benefit of his creditors, and on the twentysixth there is an entry in his journal: "Can we do nothing for creditors with the goblin drama called Doom of Devorgoil?" His friend James Skene notes in his unpublished reminiscences what were Sir Walter's plans at the time, and the following passages sets them forth : the ment. ought to have brought something handsome to poor Mat. But Sheridan, then manager, you know, generally paid jokes instead of cash, and the joke that poor Mat got was, Don't let me tell you a story you know." after all, not a bad one. Have you heard it? I had not heard it, he proceeded: "Well, As they were disputing about something, and Lewis had clinched the argument by proposThe energy with which Sir Walter had set ing to lay a bet about it. I shall lay what about turning his resources, both past and you ought long ago to have paid me for my present, to immediate account, with a view to Sheridan; I never lay large bets; but come, "Castle Spectre "" 'No, no, Mat,' said prove to his creditors, with as little delay as I will bet a trifle with you-I'll bet what possible, that all that could depend upon himself should be put in operation to retrieve his Constable managed differently; he paid well "Castle Spectre "" was worth.'" Now affairs, made him often reluctant to quit his and promptly, but devil take him, it was all study, however much he found himself ex-spectral together. Moonshine and no merrihausted. However, the employment served to occupy his mind, and prevent its brooding and as liberally scattered the tares with the He sowed my field with one hand, over the misfortune that had befallen him; other. and, joined to the natural contentedness of his disposition, prevented any approach of despondency. "Here is an old effort of mine to compose a melodrama" (showing me one day a bundle of papers which he had found in his repositories). "This trifle would have been long ago destroyed had it not been for our poor friend Kinneder, who arrested my hand, as he thought it not bad, and for his sake it was kept. I have just read it over, and, do you know, with some satisfaction. Faith, I have known many worse things make their way very well in the world; so, God willing, it shall e'en see the light, if it can do aught in the hour of need to help the hand that fashioned it." Upon asking the name of this production, he said, "I suspect I must change it, having already forestalled it by the Fortunes of Nigel.' I had called it the 'Fortunes of Devorgoil,' but we must not begin to double up in that way, for if you leave anything hanging loose, you may be sure that some malicious devil will tug at it. I think I shall call it The Doom of Devorgoil.' It will make a volume of itself, and I do not see why it should not come out by particular desire as a fourth volume to Woodstock.' They have some sort of connection, and it would not be a difficult matter to bind the connection a little closer. As the market goes, I have no doubt of the Bibliophilist 46 With the exception of inducing Sir Walter to make an advance of £5,000 at a time when the affairs of Hurst & Robinson and his own firm were irretrievably involved, Constable did not merit this censure. He was over-sanguine and rather reckless, fonder of devising grand proj ects than of attending to the plodding details of business; yet he was just the sort of publisher required by Sir Walter, and not a little of his marvellous success was due to Constable. The real blunder and almost inexcusable action on Sir Walter's side consisted in his becoming a partner, first in the firm of James Ballantyne & Co., printers, and next in that of John Ballantyne & Co., booksellers. was prompted to join the Ballantynes by his desire to render them a service. He had known one of them as a boy, and he had helped James Ballantyne with his purse as well as his advice to establish himself as a printer in Edinburgh. In each case he After a few years of struggle the publishing firm was dissolved. More than once Sir Walter wished to withdraw from the entangling alliance with James, but he never gave effect to his desire. Like other men who have got into a false position, Sir Walter found it easier to remain than to extricate himself. When the day of reckoning came, he was made to pay dearly for his mistake. It is strange that neither in the "Life" by Lockhart nor in Sir Walter's journal is an account given of Constable's project of a new edition of Shakespeare in ten volumes. In 1822 he first suggested the matter to Sir Walter, and after a time it was agreed that he should edit the new edition in concert with Lockhart. sum to be paid by Constable for the work The was £2,500. On the 25th of January, 1825, Constable wrote to Mr. Robinson, of Hurst & Robinson, saying among other things: migration, that I repose much confidence in Sophia's tact and good sense. Her manners are good, and have the appearance of being perfectly natural. She is quite conscious of the limited range of her musical talents, and It gives me great pleasure to tell you that never makes them common or produces them the first sheet of Sir Walter Scott's "Shake-out of place—a rare virtue; moreover, she is speare" is now in type. . . it will make ten volumes. The first volume contains the life of Shakespeare, by Sir Walter. He is to be assisted in the notes by Mr. Lockhart, who is perhaps the best philologist of the present day. proud enough, and will not be easily netted and patronized by any of that class of ladies who may be called lion-providers for town and country. The foregoing passage not only supplies a pleasant characterization of Sir Walter's daughter and his son-in-law, but it shows that Disraeli had paid a visit to Scotland in 1825, and might have conversed with Scott. The following entry in his journal on the 11th of June, 1827, shows that he had read, without being greatly struck with "Vivian Grey," which had appeared anonymously not long be fore: Reading, among the rest, an odd volume of "Vivian Grey;" clever, but not so much as to make me, in this sultry weather, go upstairs to the drawing-room to seek the other volumes. Ah! villain, but you smoked when you read. Well, madam, perhaps I think the better of the book for that reason. Another notable man, who happily still survives, visited Edinburgh when he was a youth, and is referred to, on the 31st of January, 1827, in a way which proves that he made a good impression upon Walter: Sir Young Murray, son of Mr. M. in Albemarle Street, breakfasted with me. English boys have this advantage, that they are wellbred, and can converse when ours are regularbuilt cubs. Some time since John Murray entered into a contract with my son-in-law, John G. Lockhart, giving him, on certain ample conditions, the management and editorship of the Quarterly Review, for which they could scarcely find a fitter person, both from talents and character. It seems that Barrow and one or two stagers have taken alarm at Lockhart's character as a satirist, and his supposed accession to some of the freaks in Blackwood's Magazine, and down comes young D'Israeli to Scotland imploring Lockhart to remove objections, and so forth. I have no idea of telling all and sundry that my son-in-law is not a slanderer, or a silly, thoughtless lad, although he was six or seven years ago engaged in some light satires. It is odd enough that many years since I had the principal share in erecting this Review, which has since been so prosperous, and now it is placed under the management of my son-in-law upon the most honorable principle of detur digniori. Yet there are sad drawbacks as far as family comfort is concerned. To-day is Sunday, when they always dined with us, and generally met a family friend or two, but we are no longer to expect them. In the country, where their little cottage was within a mile or two of Abbotsford, we shall miss their society still more, for Chiefswood was the perpetual object of our walks, rides, and drives. Lock-ment as soon as the details of the measure hart is such an excellent family man, so fond of his wife and child, that I hope all will go well. I have the less dread, or rather the less anxiety about the consequence of this When Sir Walter was busied and anxious about arranging his affairs in order that his creditors might not suffer, his mind was distracted with a measure introduced into Parliament by his political friends and allies. The government ascribed much of the mania for speculation to the issue of paper currency by private banks, and in particular to the issue of notes for one pound, and it was resolved to hinder this by legislation. The powers of the private banks were curtailed, and the issue of notes for less than five pounds was forbidden in the bill introduced into the House of Commons. The Scottish banks were dealt with in the same way as the English. All Scotland was in a fer were made known. No person took the proposed legislation more to heart than Sir Walter Scott, and though his own party was in office, he set himself to de nounce the bill in a series of letters to | ing being an exception. At Abbotsford the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, which on the 29th of May he wrote:were signed Malachi Malagrowther. He was rewarded with the success achieved To-day I leave, for Edinburgh, this house of sorrow. In the midst of such distress I by Swift when he wrote the " Drapier have the great pleasure to see Anne regaining Letters" to denounce Wood's halfpence, her health, and showing both patience and as the Scottish banks were exempted from steadiness of mind. God continue this for the operation of the bill and one pound my own sake as well as hers. Much of my notes remained in circulation. The result future comfort must depend upon her. was to increase Sir Walter's popularity, and the banks which had been pressing hardly upon him now treated him with more consideration. There was something comic in the situation of which he was conscious. Hence he wrote in his jour nal: Whimsical enough that when I was trying to animate Scotland against the currency bill, John Gibson brought me the deed of trust, assigning my whole estate, to be subscribed by me; so that I am turning patriot, and taking charge of the affairs of the country, on the very day I was proclaiming myself incapable of managing my own. [He adds an apt reference to Arthur Murphy's farce, "The Upholsterer, or What News?] What of that? The eminent politician Quidnunc, was in the same condition. It is gratifying to add that his hope was fulfilled, his daughter watching over him with care and tenderness in his declining years. Nothing gave Sir Walter greater concern after losing his wife than the delicate health of his grandson. On the 24th of May, 1827, he wrote: "A good thought came into my head: to write stories for little Johnnie Lockhart from the history of Scotland, like those taken from the history of England. Such was the origin of the "Tales of a Grandfather," which had the warmest reception from the public of any work by him since "Ivanhoe." As Lockhart put it, Sir Walter "had solved for the first time the problem of narrating history, so as at once to excite and gratify the curiosity of youth, and please and instruct the wisest of mature minds." When revising these "Tales for the press in January, 1828, he wrote: A more serious matter preyed upon his mind at the time when all its energies were in a state of tension. Lady Scott's health then gave him great concern. The evil fortune which had befallen him was a I have made great additions to volume first still more crushing biow to her. She did and several of these "Tales; " and I care not not comfort him when he much needed who knows it, I think well of them. Nay, I consolation. Writing before the crash will hash history with anybody, be he who he bad actually occurred, but when he be- will. I do not know but it would be wise to lieved it could not be averted, he says; let romantic composition rest, and turn my "Another person did not afford me all the mind to the history of England, France, and sympathy I expected, perhaps because IIreland, to be da capo rota'd, as well as that seemed to need little support, yet that is not her nature, which is generous and kind." When his forebodings were realized, he says: A painful scene after dinner, and another after supper, endeavoring to convince these poor dear creatures [Lady Scott and Anne, his younger daughter] that they must not look for miracles, but consider the misfortune as certain, and only to be lessened by patience and labor. On the 11th of May, 1826, his professional duties obliged him to go to Edinburgh, leaving his wife at Abbotsford. Before going he wrote; "To what scene I may suddenly be recalled, it wrings my heart to think." He received a message on the fifteenth that his wife was dead. His feelings at the time, on his return and at the funeral, are pathetically set forth in his journal, and most of the passages have been quoted by Lockhart, the follow of Scotland. Men would look at me as an author for Mr. Newbery's shop in Paul's Virginibus puerisque. I would as soon comChurchyard. I should care little for that. pose histories for boys and girls, which may be useful, as fictions for children of a larger growth, which can at best be only idle folk's entertainment. But write what I will, or to whom I will, I am doggedly determined to write myself out of the present scrape by any labor that is fair and honest. Sir Walter was unfaltering in his determination to work for his creditors. When offered from £1,500 to £2,000 a year to conduct a journal, he declined, writing at "A large income is not my obthe time, ject; I must clear my debts." The following entry in his journal shows that his son-in-law had given him good advice concerning his style: : proper genitive of "which;" only at such times as "which" retains its quality of impersonification. Well I will try to remember all this; but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me. I never learned grammar; and not only Sir Hugh Evans, but even Mrs. Quickly might puzzle me about Giney's case and horum, harum, horum. I believe the Bailiff in the "Good-natured Man" is not far wrong when he says, "One man has one way of expressing himself, and another another, and that is all the difference between them." While Lockhart did not hesitate to crit. icise Sir Walter, the latter was ready to return the compliment, and doubtless he spoke to Lockhart in the strain which he used in his journal when writing about him. Having read the sixty-sixth number of the Quarterly, in which Lockhart reviewed Moore's "Life of Sheridan," Sir Walter writes: Don't like Lockhart's article on Sheridan's life. There is no breadth in it, no general views, the whole flung away in smart but party criticism. Now, no one can take more general and liberal views of literature than J. G. L. But he lets himself too easily into that advocatism of style, which is that of a pleader, not a judge or a critic, and is particularly unsatisfactory to the reader. Though a strong party man and theoretically a Tory among Tories, yet Sir Wal ter was most tolerant and fair-minded in practice. He disliked carrying anything to an extreme, even his own political opin ions. When Lockhart became editor of the Quarterly, it was feared that Southey would raise objections and refuse to write for the review. When Sir Walter was informed of this he wrote in his journal: Lockhart will have hard words with him, for, great as Southey's powers are, he has not the art to make them work popularly; he is often diffuse, and frequently sets much value on minute and unimportant facts, and useless pieces of abstruse knowledge. Living too exclusively in a circle where he is idolized both for his genius and the excellence of his disposition, he has acquired strong prejudices, though all of an honorable and upright cast. He rides his High Church hobby too hard, and it will not do to run a tilt upon it against all the world. Gifford used to crop his articles considerably, and they bear mark of it, being sometimes décousues. Southey said that Gilford cut out his middle joints. When John comes to use the carving-knife, I fear Dr. Southey will not be so tractable. It is right to give by way of pendant to Sir Walter's depreciatory remarks on I have amused myself to-day with reading Lockhart's "Life of Burns," which is very well written-in fact, an admirable thing. He has judiciously slurred over his vices and follies; for although Currie, I myself, and others have not said a word more on that subject than is true, yet as the dead corpse is straightened, swathed, and made decent, so ought the character of such an inimitable genius as Burns to be tenderly handled after death. The knowledge of his vicious weaknesses or vices is only a subject of sorrow to the well disposed, and of triumph to the profligate. Sir Walter's political opinions did not prevent him from associating with others who thought differently; indeed, these opinions were most active at election time, and in particular at an election in his own County. Towards the end of his life he the country, and he wrote a fourth letter was greatly concerned about the state of signed Malachi Malagrowther, which he hoped would avert the Reform Bill, but which his friends persuaded him to destroy. In his younger and robust days he was not an active partisan, and though he hated the Whigs and opposed them on the hustings, he was ready to entertain them at Abbotsford and to be entertained in turn. He records a dinner of the leading Whigs at which he was present, and adds: "I do not know why it is that when I am with a party of my opposition friends, the day is often merrier than when with our own set." The point upon which he and his opposition friends were entirely at variance was the part played by the sovereign in our constitutional monarchy. In sentiment he was a Jacobite, yet he had no quarrel with the house of Hanover and he was one of the few men of note who conscientiously respected George IV. as a king. Moreover his admiration for George III. was extreme, and long after his death he made this entry in his journal on the 4th of June, 1827: "The birthday of our good old king. It was wrong not to keep up the thing as it was of yore, with dinners, and claret, and squibs, and crackers, and saturnalia." Yet he was not wholly blind to the old king's weaknesses, and he wrote on the 14th of October in the same year: told me that the late king made it at one "Lord Bathurst time a point of conscience to read every word of every act of Parliament before giving his assent to it. There was a mix ture of principle and nonsense in this.' He tells a story of George II. of a very different kind. Old George II. was, as is well known, extremely passionate. On these occasions his small stock of English totally failed him, and he used to express his indignation in the following form: "G-d-n me, who I am? Got d-you, who you be?" When absorbed with the work in hand, and especially when he was toiling in order that his creditors might be paid, Sir Walter gave little heed to politics, and this is shown by an entry on the 18th of May, 1827: Tom Campbell called, warm from his Glasgow rectorship; he is looking very well. He seemed surprised that I did not know anything about the contentions of Tories, Whigs, and Radicals in the great commercial city. I have other eggs on the spit. One of the passages which Mr. Douglas has extracted from James Ballantyne's unpublished memoranda contains a fuller account than Lockhart supplied of the extraordinary conditions under which some of Sir Walter's best novels were produced. In his journal he made an entry to the effect that: Bishop, the composer, was very ill when he wrote "The Chough and Crow," and other music for "Guy Mannering." Singular but I do think illness, if not too painful, unseals the mental eye, and renders the talents more acute, in the study of the fine arts at least. To this passage the illustration from James Ballantyne is appended: -a During the progress of composing "The Heart of Midlothian," "The Bride of Lammermoor," and "Legend of Montrose period of many months - Mr. Scott's health had become extremely indifferent, and was often supposed to place him in great danger. But it would hardly be credited, were it not for the notoriety of the fact, that although one of the symptoms of his illness was pain of the most acute description, yet he never allowed it to interrupt his labors. The only difference it produced that I am aware of was its causing him to employ the hand of an amanuensis in place of his own. Indeed, during the greater part of the day at this period he was confined to his bed. The person employed for this purpose was the respectable and intelligent Mr. Wm. Laidlaw, who acted for him in this capacity in the country, and I think also attended him to town. I have often been present with Mr. Laidlaw during the short intervals of his labor, and it was deeply affecting to hear the account he gave of his patron's severe sufferings, and the indomitable spirit which enabled him to overmaster them. He told me that "As to very often the dictation of Caleb Balderstone's and the old cooper's best jokes was mingled with groans extorted from him by pains; but that when he, Mr. L., endeavored to prevail upon him to take a little respite, the only answer he could obtain from Mr. Scott was a request that he would see that the doors were carefully shut, so that the expressions of his agony might not reach his family. stopping work, Laidlaw," he said, ". you know that is wholly out of the question.' What followed upon these exertions, made in circumstances so very singular, appears to me to exhibit one of the most singular chapters in the history of the human intellect. The book having been published before Mr. Scott was able to rise from his bed, he assured me that, when it was put into his hands, he did not recollect one single inciHe by no means desired me to understand, dent, character, or conversation it contained. nor did I understand, that his illness had erased from his memory all or any of the original family with which he had been acquainted from the period probably of his boyhood. These of course remained rooted where they had ever been, or, to speak more explicitly, where explicitness is so entirely important, he remembered the existence of the father and mother, of the son and daughand the attack made by his bride upon the ter, the rival lovers, the compulsory marriage, unhappy bridegroom, with the general catastrophe of the whole. All these things he recollected, just as he did before he took to his bed, but the marvel is that he recollected literally nothing else—not a single character woven by the romancer-not one of the many scenes and points of exquisite humor, nor writer of the work. anything with which he was connected as "For a long time I felt myself very uneasy," he said, "in the course of my reading, always kept upon the qui vive lest I should be startled by something_altogether glaring and fantastic; however, I recollected that the printing had been performed by James Ballantyne, who, I was sure would not have permitted anything of this sort to pass.' Well," " I said, " upon the whole, how did you like it?" "Oh," he said, "I felt it monstrous gross and grotesque, to be sure; but still the worst of it made me laugh, and I trusted, therefore, the good-natured public wou d not be less indulgent.'" not think I ever ventured to lean to this singular subject again; but you may depend upon it, that what I have said is as distinctly reported as if it had been taken down at the moment in shorthand. I could not otherwise have imparted the phenomenon at all. I do It is always interesting to learn what one novelist thinks of another, and when the critic is such a man as Sir Walter his comments receive special attention. Some of his remarks on Jane Austen which he wrote in his journal were quoted by Lockhart, and are familiar to many |