We regret to notice the death of Mr. John Blackwood,
senior partner in the publishing house, and for thirty-three years editor of Blaawood's Magazine. Though not himself a man of literature, Mr. Blackwood had a fine sense of what good litera- ture is, much discrimination, and a power of admiring merit of many different kinds. He would publish really good work, even though it was work of a kind the public had ceased to favour. Genuinely kind-hearted, especially towards literary men, ho helped many an unknown genius forward, and repeatedly made remarkable hits, the best known being George Eliot and Samuel Warren, a writer who, though he is now difficult to read, had a keen insight into character, and enjoyed. for some years a great hold. over the public. In spite, too, of the powerful competition to which it was exposed, Blackwood's Magazine always retained its hold, its editor having the ability to maintain in it a distinct separateness of literary flavour to many men exceedingly enjoys able. Personally, Mr. Blackwood, besides a great capacity for business, strong sense, and a most extensive knowledge of Mcrae. ture—he knew through aud through, for example, every book he published—was possessed of a humour of a rather rare kind-- a nutty kind—and could occasionally utter, and write, too, most
sentenees, full at once of fun and of sharpness. epigrammatic In politics, he belonged rather to the sohool of another day ; but he was iore moderate than he sometimes seemed, and he had a most accurate judgment of the temper of the Euglish, people.
Previous page
