ABSTRACT
William Maginn's Corkagian attitudes are the catalyst for this practice, although Cork's disrespect for sacred cows would bring conflicts with his Edinburgh peers, where the holy bovines included Walter Scott and the novelist Susan Ferrier. Once in Edinburgh, Maginn tested his gift for the symposium form by writing "Noctes IV", in which the scene is "Transferred to Pisa" where O'Doherty dines with Lord Byron. Maginn mined the sheaves of London gossip that Alaric Watts sent to William Blackwood, and then cleverly combined the best bits into a superb imaginary conversation. Blackwood wanted more, but late in November Maginn gave him "strong warning not to expect anything from me". At some point in 1823, Maginn had in fact become engaged to a genteel Irish parson's daughter, rather than the original of "Margaret"or the Bohemian London poetess Landon. Maginn's mind, in fact, was already halfway across the Irish Sea.
