The most important of the requests which the labouring house made to Constable was, that he should forthwith take entirely to himself the stock, copyright, and future management of the Edinburgh Annual Register. Upon examining the state of this book, however, Constable found that the loss on it had never been less than L. 1000 per annum, and he therefore declined that matter for the present. He promised, however, to consider seriously the means he might have of ultimately relieving them from the pressure of the Register, and, in the mean time, offered to take 300 sets of the stock on hand. The other purchases he finally made on the 18th of May, were considerable portions of Weber's unhappy Beaumont and Fletcher-of an edition of Defoe's novels, in twelve volumes-of a collection entitled Tales of the East, in three large volumes, 8vo, double columned-and of another in one volume, called Popular Tales-about 800 copies of the Vision of Don Roderick-and a fourth of the remaining copyright of Rokeby, price L.700. The immediate accommodation thus received amounted to L.2000; and Scott, who had personally conducted the latter part of the negociation, writes thus to his junior partner, who had gone a week or two earlier to London in quest of some similar assistance there :— "To Mr John Ballantyne, care of Messrs Longman and Co., London. Printing-office, May 19th, 1813. "DEAR JOHN,-After many offs and ons, and as many projets and contre-projets as the treaty of Amiens, I have at length concluded a treaty with Constable, in which I am sensible he has gained a great advantage; * but what could I do amidst the disorder and pressure of so many demands? The arrival of your long-dated bills decided my giving in, for what could James or I do with them? I trust this sacrifice has cleared our way, but many rubs remain; nor am I, after these hard skirmishes, so able to meet them by my proper credit. Constable, however, will be a zealous ally; and for the first time these many weeks I shall lay my head on a quiet pillow, for now I do think that, by our joint exertions, we shall get well through the storm, save Beaumont from depreciation, get a partner in our heavy concerns, reef our topsails, and move on securely under an easy sail. on the one hand, I have sold my gold too cheap, I have, on the other, turned my lead to gold. Brewster and Singers are the only heavy things to which I have not given a blue eye. Had your news of Cadell's sale § reached us here, I could not have harpooned my grampus so deeply as I have done, as nothing but Rokeby would have barbed the hook. And if, "Adieu, my dear John. I have the most sincere regard for you, and you may depend on my considering your interest with quite as much attention as my own. If I have ever expressed myself with irritation in speaking of this business, you "These and after purchases of books from the stock of J. Ballantyne and Co. were resold to the trade by Constable's firm, at less than one half and one third of the prices at which they were thus obtained."-Note from Mr R. Cadell. + Dr Brewster's edition of Ferguson's Astronomy, 2 vols. 8vo, with plates, 4to, Edin. 1811. 36s. Dr Singers' General View of the County of Dumfries, 8vo. Edin. 1812. 18s. A trade sale of Messrs Cadell and Davies in the Strand. must impute it to the sudden, extensive, and unexpected embarrassments in which I found myself involved all at once. If to your real goodness of heart and integrity, and to the quickness and acuteness of your talents, you added habits of more universal circumspection, and, above all, the courage to tell disagreeable truths to those whom you hold in regard, I pronounce that the world never held such a man of business. These it must be your study to add to your other good qualities. Mean time, as some one says to Swift, I love you with all your failings. Pray make an effort and love me with all mine. Yours truly, W. S." Three days afterwards, Scott resumes the subject as follows: "DEAR JOHN,-Let it never escape your recollection, that shutting your own eyes, or blinding those of your friends, upon the actual state of business, is the high road to ruin. Meanwhile, we have recovered our legs for a week or two. Constable will, I think, come in to the Register. He is most anxious to maintain the printing-office; he sees most truly that the more we print the less we publish; and for the same reason he will, I think, help us off with our heavy quire-stock. "I was aware of the distinction between the state and the calendar as to the latter including the printing-office bills, and I summed and docked them (they are marked with red ink), but there is still a difference of L. 2000 and upwards on the calendar against the business. I sometimes fear that, between the long dates of your bills, and the tardy settlements of the Edinburgh trade, some difficulties will occur even in June; and July I always regard with deep anxiety. As for loss, if I get out without public exposure, I shall not greatly regard the rest. Radcliffe the physician said, when he lost L. 2000 on the South-Sea scheme, it was only going up 2000 pair of stairs; I say, it is only writing 2000 couplets, and the account is balanced. More of this hereafter. Yours truly, W. SCOTT. "P.S. James has behaved very well during this whole transaction, and has been most steadily attentive to business. I am convinced that the more he works the better his health will be. One or other of you will need to be constantly in the printing-office henceforward—it is the sheet-anchor." The allusion in this postscript to James Ballantyne's health reminds me that Scott's letters to himself are full of hints on that subject, even from a very early period of their connexion; and these hints are all to the same effect. James was a man of lazy habits, and not a little addicted to the more solid, and perhaps more dangerous, part of the indulgences of the table. One letter (dated Ashestiel, 1810) will be a sufficient specimen : "To Mr James Ballantyne. "MY DEAR JAMES, -I am very sorry for the state of your health, and should be still more so, were I not certain that I can prescribe for you as well as any physician in Edinburgh. You have naturally an athletic constitution and a hearty stomach, and these agree very ill with a sedentary life and the habits of indolence which it brings on. Your stomach thus gets weak, and from those complaints of all others arise most certainly flatulence, hypochondria, and all the train of unpleasant feelings connected with indigestion. We all know the horrible sensation of the nightmare arises from the same cause which gives those waking nightmares commonly called the blue devils. You must positively put yourself on a regimen as to eating, not for a month or two, but for a year at least, and take regular exercise- and my life for yours. I know this by myself, for if I were to eat and drink in town as I do here, it would soon finish me, and yet I am sensible 1 live too genially in Edinburgh as it is. Yours very truly, W. SCOTT." Among Scott's early pets at Abbotsford there was a huge raven, whose powers of speech were remarkable, far beyond any parrot's that he had ever met with; and who died in consequence of an excess of the kind to which James Ballantyne was addicted. Thenceforth Scott often repeated to his old friend, and occasionally scribbled by way of postscript to his notes on business "When you are craving, Remember the Raven." Sometimes the formula is varied to "When you've dined half, Think on poor Ralph!" His preachments of regularity in book-keeping to John, and of abstinence from good cheer to James Ballantyne, were equally vain; but on the other hand it must be allowed that they had some reason for displeasure (the more felt because they durst not, like him, express their feelings) when they found that scarcely had these "hard skirmishes" terminated in the bargain of May 18th, before Scott was preparing fresh embarrassments for himself, by commencing a negociation for a considerable addition to his property at Abbotsford. As early as the 20th June, he writes to Constable as being already aware of this matter, and alleges his anxiety "to close at once with a very capricious person," as the only reason that could have induced him to make up his mind to sell the whole copyright of an as yet unwritten poem, to be entitled "The Nameless Glen." The copyright he then offered to dispose of to Constable for L.5000; adding, "this is considerably less in proportion than I have already made on the share of Rokeby sold to yourself, and surely that is no unfair admeasurement." A long correspondence ensued, in the course of which Scott mentions "the Lord of the Isles," as a title which had suggested itself to him in place of the Nameless Glen;" but as the negociation did not succeed, I may pass its details. The new property which Scott was so eager to acquire, was that hilly tract stretching from the old Roman road near Turn-again towards the Cauldshiels Loch: a then desolate and naked mountain-mere, which he likens, in a letter of this summer (to Lady Louisa Stuart), to the Lake of the Genie and the Fisherman in the Arabian Tale. To obtain this lake at one extremity of his estate, as a contrast to the Tweed at the other, was a prospect for which hardly any sacrifice would have appeared too much; and he contrived to gra tify his wishes in the course of that July, to which he had spoken of himself in May as looking forward "with the deepest anxiety." Nor was he, I must add, more able to control some of his minor tastes. I find him writing to Mr Terry, on the 20th of June, about "that splendid lot of ancient armour, advertised by Winstanley," a celebrated auctioneer in London, of which he had the strongest fancy to make his spoil, though he was at a loss to know where it should be placed when it reached Abbotsford; and on the 2d of July, this acquisition also having been settled, he says to the same correspondent "I have written to Mr Winstanley. My bargain with Constable was otherwise arranged, but Little John is to find the needful article, and I shall take care of Mr. Winstanley's interest, who has behaved too handsomely in this matter to be trusted to the mercy of our little friend the Picaroon, who is, notwithstanding his many excellent qualities, a little on the score of old Gobbo-doth somewhat smack -somewhat grow to. We shall be at Abbotsford on the 12th, and hope soon to see you there. I am fitting up a small room above Peter-house, where an unceremonious bachelor may consent to do penance, though the place is a cock-loft, and the access that which leads many a bold fellow to his last nap—a ladder.' And a few weeks later, he says, in the same sort, to his sister-in-law, Mrs Thomas Scott, "In despite of these hard times, which affect my patrons the booksellers very much, I am buying old books and old armour as usual, and adding to what your old friend † Burns calls "A fouth of auld nick-nackets, Rusty airn caps and jingling jackets. Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets And parritch-pats and auld saut-backets, Notwithstanding all this, it must have been with a most uneasy mind that he left Edinburgh to establish himself at Abbotsford that July. The assistance of Constable had not been granted, indeed it had not been asked, to an extent at all adequate for the difficulties of the case; and I have now to transcribe, with pain and reluctance, some extracts from Scott's letters, during the ensuing autumn, which speak the language of anxious, and indeed humiliating distress; and give a most lively notion of the incurable recklessness of his younger partner. "To Mr John Ballantyne. Abbotsford, Saturday, 24th July. "DEAR JOHN,—I sent you the order, and have only to hope it arrived safe and in good time. I waked the boy at three o'clock myself, having slept little, less on * The court of offices, built on the haugh at Abbotsford in 1812, included a house for the faithful coachman, Peter Mathieson. One of Scott's Cantabrigian friends, Mr W. S. Rose, gave the whole pile soon afterwards the name, which it retained to the end, of Peter-House. The loft at Peter-House continued to be occupied by occasional bachelor guests until the existing mansion was completed. + Mrs Thomas Scott had met Burns frequently in early life at Dumfries. Her brother, the late Mr David MacCulloch, was a great favourite with the poet, and the best singer of his songs that I ever heard. account of the money than of the time. Surely you should have written, three or four days before, the probable amount of the deficit, and, as on former occasions, [ would have furnished you with means of meeting it. These expresses, besides every other inconvenience, excite surprise in my family and in the neighbourhood. I know no justifiable occasion for them but the unexpected return of a bill. I do not consider you as answerable for the success of plans, but I do and must hold you responsible for giving me, in distinct and plain terms, your opinion as to any difficulties which may occur, and that in such time that I may make arrangements to obviate them if possible. "Of course if any thing has gone wrong, you will come out here to-morrow. But if, as I hope and trust, the cash arrived safe, you will write to me, under cover to the Duke of Buccleuch, Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries-shire. I shall set out for that place on Monday morning early. W. S." "To Mr James Ballantyne. “Abbotsford, 25th July, 1813. "DEAR JAMES, I address the following jobation for John to you, that you may see whether I do not well to be angry, and enforce upon him the necessity of constantly writing his fears as well as his hopes. You should rub him often on this point, for his recollection becomes rusty the instant I leave town and am not in the way to rack him with constant questions. I hope the presses are doing well, and that you are quite stout again. W. S." Yours truly, "To Mr John Ballantyne. "MY GOOD FRIEND JOHN,-The post brings me no letter from you, which I am much surprised at, as you must suppose me anxious to learn that your express arrived. I think he must have reached you before post-hours, and James or you might have found a minute to say so in a single line. I once more request that you will be a business-like correspondent and state your provisions for every week prospectively. I do not expect you to warrant them, which you rather perversely seem to insist is my wish, but I do want to be aware of their nature and extent, that I may provide against the possibility of miscarriage. The calendar, to which you refer me, tells me what sums are due, but cannot tell your shifts to pay them, which are naturally altering with circumstances, and of which alterations 1 request to have due notice. You say you could not suppose Sir W. Forbes would have refused the long dated bills; but that you had such an apprehension is clear, both because in the calendar these bills were rated two months lower, and because, three days before, you wrote me an enigmatical expression of your apprehensions, instead of saying plainly there was a chance of your wanting L.350, when I would have sent you an order to be used conditionally. "All I desire is unlimited confidence and frequent correspondence, and that you will give me weekly at least the fullest anticipation of your resources, and the probability of their being effectual. I may be disappointed in my own, of which you shall have equally timeous notice. Omit no exertions to procure the use of money, even for a month or six weeks, for time is most precious. The large bɛlance due in January from the trade, and individuals, which I cannot reckon at less than L.4000, will put us finally to rights; and it will be a shame to founder within sight of harbour. The greatest risk we run is from such ill-considered despatches as those of Friday. Suppose that I had gone to Drumlanrig-suppose the poney had set up-suppose a thousand things-and we were ruined for want of your telling your apprehensions in due time. Do not plague yourself to vindicate this sort of management; but if you have escaped the consequences (as to which you have left me uncertain), thank God, and act more cautiously another time. It was quite the same to me on what day 1 sent that draft; indeed it must |