Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/169

135 CONSTABLE, C A DELL, AND BLACK. 135 which he had devoted all the efforts of his genius to acquire, and which he loved so well ; how he slaved and toiled until the incredible sum was repaid but, alas ! at the expense of a life more precious than all the lucre of creditors; and how his last words on his death-bed were his best epitaph: " My dear, be a good man, be virtuous, be religious be a good man ! Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." Our matter, however, is with Constable. He saw his fortunes the strong up-buildings of a gloriously successful life-time dashed to the ground at one blow. With a young family growing up around him, sick in body and weary in soul, he too had to begin life afresh. All his " sunshine " friends fell off, Scott was alienated, and his stock, which he had been wont to contemplate as a mine of wealth, was sequestered, and sold for a tithe of its value.* Cadell, his late partner, purchased the copyrights of the "Waverley Novels" for 8,500, and, securing Scott's countenance, set up as a fortu- nate rival. Constable, however, went manfully to work at his proposed Miscellany. Captain Basil Hall, in kindly consideration, made him a present of his Voyages, and this was brought out in 1827, for the small sum of one shilling, and proved fairly successful. This same year, by-the-by, was commenced the Library of Useful M.D., author of "Bibliotheca Britannica," for which ,2000 had been given in bills, all of which were dishonoured. He was a ploughboy until his seventeenth year, wrote many medical treatises, and occupied his concluding years with a work precious and indispensable to every student. The whole plan of the "Bibliotheca" is new, and few com- pilations of similar magnitude and variety ever presented, in a first edi- tion, a more complete design and execution.
 * Among the sufferers by this failure was the family of Robert Watt,