into him since he lost hopes at the bar, induced the false step of his setting up a publishing-house in Edinburgh, under the firm of John Ballantyne and Company, the ostensible manager being a younger brother of the printer, a clever comical being, not overstocked with worldly prudence, and possessed of few qualifications for business beyond a knowledge of accounts.

From this house issued, in May 1810, his most pleasing poem, the Lady of the Lake, which experienced even greater popularity than either of its two predecessors, and might, if anything could, have made its author a vain man. In this and his two preceding poems, the chief charm lay in the vividness with which the author brought the past before the minds of his readers. He gave the grace, the dignity, the gallantry of old times, free from all their rudeness and grossness. All was done, too, in such an easy and fluent style, that the reader was never wearied. Surely he did himself less than justice when he wrote: 'I am sensible that if there be anything good about my poetry or prose, it is a hurried frankness of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active disposition.' The singular fascination of these writings showed itself in numberless ways: for one thing, there was a rush of tourists to the scene of the Lady of the Lake, so great as to produce a marked rise of the amount of post-horse duty raised in Scotland. Scott's own firm, in connection with another, undertook to pay two thousand guineas for the Lady of the Lake, a fact in authorship at that time without anything approaching to a parallel.

Meanwhile he was urging into print, as a publisher, an Annual Register, to commence with the year 1808; an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, under the care of a drudging German of the name of Weber; a huge quarto,

under the title of Tixall Poetry; an edition of Defoe's novels; the Secret Memoirs of the Court of James I.; and some other books agreeable to his own taste, but hardly to that of the public. These huge indigestible masses of paper and print had brought his outlay in the printing and publishing concerns up to £9000 before the end of this year. Scarcely ever did the most thoughtless of the tuneful tribe make a more unfortunate adventure than this publishing affair was destined to prove itself. If Scott had instituted some safe and modest copartnery, to give himself the publishing profits of his own writings, diminished only by expenses and the small profits due to his acting associates, he would have been doing what perhaps it will yet be seen all authors of decided popularity may rightly do. But he had an antiquarian taste, and a disposition to overestimate all literary productions save his own-he indulged these tendencies in his firm of John Ballantyne and Company, and unavoidably became a great loser. Before it was fully seen that such was to be his fate as a man of businessnamely, in the summer of 1811-he had thought so well of his means and prospects-the clerkship salary being now on the eve of realisation-as to resolve on purchasing a hundred acres of land on Tweedside, in order to build a cottage residence for himself, and this notwithstanding that the £4000 requisite in the very first place had to be borrowed, the one half as a permanent burden on the property. Such was the origin of his estate of Abbotsford, where ultimately he reared a castle. The purchase would have been a perfectly right one, if he had not involved his superfluous fortune in business: as things actually stood, it was only preparing for himself needless embarrass

ments.

CHAPTER VII.

REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD--THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.

IS removal to the little estate which he had purchased took place in May 1812, and he soon became involved in the pleasant but costly labours attendant on building and planting

at Abbotsford. At the same time, besides attending to other literary avocations, he was composing a fourth romance in verse, which appeared just before the close of the year under the title of Rokeby, but in point of popularity proved a comparative failure. Ere this time, the concerns of John Ballantyne and Company were seriously embarrassed, insomuch that Scott was glad to accept of a little credit from his friend Mr Morritt of Rokeby Park. The difficulties had only increased during the early months of 1813, and it then became necessary for those who had begun in rivalry to Mr Constable to resort to that publisher for his friendly aid. To give an idea of the fatality of the whole adventure, it appears that the single publication of Tixall Poetry, which proved a dead failure, involved an outlay of £2500, while the Edinburgh Annual Register was attended by an annual loss of £1000. At the same time, all the parties concerned were living in a style rather suited to their hopes than to their realised profits. To sustain so severe a drainage, the private fortune of Scott and even his unprecedented literary gains were inadequate. Fortunately, the hope of regaining the author of Marmion as an adherent of his house, induced Mr Constable to grant relief to

some extent by the purchase of stock, trusting that the rival house would as soon as possible be extinguished. The Duke of Buccleuch also extended the favour of his credit for the sum of £4000, by means of which, and of further sales of stock to other publishers, the principal difficulties were passed, though not without the most serious vexation to Scott for the greater part of a year. In the midst of his worst perplexities, he resigned an offer of the laureateship to Mr Southey, and was liberal as usual to unfortunate men of letters, sending, for one thing, fifty pounds to Mr Maturin, the Irish novelist.

Scott had, so early as 1805, commenced a prose fiction on the manners of the Highlanders, which he designated Waverley, or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. Discouraged by the unfavourable opinion of his friends regarding the first few chapters, he threw aside the manuscript, which lay accordingly unthought of in an old desk for nine years. Happening to find it while rummaging for fishing-tackle, he bethought of completing the story, and seriously trying his fortune in a new walk of literature. Three weeks of June 1814 enabled him to add the second and third volumes, and the tale appeared anonymously in the ensuing month. The public almost immediately appreciated its merits, and the first edition of a thousand copies meeting with a quick sale, was speedily followed by a second and a third. The lifelike representation here given of times not too remote for sympathy, and yet sufficiently so in character to tell as eminently romantic, joined to the wonderful ease, spirit, and mingled humour and pathos of the narrative, gave Waverley at once a place far above all contemporary novels, and awakened great curiosity regarding the unknown author. Always unconcerned about the fate of his works, Scott immediately set out on a six weeks' yachting excursion

G

round the north of Scotland, with hardly a chance of hearing news from the world of letters during that time, and when he came back, he found himself famous in a new and impersonal capacity. Many reflecting persons were at no loss to see that only the same mind which had reproduced the times of the Jameses in Marmion and the Lady of the Lake, could have resuscitated the court and camp of Charles Edward Stuart in 1745; but with the mass of the public the mystery was successful. Some thought it most. likely that Scott's brother, Thomas, had produced this romance; there were even some who attributed it to Jeffrey. Of Thomas he had himself so high an opinion, that he about this time offered him money from his own pocket for any novel he might produce. But the opinion of Walter Scott regarding the literary powers of his contemporaries was of absolutely not the least value, in consequence of the peculiar generosity of his nature. Thomas Scott and many others whom he stimulated, and helped to become authors, were in the eyes of the world very ordinary persons, and can only be remembered because they were the objects of this great man's love and esteem.

The success of Waverley, and the necessity of money to relieve the Ballantyne concern, quickly urged Scott to a new effort in the same walk. During the 'short vacation at the Christmas of this year (1814), he produced his tale of Guy Mannering, which, being published in the ensuing February, was received with transports of delight-more sober language would be quite inappropriate-by both the Scottish and English public. The author had, only a month before, brought out his last poem, The Lord of the Isles, which met with a reception so cool as to convince him that he must now resign the top of the poetical walk to his young rival, Lord Byron. He heard the report of