case.  It had not the wit, pungency, and facility of its rival, and failed of securing so general a popularity.  Its learning and gravity made it better suited to be the oracle of scholars than the organ of a party.  Compared with its adversary across the Tweed, it was like a ponderous knight, cased in complete steel, attacking an agile, light-armed Moorish cavalier; or, to use Ben Jonson’s illustration, like a Spanish great galleon opposed to the facile manoeuvres of a British man-of-war.  For such an enemy there were needed other weapons.  Well might the Tories say,—­

“Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis Tempos eget.”

William Blackwood, the Prince-Street publisher, thought, that, to be successful, the war should be carried into Africa,—­that the enemy must be met on his own ground with his own weapons.  Hogg, whose weekly paper, “The Spy,” had recently fallen through, also came to the conclusion that a sprightly monthly publication, of strong Tory proclivities, could not fail to do well.  So, the times being ripe, Blackwood issued, in March, 1817, the first number of his new monthly, then called “The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine.”  Though himself a violent Tory, he, singularly enough, chose as his editors two Whigs,—­Pringle the poet, and Cleghorn.  Hogg lent his aid from the beginning.  Scott, too, wrote now and then; and very soon Wilson made his appearance as “Eremus,” contributing prose and verse.  But the new magazine did not prove to be what was hoped,—­a decided success.  It was, in fact, quite flat and dull, having nothing life-like and characteristic.  The radical error of attempting to build on such heterogeneous foundations was soon perceived.  Vigor of action could proceed only from entire unanimity of sentiment.  Soon a rupture arose between editors and publisher, and the former seceded with the list of subscribers, leaving the latter his own master.  He at once decided to remodel his periodical entirely,—­to make it a thorough-going partisan, and to infuse a new life and vigor by means of personality and wit.  How well he succeeded we all know.  Thenceforward, until his death in 1834, he acted as editor, and a better one it would be difficult to find.  The new management went into effect in October, 1817, with the famous No.  VII.  The difference was apparent at once, not only in the ability and style, but also in the title of the periodical, which was then changed to the name which it has borne ever since.  In this number appeared the first really distinctive article of the magazine,—­the celebrated “Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript,”—­an allegorical account, in quaint Scripture phrase, of Blackwood’s quarrel with his editors, and a savage onslaught on the leading Whigs of Edinburgh.  So great a hubbub arose immediately on the appearance of this diatribe that it was suppressed as soon as possible; and though the editor offered an earnest apology for its insertion, he was finally mulcted in costs in a large sum for libel.  But the general