of noble qualities with absurd weaknesses which humourists love. Not like Sterne, working out with lingering and delicate detail every trait of character, and framing perfection in graceful oddities of habit, old-world dress and custom, and primitive sincerity, open to every imposition; but rather with a luminous perception of every man "ganging his ain gait," and all the wonderful curves and diversities of path through which he does so, and an amused affectionate sense of the special foibles, broken bits of folly and wisdom, obstinacies, prejudices, absurdities, which envelop here and there the best heart and nature. His insight here was unbounded, for he knew the race he set forth in all their varieties, and had seen below the surface all their quips and cranks of being from his earliest days, being always an unconscious observer, and above all a friend and lover of his countrymen and humankind.

If

His novels brought Scott more money than literature had ever brought before, money destined, as has been seen, with a delightful self-delusion and refinement, to "plant scaurs," not to increase his dignity and importance and make a Tweedside laird of him, according to the version of the vulgar. it did not turn his noble head to be thus able to win money at his will, it did turn the heads of all connected with him in the business built upon the workings of his brain. The booksellers seem to have considered the fountain inexhaustible, and to have calculated as upon solid capital on his power of producing what the public wanted, and meet

ing every vagary of its taste and favour. Never was there such a romance of trade as that which these dazzled and intoxicated men carried on at his expense, always confident that some new effort on his part would clear away every difficulty. When a new book was ready, a jovial dinner or supper was the first preliminary; and after the fun had begun to wax fast and furious, the guests, all intent and holding fast by their wits for the emergency, notwithstanding claret and toddy, were allowed to know the name, and perhaps to have a chapter read from the proofs, James Ballantyne being the prophet who communicated these oracles to man. This strangest and most unbusiness-like of printers was, indeed, Scott's interpreter in more ways than one. He spent his life over the hasty manuscripts and proofs. He was the critic, if not in words, yet by involuntary revelations, of the feeling which it was his mission to sound and fathom out of doors-a sort of literary henchman, as entirely devoted to his chief as Evan Dhu to Fergus MacIvor. Unfortunately, Constable, though a better man of business, and with some real foundation to go upon, was not much wiser than his coadjutors. He too became excited by the possession of this strange slave of genius, who went on at his magic loom while other men slept, and threatened to fill the world with those glittering webs which brightened everything around the face of the country, and the aspect of society, and the balance at the bank. When, after so much wild trading upon credit, so many rash and unwise speculations in literature, and daring play with

danger, the shock came at last, and the Edinburgh printing house and publishing office came down together, their ruin precipitated by the failure of an English correspondent and agent, Constable could not believe that the name he had to conjure withal was not enough to overcome all his foes. He wanted, it is said, to go to the Bank of England and borrow from one hundred to two hundred thousand pounds on the security of his possession of the author of Waverley-mortgaging, as it were, this estate which was to him the most certain and inexhaustible of all quarries and mines of gold.

It is a proof at once of Scott's extraordinary power over the imaginations of those surrounding him, and of the bewildering excitement and fever heat at which one brilliant success after another held them, that such an idea could have entered into the mind of mortal man. Scott was to these men what the subject spirit of his own story was to Michael Scott; but with this difference, that whereas the Wizard was embarrassed by the too rapid accomplishment of all his wishes, and had soon no mountain to be cleft in twain or sea sand to be twisted into ropes, Constable and the Ballantynes felt that they had nothing to do but to pass on to the public the constant product of his toil, the more the better, and build upon the endless increase of a power which they did not attempt to gauge, which they never seem to have thought of as likely to be affected by distress or anxiety or pain, like that of other men. Had he, one is tempted to think, kept clear of these knights-errant of the

bookselling trade,-had he been in the hands of a Blackwood or a Murray, born to success, what a different end had been that of the Magician, the great improvisatore of an entranced and wondering age ! Then had he built his towers and planted his scaurs in peace, then had his charmed doors stood open for the comfort and solace of all pilgrims, then had the world applauded all his gentle ambitions, and sworn by its right hand that never was nobler issue of a poet's labours than that poetic castle and those beloved woods on Tweedside. But when the spectres of bankruptcy and ruin came, the real defaulters sank into insignificance, and Scott had all to pay, not only in his purse and person, but in his fame, in his favourite pursuits, in Abbotsford and all its hospitalities and hopes. We cannot but think that there is no circumstance in his life more cruel than that which has made so legitimate a desire, so habitual and blameless an ambition, his reproach and almost shame. Abbotsford would not have ruined him had not trade swept all this recompense of his labours into its devouring current. And he might have tranquilly enjoyed all the honours he loved but for his tenderheartedness towards his old schoolfellow, but for his loyal faithfulness to the "trade" which for years had filled his life with the hazards and excitements of a failing fight.

The end of this wonderful career is too well known to demand repetition. When the ruin of the booksellers was no longer to be averted, and when his own astonished family and the larger circle of the

world out of doors learnt how Scott was involved with them, he met the downfall with a heroism which nothing in the history of literature has ever equalled. "Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me," is almost the first comment he makes when the terrible news falls on his ears. Nothing can be more soberly sad, and yet brave, than the tone of his journal, though now and then it rises into a momentary wondering appeal to heaven and earth, or drops into a musing melancholy over his lost fortunes, which is so tragically calm that it is impossible to read it unmoved. "Poor Will Laidlaw ! poor Tom Purdie," he cries, "such news will wring your hearts, and many a poor fellow's besides, to whom my prosperity was daily bread." Then, with that immediate return to the thought of something to be done, which shows the mettle of the courageous soul, he sets himself to what is before him. Now that he has at last fairly faced the situation, he will have no tidings-over, no fresh borrowings. "I feel quite composed and determined to labour," he says; and when he records "a sleepless night" and a body out of sorts-" Mais pourtant cultivons notre jardin. The public favour is my only lottery. I have long enjoyed the foremost prize, and something in my breast tells me my evil genius will not overtake me if I stand by myself." Then he adds, with a break in his valiant voice, "I have walked my last on the domains I have planted; sate the last time in the house I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them. My