Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/155

121 CONSTABLE, CAD ELL, AND BLACK. 121 a quality without which no projector could possibly succeed he was one of the most sagacious persons who ever followed his profession. A brother poet of Scott says of him : " Our butteracious friend turns up a deep draw-well ;" and another eminent writer still more intimately connected had already christened him "the Crafty "a title which, of all the flying burrs, was the one that stuck the firmest. His fair and handsome physiognomy was marked by an un- mistakable and bland astuteness of expression. He generally avoided criticism as well as authorship, both being out of his " proper line." But of this " proper line," and his own qualification for it, his esteem was ample. The one flaw, and the fatal flaw, in his character as a business man was his hatred of accounts, for he systematically refused during the most vigorous years of his life to examine or sign a balance sheet. Scott, in describing his appearance, says, "Ay, Constable is indeed a grand-looking chield. He puts me in mind of Fielding's apology for Lady Booby to wit that Joseph Andrews had an air which to those who had not seen many noblemen, would give an idea of nobility." His conversation was manly and vigorous, abounding in Scotch anecdotes of the old times, and he could, when he had a mind, control the extravagant vanity which at times made him ridiculous. His advice was often useful to Scott, and more than one of the subjects of the novels, and many of the titles, were due to his recommenda- tions. Cadell, his partner, says that in his high moods he used to stalk up and down the room exclaiming, " By God ! I am all but the author of the Waverley novels !" Of course, as a successful publisher, Constable was 8