From the time of his abandoning "The Spy," Hogg had contemplated the publication of a periodical on an extended scale. At length, finding a coadjutor in Mr Thomas Pringle, he explained their united proposal to his friend, Mr Blackwood, the publisher, who highly approved of the design. Preliminaries were arranged, and the afterwards celebrated _Blackwood's Magazine_ took its origin. Hogg was now resident at Altrive, and the editorship was entrusted to Pringle and his literary friend Cleghorn. The vessel had scarcely been well launched, however, on the ocean of letters, when storms arose a-head; hot disputes occurred between the publisher and the editors, which ultimately terminated in the withdrawal of the latter from the concern, and their connexion with the _Edinburgh Magazine_, an opposition periodical established by Mr Constable. The combating parties had referred to the Shepherd, who was led to accord his support to Mr Blackwood. He conceived the idea of the "Chaldee Manuscript," as a means of ridiculing the oppositionists. Of this famous satire, the first thirty-seven verses of chapter first, with several other sentences throughout, were his own composition, the remaining portion being the joint fabrication of his friends Wilson and Lockhart.[39] This singular production produced a sensation in the capital unequalled in the history of any other literary performance; and though, from the evident personalities and the keenness of the satire, it had to be cancelled, so that a copy in the pages of the magazine is now a rarity, it sufficiently attained the purpose of directing public attention to the newly-established periodical. The "Chaldee Manuscript" appeared in the seventh number of _Blackwood's Magazine_, published in October 1817. To the magazine Hogg continued to be a regular contributor; and, among other interesting compositions, both in prose and verse, he produced in its pages his narrative of the "Shepherd's Calendar." His connexion with this popular periodical is more generally known from the position assigned him in the "_Noctes Ambrosianæ_" of Professor Wilson. In those interesting dialogues, the _Shepherd_ is represented as a character of marvellous shrewdness and sagacity, whose observations on men and manners, life and literature, uttered, as they are, in the homeliest phrases, contain a depth of philosophy and vigour of criticism rarely exhibited in the history of real or fictitious biography. "In wisdom," writes Professor Ferrier, "the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato; in humour, he surpasses the Falstaff of Shakspeare; clear and prompt, he might have stood up against Dr Johnson in close and peremptory argument; fertile and copious, he might have rivalled Burke in amplitude of declamation; while his opulent imagination and powers of comical description invest all that he utters, either with a picturesque mildness or a graphic quaintness peculiarly his own." These remarks, applicable to the Shepherd of the "_Noctes_,"