three months from that date it would be discontinued; but on 1 Oct. following was issued as No. 7 'Blackwood's ridinburgh Magazine.' Its publisher was, and until his death continued to be, its sole editor. John Wilson and John Gibson Lockhart were the chief contributors to the magazine under its new name. Its first issue produced a considerable sensation from the appearance in it of the Chaldee Manuscript, which was chiefly their composition. In style and phraseology a somewhat audacious imitation of the Old Testament, this piece satirised the chief contributors to and the publisher of the 'Edinburgh Review,' and the leading Edinburgh whigs, while giving a glowing description of the parentage and prospects of 'Blackwood's Magazine. Probably its apparent profanity offended in presbyterian Scotland many who would have relished its personalities. With the caution which, as well as enten)rise, characterised him, Blackwood excluded the Chaldee Manuscript from the second edition, immediately called for, of the number in which it had appeared.
With Wilson and Lockhart among its principal contributors, and its sagacious publisher to edit it, 'Blackwood's Magazine' prospered and took a loading position among British penodicals. New contributors of mark or likelihood were always welcomed and liberally treated. Blackwood was the first to recognise the merits of John Gait as a novelist his 'Ayrshire legatees,' the earliest published of his prose fictions, was at once accepted, and speedily appeared in the magazine. While encouraging and rewarding his contributors, Blackwood kept in check the exuberance of some of them. The restraining influence which he exercised over Wilson himself, the most powerful and prolific of them all, is shown in those of Blackwood's letters to him published in Mrs. Gordon's 'Christopher North.' Among the latest and most telling of his editorial acquisitions was Samuel Warren's 'Diary of a Late Physician,' the first chapter of which, declined by the editors of the principal London magazines, was at once accepted by Blackwood.
As a published Blackwood was largely, but by no means exclusively, occupied with the reissue, in book form, of prominent contributions to his magazine. In 1818 he published 'Marriage,' the earliest of Miss Ferrier's fictions. He lived to see completed in 1830 the publication, begun by him twenty years before, of the 'Edinburgh Encyclopædia,' The publication of the voluminous and valuable 'New Statistical Account of Scotland' he undertook more from patriotic motives than with a view to profit. One of the latest and most spirited of his enterprises he did not live to see completed, Alison's 'History of Europe,' which he at once undertook to publish on a perusal of the first volume in manuscript, though he foresaw that it would be a voluminous work. In spite of his engrossing business avocations he found time to attend, as an active member of the town council of Edinburgh, to the interests of his native city, and, while as a staunch tory opposed to parliamentary reform, he is said to have been a zealous promoter of all civic improvements. He died at Edinburgh on 16 Sept. 1834, after an illness of some months, during which he was attended by D. M. Moir, poet and physician, the 'Delta' of his magazine. To the last John Wilson was a visitor to his sick room. In 'Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk' Lockhart has described him in his prime among the literary loungers in his Prince's Street shop as 'nimble, active-looking, with a complexion very sanguineous.' 'Nothing,' it is added, 'can be more sagacious than the expression of his whole physiognomy — the grey eyes and eyebrows full of locomotion.' He is said to have contributed three papers to his magazine, but their subjects and dates have not been specified.
[Obituary Notice (by Lockhart) in Blackwood's Magazine for October 1834; Christopher North, a Memoir of John Wilson, by his daughter Mrs. Gordon (edition of 1879); Chamber's Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen; Histories of Publishing Houses: the House of Blackwood, in (London) Critic for July-August 1860.]
BLADEN, MARTIN (1680–1746), soldier and politician, was the son of Nathaniel Bladen of Hemsworth, Yorkshire, by Isabella, daughter of Sir William Fairfax of Steeton, and was born in 1680. He is said to have passed a short time at a small private school in the country with the great Duke of Marlborough, and from 1696 to 1697 was at Westminster School. He went into the army, and served in the low countries and in Spain, becoming aide-de-camp to Lord Galway, and rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. When he determined upon adopting a parliamentary career, he contested the Comisn constituency of Saltash in 1713 and 1715 in the whig interest, but was rejected on both occasions. For noneteen years (1715-34) he sat for Stockbridge in Hampshire, from 1734 to 1741 he represented Maldon in Essex, and from the latter year until his death he sat for Portsmouth. In 1714 he was appointed comptroller of the mint, and from 1717 to 1746 he was a commissioner of trade and plantations, So complete a sinecure was the latter post
