Blackwood was alarmed at the commotion he had caused, withdrew the obnoxious article from the second edition, suppressed it in what he could of the first, and in the second number inserted the following announcement:--“The editor has learnt with regret that an article in the first edition of last number, which was intended merely as a _jeu d’esprit_, has been construed so as to give offence to individuals justly entitled to respect and regard; he has, on that account, withdrawn it in the second edition, and can only add that, if what has happened could have been anticipated, the article in question certainly never would have appeared.” It was, however, too late, war had been declared to the knife, and Blackwood was nothing loath to continue the struggle.
“The conception of the Caldee MS.,” says Wilson’s son-in-law, Professor Ferrier, “and the first thirty-seven verses of Chapter I., are to be ascribed to the Ettrick Shepherd; the rest of the composition falls to be divided between Professor Wilson and Mr. Lockhart, in proportions which cannot now be determined.” Again, Mrs. Gordon tells us that this audacious squib was composed in her grandmother’s house, 23, Queen Street, where Wilson lived, “amid such shouts of laughter as made the ladies in the room above send to inquire and wonder what the gentlemen below were about;” and yet she adds, as if to protect her father from suspicion of a share in it, that she “cannot trace to her father’s hand any instance of unmanly attack, or one shade of real malignity.” Very probably not; but at the same time the fun of the squib is decidedly in Wilson’s favourite manner. “An old contributor to _Blackwood_,” who, in 1860, furnished a most interesting and full account of Maga and Blackwoodiana to the columns of the _Bookseller_, asserts, in reference to Hogg’s claim, “on the best authority (that of the man who did write it), that there is no foundation whatever for any such pretext. The hare was started by Wilson at one of those _symposia_ which preceded and perhaps suggested the _Noctes_. The idea was caught up with avidity by Hogg, and some half-dozen verses were suggested by him on the ensuing day; but we are, we believe, correct in affirming that no part of his _ébauche_ appeared in the original or any other draft of the article.” It is to be wished that this writer, whose article evidently exhibits personal knowledge, and, apart from a running attack upon Hogg, due impartiality, had, in putting forward a new version of the story, in contradiction to those already given, been enabled to give us the name of the writer, apparently, from the wording of the context, a new claimant.