Knowing what we do of Jeffrey and the _Edinburgh Review_ it is easy to comprehend what prompted Lockhart’s pen to say: “It is, indeed, a very deplorable thing to observe in what an absurd state of ignorance the majority of educated people in Scotland have been persuaded to keep themselves, concerning much of the best and truest literature of their own age, as well as of the ages that have gone by”.[15]... His quarrel is ours for the nonce, and to comprehend the spirit of “Maga” it is first necessary to comprehend the spirit which prompted much for which it is so rigorously criticised. Lockhart speaks of the “facetious and rejoicing ignorance” of the Reviewers. “I do not on my conscience believe”, says he in Peter’s Letters, “that there is one Whig in Edinburgh to whom the name of my friend Charles Lamb would convey any distinct or definite idea.... They do not know even the names of some of the finest poems our age has produced. They never heard of _Ruth_ or _Michael_, or _The Brothers_ or _Hartleap Well_, or the _Recollections of Infancy_ or the _Sonnets to Buonaparte_. They do not know that there is such a thing as the description of a churchyard in _The Excursion_. Alas! how severely is their ignorance punished in itself”![16] Perhaps we can forgive the egotistic note in the following words, also from Peter’s Letters: “There is no work which has done so much to weaken the authority of the _Edinburgh Review_ in such matters as _Blackwood’s Magazine_.”[17] _Blackwood’s_ is at least still readable which is more than can be said of most of its contemporaries. Though it did not, like the _London_, discover a Charles Lamb or a De Quincey, it did and does still overflow with the forging energy and ardent enthusiasms of youth. Besides the famous “Noctes Ambrosianae” for the most part attributed to John Wilson, it published good short stories, good papers by James Hogg, John Galt, and others, good verse, much generous as well as much vindictive criticism. It opened up new fields of interest: German, Italian and Norse letters, all hitherto but slightly touched upon. But we anticipate,--and must needs begin at the beginning. [15] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 141 [16] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 142, 143 [17] Ibid. V. ii, p. 144 II _Genesis_