Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/101

Rh worn on his breast, as a national emblem. When the king was informed of Sir Walter's approach, he exclaimed, "What! Sir Walter Scott? The man in Scotland I most wish to see! Let him come up." Sir Walter accordingly ascended the ship, and was presented to the king on the quarter-deck, where he met with a most gracious reception. After an appropriate speech, Sir Walter presented his gift, and then knelt and kissed the king's hand. He had afterwards the honour of dining with his majesty, being placed on his right hand. Throughout the whole proceedings connected with the reception and residence of the king in Scotland, Sir Walter Scott bore a very conspicuous part.

Sir Walter Scott had now apparently attained a degree of human greatness, such as rarely falls to the lot of literary men; and he was generally considered as having, by prudence, fairly negatived the evils to which the whole class are almost proverbially subject It was now to appear, that, though he had exceeded his brethren in many points of wisdom, and really earned an unusually large sum of money, he had not altogether secured himself against calamity. The bookselling house with which he had all along been chiefly connected, was one in which the principal partner was Mr Archibald Constable, a man who will long be remembered in Scotland for the impulse which he gave by his liberality to the literature of the country, but at the same time for a want of calculation and prudence, which in a great measure neutralized his best qualities. It is difficult to arrive at exact information respecting the connexion of the author with his publisher, or to assign to each the exact degree of blame incidental to him, for the production of thir common ruin. It appears, however, to be ascertained, that Sir Walter Scott, in his eagerness for the purchase of land, and at the same time to maintain the style of a considerable country gentleman, incurred obligations to Messrs Constable and Company, for money or acceptances, upon the prospect of works in the course of being written, or which the author only designed to write, and was thus led, by a principle of gratitude, to grant counter-acceptances to the bookselling house, to aid in its relief from those embarrassments, of which he was himself partly the cause. It is impossible otherwise to account for Sir Walter Scott having incurred liabilities to the creditors of that house, to the amount of no less than £72,000, while of its profits he had not the prospect of a single farthing.

On the failure of Messrs Constable and Company, in January, 1826, Messrs Ballantyne and Company, printers, of which firm Sir Walter Scott was a partner, became insolvent, with debts to the amount of £102,000, for the whole of which Sir Walter was, of course, liable, in addition to his liabilities for the bookselling house. It thus appeared that the most splendid literary revenue that ever man made for himself, had been compromised by a connexion, partly for profit, and partly otherwise, with the two mechanical individuals concerned in the mere bringing of his writings before the world. A per-centage was all that these individuals were fairly entitled to for their trouble in putting the works of Sir Walter into shape; but they had absorbed the whole, and more than the whole, leaving both him and themselves poorer than they were at the beginning of their career.

The blow was endured with a magnanimity worthy of the greatest writer of the age. On the very day after the calamity had been made known to him, a friend accosted him as he was issuing from his house, and presented the condolences proper to such a melancholy occasion.

"It is very hard," said he, in his usual slow and thoughtful voice, "thus to lose all the labours of a lifetime, and be made a poor man at last, when I ought to have been otherwise. But if God grant me health and strength for a few years longer, I have no doubt that I shall redeem it all."