“And he brought down the great wild boar from the forest of Lebanon and he roused up his spirits and I saw him whittling his dreadful tusks for the battle.”[70] This last is James Hogg. There were others. Walter Scott was the “great Magician which has his dwelling in the old fastness hard by the river Jordan, which is by the Border”[71] to whom Constable, the Crafty, appealed for advice. Francis Jeffrey was “a familiar spirit unto whom he (the Crafty) had sold himself”.[72] The attack on the Rev. Prof. Playfair, later so sincerely deplored in _Peter’s Letters_, reads in part thus: “He also is of the seed of the prophets, and ministered in the temple while he was yet young; but he went out and became one of the scoffers”[73]--in other words, one of the Edinburgh Reviewers! The spirit of prophecy seems indeed to have been upon the writer of the Chaldee, for it ends--appropriately, thus: “I fled into an inner chamber to hide myself, and I heard a great tumult, but I wist not what it was.”[74] The great tumult was heard, to be sure, and the authors fled to be safe. [70] Ibid., V. i, p. 123 [71] Ibid., V. i, p. 122 [72] A. Lang: _Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart_, V. i, p. 161 [73] Same [74] Same Just who wrote the Chaldee will never be known; but all indications are that the idea and first draft were James Hogg’s, and that it was touched up and completed by Wilson and Lockhart, with the aid, or rather with the suggestions and approval of William Blackwood. The number for August 1821 contains the first of a series of “Familiar Epistles to Christopher North, From an Old Friend with a New Face.”[75] Letter I deals with Hogg’s Memoirs. This is anticipating a bit, anticipating some four years, in fact, but is nevertheless apropos of our discussion of the Chaldee. Just who the Old Friend with a New Face was would be hard to judge. Mr. Lang has surmised him to be either Lockhart or De Quincey. It is a lively bit of work, worthy the wit of either, but the sentences do not feel like Lockhart’s. That both these men were friends of Hogg, encourages one to hope that the biting sarcasm of the thing was its own excuse for being, and came not from the heart. Such was ever the tone of “Maga”, however; and none can deny that once begun the article _must_ be read! Excerpts follow: “Of all speculations in the way of printed paper, I should have thought the most hopeless to have been ‘a Life of James Hogg, by himself’. Pray who wishes to know anything about his life? ... “It is no doubt undeniable that the political state of Europe is not so interesting as it was some years ago. But still I maintain that there was no demand for the Life of James Hogg.... At all events, it ought not to have appeared before the Life of Buonaparte.”[76] [75] _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, V. x, p. 43 [76] Same