INTRODUCTION:

Famous Authors on Scott

SIR WALTER SCOTT AND LADY MORGAN by Victor Hugo

Sir Walter Scott is a Scotchman; his novels are enough to to convince us of this fact. His exclusive love of Scottish subjects proves his love for Scotland; revering the old customs of his country, he makes amends to himself, by faithfully portraying them, for not being able to observe them more religiously; and his pious admiration for the national character shines forth in the willingness with which he details its faults. An Irish lady ã Lady Morgan ã presents herself, as the natural rival of Sir Walter Scott, in persisting, like him, in writing only on national topics ; hut there is in her works much more love of celebrity than attachment to country, and much less national pride than personal vanity.

Lady Morgan seems to paint Irishmen with pleasure ; but it is an Irish woman whom she, above everything and everywhere, paints with enthusiasm ; and that Irish woman is herself. Miss O’Hallogan in O’Donnell, and Lady Clancare in Florence Maccarthy, are neither more nor less than Lady Morgan, flattered by herself.

We must say that, after Scott’s pictures, so full of life and warmth, the sketches of Lady Morgan seem but pale and cold. The historical romances of that lady are to be read; the romantic histories of the Scotchinan to be admired. The reason is simple enough : Lady Morgan has sufficient tact to observe what she sees, sufficient memory to retain what she observes, and sufficient art aptly to relate what she has retained; her science goes no farther. This is the reason her characters, though sometimes well drawn, are not sustained ; apart from a trait, the truth of which pleases you, because it is copied from nature, you will find another which offends you by its falsity, because she invented it.

Walter Scott, on the contrary, conceives a character after having often observed only one trait; he sees it at a glance, and directly paints it. His excellent judgment prevents him from being misled ; and what he creates is nearly always as true as that which he observes. When talent is carried to this point, it is more than talent: we can draw the parallel in two words ã Lady Morgan is a woman of talent ã Walter Scott is a man of genius.

License covers its hundred eyes with its hundred hands.

Some rocks cannot arrest the course of a river; over human obstacles, events roll onward without being turned aside.

There are some unfortunate men in the world. Christopher Columbus cannot attach his name to his discovery; Guillotin cannot detach his from his invention.

Glory, ambition, armies, fleets, thrones, crowns: the playthings of great children. Empires have their crises, as mountains have their winter. A word spoken too loud brings down an avalanche.

The conflagration of Moscow: an aurora borealis lit up by Napoleon.

I have heard men of the present day, distinguished in politics, in literature, in science, complain of envy, of hatred, of calumny. They are wrong. It’ is law, it is glory. The high-renowned afford examples. Hatred follows them everywhere. Nothing escapes it. The theatre openly yielded to it Shakspeare and Moliere; the prison could not take away from it Christopher Columbus; the cloister did not preserve St. Bernard; the throne did not save Napoleon. There is only one asylum for genius in this world : it is the tomb .

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS by Robert Louis Stevenson

Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. “The Lady of the Lake” has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the inherent fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, “The Lady of the Lake,” or that direct, romantic opening — one of the most spirited and poetical in literature — ”The stag at eve had drunk his fill.” The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, “The Pirate,” the figure of Cleveland — cast up by the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunrossness — moving, with the blood on his hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple islanders — singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland mistress — is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic invention. The words of his song, “Through groves of palm,” sung in such a scene and by such a lover, clinch, as in a nutshell, the emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In “Guy Mannering,” again, every incident is delightful to the imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a model instance of romantic method.

“’I remember the tune well,’ he says,’though I cannot guess what should at present so strongly recall it to my memory.’ He took his flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the tune awoke 146 the corresponding associations of a damsel…. She immediately took up the song —

On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as an instance of modern feeling for romance, this famous touch of the flageolet and the old song is selected by Miss Braddon for omission. Miss Braddon’s idea of a story, like Mrs. Todgers’s idea of a wooden leg, were something strange to have expounded. As a matter of personal experience, Meg’s appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road, the ruins of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet, and the Dominie’s recognition of Harry, are the four strong notes that continue to ring in the mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is still more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the passage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: “a damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about halfway down the descent and which had once supplied the castle with water, was engaged in bleaching linen.” A man who gave in such copy would be discharged from the staff of a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to prepare the reader for the presence of the “damsel”; he has forgotten to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is abominably bad narrative besides.

Certainly the contrast is remarkable; and it is one that throws a strong light upon the subject of this paper. For here we have a man of the finest creative instinct touching with perfect certainty and charm the romantic junctures of his story: and we find him utterly careless, almost, it would seem, incapable, in the technical matter 147 of style, and not only frequently weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama. In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scots, he was delicate, strong, and truthful; but the trite, obliterated features of too many of his heroes have already wearied three generations of readers. At times his characters will speak with something far beyond propriety — with a true heroic note; but on the next page they will be wading wearily forward with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole of words. The man who could conceive and write the character of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot, as Scott has conceived and written it, had not only splendid romantic but splendid tragic gifts. How comes it, then, that he could so often fob us off with languid, inarticulate twaddle? It seems to me that the explanation is to be found in the very quality of his surprising merits. As his books are play to the reader, so were they play to him. He was a great daydreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful and humorous visions, but hardly a great artist. He conjured up the romantic with delight, but had hardly patience to describe it. Of the pleasures of his art he tasted fully; but of its cares and scruples and distresses never man knew less.

SCOTT AND HIS PUBLISHERS by Charles Dickens

I

[March 31, 1839]

When the Refutation, to which this pamphlet1 is a reply, was put forth, we took occasion to examine into the nature of the charges of misstatement and misrepresentation which were therein brought against Mr. Lockhart, to point out how very slight and unimportant they appeared to be, even upon the refuter’s own showing, and to express our opinion that the refutation originated in the overweening vanity of the Ballantyne family, who, confounding their own importance with that of the great man who condescended (to his cost) to patronise them, sought to magnify and exalt themselves with a degree of presumption and conceit which leaves the fly on the wheel, the organ bellows-blower, and the aspiring frog of the fable, all at an immeasurable distance behind.

1 The Ballantyne Humbug Handled; in a letter to Sir Adam Fergusson. By the Author of Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott. Cadell, Edinburgh; Murray, London.

Much as we may wonder, after an attentive perusal of the pamphlet before us, how the lad, James Ballantyne’s son, can have been permitted by those who must have known from the commencement what facts were in reserve, to force on this exposure of the most culpable negligence and recklessness on the part of the men who have been paraded as the victims of erring and ambitious genius, it is impossible to regard the circumstance in any other light than as a most fortunate and happy one for the memory of Sir Walter Scott. If ever engineer were ‘hoist with his own petard,’ if ever accusations recoiled upon the heads of those who made them, if ever the parties in the witness-box and the dock changed places, it is in this case of the Ballantynes and Sir Walter Scott. And the proof, be it remembered, is to be found — not in the unsupported assertions of Mr. Lockhart or his ingenious reasoning from assumed facts, but in the letters, accounts, and statements of the Ballantynes themselves.

Premising that Mr. Lockhart, in glancing at the ‘ unanswerable

refutation’ and ‘the overwhelming exposure’ notices of the Ballantyne pamphlet in other journals, might fairly and justly have noticed this journal as an exception (in whose columns more than one head of his reply was anticipated long ago), we will proceed to quote — first, Mr. Lockhart’s statement of his reasons for introducing in the biography detailed descriptions of the habits and manners of the Ballantynes, which we take to have been the head and front of his offence; and secondly, such scraps of evidence bearing upon the allegation that the Ballantynes were ruined by the improvidence and lavish expenditure of Scott, as we can afford space for, in a very brief analysis of the whole.

With regard to the first point, Mr. Lockhart writes thus: — ‘The most curious problem in the life of Scott could receive no fair attempt at solution, unless the inquirer were made acquainted, in as far as the biographer could make him so, with the nature, and habits, and manners of Scott’s partners and agents. Had the reader been left to take his ideas of those men from the eloquence of epitaphs — to conceive of them as having been capitalists instead of penniless adventurers — men regularly and fitly trained for the callings in which they were employed by Scott, in place of being the one and the other entirely unacquainted with the prime requisites for success in such callings — men exact and diligent in their proper business, careful and moderate in their personal expenditure, instead of the reverse; had such hallucinations been left undisturbed, where was the clue of extrication from the mysterious labyrinth of Sir Walter’s fatal entanglements in commerce? It was necessary, in truth and justice, to show — not that he was without blame in the conduct of his pecuniary affairs — (I surely made no such ridiculous attempt) — but that he could not have been ruined by commerce, had his partners been good men of business. It was necessary to show that he was in the main the victim of his own blind over-confidence in the management of the two Ballantynes. In order to show how excessive was the kindness that prompted such over-confidence, it was necessary to bring out the follies and foibles, as well as the better qualities, of the men.”

Does any reasonable and dispassionate man doubt this? Is there any man who does not know that the titles of a hundred biographies might be jotted down in half an hour, in each and every of which there shall be found a hundred personal sketches of a hundred men, a hundred times more important, clever, excellent, and worthy, than Mr. James Ballantyne, the Printer of Edinburgh, and whilom of Kelso, regarding which the world has never heard one syllable of remonstrance or complaint?

Of Mr. John Ballantyne, the less said the better. If he were an honest, upright, honourable man, it is a comfort to know that there are plentiful store of such characters living at this moment in the rules of our Debtors” Prison, and passing through the Insolvent Court by dozens every day. As an instance of Mr. Lockhart’s easy mode of assertion, we were given to understand in the Refutation that Mr. John Ballantyne had never been a banker’s clerk. Mr. Cadell and another gentleman bear testimony that he used to say he had been (which seems by no means conclusive evidence that he ever was), and if he were, as Mr. Lockhart tells us he has since learnt, a tailor, or superintendent of the tailoring department of the father’s general shop at Kelso, a previously unintelligible fragment in one of Scott’s letters becomes susceptible of a very startling and simple solution. ‘If it takes nine tailors to make a man, how many will it take to ruin one?’

The descendants of Mr. James Ballantyne charge Sir Walter Scott with having ruined him by his profuse expenditure, and the tremendous responsibilities which he cast upon the printing concern. Mr. Lockhart charges Mr. James Ballantyne with having ruined the business by his own negligence, extravagance, and inattention. Let us see which of these charges is the best supported by facts.

Scott entered into partnership with James Ballantyne in May 1805. James Ballantyne’s brother John (being then the bookkeeper) enters the amount of capital which James had invested in the concern, at £3694, 16s. 11d.; but of these figures no less than £2090 represents ‘stock in trade,’ which it appears from other statements that the same John Ballantyne was in the habit of valuing at most preposterous and exaggerated sums; and the balance of £1604, 16s. lid. is represented by ‘book debts’ to that amount. Scott came in as the monied partner — as the man to prop up the concern; even then his patrimonial fortune was £10,000 or £12,000; he possessed at the time, independently of all literary exertions, an income of £1000 per annum; he advanced for the business £2008, ‘including in the said advance the sum of £500 contained in Mr. Ballantyne’s promissory note, dated 1st February last’ — from which it would seem pretty clear that the affluent Mr. James Ballantyne ran rather short of money about this time — and £40 more, also advanced to Mr. Ballantyne previous to the execution of the deed. Scott, in consideration of this payment, was to have onethird of the business, and James Ballantyne two; his extra third being specially in consideration of his undertaking those duties of management, for the neglect and omission of which, throughout the long correspondence of a long term of years, we find him apologising to Scott himself in every variety of humble, maudlin, abject, and whining prostration.

The very first entry in the very first ‘State,’ or statement of the partnership accounts, is a payment on behalf of James Ballantyne for ‘an acceptance at Kelso? — at Kelso, observe, in his original obscurity and small way of business — ‘£200.’ There are advances to his father to the amount of £270, 19s. 5d., there are his own drafts during the first year of the partnership to the enormous amount of £2378, 4s. 9d., his share of the profits being only £786, 10s. 3d.; Scott’s drafts for the same period being £100 and his share £393, 5s. Id.! At the expiration of five years and a half, the injured and oppressed Mr. James Ballantyne had overdrawn his share of the profits to the amount of £2027, 2s. 5d., while Scott had underdrawn his share by the sum of £577, 2s. 8d. Now let any man of common practical sense, from Mr. Rothschild’s successor, whoever he may be, down to the commonest light-porter and warehouseman who can read and write and cast accounts, say, upon such a statement of figures as this, who was the gainer by the partnership, who may be supposed to have had objects and designs of his own to serve in forming it, and in what pecuniary situation Mr. James Ballantyne — the needy and embarrassed printer of Kelso — must have been placed, when Scott first shed upon him the light of his countenance.

‘Scott, in those days,’ says Mr. Lockhart, ‘had neither bought land, nor indulged in any private habits likely to hamper his pecuniary condition. He had a handsome income, nowise derived from commerce. He was already a highly popular author, and had received from the booksellers copy-monies of then unprecedented magnitude. With him the only speculation and the only source of embarrassment was this printing concern; and how, had the other partner conducted himself in reference to it as Scott did, could it have been any source of embarrassment at all? He was, I cannot but think, imperfectly acquainted with James Ballantyne’s pecuniary means, as well as with his habits and tastes, when the firm was set up. He was deeply injured by his partner’s want of skill and care in the conduct of the concern, and not less so by that partner’s irreclaimable personal extravagance; and he was systematically mystified by the States, etc., prepared by Mr. John. In fact, every balance-sheet that has been preserved, or made accessible to me, seems to be fallacious. They are not of the company’s entire affairs, but of one particular account in their books only — viz. the expenditure on the printing work done, and the produce of that work. This delusive system appears to have continued till the end of 1823, after which date the books are not even added or written up.’

In 1809 the bookselling firm started, Scott having one moiety for his share, and the two brothers the remaining moiety for theirs. He put down £1000 for his share, and lent Mr. James Ballantyne £500 for his (!), and by the month of June 1810 he had embarked £9000 in the two concerns. Mr. James Ballantyne, even now, had no capital; he borrowed capital from Scott to form the bookselling establishment; he rendered the system of accommodation bills necessary by so egregiously overdrawing so small a capital as they started with; and not satisfied with this, he grossly neglected and mismanaged the business (by his own confession) during the whole time of its superintendence being entrusted to him.

In 1815 (the year of Mr. James Ballantyne’s marriage) the bookselling business was abandoned; there were no resources with which to meet its obligations but those of the printing company, and Scott, in January 1816, writes thus to him —

‘The burthen must be upon you and me — that is, on the printing office. If you will agree to conduct this business henceforth with steadiness and care, and to content yourself with £400 a year from it for your private purposes, its profits will ultimately set us free. I agree that we should grant mutual discharges as booksellers, and consider the whole debt as attaching to you and me as printers. I agree, farther, that the responsibility of the whole debt should be assumed by myself alone for the present — provided you, on your part, never interfere with the printing profits, beyond your allowance, until the debt has been obliterated, or put into such a train of liquidation that you see your way clear, and voluntarily reassume your station as my partner, instead of continuing to be, as you now must consider yourself, merely my steward, bookkeeper, and manager in the Canongate.”

Now, could the dullest and most addle-headed man alive be brought to believe — is it in human nature, in common sense, or common reason — that if Mr. James Ballantyne had the smallest ground of just complaint against Scott at this time, he would have listened to such a proposition? But he did listen to it, and eagerly embraced it; and in the October of that very year this same Mr. James Ballantyne, whose besotted trustees have dragged the circumstance to light from the concealment in which Mr. Lockhart mercifully left it — this same Mr. James Ballantyne, the plundered and deluded victim of Scott, announces to him that, being pressed by a younger brother at Kelso for a personal debt — not a partnership liability — a personal debt of £500, he had paid away to him a bill of the company, and, but for this bill being dishonoured by an accidental circumstance, Scott would, in all human probability, have never heard one word of the matter down to the day of his death.

Does Mr. James Ballantyne brazen this proceeding out, and retort upon Scott, ‘I have been your tool and instrument. But for you I should have been by this time a man in affluent circumstances, and well able to pay this money. You brought me to this pass by your misconduct; it was your bounden duty to extricate me, and I had a right to extricate myself by the use of your name for my own purposes, when you have so often used mine for yours,? Judge from the following extracts from his letters on the subject: —

‘It is needless for me to dwell on my deep regret at the discreditable incident which has taken place… . I was not aware of the terrible consequences arising from one acting partner’s using the copartnery signature for his personal purposes. I assure you, Sir, I should very nearly as soon forge your own signature as use one which implicated your credit and property for what belonged to me personally.”

And then he goes on in a tone of great humility, endeavouring to excuse himself thus: —

‘I respectfully beg leave to call to your recollection a very long and not very pleasant correspondence two years ago, on the subject of the debts due to my brother Alexander, and I may now shortly restate, that the money advanced by him went into the funds of the business, and at periods when it was imperiously wanted. No doubt it went in my name, to help up my share of stock equal to yours; but I honestly confess to you, that this consideration never went into my calculation, and that when I agreed that the name of James B. and Co. should be given to the bills for that money, I had no other idea than that it was an easy mode of procuring money, at a very serious crisis, when money was greatly wanted; nor did I see that I should refuse it because the lender was my brother. His cash was as good as another’s. Personally, I never received a sixpence of it.’

Personally he never received a sixpence of it! Oh, certainly not. That is to say, Mr. James Ballantyne paid the money to the partnership banking account towards his share of the joint capital, and immediately set about drawing private cheques as fast as he could draw for three times the sum.

In 1821 Mr. John Ballantyne died, and Mr. James Ballantyne, petitioning Scott that a termination might be put to his stewardship, and that he might be admitted to a new share in the business, he becomes, under a deed bearing date on the 1st of April 1822 (the missive letter, in Scott’s handwriting, laying down the heads of which, is given by Mr. Lockhart at length), once more a partner in the business. The circumstances under which his stewardship had been undertaken — and this request for a new partnership was conceded by Scott — are thus stated by Mr. Lockhart; and the statement is, in every respect in which we have been able to examine it, borne out by facts: —

‘For the preparation of the formal contract of 1822, Sir Walter selected Mrs. James Ballantyne’s brother. We have seen that this Mr. George Hogarth, a man of business, a Writer to the Signet, a gentleman whose ability and intelligence no one can dispute, was privy to all the transactions between Scott and James, whereupon the matrimonial negotiation proceeded to its close; — and that Mr. Hogarth approved of, and Mr. Ballantyne expressed deep gratitude for, the arrangements then dictated by Sir Walter Scott. Must not these Trustees themselves, when confronted with the evidence now given, admit that these arrangements were most liberal and generous? Scott, “the business being in difficulties,” takes the whole of these difficulties upon himself. He assumes, for a prospective series of five or six years, the whole responsibility of its debts and its expenditure, including a liberal salary to James as manager. In order to provide him with the means of paying a personal debt of £3000 due to himself — and wholly distinct from copartnery debts — Scott agrees to secure for him a certain part of the proceeds of every novel that shall be written during the continuance of this arrangement. With the publishing of these novels James was to have no trouble — there was no risk about them — the gain on each was clear and certain, — and of every sum thus produced by the exertion of Scott’s genius and industry, James Ballantyne was to have a sixth, as a mere bonus to help him in paying oft* his debt of £3000, upon which debt, moreover, no interest was to be charged. In what respect did this differ from drawing the pen, every five or six months, through a very considerable portion of the debt? Scott was undertaking neither more nor less than to take the money out of his own pocket, and pay it regularly into James’s, who had no more risk or trouble in the publication of those immortal works than any printer in Westminster. The Pamphleteers must admit that James, pending this arrangement, was not the partner, but literally the paid servant of his benefactor, and that while “ the total responsibility of the debts and expenditure of the business” lay on Scott, Scott had the perfect right to make any use he pleased of its profits and credit. They must admit, that after the arrangement had continued for five years, James examined the state of the concern, and petitioned Scott to replace him as a partner; that so far from finding any reason to complain of what Scott had done with the business while it was solely his, without one word of complaint as to this large amount of floating bills so boldly averred in the Pamphlet to have been drawn for Scott’s personal accommodation, James, in praying for readmission, acknowledged that down to the close of that period (June 1821) he had grossly neglected the most important parts of the business whereof he had had charge as Scott’s stipendiary servant; — acknowledged, that notwithstanding his salary as manager of the printing-office, another salary of £200 a year as editor of a newspaper, and the large sums he derived from novel-copyrights given to him ex mera gratia, — he had so misconducted his own private affairs, that having begun his stewardship as debtor to Scott for £3000, he, when he wished the stewardship to terminate, owed Scott much more than £3000; but that, acknowledging all this, he made at the same time such solemn promises of amendment for the future, that Scott consented to do as he prayed; only stipulating, that until the whole affairs of the printing business should be reduced to perfect order, debts discharged, its stock and disposable funds increased, each partner should limit himself to drawing £500 per annum for his personal use. They must admit that James made all these acknowledgments and promises; that Scott accepted them graciously; and that the moment before the final copartnership was signed, James Ballantyne was Sir Walter Scott’s debtor, entirely at his mercy; that down to that moment, by James’s own clear confession, Scott, as connected with this printing establishment, had been sinned against, not sinning.

‘The contract prepared and written by Mr. Hogarth was signed on the 1st of April 1822. It bears express reference to the “missive letter dated the 15th and 22nd of June last,” by which the parties had “concluded an agreement for the settlement of the accounts and transactions subsisting between them, and also for the terms of the said new copartnery, and agreed to execute a regular deed in implement of said agreement”; and “therefore and for the reasons more particularly specified in the said missive letters, which are here specially referred to, and held as repeated, they have agreed, and hereby agree, to the following articles.” Then follow the articles of agreement, embodying the substance of the missive. Scott is to draw the whole profits of the business prior to Whitsunday 1822, in respect of the responsibility he had undertaken. Ballantyne acknowledges a personal debt of £1800 as at Whitsunday 1821, which was to be paid out of the funds specified in the missives, no interest being due until after Whitsunday 1822. Sir Walter having advanced £2575 for buildings in the Canongate, new types, etc., James is to grant a bond for the half of that sum. It further appears by the only cashbook exhibited to me, that James, notwithstanding his frugal mode of living, had quietly drawn £1629 more than his allowance between 1816 and 1822, but of this, as it is stated, as a balance of cash, due by James at Whitsunday 1822, Scott could not have been aware when with his own hand he wrote the missive letter. Sir Walter, I have said, was to be liable for all the debts contracted between 1816 and 1822, but to have the exclusive right of property in all the current funds, to enable him to pay off these debts, and as the deed bears, “to indemnify him for his advances on account of the copartnery” — i.e. from 1816 to 1822. Finally, James becomes bound to keep regular and distinct books, which are to be balanced annually. Now, on looking at the import of this legal instrument, as well as the missive which it corroborated, and the prior communications between the parties, whom would an unbiassed reader suppose to have been the partner most benefited by this concern in time past, — whom to be the person most likely to have trespassed upon its credit, and embarrassed its resources?’

How did Mr. James Ballantyne perform his part of this contract? From January 1822 to May 1826, when the affairs were wound up, he was entitled to have drawn in all about £1750. He drew in all £7581, 15s. 5d. Of whose money? Assuredly not his own.

For Mr. Lockhart’s explanation of the Vidimus, and of the refuter’s construction and distortion of certain important items which go a long way towards accounting for the great increase in the accommodation bills, and show how improperly, and with what an appearance of wilful error, certain receipts and charges have been fixed upon Scott, which might with as much justice have been fixed upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Bank of Scotland, we must refer our readers to the pamphlet itself, and merely state these general results: That in 1823, the accommodations of James Ballantyne and Co. amounted to £36,000; that there is no shadow or scrap of evidence to show that any of these accommodation bills had been issued for Scott’s private purposes; that it is made a matter of charge in the Refutation pamphlet that in 1826 they had increased to £46,000; that we now find that of this additional £10,000 Mr. James Ballantyne himself pocketed (calculating interest) more than £8000, and that all the expenses of stamps and renewals have to be charged against the remaining £2000; finally, that Scott, who is asserted to have ruined these Ballantynes by his ambition to become a landed proprietor, invested in all, up to June 1821, £29,083 in the purchase of land, having received since 1811 an official income of £1600 per annum, and gained, as an author, £80,000. Let any plain, unprejudiced man, who has learnt that two and two make four, and who has moved in the world in the ordinary pursuits of life, put these facts together, read this correspondence with acknowledgments of error and misconduct on the part of the Messrs. Ballantyne repeated from day to day and urged from year to year — let him examine these transactions, and find that in every one which is capable of explanation now the parties are in their graves, the extravagance, thoughtlessness, recklessness, and wrong have been upon the part of these pigmies, and the truest magnanimity and forbearance on the side of the giant who upheld them, and under the shadow of whose protection they gradually came to lose sight of their own stature, and to imagine themselves as great as he — let any man divest himself of that lurking desire to carp and cavil over the actions of men who have raised themselves high above their fellows, which unhappily seems inherent in human nature, and bring to this subject but the calmest and most plodding consideration of facts and probabilities — and say whether it is possible to arrive at any conclusion but that Messrs. Ballantyne and the Messrs. Ballantyne’s descendants owe a deep and lasting debt of gratitude to Sir Walter Scott as the originator of all the name, fame, and fortune they may possess, or to which they can ever aspire — and that this attempt to blacken the memory of the dead benefactor of their house would be an act of the basest and most despicable ingratitude, were it not one of the most puling and drivelling folly.

That Mr. James Ballantyne did not know at what time Abbotsford had ceased to stand ‘between him and ruin,’ — that he did not know, and well know, that Sir Walter Scott had made the settlement of it which he did upon his son’s marriage, is next to impossible. All Edinburgh rung with it for days; the topic was canvassed in every bookseller’s shop and discussed at every street corner; gossips carried it from door to door; advocates discoursed upon it in loquacious groups in the outer house; and the very boys at the High School bandied it from mouth to mouth. To Professor Wilson, Mr. Sheriff Cay, Mr. Peter Robertson, all the known men and women of Edinburgh, and all the unknown men and women also, it was notorious as the existence of Arthur’s Seat or Holyrood. Is it to be believed that Mr. James Ballantyne alone, shut up in his printing-office in solitary admiration of his old critiques on Mrs. Siddons or his improvements in Scott’s romances, was in ignorance of the fact while it resounded through the city from end to end, or that he could have remained so for the space of nine long months? The insinuations put forth by the trustees and son of the late Mr. James Ballantyne respecting his marriage, and his throwing his wife’s portion into the partnership fund at Scott’s command, are no less monstrous. How stands this fact? Why, that but for Scott’s kindness and goodness he never could have contracted it. — ‘ I fear I am in debt for more than all I possess — to a lenient creditor, no doubt; but still the debt exists.’ — ‘I am, dejure et de facto, wholly dependent on you.’ — ’All, and more than all, belonging ostensibly to me, is, I presume, yours.’

‘God be praised that, after all your cruel vexations, you know the extent of your loss. It has been great, but few men have such resources.’ Such are the terms in which Mr. James Ballantyne addresses his ‘dear friend and benefactor’ when, being deep in love as well as in debt, he solicits that aid from his lenient creditor, which, after all the cruel loss and vexation, the latter did not withhold.

Ruin! ruin brought upon the Ballantynes by Scott — by Scott, who aided and assisted them at every turn, from the first hour when he found Mr. James Ballantyne, a poor and struggling tradesman in a small Scotch town, down to those later days when the same patronage and notice enabled him to affect criticism and taste, Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses, and to get a good business — which would have been a better one if he had minded it — and to leave it to this very son, who is made to talk about his father having cast his bread upon the waters, and so forth, in a style not unworthy of Mr. James Ballantyne’s own extravagant solemnity! Ruin! Where are the signs and tokens of this ruin? Are they discernible in the position of Mr. James Ballantyne at any one time after he had fluttered, butterfly-like, into Edinburgh notoriety through the influence of Scott, but for whom he would have lived and died a grub at Kelso? Are they manifest in the present condition of his son, who has acquired and inherited an honourable trade which he will do well to stick to, disregarding the promptings of weak and foolish friends? Good God! How much of the profits of the last edition of the Waverley Novels has gone to the schooling, apprenticing, boarding, lodging, washing, clothing, and feeding of this very young man, and in how different a manner would he have been schooled, apprenticed, boarded, lodged, washed, clothed, and fed, without them!

There is nothing in the whole of these transactions, which, to our mind, casts the smallest doubt or suspicion upon Sir Walter Scott, save in one single particular. His repeated forgiveness of his careless partners, and his constant and familiar association with persons so much beneath a man of his transcendent abilities and elevated station, lead us to fear that he turned a readier ear than became him to a little knot of toad-eaters and flatterers.