ABSTRACT
Near the end of the fifteenth instalment of the Noctes Ambrosianae, Timothy Tickler and Morgan Odoherty discuss how Christopher North has taken to running Maga with an iron hand. North’s imperious manner, they suggest, extends even to ‘Ebony’, or William Blackwood. By Odoherty’s account: ‘One can scarcely get [North] to put in the least puff now, merely to oblige a friend. Ebony does not like to speak to him on the subject, particularly when his gout is flying about in this horrid way; but entre nous, he is by no means satisfied with old Christopher. He seldom or never mentions any of Blackwood’s books, which to me, I must own, seems deuced unfair.’ 2
