THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL 403 In a boat over some deep pool on Tweed, salmon-spear in hand, watching in the sunlight for a silver-scaled twenty-pounder.* Such sports, varied with breezy rides by green glen and purple moorland, closed the day, whose early hours had been given to the battle of Flodden, or the romantic wanderings of Fitzjames. A.D. It was at Ashestiel that his first great poem-The Lay of the Last Minstrel was completed. Published in January 1805, this noble picture of the wild Border life of by- 1805 gone days raised the Sheriff of Ettrick Forest to an exalted rank among British poets. The grey-haired Harper, who timidly turned his weary feet towards the iron gate of Newark, and tuned his harp to such glorious strains, is one of the finest creations of our poetical literature. This tale was but the first of a series of picturesque romances, couched in flowing verse of eight syllables, and coloured with the brightest hues of Highland and knightly life, that proceeded during the next ten years from Scott's magic pen. Of these enchanting poems we shall here name only Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. Another important work of this period was his Life and Works of Dryden, which, published in eighteen volumes in 1808, cost him much toil during the three years he spent upon it. The dream of being a Tweedside laird began, with his brightening fame and growing wealth, to take a definite shape. In 1806 he had been appointed one of the Clerks of Session, in room of old Mr. Home; promotion which did not at once increase his income, but gave him the prospect of £800 a year, in addition to his salary as sheriff, upon the death of his predecessor. Accordingly, he purchased the farm of Clarty-Hole, consisting of about a hundred acres, stretch- 1811 ing for half a mile along the Tweed, not far from the foot of the Gala. This ill-named and not very wellfavoured spot formed the nucleus of Abbotsford. One piece of neighbouring land after another was added,—a mansion was built, which has been called "a Gothic romance embodied in Etone and mortar,"-the bare banks of Tweed were clothed with *In that day even sheriffs plied the leister. A.D. supplied him with materials for his fine poem, The Lord of the Isles, published in the following January. The success of "Waverley" was immediate and remarkable, although it appeared in what publishers call the dead season. "Who wrote the nameless book?" became the great literary question of the day; and when, from the same hidden hand, there came a series of new novels, brilliant and enchaining as no novels had ever been before, the marvel grew greater still. Most carefully was the secret kept. One of the Ballantynes always copied the manuscript before it was sent to press. For a time Scott was not suspected, owing to the mass of other literary work he got through; but, in Edinburgh at least, long before his own confession at the Theatrical Fund Dinner in 1827 rent a then transparent veil, the authorship of the Waverley novels was no mystery. Elated by this success, and feeling like a man who had come suddenly upon a rich and unwrought mine of gold, Scott began to build and to plant at Abbotsford, and to buy land with all the earnestness of a most hopeful nature. His industry never relaxed; nor did his public duties ever suffer from the severe desk-toil that he went through every day. While Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, Rob Roy, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, and many other works, were in progress, he sat daily during the winter and spring in the Court of Session, attended to his duties as Sheriff, gave dinners in Castle Street, or went to "refresh the machine" and entertain his friends at Abbotsford. Never had a hard-working littérateur so many hours to give to his friends. When the morning's task was over in the little back parlour in Castle Street-a neat and orderly room, with its blue morocco books in dustless regularity, and its well-used silver ink-stand shining as if newhe took his drive, or frolicked with his dogs, until it was time to show his bright and happy face in the drawing-room of some friend. And at Abbotsford there was no difference in the deskwork; but when that was done, he went with the ardour of a boy into the sports and pleasures of rural life, or walked out among his young trees with his unfailing retinue of dogs frisking about his feet. And none was happier than that hard-featured and faithful old forester, Tom Purdie, whom Scott's kindness had changed from a poacher into a devoted servant, when he saw the green shooting-coat, white hat, and drab trousers of the jovial Sheriff appearing in the distance on the path that led to the plantations. The decoration of the interior of his mansion by the Tweed, and the collection of old armour, foreign weapons, Indian creases and idols, Highland targets, and a thousand such things, dear to his chivalrous and antiquarian tastes, occupied many of lis busiest and happiest hours. Upon his armory and his woodlands, his house and grounds, his furniture and painting, he spent thousands of pounds; and to meet the expenses of such costly doings, and of the free hospitality to which his generous nature prompted him-doing the honours for all Scotland, as he said he coined his rich and fertile brain into vast sums-the prices of his magical works. Unhappily, much of this money was spent before it was earned; and the ruinous system of receiving bills from his publishers as payment for undone work, when once entered upon, grew into a wild and destructive habit. Author and publishers, alike intoxicated by success, became too giddy to look far into the future. Yet that retributive future was coming with swift and awful pace. As they neared the cataract, the smooth, deceitful current, bore them yet more swiftly on. At last the money panic of 1825 came with its perils and its crashes. Hurst and Robinson went down. Then followed Constable and Ballantyne. Scott's splendid fortune, all built of paper now utterly worthless, crumpled up like a torn balloon; and the author of the Waverley Novels stood, 1826 at fifty-five years of age, not penniless alone, but burdened, as a partner in the Ballantyne concern, with a debt of £117,000. Nobly refusing to permit his credi. or rather the creditors of the firm to which he belongedto suffer any loss that he could help, he devoted his life and his pen to the herculean task of removing this mountain-debt. Thus opens the last, the shortest, and the saddest of the four periods into which we have marked out this great life. A.D. tors Already his strong frame had been heavily shaken by severe G illness. Especially in 1819-the year after he accepted the offer of a baronetcy-jaundice had turned the slightly grey hair, that fringed his conical forehead, to snowy white. The first symptoms of apoplexy had appeared in 1823. Yet the valiant soul was never shaken by the failing of the once sturdy frame. Amid the gloom of his commercial distresses-under the deeper sorrow of his wife's death, which befell him in the same sad year—he worked steadily and bravely on. Every day saw its heavy task performed; and he seldom laid aside his pen until he had filled six large pages with close writing, which he calculated as equal to thirty pages of print. Some months before the crash, he had entered upon a new and much more laborious kind of work. He had undertaken to write a Life of Napoleon Buonaparte. Formerly, with head erect and left hand at liberty for patting his stag-hound Maida, or other canine occupant of his "den," he had been used to write sheet after sheet of a novel with the same facile industry as on that summer evening when the young advocates in George Street saw the vision of a hand. But now he had to gather books, pamphlets, newspapers, letters, and all other kinds of historical materials round his writing-table, and painfully and slowly, note-book in hand, to wade through heavy masses of detail in search of dates and facts. Before, he had read for pleasure; the old man had now to read, often with aching head and dim eyes, for the materials of his task. Heavy work for any one; heavier for him, who had been used to pour forth the riches of his own mind without trouble and without research. Both morning and evening must now for the most part be given to literary toil. Woodstock was the first novel he wrote after his great misfortune; and its sale for £8228-it was the work of only three months-gave strength to the hopes of the brave old man, that a few years would clear him from his gigantic debt. But the toil was killing him. The nine volumes of his "Life of Napoleon" were published in 1827. Essays, reviews, histories, letters, and tales, among the last that series called The Chronicles of the Canongate, poured from the unresting pen as fast as they had ever done in its strongest days. His delightful Tales of a Grandfather, in |