commercial fabrics, proved fatal to Scott's prosperity as to that of many thousands of lesser men. Unknown to his friends, he had become a partner in the printing firm established in Edinburgh by his old friends the Bailantynes. The great Scottish publisher Constable, who, both by the magnitude and boldness of his plans and the brilliance of his publishing exploits, deserved the title Scott laughingly applied to him of "the great Napoleon of the realms of print," was compelled, after a brief but brave struggle, to succumb to the tide of ruin which could not but overwhelm him. He became bankrupt, and the Ballantyne firm soon followed suit. In February 1826 he found himself bankrupt-a debtor to the extent of over £120,000.1 The catastrophe was heavy; to most men it would have been a crushing one. Nothing in his life better shows his courage and his honesty than his behaviour under this great calamity. He determined that if his creditors would but grant him time they should be paid to the very uttermost farthing. "I am always ready," he said, "to make any sacrifice to do justice to my engagements, and would rather sell anything or everything than be less than a true man of my word." The estate of Abbotsford had, shortly before the crash, been secured to his son on the occasion of his marriage, so it was beyond the creditors' reach; but Scott's house and furniture in Edinburgh were sold by auction, and his personal effects at Abbotsford,-books, pictures, &c., -were delivered over to be held in trust for his creditors. Having bound himself to limit the cost of his living to his official income, and to employ what he earned by his pen in liquidating his debts, Scott took second-rate lodgings in Edinburgh and began his Herculean task. "For many years,” he said to a friend, I have been accustomed to hard work, because I found it a pleasure; now, with all due respect for Falstaff's 66 For a statement of the business relations between Sir Walter Scott and the Ballantynes, see a "Refutation of the Misstatements and Calumnies contained in Mr. Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., respecting the Messrs. Ballantyne. By the Trustees and Son of the late Mr. James Ballan yne." London: Longman & Co., 1838. Scott's " Life of Napoleon." 335 principle, nothing on compulsion,' I certainly will not shrink from work because it has become necessary." Misfortunes, it is said, never come singly, and the death of his wife, which followed soon after the ruin of his fortunes, intensified Scott's woes. Still he did not yield to despair. Day after day, despite his mental and bodily troubles, he diligently toiled on. The following entry in his diary for June 8, 1826, may be taken as typical of the rest : "Bilious and headache this morning. A dog howled all night, and left me little sleep. Poor cur! I daresay he had his distresses, as I have mine. I was obliged to make Dalgleish shut the windows when he appeared at half-past six as usual, and did not rise till nine. I have often deserved a headache in my younger days without having one, and nature is, I suppose, paying off old scores. Ay ! but then the want of the affectionate care that used to be ready, with lowered voice and stealthy pace, to smooth the pillow and offer assistance,-gone-gone-for ever- everever. Well, there is another world, and we'll meet free from the mortal sorrows and frail ties which beset us here. Amen! so be it. Let me change this topic with hand and head, and the heart must follow. I finished four pages to-day, headache, laziness, and all." Scott's first published work after the catastrophe which overwhelmed his fortunes was "Woodstock" (1826), which realised for his creditors over £8000. Then in the following year came his long "Life of Napoleon," written with almost incredible speed, of which the first and second editions brought £18,000. It is inaccurate and one-sided, interesting as having been written by Scott, but not of great value otherwise :— "When the harness galls sore and the spurs his side goad, In two years, by incessant industry, Scott paid off £40,000 of his debts, and in the course of four years nearly £70,000. No wonder though under the strain of constant exertion added to sorrow and anxiety his health gave way. His last novels, "Count Robert of Paris" and "Castle Dangerous," gave painful evidence that the wand of the Great Magician, which had charmed so long, had at length lost its power. The last important work of his closing years was the excellent notes and introductions which he furnished for a new edition of the Waverley novels. His "Tales of a Grandfather," "History of Scotland," &c., &c., are not of a quality to add anything to the lustre of his fame. In 1831 he was induced to abandon literary labour for a time, and to undertake a voyage to the Continent. After a residence of five months in Italy, he returned to London in June 1832. It was now painfully evident that his health was irretrievably ruined, and after a few weeks he was conveyed. to Abbotsford, where, writes his biographer, "about half-past one P.M. on the 21st of September, Sir Walter breathed his last, in the presence of all his children. It was a beautiful day, so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectiy still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ears-the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles-was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes." He was buried by the side of his wife in Dryburgh Abbey. It is pleasing to be able to relate that the collected editions of his works were after his death found sufficient to remove the mountain of debt which he struggled so manfully to discharge. His hopes of founding a family proved as fallacious as many of his other ambitions. All his children died within fifteen years of his own death, and only one or two very remote descendants of the Great Enchanter now survive. "It is written," he said, with melancholy truth, a year or two before his death, "that nothing shall flourish under my shadow; the Ballantynes, Terry, Nelson, Weber, all came to distress. Nature has written on my brow, 'Your shade shall be broad, but there shall be no protection from it to aught you favour."" Scott's personal character is a wide subject, on which much might be said. It is rather remarkable that it seems to have affected two great writers of our time, of very different tenden Macaulay on Scott. 337 cies, in much the same way. Carlyle and Macaulay, to whom one scarcely looks for agreement on such points, alike take a severe view of it. Carlyle's famous estimate of Scott as author and man, in which he figured so conspicuously in the character of a "hanging judge," is well known, and should be carefully read by all who wish to form an intelligent estimate of the Wizard of the North. Macaulay, writing in June 1838 to Macvey Napier, who had asked an article for the Edinburgh Review on Scott's life, says, "I have not, from the little that I do know of him, formed so high an opinion of his character as most people seem to entertain, and as it would be expedient for the Edinburgh Review to express. He seems to me to have been most carefully and successfully on his guard against the sins which most easily beset literary men. On that side he multiplied his precautions and set double watch. Hardly any writer of note has been so free from the petty jealousies and morbid irritabilities of our caste. But I do not think that he kept himself equally pure from faults of a very different kind-from the faults of a man of the world. In politics a bitter and unscrupulous partisan; profuse and ostentatious in expense; agitated by the hopes and fears of a gambler; perpetually sacrificing the perfection of his compositions and the durability of his fame to his eagerness for making money; writing with the slovenly haste of Dryden, in order to satisfy wants which were not, like those of Dryden, caused by circumstances beyond his control, but which were produced by his extravagant waste or rapacious speculation. This is the way in which he appears to me. I am sorry for it, for I sincerely admire the greater part of his works, but I cannot think him a high-minded man or a man of very strict principle." There is considerable truth in this estimate. Scott was not a man of high, heroic spirit. He looked upon life precisely as we may imagine some industrious merchant doing, anxious to get the best price he could for his wares, and caring more for their saleable qualities than for any other features in them. His letters afford fine examples of the worldly wisdom of his dis position. It is amusing and curious to notice how carefully he adapted their tone to suit the particular temperament of whatever correspondent he happened to be addressing. Those to his son Walter may be described as resembling Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son minus the immorality. There is no trace in them of any high or ennobling principle. "Don't do rash and foolish things; take care of yourself; be sure to get on in the world," is the gospel they proclaim. But if Scott's character lacked somewhat of the loftier virtues, it was full of those endearing qualities which men of higher aspirations have, alas! too often been without. He was totally free from any taint of vanity, envy, or malice. Like his great contemporary Goethe, he liked much better to praise the good than to condemn the evil. No critic was ever more lenient in his judgments; indeed he carried literary tolerance so far that praise from him became almost a brevet of mediocrity. In his relations with his family and his dependants he acquitted himself in a manner deserving of the highest praise. Never was there a better master than he, never a more loving and devoted parent. To do full justice to Scott's writings would require large space; it is so various in kind and so large in quantity. He cannot be ranked amongst our greatest poets, nevertheless his stirring lays have great merit of their kind. The tendency nowadays is to underrate them as much as they were overrated at the time of their appearance. Their generous, healthy, open-air tone, their ringing vivacity, their rush and vigour, have very rarely been successfully imitated. Scott's miscellaneous prose works, if not brilliant, furnish extraordinary proofs of the soundness of his judgment and the width of his knowledge. His "Lives of the Novelists" are models of sensible and manly criticism; and the lives and notes added to his editions of Dryden (1808) and of Swift (1814) show an extraordinary knowledge of the byways of English literary history, and evince a capacity for patient research with which one would scarcely be prepared to credit a man of Scott's rapid-working habits. Of the great Waverley series the worst that criticism can say was said long ago by Carlyle. All culti |