Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

548
SCOTT
divide his year between this and Edinburgh, where he
had good hopes, soon afterwards realized, of a salaried
appointment in the Court of Session. This would have
given him ample leisure and seclusion for literature,
while his jn’ivate means and official emoluments secured
him against dependence on his pen. He would have been
laird as well as sheriff of the cairn and the scaur, and
as a man of letters his own master. Since his marriage
in 1797 with Miss Charpentier, daughter of a French
refugee, his chief residence had been at Lasswade, about
six miles from Edinburgh. But on a hint from the lord-
lieutenant that the sheriff must live at least four months
in the year within his. county, and that he was attending
more closely to his duties as quartermaster of a mounted
company of volunteers than was consistent with the
proper discharge of his duties as sheriff, he had moved
his household in 1804 to Ashestiel. When his uncle’s
bequest fell in, he determined to buy a small property on
the banks of the Tweed within the limits of his sheriffdom.
There, within sight of Newark Castle and Bowhill, he
proposed to live like his ancient minstrel, as became the
bard of the clan, under the shadow of the great ducal
head of the Scotts. But this plan was deranged by an
accident. It so happened that an old schoolfellow, James
Lallantyne, a printer in Kelso, whom he had already be¬
friended, transplanted to Edinburgh, and furnished with
both work and money, applied to him for a further loan.
Scott declined to lend, but offered to join him as sleeping
partner. Thus the intended purchase money of Broad-
meadows became the capital of a printing concern, of
which by degrees the man of letters became the over¬
wrought slave, milch-cow, and victim.
When the Lay was off his hands, Scott’s next literary
enterprise was a prose romance—a confirmation of the
argument that he did not take to prose after Byron had
bet him, as he put it, in verse, but that romance writing
was. a long-cherished purpose. He began Wqverley, but
a friend to whom he showed the first chapters—which do
not take Waverley out of England, and describe an educa¬
tion m romantic literature very much like Scott’s own
not unnaturally decided that the work was deficient in
interest and unworthy of the author of the Lay Scott
accordingly laid Waverley aside. We may fairly conjec¬
ture that he would not have been so easily diverted had
he not been, occupied at the time with other heavy publish¬
ing enterprises calculated to bring grist to the printing
establishment. .His active brain was full of projects for
big editions, which he undertook to carry through on con¬
dition that the printing was done by Ballantyne & Co.,
the “ Co.” being kept a profound secret, because it might
have injured the lawyer and poet professionally and socially
nc known as partner in a commercial concern. Between
1806 and 1812, mainly to serve the interests of the firm,
though of course the work was not in itself unattractive to
him Scott produced his elaborate editions of Dryden
Swift, the Somers Tracts, and the Sadler State papers!
Incidentally these laborious tasks contributed to his pre¬
paration for the main work of his life by extending his
knowledge of English and Scottish history.
Marmion, begun in November 1806 and published in
February 1808, was written as a relief to “graver cares ”
hough in this also he aimed at combining with a romantic
story a solid picture of an historical period. It was even
more popular than the Lay. Scott’s resuscitation of the
our-beat measure of the old “gestours” afforded a signal
} ioo o le justness of their instinct in choosing this
vehicle for their recitations. The four-beat lines oi Mar-
vnon took possession of the public like a kind of madness :
rZ ^ { Ung t0 the memory but they would not
keep off the tongue : people could not help spouting them
m solitary places and muttering them as they walked
about the streets. The critics, except Jeffrey, who may
have been offended by the pronounced politics of the poet
were on . the whole better pleased than with the Lay.
Their chief complaint was with the “ introductions ” to
the various cantos, which were objected to as vexatiously
breaking the current of the story.1
The triumphant success of Marmion, establishing him
as/aa'A princeps among living poets, gave Scott such a
heeze, to use his own words, “as almost lifted him off his
eet. He touched then the highest point of prosperity
and happiness. Presently after, he was irritated and
tempted by a combination of little circumstances into the
great blunder of his life, the establishment of the publish¬
ing house , of John Ballantyne & Co. A coolness arose
between him and Jeffrey, chiefly on political but partly
also on personal grounds. They were old friends, and
Scott had written many articles for the Review^ but its
political attitude at this time was intensely unsatisfactory
to Scott. To complete the breach, Jeffrey reviewed Mar¬
mion in a hostile spirit. A quarrel occurred also between
Scott’s printing firm and Constable, the publisher, who
had been the principal feeder of its press. Then the
tempter appeared in the shape of Murray, the London
publisher, anxious to secure the services of the most popular
litterateur of the day. The result of negotiations was that
Scott set up, in opposition to Constable, “ the crafty,” “ the
grand Napoleon of the realms of print,” the publishing
house of John Ballantyne & Co., to be managed by a
dissipated and swaggering little tailor, whom he nicknamed
Bigdumfunnidos ” for his talents as a mimic and low
comedian. Scott interested himself warmly in starting
the Quarterly Review, and in return Murray constituted
Ballantyne & Co. his Edinburgh agents. Scott’s trust
in Bigdumfunnidos and his brother, “ Aldiborontiphos-
cophornio,” and in his own power to supply all their defi¬
ciencies, is as strange a piece of infatuation as any that ever
formed a theme for romance or tragedy. Their devoted
attachment, to the architect of their fortunes and proud
confidence in his powers helped forward to the catastrophe,
for whatever Scott recommended they agreed to, and he
was. too immersed in multifarious literary work and pro¬
fessional and social engagements to have time for cool
examination of the numerous rash speculative ventures
into which he launched the firm.
?\be ^Mdy of the Lake (May 1810) was the first great
publication by the new house. It was received with
enthusiasm, even Jeffrey joining in the chorus of applause.
It made the Perthshire Highlands fashionable for tourists,
and raised the post-horse duty in Scotland. But it did
not make up to Ballantyne & Co. for their heavy invest¬
ments in unsound ventures. The Edinburgh Annual
Register, meant as a rival to the Edinburgh Review, though
Scott engaged Southey to write for it and wrote for it
largely himself, proved a failure. In a very short time
the warehouses of the firm were filled with unsaleable
stock. By the end of three years Scott began to write to
his partners about the propriety of “reefing sails.” But
apparently he was too much occupied to look into the
accounts of the firm, and, so far from understanding the
real state of their affairs, he considered himself rich enough
to make his first purchase of land at Abbotsford. But he
had hardly settled there in the spring of 1812, and begun
his schemes for building and planting and converting a
bare moor into a richly ytoododpleasaunce, than his business
troubles began, and he found himself harassed by fears of
bankruptcy. Bigdumfunnidos concealed the situation as
See Mr Huttons Scott, in English Men of Letters Series, p. 56,
OT .a &00(t defence of these introductions. Scott advertised them
originally as a separate publication.