Chapter IX

[14] Lockhart’s “Life of Scott,” ii. 201, 202.

[15] “My father never could forgive Scott his concealment of the Ballantyne partnership.”—Ruskin, “Fors Clavigera,” Letter liv.

[16] “Constable and his Literary Correspondents,” i. 376.

[17] “The book was among the most unfortunate that James Ballantyne printed, and his brother published, in deference to the personal feelings of their partner.”—Lockhart’s “Life,” iii. 298. See further on this point, Chapter V., p. 46.

[18] “The conclusion of the matter was that the Ballantyne publishing company found a haven in the capacious bosom of Constable, who believed in the Star of Scott, advanced some £4000, and took off the sinking ship the useless burden of the valueless books.”—A. LANG.

[19] “He was a prince of booksellers.... He knew, I think, more of the business of a bookseller in planning and executing popular works than any man of his time.”—Scott’s “Journal,” July 23, 1827.

[20] Willison was his own press-reader. He was rigid in his ideas of punctuation, and gave much trouble to the Reviewers by his finical particularity in this respect. A story is told of his having on one occasion sent Jeffrey a second proof (technically _revise_) of a portion of one of his criticisms, with a note on the margin, that “there appeared to be something unintelligible in this passage.” Jeffrey returned the proof unaltered, with a note to the effect that “Mr. Jeffrey can see nothing unintelligible in this passage, unless in the number of commas, which Mr. Willison seems to keep in a pepper-box beside him, for the purpose of dusting the proof with.”

[21] A complete set of the _Sale Room_ in good condition is very rare.

[22] Charles Cowan’s “Reminiscences.”

[23] Lockhart’s “Life of Scott,” vi. 67.

[24] “Perhaps the very best specimens of Scott’s powers in this direction are the prefaces which he contributed much later and gratuitously to John Ballantyne’s ‘Novelists’ Library’—things which hardly yield to Johnson’s ‘Lives’ as examples of the combined arts of criticism and biography.”—Saintsbury’s “Sir Walter Scott” (Famous Scots Series).

[25] Lockhart’s “Life of Scott,” vi. 328, 329.

[26] “Literary Lives” (Hodder & Stoughton).

[27] “To dethrone the Scot’s one-pound note, the Palladium of the ancient kingdom.”—A. LANG.

[28] “Meadowbank taxed me with the novels, and to end that farce at once I pleaded guilty, so that splore is ended.”—Scott’s “Journal,” Feb. 24, 1827.

[29] Smiles’ “Life of John Murray,” i. 457, 461.

[30] Many manuscripts of modern authors are execrable, and little care is taken to make what is written plain and intelligible, resulting in “errors of the press,” though, owing to the vigilance of the press reader, comparatively few of these meet the eye of the public. In the preparation of their “copy” lawyers of high repute will leave technical and foreign terms in a truncated or misspelt way; divines frequently show an aversion to both punctuation marks and capitals, the omission of which would bring scorn and contempt upon the compositor and the reader. Many instances of faulty manuscripts could be cited. A few will suffice. A learned professor in a northern university wrote in such a shocking spidery hand that the men were paid a third more for putting it in type; a divine, long since gone over to the majority, wrote his sermons on any scrap of paper he got hold of—old bills, torn envelopes, &c.—and thus caused an infinity of labour in arranging these oddments in a readable way. If any particular bit got transposed from its proper place, it did not appear to matter very much; it was as well there as anywhere else. Similar to this was a famous writer, well known at Paul’s Work, who, prior to his morning prowl among old bookshops, would fill his pockets with scraps of paper—envelopes and such-like—on which he noted the particulars of his daily finds; and these were afterwards sent to the printer to be arranged for a book. Another reverend writer, whose works were many and sold well, would take a quarto sheet of paper to write on—beginning with a narrow centre column for the first draft of his subject; to this would be added afterthoughts by branching lines to the centre column, till the whole sheet was full—like a rushing river gathering in fresh supplies from meandering rivulets on either side of its course. But this topic is a wide and curious one, and instances might be given where an author was unable to read his own “copy,” and had to see a proof of what could be set in type before he was able to remedy an unreadable passage or supply an obscure or missing word.

[31] By permission of the Curators of the Library there is here given a facsimile of a page of “Waverley.”

[32] The following note is from C. G. Leland’s translation of Heine’s “Pictures of Travel” (i. 258): “Of all great writers, Byron is just the one whose writings excite in me the least passion, while Scott, on the contrary, in his every book gladdens, tranquillises, and strengthens my heart. Even his imitators please me, as in such instances as Willibald Alexis, Bronikowski, and Cooper, the first of whom, in the ironic ‘Walladmor,’ approaches nearest his pattern, setting before our souls a poetic originality well worthy of Scott.”

[33] Hutton’s “Life of Scott.”

[34] An old name for hand-pressmen, as “cuddie” was for the compositor: both now gone out of use.

[35] Lockhart’s “Life of Scott,” v. 344, 345.

[36] It may be interesting to reproduce here the statement of accounts, &c., of the paper at the time of the sale:

RECEIPTS

Sale of Newspapers £2390
Advertisements 1055
------
Total £3445

EXPENDITURE

Annual cost of stamps and paper £1425
Printing 570
Advertisement duty 360
Clerks’ salaries, office rent, &c. 250
Allowance for bad debts 230
Profits 610
------
Total £3445

—_Edinburgh Newspapers, Past and Present_ (1891).

[37] Andrew’s “British Journalism,” &c.

[38] See also a letter of Scott to Ellis (Lockhart’s “Life,” iii. 145):—“An Edinburgh Annual Register, to be conducted under the auspices of James Ballantyne, _who is himself no despicable composer_.”

[39] “The Greville Memoirs,” i. 251.

[40] _Tait’s Magazine_ (1839), pp. 657, 658, 668.

[41] “Leaves from My Autobiography.” By Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D.

[42] Miss Martineau’s “Biographical Sketches,” pp. 347, 348.

[43] “No man was better fit to arbitrate in this difficult dispute than Chambers was.”—Claudius Clear, in the _British Weekly_, January 1907.

[44] _Fraser’s Magazine_, 1835.

[45] See footnote, pp. 47-48.

[46] Letter of James Ballantyne in “Constable and his Literary Correspondents,” iii. 5.

[47] Lockhart’s “Life of Scott,” ii. 125.

[48] “Constable and his Literary Correspondents,” ii. 197.

[49] Journal, Aug. 29, 1826.

[50] In connection with this a curious fraud may be noted here. At the sale of Dr. Laing’s library there was disposed of a number of odd lots of pamphlets and papers, and amongst these a quantity of undamaged sheets of the Ballads and Poems of Dunbar. Whoever bought these was determined to make a profit out of them, for an Edinburgh “book-hunter” discovered one day in a second-hand bookseller’s shop a nicely bound gilt-top quarto volume, bearing the title “Ancient Poetry of Scotland. Edinburgh, 1508,” and having the device of Andro Myllar on it. Facing the title was “Imprinted Glasgow, 1800. Limited to 50 copies, 10 on thick paper, 1 on vellum.” The book looked tempting, and was bought; but, to the bibliophile’s disappointment, it proved most fragmentary, as it contained only a limited portion of the sheets of the Ballantyne reprint several times repeated, irrespective of consecutiveness, throughout the book, and many of the pages bore traces of the accident which befell the original work.

[51] “Constable and his Literary Correspondents,” iii. 305, 310.