[22] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. i, p. 2 Several numbers passed along peacefully enough. As Mr. Lang puts it, “Nothing could be more blameless”. That was the trouble--it was _too_ blameless! Blackwood might have forgiven a flagrant crime, but this negative and inoffensive monthly fell with a dull thud in comparison with his mounting expectations! He knew, none better, that a periodical of any appreciable merit must necessarily bring upon itself as much genuine censure as applause. _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_ for April 1817 brought neither. The great day came for the first issue, evening followed, and Edinburgh went to bed unmoved. With his overwhelming desire and ambition to rival the _Edinburgh Review_ and electrify Edinburgh city with a stimulating diet, it is not likely that he would observe with much composure the advent of this cherished scheme of his into the world, containing for its first long article[23] six pages of “Memoirs of the Late Francis Horner, Esq., M. P.”, one of Jeffrey’s own right hand men!--or in finding in the department of “Periodical Works”,[24] a statistical and more or less pleasant rehashment of the contents of the last _Reviews_. Francis Horner had ever been one of the mainstays of the _Edinburgh_; and though it was altogether fitting and proper that the death of an illustrious statesman should be commemorated, it is not likely that William Blackwood welcomed as the first article in the first number of his new magazine, a wholly unmitigated extolling of one whose past influence he hoped to erase. Though the publisher’s generous mind would be the last to begrudge him the due honor of such phrases as “highly gifted individual”, “eminent statesman”, and the like, it cannot be imagined that he rejoiced over the words “original and enlightened views”, “correct and elegant taste”, when it was his ardent purpose to prove the _Edinburgh_ and its builders the opposite of enlightened, and the embodiment of poor taste and incompetent judgment! [23] Ibid., V. i, p. 3 [24] Ibid., V. i, p. 81