In October of this year was published an anonymous pamphlet, entitled “Hypocrisy Unveiled,” which raked up the whole of the joke contained in the “Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript,” published a year before.  The number containing it had, as we have already seen, been suppressed, because of the offence it had given to many persons of celebrity, while the general tone of bitterness and personality had been subsequently modified, if not abandoned.  Murray assured Blackwood that his number for October 1818 was one of the best he had ever read, and he desired him to “offer to his friends his very best thanks and congratulations upon the production of so admirable a number.”  “With this number,” he said, “you have given me a fulcrum upon which I will move heaven and earth to get subscribers and contributors.”  Indeed, several of the contributions in this surpassingly excellent number had been sent to the Edinburgh publisher through the instrumentality of Murray himself.

“Hypocrisy Unveiled” was a lampoon of a scurrilous and commonplace character, in which the leading contributors to and the publishers of the magazine were violently attacked.  Both Murray and Blackwood, who were abused openly, by name, resolved to take no notice of it; but Lockhart and Wilson, who were mentioned under the thin disguise of “the Scorpion” and “the Leopard,” were so nettled by the remarks on themselves, that they, in October 1818, both sent challenges to the anonymous author, through the publisher of the pamphlet.  This most injudicious step only increased their discomfiture, as the unknown writer not only refused to proclaim his identity, but published and circulated the challenges, together with a further attack on Lockhart and Wilson.

This foolish disclosure caused bitter vexation to Murray, who wrote: 

John Murray to Mr. Blackwood.

October 27, 1818.

My DEAR BLACKWOOD,

I really can recollect no parallel to the palpable absurdity of your two friends.  If they had planned the most complete triumph to their adversaries, nothing could have been so successfully effective.  They have actually given up their names, as the authors of the offences charged upon them, by implication only, in the pamphlet.  How they could possibly conceive that the writer of the pamphlet would be such an idiot as to quit his stronghold of concealment, and allow his head to be chopped off by exposure, I am at a loss to conceive....

I declare to God that had I known what I had so incautiously engaged in, I would not have undertaken what I have done, or have suffered what I have in my feelings and character—­which no man had hitherto the slightest cause for assailing—­I would not have done so for any sum....

In answer to these remonstrances Blackwood begged him to dismiss the matter from his mind, to preserve silence, and to do all that was possible to increase the popularity of the magazine.  The next number, he said, would be excellent and unexceptionable; and it proved to be so.