Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/158

124 I2 4 CONSTABLE, CADELL, AND BLACK. that I at this moment doubt whether it ought, on the whole, to be considered with more of satisfaction or regret." Scott's wish, openly expressed in his corres- pondence, of thwarting Constable in his attempts to obtain a monopoly of Scottish literature, resulted in the establishment of a new and rival bookselling firm, under the title of John Ballantyne and Co., to which he appears to have supplied the whole capital at any rate he subscribed his own half, with one-fourth, the portion of James Ballantyne, and not improbably also the other fourth for John Ballantyne. . John and James Ballantyne were the sons of a merchant at Kelso, and here it was they went to school with Walter Scott, and thus commenced an acquaintance so fraught with interest to all three. Early in life James Ballantyne, though not bred to the trade, nor " to the manner born," opened a printing house at Kelso and started the Kelso Mail news- paper, in which his brother John soon joined him. Having made some improvements in the art of print- ing, which rendered their provincial printing famous, they were persuaded to move to Edinburgh, and here they founded a press which, rivalling in its productions the works of a Baskerville or a Bensley, is at this present time as famous as ever. From their first start their old connection with Scott was serviceable, and in 1800 they printed his first important work, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and from the time, 1805, when he first became commercially interested in their business, they were firm friends and faithful allies. Scott, to his dying day, certainly reciprocated their kindly feelings, though Lockhart, his biographer, has since his death said very harsh things of the evil resulting from the connection. It is only fair to the