On December 17, 1819, L1,000 were remitted to Mr. Murray in payment of the sum which he had originally advanced to purchase his share, and his connection with Blackwood’s Magazine finally ceased.  He thereupon transferred his agency for Scotland to Messrs. Oliver & Boyd, with whose firm it has ever since remained.  The friendly correspondence between Murray and Blackwood nevertheless continued, as they were jointly interested in several works of importance.

In the course of the following year, “Christopher North” made the following statement in Blackwood’s Magazine in “An Hour’s Tete-a-tete with the Public”: 

“The Chaldee Manuscript, which appeared in our seventh number, gave us both a lift and a shove.  Nothing else was talked of for a long while; and after 10,000 copies had been sold, it became a very great rarity, quite a desideratum....  The sale of the Quarterly is about 14,000, of the Edinburgh upwards of 7,000....  It is not our intention, at present, to suffer our sale to go beyond 17,000....  Mr. Murray, under whose auspices our magnum opus issued for a few months from Albemarle Street, began to suspect that we might be eclipsing the Quarterly Review.  No such eclipse had been foretold; and Mr. Murray, being no great astronomer, was at a loss to know whether, in the darkness that was but too visible, we were eclipsing the Quarterly, or the Quarterly eclipsing us.  We accordingly took our pen, and erased his name from our title-page, and he was once more happy.  Under our present publishers we carry everything before us in London.”

Mr. Murray took no notice of this statement, preferring, without any more words, to be quit of his bargain.

It need scarcely be added that when Mr. Blackwood had got his critics and contributors well in hand—­when his journal had passed its frisky and juvenile life of fun and frolic—­when the personalities had ceased to appear in its columns, and it had reached the years of judgment and discretion—­and especially when its principal editor, Mr. John Wilson (Christopher North), had been appointed to the distinguished position of Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh—­the journal took that high rank in periodical literature which it has ever since maintained.

CHAPTER XIX

WORKS PUBLISHED IN 1817-18—­CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.—­

Scott was now beginning to suffer from the terrible mental and bodily strain to which he had subjected himself, and was shortly after seized with the illness to which reference has been made in a previous chapter, and which disabled him for some time.  Blackwood informed Murray (March 7, 1817) that Mr. Scott “has been most dangerously ill, with violent pain arising from spasmodic action in the stomach; but he is gradually getting better.”

For some time he remained in a state of exhaustion, unable either to stir for weakness and giddiness; or to read, for dazzling in his eyes; or to listen, for a whizzing sound in his ears—­all indications of too much brain-work and mental worry.  Yet, as soon as he was able to resume his labours, we find him characteristically employed in helping his poorer friends.