In the February number of _Maga_ a new contributor, Billy Maginn, made his first bow to the public as Mr. Ensign O’Doherty. Maginn was at this time a rollicking young Irishman of marvellous classical and literary acquirements, who at four-and-twenty had achieved the difficult honour of taking a degree of Doctor of Laws at Dublin, never before earned by one so young. He had a wonderful gift of improvising in either verse or prose, and his talents were so versatile, his reading, though desultory, so universal, that he could immediately treat any subject, no matter what, in a sparkling and dashing manner. When, however, under the influence of liquor, he was perfectly unmanageable; and his writings bore every stamp of his own character. One of his first squibs in _Blackwood_ was a Latin version of “Chevy-chase,” which, in a foot-note expressed more than a doubt as to the Hebraical knowledge of Professor Leslie--an Edinburgh Reviewer who had recently been appointed to the University Chair of Philosophy. The enraged professor summoned the aid of the law. Blackwood accepted the challenge and inserted another article by Maginn, which stated that the professor “did not even know the alphabet of the tongue which he had the imprudence to pretend to criticise,” and charged him, in addition, of stealing his pet theories respecting heat, from an old volume of the “Philosophical Transactions.” The damages awarded amounted to £100, but as all the legal talent in Edinburgh was engaged in what was regarded as a party trial, the costs were unusually heavy. Nothing scared, however, Blackwood welcomed the writer to Edinburgh when he chose to cast off his incognita. The magazine was thriving now, and circulated throughout the kingdom. Blackwood, busy as he was with its management, found time to push his general publishing business steadily forward. The issue of Brewster’s “Edinburgh Encyclopædia” was continued, and Lockhart’s talents were utilized beyond the pale of _Maga_. In 1818 Schlegel’s “History of Literature,” translated by Lockhart, was published; and in 1819 appeared Lockhart’s “Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, by Dr. Peter Morris”--a series of sketches of all things Scotch, from which we extract an account of Blackwood and his shop:--