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attend to them: consequently, few fathers were more beloved and confided in. And, as the years rolled on, this love and confidence certainly did not diminish. He never made them weep, except at the last :

"Deep for the dead that grief must be

Which ne'er gave cause for grief before."

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CHAPTER X.

Quarterly Review" established. Scott a Publisher. -William Gifford. John Ballantyne. - Scott lionized in London. - Visit to Loch Katrine. Byron's Satire. - Writing for Money. - The Theatre.- John Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Terry, C. M. Young. -Joanna Baillie's Play.. - Scott's Social Habits. High Jinks. - Bibacity on the Bench. Miss Seward's Bequests. -"Lady of the Lake" published.

1809-1810.

THE Tasopelthen, upon various works. He was now in his thirty-eighth year, and, the perils which threatened his early life having been weathered, enjoyed rude health. His principal work was on the new edition of Swift. He had not read Jeffrey's insidious article upon "Marmion" with all the equanimity he affected: it had deeply wounded him, particularly because much of it was true. "The Edinburgh Review," in which it had appeared, had literally built up the business and the reputation of Archibald Constable, and at a great political crisis, when Napoleon Bonaparte threatened to extend his sway over Europe, and might have done so if England had not opposed him in the Peninsula, repeatedly declared that resistance to the conqueror's sway would be worse than useless, a doctrine of submission to which Scott, with his predominant high Toryism, refused to subcribe. In the twenty-sixth number of the "Review," an article on Spanish affairs expressed this "manifestdestiny" doctrine so strongly, that Scott gave orders to have his name removed from the list of subscribers.

HE opening of 1809 found Walter Scott busy,

About the same time, Mr. Hunter, Constable's partner, who had an idea that Scott should not work for any other house until he had completed the edition of Swift which he was engaged upon for them, said as much in his hearing; which much aroused the poet's ire. The result was, that he offered to cancel the contract for Swift, if Constable & Co. desired it. They declined to do this; but the breach was not soon built up.

Out of this difference arose the establishment of "The Quarterly Review" and the formation of a new publishing-house in Edinburgh. Mr. John Murray, then young, and little known among the London publishers, had a meeting with James Ballantyne, in a quiet, out-of-the-way town in Yorkshire, at which he was told that the mighty Minstrel had another Scotch poem and a Scotch novel on the stocks, and desired to see an Edinburgh Annual Register, to be conducted in opposition to the politics and criticism of “The Edinburgh Review;" lastly, that the establishment of a new publishing-house in Edinburgh was certain. On this, Murray went to Ashestiel, where he laid before Scott the plan of a quarterly review, to be published in London under the editorship of Mr. William Gifford, translator of Juvenal, and author of The Baviad" and "The Mæviad," satirical poems, which had been very popular in their day. The result was, that Scott, George Ellis, William Stuart Rose, George Canning, Croker, Southey, and other literary and political Tories, agreed to write for the new periodical. Scott contributed three articles to the first number, published in March, 1809; and his connection with it was never suspended.

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Simultaneous with this action in London was the setting-up, in Edinburgh, of John Ballantyne & Co., publishers. The nominal head of this firm was John, a younger brother of James Ballantyne. He had been a clerk in a London bank, where he was pre

ÆT. 38.]

THE BALLANTYNES.

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sumed to have learned business. He was volatile, careless, addicted to pleasure, but amusing, fond of field-sports, a capital mimic, and, in mind, manner, and person, the very opposite of his brother James, who was burly and brawny, with a great deal of mock dignity, and very supercilious manners. Mr. Lockhart sketched both brothers in caricatura, and laid the misfortunes of Scott mainly at their door: but they were most devoted to him; and he knew and valued the depth of their affection. John died in June, 1821, years before the failure of Constable; and on the day of his funeral, when, as they were smoothing the turf over his grave, the midsummer sun shone forth in his strength through a panoply of dense clouds, Scott turned to Lockhart, and sadly whispered, "I feel as if there would be less sunshine for me from this day forth." Both brothers had decided literary taste and ability. Independent of the manner in which, for nearly thirty years, James Ballantyne revised and corrected Scott's writings, he was a very competent newspaper editor; and his dramatic criticisms were long admired and relied on in "The Edinburgh Weekly Journal." At the same time, the musical articles were written by Mr. George Hogarth, long afterwards father-in-law of Charles Dickens. Of John Ballantyne it should be added, that in his later years he showed great talent, readiness, and wit as a literary auctioneer in Edinburgh; and the Life of Daniel Defoe, for the Novelists' Library, now included in Scott's Miscellaneous Works, was written by John Ballantyne, and indeed is credited to him. there, with a brief tribute from Scott to his "wit, lively talents, and kindness of disposition."

In the spring of 1809, Scott was in London on public business, his first visit since the success of "Marmion;" and his friend Morritt could scarcely have exaggerated when he said, "The homage paid

him would have turned the head of any less gifted man of eminence. It neither altered his opinions, nor produced the affectation of despising it: on the contrary, he received it, cultivated it, and repaid it in its own coin. All this is very flattering,' he would say, and very civil: and if people are amused with hearing me tell a parcel of old stories, or recite a pack of ballads, to lovely young girls and gaping matrons, they are easily pleased; and a man would be very illnatured who would not give pleasure so cheaply conferred.' If he dined with us, and found any new faces, Well, do you want me to play lion to-day?' was his usual question. I will roar, if you like it, to your heart's content.' He would indeed, in such cases, put forth all his inimitable powers of entertainment, and, day after day, surprised me by their unexpected extent and variety. Then, as the party dwindled, and we were left alone, he laughed at himself; quoted, Yet know that I, one Snug the joiner, am no lion fierce,' &c.; and was at once himself again."

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Before he retired to the country for the summer, Scott undertook to have a third poem ready for publication by the end of the year, and soon began to write "The Lady of the Lake." In company with his wife, he revisited the localities first beheld in youth which he had chosen for the scene of his romance. He took considerable pains to verify the local circumstances of the story, and personally ascertained that King James could have ridden from the banks of Loch Vennachar to Stirling Castle within the space allotted for that purpose to "the Knight of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James." Literally on the spot where it is to be supposed to have taken place, he composed "The Stag-Chase."

During this tour, he first read "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," in which the noble and youthful

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