Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/159

125 CONSTABLE, CADELL, AND BLACK. 123 Ballantynes to remember that both before and after the period of partnership with him, their house was eminently successful. In the meantime, Constable was busy publishing the works of Dugald Stewart, who at this time occupied the same place in meta- physics as Sir Walter did in poetry. ^^Philosophical Essays, published in 1810, excited great, and even popular, attention. He also became the proprietor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, for which he paid an enormous price, and to which he published an excellent supplement. We shall, however, treat more fully of the Encyclopedia in connection with Mr. Adam Black. We may here mention, as among Constable's other successful publications, Wood's excellent edition of Douglas's Scottish Peerage, and Chalmers' Caledonia. The London branch was found to be unattended with the expected advantages, and was given up in 1811. In the early part of this same. year Hunter retired from the Edinburgh house, upon which Constable, acting upon the liberal view he always entertained as to the value of his stock, and being, perhaps, not unwilling to impress the world with an exalted idea of his property, allowed his partner a greater amount of actual cash (17,000 is understood to be the sum) than was really his due. Robert Cath- cart, of Drum, writer-to-the-signet, and Robert Cadell, then a clerk in his employ, were admitted as partners. Cathcart, however, dying the following year, Cadell remained Constable's sole partner. Constable had, of course, felt considerably hurt at Scott's desertion. Sometimes it is related he would pace up and down the room, as was his wont, raving grandiloquently of those who kick down the ladder by which they have risen, But now that Hunter had