of any delicacy towards its aiders or abettors. Mr. Murray, as we have seen, thought it due to his character to extricate himself from all connection with Blackwood's Magazine :-we shall be happy to have the Baronet's disavowal of any such connection. After having been thus literally and notoriously kicked out of the shop in Albemarle-street, Blackwood's Editor has the effrontery, in his last Number, to declare that he dismissed Mr. Murray! This is a specimen of the impudence which he passes off for pleasantry. It is a hoax founded on his own disgrace. Most people would have felt the recollection of the circumstance too painful tə |