?R 
 
 E 
 
 *R 5338 
 
 Z, 1 »^REFUTATION 
 
 11. 
 
 MISSTATEMENTS AND CALUMNIES 
 
 CONTAINED IN MR. LOCKHART S 
 
 LIFE OF SIR WALTER vSCOTT, BART., 
 
 RESPECTING 
 
 THE MESSRS. BALLANTYNE. 
 
 THE TRUSTEES AND SON 
 OF THE LATE MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. 
 
 FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY 
 
 1838. 
 
v^- 
 
 REFUTATION 
 
 MISSTATEMENTS AND CALUMNIES 
 
 CONTAINED IN MR. LOCKHART's 
 
 LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART., 
 
 RESPECTING 
 
 THE MESSRS. BALLANTYNE. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE TRUSTEES AND SON 
 OF THE LATE MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. 
 
 FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 
 1838. 
 

 V. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 FREEMAN AND BOLLES, PRINTERS, 
 
 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
I (2 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 s ^ In offering to the public the following remarks, 
 I j^ intended to vindicate the character and con- 
 ' i duct of the late Mr. James Ballantyne, which 
 
 : I have been so foully aspersed by Mr. John 
 
 Gibson Lockhart, in his Life of Sir Walter 
 Scott, the trustees and executors of that 
 gentleman, acting in concert with his family, 
 conceive that no apology is necessary on their 
 part for the step they have thus taken, nor for 
 the firm and decided manner in which they 
 have repelled the misstatements and calum- 
 nies by means of which Mr. Lockhart has at- 
 tempted to fix a stain upon the memory of 
 their departed friend. On the contrary, since 
 the appearance of the work in question, and 
 the full development of that hostile spirit by 
 which it is pervaded, they have had but one 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 opinion as to the course which their duty pre- 
 scribed for their adoption ; and, with sufficient 
 materials in their hands for refuting all that 
 Mr. Lockhart has alleged or insinuated in dis- 
 paragement of Mr. Ballantyne, they feel that 
 they would neither have done justice to them- 
 selves, nor have fulfilled, in its true spirit, the 
 sacred trust confided to them, if they had not 
 come forward to repel the most unjust and 
 ungenerous attack that ever was made upon 
 the memory of an upright and honorable man. 
 In acting upon these convictions of duty, 
 however, they are aware that they have done 
 so under several disadvantages. They have 
 no pretensions whatever to enter into literary 
 strife with Mr. Lockhart; and they cannot 
 stoop to engage in a mere war of words, re- 
 specting matters which must be judged and 
 decided by the evidence of facts and docu- 
 ments alone. They are also fully sensible 
 that, if Mr. Ballantyne had been still alive, he 
 would have defended himself with far greater 
 ability, and a much more intimate knowledge 
 of the complex transactions they have been 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 called on to unravel, than they either possess 
 or can in any degree pretend to ; indeed it is 
 their firm belief that, if their excellent friend 
 had been spared, Mr. Lockhart would have 
 put the rein upon his imagination, and hesi- 
 tated to assert wdiat he could not substantiate, 
 and what, in such a case, might have been 
 more easily and effectually disproved. As it 
 is, however, his representatives humbly con- 
 ceive they have produced evidence sufficient 
 to vindicate his character and conduct, in re- 
 lation to all his transactions with Sir Walter 
 Scott ; and also to convince the world that, 
 so far from having, in any respect, injured his 
 illustrious friend, he was himself the victim of 
 schemes into which he was reluctantly and 
 almost inevitably drawn. 
 
 The authors much regret the delay which 
 has arisen in the appearance of this " Refuta- 
 tion," but, from various causes, it was unavoid- 
 able. 
 
 Edinburgh, August^ 1838. 
 
I 
 
REFUTATION, &^c. 
 
 " Lockhart," said Sir Walter Scott, when his son-m-law 
 was called to his death-bed, " I may have but a mmute to 
 speak to you. 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 he^e."-(X^/e of Sir W. Scott, 
 vol. vii. p. 393.) 
 
 When Sir Walter Scott, upon his death-bed, ad- 
 dressed this parting admonition to the gentleman 
 destined to become his literary executor, he not 
 only evinced a deep interest in the welfare of that 
 individual, but at the same time impressively 
 indicated the spirit in which he expected his son- 
 in-law to conduct himself, even in asserting and 
 vindicating his posthumous fame. He recom- 
 mended that '' goodness" which excludes all ma- 
 hgnant thoughts or representations ; that '' virtue 
 which courageously proclaimsthe truth ; and that 
 ''religion" "which thinketh no evil:" and he 
 solemnly declared that nothing else would give 
 
8 
 
 him any comfort when he came to He upon the 
 bed. of death, there to take the retrospect of his 
 past Ufe and actions. 
 
 We are now going to inquire what effect this 
 touching appeal produced upon the mind of the 
 gentleman to whom it was addressed, — not at the 
 moment, when any human heart not altogether 
 seared must have been softened, and disposed to 
 receive generous impressions, but in following out 
 the duties of the important literary trust commit- 
 ted to him. In doing so, however, we shall keep 
 aloof from all speculations, and adhere strictly to 
 facts. Nor shall we concern ourselves with any 
 inquiry into the private views, motives, feelings, 
 or principles of Mr. Lockhart, as these might be 
 collected by inference from the Life of Sir Walter 
 fScott, in which, we lament to say, the character 
 of the dead and the feelings of the living have, in 
 so many instances, been most wantonly assailed. 
 The task which we propose to ourselves is one of 
 a different description, namely, to expose the in- 
 justice of his representations in as far as two per- 
 sons are concerned ; — to show that his own dis- 
 paraging statements are directly contradicted by 
 the evidence Avhich he has himself produced ; — 
 and to place in a true light before the public that 
 series of transactions which, either from ignorance 
 or design, he has involved in misrepresentation 
 and perplexity. 
 
 Before this Life appeared, the pecuniary embar- 
 rassments of Sir Walter Scott were matter of gen- 
 
HIS PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENTS. y 
 
 eral notoriety ; and, since its publication, they 
 have been found to constitute the staple subject of 
 the work, and are now, in their origin, progress, 
 and consummation, as fully before the public as 
 Mr. Lockhart has been able or willing to place 
 them. Such matters, indeed, have but little in- 
 terest to the great mass of readers, who seldom 
 think it worth while to take the trouble to under- 
 stand them, and who are, moreover, indifferent to 
 concerns by which they can in nowise be affected. 
 But in the present instance the case is materially 
 different. The well earned fame of Sir Walter 
 Scott, and the unparalleled sums which he was 
 generally understood to have realized by his 
 works, taken in conjunction with the bankruptcy 
 and ruin in which he and those connected with 
 him became ultimately involved, excited a gen- 
 eral desire to penetrate the secret of the mystery, 
 which no one was able altogether to unravel, al- 
 though many had shrewdly divined its real char- 
 acter ; and hence the volumes of the Life, as they 
 successively appeared, were devoured with all 
 the eagerness of the most impatient curiosity. 
 
 Nor has Mr. Lockhart been wanting in the use 
 of the means calculated to feed this appetite. By 
 blending his attempts to exculpate his father-in- 
 law from blame, in transactions where he alone 
 was responsible, with caricature portraits and dis- 
 paraging or degrading anecdotes of Sir Walter's 
 most intimate friends and associates ; by libellous 
 misrepresentations and bitter personalities; by 
 a2 
 
10 CHARACTER AND OBJECT OF MR. LOCKHARt's '' LIFE." 
 
 exaggerating foibles, recording hasty expressions, 
 and rehearsing after-dinner conversations, where 
 he, perchance, was himself present as a guest; 
 and, generally, by pandering to that depraved 
 taste which gloats over all sorts of revelations 
 calculated to lower to the level of the vulgar herd 
 those who had before appeared to occupy elevated 
 stations ; — by these, and other similar means, he 
 has certainly succeeded in giving a certain species 
 of attraction to this portion of his work, unprom- 
 ising as it seemed, and also in imparting to his 
 cruel and ridiculous distortions a temporary cur- 
 rency and credit. 
 
 It must be obvious to every person who has 
 perused the Life^ that one great object of Mr. 
 Lockhart is to rivet on the public mind the impres- 
 sion that all the involvements, embarrassments, 
 and misfortunes of his father-in-law were, in a 
 great measure, if not altogether, attributable to 
 his choice of improper or worthless instruments. 
 From first to last he labors, directly or indirectly, 
 by assertion and insinuation, by ribaldry and dis- 
 tortion, to depreciate the character, or to throw 
 ridicule on the habits and conduct, of the individ- 
 uals with whom Sir Walter Scott was chiefly 
 connected, and in whom he most fully confided. 
 The Messrs. Ballantyne, in particular, are not 
 only the objects of incessant derision, but they 
 are made the scape-goats of all Scott's errors and 
 misfortunes. No quarter is given to them ; all 
 merit, industry, and intelligence, are, in some 
 
TREATMENT OF SCOTT's FRIENDS. 11 
 
 mode or form, denied them, either exphcitly or by 
 imphcatioii. They are each introduced upon the 
 scene in a manner calculated, and intended, to be 
 disparaging. They are caricatured in their per- 
 sons, in their manners, in their habits, and even 
 in their virtues. Their alleged foibles or weak- 
 nesses are made the frequent subject of vulgar wit 
 and ribald exaggeration. And, as if all this, and 
 much more of the same sort, were not enough, 
 ludicrous nicknames are bestowed on them, to 
 serve as reminiscences of all that has elsewhere 
 been said or insinuated to their disadvantage ; 
 while, to envenom the wound thus inflicted on the 
 feelings of the living, these opprobrious sobriquets 
 are aflixed upon the alleged authority of Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott, who, if he actually took such liberties 
 with his friends, under cover of the confidential 
 intercourse of private life and good-humored 
 fellowship, certainly never contemplated that his 
 familiarities would be so scandalously abused by 
 the individual to whom his dying injunctions had 
 prescribed a very different rule of conduct. In a 
 word, Mr. Lockhart endeavors, throughout the 
 whole of his work, to aggrandize the character of 
 Sir Walter Scott by depreciating that of the friends 
 whom he most esteemed and trusted ; and seeks 
 to exonerate him from all blame connected with 
 the misfortunes which ruined them all, by insinu- 
 ating every sort of misdeed or negligence against 
 his associates.^ 
 
 * In the Life of Sir Walter Scott it did not, it seems, 
 occur to Mr. Lockhart that the representations he has given 
 
12 IMPUTATIONS AGAINST THE BALLANTYNES. 
 
 A shrewder biographer, recollecting the old 
 maxim, Noscitur a sociis, would, perhaps, have 
 avoided paying so bad a compliment to the mi- 
 derstanding, judgment, and principles of his hero 
 
 of his father-in-law's dearest friends and most constant 
 allies might lead honest people to inquire how, if these men 
 were really such doubtful or ambiguous characters — glut- 
 tons or picaroons — as they have been described by him, a 
 gifted being like Scott, who to high genius united great 
 worldly discernment and sagacity, came to associate with 
 and confide in them throughout every vicissitude of fortune, 
 in cloud as well as in sunshine, in storm as well as in calm. 
 A question so natural and so german to the subject (as 
 treated by Mr. Lockhart) not having been anticipated by 
 him, no solution had been provided for the unforeseen in- 
 terrogatory. But, when reflection had shown that it might 
 be convenient to obviate an objection which must present 
 itself to every mind, means were immediately used to sup- 
 ply the omission : and we have now before us the Standard 
 newspaper of the 2d April, 1838, in which, under cover of 
 some general remarks on the Life of Sir Walter Scott, an 
 attempt is made to forestall the anticipated objection ; and, 
 in order to give greater prominence to the volunteer defence, 
 the ordinary " leader " of the paper is displaced to make 
 room for it. The writer of the article in question, after 
 telling us that " Sir Walter Scott was the greatest man 
 that has lived in our generation," and that " he was the 
 wisest man of his own and of many ages," proceeds to throw 
 a little shade into his picture, by way of enhancing the ul- 
 timate effects: — " Hehad iveaknesses, but they were the effect 
 of a lofty and modest nature ; he ivas indiscreet in the selec- 
 tion of associates, from generous confidence and a too much 
 expanded benevolence." We speak with much deference, 
 but we must, nevertheless, be permitted to observe, that a 
 tendency to herd with improper associates appears to us to 
 
IMPUTATIONS AGAINST THE BALLANTYNES. 13 
 
 as is involved in the portraiture he has thus 
 drawn of his most intimate and confidential 
 friends. But, as Mr. Lockhart has not thought 
 it proper to exercise any such discretion in regard 
 to the persons who enjoyed his father-in-law's 
 esteem and confidence ; as he has even published 
 documents, and made disclosures, which the dic- 
 tates of ordinary prudence and good feeling would 
 have led any other man, similarly situated, to 
 withhold; and as he has sought, by means hith- 
 erto unknown in English literature, to ridicule 
 and disparage estimable men, the victims of 
 schemes into which they were almost unavoida- 
 bly drawn, by gradual entanglements and the 
 controlling force of circumstances ; it has become 
 essentially necessary, in justice to all parties, the 
 dead as well as the living, to show that Mr. Lock- 
 hart's imputations against the Messrs. Ballantyne 
 are equally at variance with the evidence which 
 he has himself produced, and with facts which, 
 having access to know them, he was bound to 
 make himself master of, before presuming to ap- 
 
 be a strange " effect of a lofty and modest nature ; " one, 
 indeed, which we should never have a priori anticipated 
 from our OAvn knowledge of human nature. And, on the 
 other hand, with regard to the assertion that Sir Walter 
 Scott's alleged indiscretion "in the selection of associates" 
 arose " from generous confidence and a too much expanded 
 benevolence," we shall, in the sequel, be under the necessity 
 of testing the value of this rhetoric by a species of logic 
 (that of figures) to which Mr. Lockhart seems to be in a 
 great measure a stranger. 
 
14 IMPUTATIONS AGAINST THE BALLANTYNES". 
 
 pear before the public in the character of an ac- 
 cuser. It is, no doubt, a very hard matter to deal 
 with charges resting solely upon such vain, and 
 foolish, and untenable grounds as we have already 
 described; and it is still harder to be, in some 
 measure, under the necessity of proving a nega- 
 tive — which, in fact, is, to a certain extent, the 
 task we have here undertaken. But truth, recti- 
 tude, and integrity are strong enough to assert 
 their supremacy under almost any disadvantages, 
 and to render the unjust accusation innocuous to 
 all except the unjust accuser. With reference to 
 James Ballantyne, in particular, his family, re- 
 garding his good name as the best part of their 
 inheritance, are by no means disposed to consent 
 that his memory should be loaded Avith unmerit- 
 ed obloquy in a work to which, at Mr. Lockhart's 
 own request, he had on his death-bed contributed 
 some of its most " precious contents." His rela- 
 tions and friends, including the trustees appoint- 
 ed under his last will, participate in the same 
 feeling, enhanced as it is by the conviction that 
 he was as "good," " virtuous," and "religious" 
 a man as Sir Walter Scott wished his literary ex- 
 ecutor to be : and the present publication is there- 
 fore intended to refute, by plain facts, authentic 
 documents, and indisputable evidence, every im- 
 putation derogatory to Mr. Ballantyne which Mr. 
 Lockhart has thought proper to introduce into his 
 work. 
 
 But, before entering into the discussion of the 
 
MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE. 15 
 
 various questions which arose out of the alUance 
 of Sir Walter Scott with Mr. James Ballantyne, 
 it may be proper, by way of introduction, to no- 
 tice here the mode in which Mr. John Ballantyne 
 is introduced by Mr. Lockhart to his readers ; 
 more especially as, by doing so, we shall at once 
 convey to the reader a pretty accurate notion ot 
 the whole tone and temper of his book, and, at 
 the same time, exemplify his negligence of facts, 
 when they come into competition with his habit- 
 ual straining after effect, at whatever sacrifice it 
 may be obtained. 
 
 After stating that John was a younger brother 
 of James, and " had been originally bred to his 
 father's trade of a merchant" in Kelso, he con- 
 tinues,—'' But James's rise in the world was not 
 observed by him (John) without ambitious long- 
 ings • for he, too, had a love, and he at least fan- 
 cied that he had a talent, for literature. He left 
 Kelso ahniptly for the chances of the English 
 metropohs. After a short residence m London, 
 where, among other things, he officiated for a few 
 months as a clerk in a hanking-house, the con- 
 tinued inteUigence of the printer's prosperity de- 
 termined him to return to Scotland. Not finding 
 any opening at the moment in Edinburgh, he 
 again tried the shop at Kelso ; but his habits had 
 not been improved by his short sojourn m Lon- 
 don, and the business soon melted to nothing m 
 his hands. His goods were disposed of by auc- 
 tion for the benefit of his creditors; the paternal 
 
16 MISSTATEMENTS REGARDING 
 
 shop was closed; and John agam quitted his 
 birthplace under circumstances which, I shall 
 show in the sequel, had left a deep and painful 
 trace even upon that volatile mind." {^Life^ vol. 
 ii. p. 196.) In this sketch of John Ballantyne's 
 early history, there is a labored particularity, and 
 seeming accuracy of specification, calculated to 
 impose upon the reader, and to induce a belief 
 that it must have been drawn up from detailed, 
 as well as authentic information. But a more 
 erroneous notion could not possibly be enter- 
 tained. 
 
 Mr. Lockhart's statement is inaccurate in al- 
 most every particular. Mr. John Ballantyne did 
 not '' leave Kelso abruptly for the English metro- 
 polis ; " he never " ofiiciated as a clerk in a Lon- 
 don banking-house ; " ''the continued intelligence 
 of the printer's prosperity " did not " determine 
 him to return to Scotland," because it coidd not, — 
 James Ballantyne not having settled in Edinburgh 
 until about seven years after his brother's re- 
 turn from London ! It is incorrect, therefore, 
 that, ^^ not finding an opening in Edinburgh, he 
 again tried the shop at Kelso," he having made 
 no attempt to find such '^opening" until nearly 
 ten years subsequent to this period ; his business 
 in Kelso did not "soon melt to nothing in his 
 hands ; " and, lastly, it is not true that '' his 
 goods were disposed of by auction for the benefit 
 of his creditors." The different assertions con- 
 tained in this short extract are all groundless and 
 
MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE. 17 
 
 imaginary, without the shghtest foundation in 
 fact, as Mr. Lockhart might have easily discover- 
 ed by making the necessary inquiries. From 
 those of his contemporaries who still survive the 
 truth could have been ascertained, had the truth 
 been wanted. 
 
 The father of the Messrs. Ballantyne, a man of 
 unchallengeable respectability, notwithstanding 
 Mr. Lockhart' s paltry sneer about his being a 
 petty shopkeeper, carried on the business of a 
 dealer in goods of all sorts, as was then usual 
 with merchants in country towns. Being in easy 
 if not in affluent circumstances, the elder Bal- 
 lantyne gave his sons a liberal, and what was 
 then considered, in the place, an expensive edu- 
 cation. But, as John was intended to follow the 
 calling of his father, the latter, being desirous to 
 afford him an opportunity of acquiring a more 
 extensive and thorough knowledge of business 
 than could be attained in a provincial town, sent 
 him for that purpose to London, in the year 1794. 
 This is what Mr. Lockhart has been pleased to 
 describe as "leaving Kelso abruptly iox the chances 
 of the English metropolis," — thereby insinuating 
 that his departure was compulsatory, or caused by 
 some discreditable occurrence. After spending 
 about a year in London, John returned to Kelso 
 in 1795, and was immediately admitted into part- 
 nership with his father. In 1797 he married, and 
 the partnership was very soon afterwards dis- 
 solved. But his father, at the same time, resigned 
 
18 ANACHRONISMS NICKNAMES ASPERSIONS. 
 
 to him one principal department of his business ; 
 and this John Ballantyne continued to carry on 
 until he left Kelso, and came to settle in Edin- 
 burgh, in the year 1805. Hence, from the time 
 when he left London until that when he settled in 
 Edinburgh, he continued to reside as a merchant 
 in Kelso ; and we therefore leave it to Mr. Lock- 
 hart to explain how " the continued intelligence 
 of the printer's prosperity," who did not settle in 
 Edinburgh until the year 1802, could "determine" 
 his brother John " to return to Scotland " in the 
 year 1795. This brief recital furnishes a pointed 
 specimen of Mr. Lockhart's historical accuracy, 
 when he professes to relate facts.^ Mr. Lockhart, 
 in conclusion, informs us that " John again quit- 
 ted his birthplace under circumstances Avhich, / 
 shall s/ioto in the sequel, had left a deep and pain- 
 ful trace even upon that volatile mind." We have 
 searched in vain "in the sequel" for the ominous 
 disclosure here so formally announced ; and we 
 are therefore left in complete ignorance as to the 
 nature of the " circumstances" which produced 
 so " deep and painful " an effect even upon the 
 " volatile mind " of John Ballantyne. But, if 
 Mr. Lockhart had no better authority for his 
 
 * We have said, a?ite, that " the printer's " prosperity in 
 Edinburgh could not have determined John Ballantyne to 
 return to Scotland, '^ the printer ^^ not having settled in Edin- 
 burgh till seven years thereafter. We may add, that John 
 returned to Scotland two years before James had become a 
 printer at all ! 
 
ANACHRONISMS — NICKNAMES ASPERSIONS. 19 
 
 promised revelation than for the other '' circum- 
 stances " above noticed, it must be admitted that 
 for once he has exercised a sound discretion in 
 omitting to fulfil his engagement. 
 
 The foregoing piece of personal history is fol- 
 lowed by a gross and libellous caricature of the 
 two brothers. The one is described as a gour- 
 mand ; the other is represented as something 
 worse. Scott, it is said, used to apply to them 
 certain grotesque nicknames, which Mr. Lock- 
 hart, with his characteristic taste and feeling, 
 has published. But still they had some merit, 
 even in the eyes of the man who has so cruelly 
 aspersed their memories. ' ' They entertained him 
 (Scott) ; they both loved and revered him, and I 
 believe would have shed their hearts' blood in his 
 service ; but they both, as men of aflfairs, deeply 
 injured him — and, above all, the day that brought 
 John into pecuniary connexion with him was the 
 blackest in his calendar. A more reckless, thought- 
 less, improvident adventurer never rushed into 
 the serious responsibilities of business." It was 
 certainly something to '' entertain " Scott \ it was 
 more '^ to love and revere him ; " and it was most 
 of all that Mr. Lockhart '' believes" they '^ would 
 have shed their hearts' blood in his service." 
 But even these singular and, as we should think, 
 redeeming virtues, were, it seems, overbalanced, 
 if not extinguished, by the consideration that 
 ^' both, as men of affairs, deeply injured him ; " 
 and, above all, that ' ' the day that brought John 
 
20 NATURE OF THE REFUTATION PROPOSED. 
 
 into pecuniary connexion with him was the 
 blackest in his calendar." 
 
 Now, we shall prove that these assertions are 
 contradicted by the evidence of Sir Walter, as 
 quoted by Mr. Lockhart himself; — that, so far 
 from his having been "deeply injured" by his 
 connexion with the Ballantynes, he was thereby 
 greatly benefited ; — that his own large expendi- 
 ture absorbed the whole profits of the printing 
 establishment, and much more besides, involving 
 the elder brother in ruin at a period of life when, 
 from the nature and extent of his business, he 
 might otherwise have possessed a comfortable, if 
 not an afiiuent independence ; — and that the day 
 which brought '' John Ballantyne into pecuniary 
 connexion with Scott," and which Mr. Lockhart 
 styles " the blackest in his calendar," was event- 
 ually productive of no greater calamity to Sir 
 Walter than replacing in full his advances on the 
 bookselling business, '^ with a balance of a thou- 
 sand pounds," notwithstanding the most impru- 
 dent undertakings in which he had embarked. 
 All these circumstances will fall under our review 
 in the sequel, where, eschewing the example of 
 Mr. Lockhart, we shall endeavor to make our 
 statements square with our proofs ; leaving it to 
 others to draw upon their imagination, which is 
 at all times an easier matter than to submit to the 
 drudgery of examining facts. In the meantime, 
 as he tells us that " a more reckless, thoughtless, 
 improvident adventurer" than John Ballantyne 
 
SCOTT's character of JOHN BALLANTYNE. 21 
 
 "never rushed into the serious responsibilities 
 of business;" and as he even insinuates that his 
 integrity was by no means of a kind to be rehed 
 upon, we shall take leave to oppose to the dam- 
 natory statements and innuendoes of Mr. Lock- 
 hart the decisive evidence of Sir Walter Scott, 
 even when writing in a moment of irritation and 
 displeasure. In a letter, dated the 18th of May, 
 1813, addressed to Mr. John Ballantyne, Sir Wal- 
 ter, in conclusion, says, — "Adieu, my dear John. 
 I have the most sincere regard for you, and you 
 may depend on my considering your interest with 
 quite as much attention as my own. If I have 
 ever expressed myself with irritation in speaking 
 of this business [the disposal from the stock of 
 John Ballantyne and Co. to Constable's firm of 
 certain unsaleable books and copyrights], you 
 must impute it to the sudden, extensive, and im- 
 expected embarrassments in which I found my- 
 self involved all at once. If to your real goodness 
 of heart and integrity^ and to the quickness and 
 acuteness of your talents, you added habits of 
 more universal circumspection, and, above all, 
 the courage to tell disagreeable truths to those 
 
 YOU HOLD IN regard, I PRONOUNCE THAT THE WORLD 
 never HELD SUCH A MAN OF BUSINESS. TllCSC it mUSt 
 
 be your study to add to your other good quali- 
 ties." — {^Life^ vol. iii. pp. 59, 60.) 
 
 This, then, is the character given by Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott, writing under irritated feelings, of the 
 person Mr. Lockhart describes as the " most reck- 
 
22 scott's character of john ballantyne 
 
 less, thoughtless, improvident adventurer that 
 ever rushed into the serious responsibilities of 
 business." If to his "real goodness of heart and 
 integrity " he had " added habits of more universal 
 circumspection, and, above all, the courage to tell 
 disagreeable truths to those he held in regard," — 
 such, for instance, as Sir Walter himself, — the 
 latter would have pronounced " that the world 
 never held such a man of business : " in a word, 
 to be perfect in all respects, John Ballantyne had 
 only " to add these to his other good qualities." 
 But, according to Mr. Lockhart, he was a "most 
 reckless, thoughtless, improvident adventurer," 
 without reflection and without probity, having 
 neither steadiness, consistency, nor principle of 
 any kind, and withal, a sort of picaroon or plun- 
 derer in a small way.^ Whom, then, are we to 
 believe 7 Sir Walter Scott or Mr. Lockhart ? — the 
 friend who knew him thoroughly, and entertained 
 for him " the most sincere regard." founded upon 
 
 * "John," says Mr. Lockhart, "had many amiable as 
 well as amusing qualities, and I am far from wishing to 
 charge him with any deep or deliberate malversation. Sir 
 Walter's own epithet of ' my little picaroon ' indicates all 
 that I desired to imply on that score." {Life, vol. iii. p. 110.) 
 "All!" why, picaroon means robber or plunderer, and the 
 epithet " little " only limits the extent, but does not affect 
 the quality of the imputation. But how, it may be asked, 
 came Sir Walter to apply such a term to the friend he loved 
 and esteemed ? We answer — ^jestingly, in a copy of doggerel 
 Verses, refusing to own the authorship of Waverley, and 
 
CONTRASTED WITH THAT GIVEN BY MR. LOCKHART. 23 
 
 that knowledge ; or the biographer who did not 
 know him at all, yet years after his death has 
 attempted to attaint his name and stigmatise his 
 memory 1 In such a case, the public, we think, 
 can have but little difficulty in coming to a deci- 
 sion. 
 
 One word more, illustrative of the feelings en- 
 tertained by Sir Walter Scott towards the object 
 of this posthumous defamation. Mr. John Ballan- 
 tyne died at Edinburgh on the 16th of June, 1821, 
 and was interred in the Canongate churchyard 
 there. At the funeral, Scott, affected by the loss 
 he had sustained, for such he evidently considered 
 
 which verses were never intended for any eye but that of 
 him to whom they were addressed. Here they are, in all 
 their nakedness, as published by Mr. Lockhart : — 
 
 " No, John, I will not own the book — 
 
 I won't, you Picaroon. 
 When next I try St. Grubby's brook, 
 The A of Wa— shall bait the hook, 
 
 And flat fish bite as soon 
 As if before them they had got 
 The worn-out wriggler, Walter Scott." 
 
 It cannot be said of Mr. Lockhart's philosophy of char- 
 acter, that it is deep-drawn or far-fetched. A word jocularly 
 stuck into a copy of doggerel verses, to serve as a peg upon 
 which to hang a rhyme, is quite sufficient for his purpose, 
 and suffices to attach an odious imputation to the name of 
 one whose integrity was, in his lifetime, approved by the 
 person who had enjoyed the very best opportunities of putting 
 it to the test. 
 
24 DEATH OF 3IR. JOHN EALLA.NTYXE. 
 
 it.=^ '-cast his eye along the overhanging Une of 
 the CaUon Hill, with its gleaming walls and 
 towers, and then, turning to the grave again, ' / 
 feel,' he whispered in Mr. Lockhart's ear, — -I fed 
 as if there would be less sunshine for me frora this 
 day forth: '' We are told by Mr. Lockhart him- 
 self that he had been ••'visibly and profomidly 
 shaken"" by the death of his friend : and can any 
 one think so meanly of Sir Walter Scott, even on 
 the authority of his son-in-law and hterary exec- 
 utor, as to suppose, for a moment, that he could 
 have been thus affected in regard to a person such 
 as Mr. Lockhart. for reasons best known to him- 
 self, has described Mr. John Ballant^^ne ] or that. 
 if the latter had been imworthy of his regard, he 
 would have declared, over his yet unclosed grave, 
 that he felt as if there would be less sunshine for 
 him after the cold earth had been heaped upon 
 the remains of the man whom he had so long 
 loved ] 
 
 * Sir Walter, writing to his son, immediately after the 
 death of the friend whom he knew and liked so well, thus 
 expressed himself: — " I have had a very great loss in poor 
 John Ba]lant\-ne, who is gone, after a long illness. He 
 persisted to the very last in endeavoring to take exercise, 
 in which he was often imprudent, and was up and dressed 
 the morning before his death. In his will, the grateful 
 creature has left me a legacy of £2000, liferented, however, 
 by his wife, and the rest of his little fortune goes betwixt 
 his two brothers. [This legacy, however, for want of funds, 
 was not paid.] I shall miss him very much, both in business, 
 and as an easy and lively companion, v:ho u-as eternally active 
 
COPARTNERSHIP OF JAMES BALLANTYNE AND CO. 25 
 
 There is some obscurity as to the constitution 
 of the firm of James Ballantyne and Company, 
 or, at least, as to Sir WaUer's original views in 
 its formation; but it seems to us demonstrable 
 that Scott contemplated a business connexion with 
 Mr. Ballantyne a considerable time before the lat- 
 ter left Kelso. A letter of Sir Walter's, addressed 
 to Mr. Ballantyne in the spring of 1800, urging 
 his removal to Edinburgh,—" a migration from 
 Kelso to this place,"— and stating a variety of 
 reasons recommendatory of the project, taken in 
 conjunction with what subsequently took place, 
 appears to put this matter beyond the reach of 
 doubt. After apologizing to Mr. Ballantyne for 
 mentioning the plan, he proceeds thus : — 
 
 " Three branches of printing are quite open in 
 Edinburgh, all of which, I am well convinced, 
 you have both the ability and inclination to unite 
 in your person. The first is that of an editor of 
 a newspaper which shall contain something of 
 an uniform historical deduction of events, distinct 
 from the farrago of detached and unconnected 
 plagiarisms from the London paragraphs of the 
 Swi' Perhaps it might be possible (and Gillon 
 
 and obliging in whatever I had to do.'' If further proof were 
 wanting of the estimation in which Mr. John Ballantyne 
 was held by his friend and patron, we might add, that shortly 
 after his death Sir Walter commissioned Mr. Allan, the 
 eminent artist, to paint a small portrait of him from re- 
 collection, to be hung up in Abbotsford, where it still re- 
 mains. 
 
 B 
 
26 OBJECTS CONTEMPLATED BY SCOTT. 
 
 has promised to make inquiry about it) to treat 
 with the proprietors of some estabhshed paper — 
 suppose the Caledonian Mercury — and we would 
 all struggle to obtain for it some celebrity. To 
 this might be added a ' Monthly Magazine ' and 
 ' Caledonian Annual Register,' if you will ; for 
 both of which, with the excellent literary assist- 
 ance which Edinburgh at present affords, there 
 is a fair opening. The next object would natur- 
 ally be Session papers, the best paid work which 
 a printer undertakes, and of which, I dare say, 
 you would soon have a considerable share ; for, 
 as you make it your business to superintend your 
 proofs yourself, your education and abilities would 
 insure your employers against the gross and pro- 
 voking blunders which the poor composers are 
 often obliged to submit to. The publication of 
 works, either ancient or modern, opens a third 
 fair field for ambition. The only gentleman who 
 attempts any thing in that way is in very bad 
 health ; nor can I, at any rate, compliment either 
 the accuracy or the execution of his press. I 
 believe it is well understood that, with equal at- 
 tention, an Edinburgh press would have superior 
 advantages even to those of the metropolis ; and, 
 though I would not advise launching into that 
 line at once, yet it would be easy to feel your way 
 by occupying your press in this manner on vacant 
 days only." Sir Walter adds — " It appears to 
 me that such a plan, judiciously adopted and 
 diligently pursued, opens a fair road to an ample 
 
MR. LOCKHART's prophecies AFTER THE EVENT. 27 
 
 fortune. In the meanwhile, the Kelso Mail might 
 be so arranged as to be still a source of some ad- 
 vantage to you ; and I dare say, if wanted, 
 pecimiary assistance might he procured to assist 
 yoii at the outset, either upon terms of a share or 
 otherwise.'''' — {Life, vol. i. pp. 320, 321.) 
 
 This plan, as Mr. Lockhart conceives, was 
 '' primarily suggested by the friendly interest 
 which he (Sir Walter) took in Ballantyne's 
 fortunes ; " but it must be equally obvious that 
 he had private views of his own ; and, according- 
 ly, we find that Mr. James Ballantyne had not 
 been long in Edinburgh when his friend ef- 
 fected the object which he had from the first con- 
 templated, and got himself " admitted as a third- 
 sharer in his business." Mr. Lockhart now pauses 
 to comment, palliate, explain, and prophesy after 
 the event. " The alliance with Ballantyne," says 
 he, " soon infected him (Scott) with the proverbial 
 rashness of mere mercantile adventure;" and 
 "hence," he adds, in conclusion, "by degrees 
 was woven a web of entanglement from which 
 neither Ballantyne nor his adviser had any means 
 of escape." Doubtless, " a web of entanglement " 
 was woven, but certainly not from " the rashness 
 of mere mercantile adventure." The profits of 
 the printing concern were at that time twice as 
 large as those that are generally derived from this 
 business now~a-days ; and, if they had been ap- 
 plied to their legitimate purpose, they would have' 
 soon un woven the meshes of any " entanglement ' 
 
28 THE BOOKSELLING BUSINESS. 
 
 proper to the business. It is true that the rash- 
 ness of Scott's hterary schemes — the extreme 
 imprudence of which his biographer has not at- 
 tempted to disguise — must have considerably em- 
 barrassed both himself and his partner ; but even 
 these were not the cause of Scott's ultimate " en- 
 tanglements," as Mr. Lockhart asserts in a subse- 
 quent part of the work : the business of the print- 
 ing-house having been ample enough to conquer 
 all the difficulties which sprmig from that source. 
 Neither was the unfortunate bookselling business 
 — " begun," as Mr. Lockhart most truly says, 
 " in the short-sighted heat of pique, and conduct- 
 ed with the extravagant folly of a raw speculator 
 in the perilous trade of publishing " — in any way 
 the cause of the embarrassments in which Sir 
 Walter Scott became eventually involved. Even 
 although it had, his biographer would not have 
 been entitled to complain ; for it was entirely of 
 Scott's own seeking. That concern was estab- 
 lished to meet his own views at the time ; he 
 having a one-half -share, =^ and James and John 
 Ballantyne one-fourth share each, with a salary 
 to the latter as manager. But, although the diffi- 
 culties arising from the bookselling concern were 
 troublesome at the time, they Avere not lasting. 
 John Ballantyne, in his " Memorandum," — which 
 
 * Mr. Lockhart states incorrectly [Life, vol. ii. p. 223) 
 that the bond of copartnership only bound Scott " as one- 
 iAi?-<:? partner ; " he had a one-half share, as mentioned above. 
 
MISREPRESENTATIONS RESPECTING IT. 29 
 
 Mr. Lockhart quotes, but does not condescend to 
 inform us how or by what means it chanced to 
 come into his hands, ^ — attributes them in part to 
 '' the most extravagant and foohsh advances from 
 its funds to the printing concern;" in other words, 
 to the paying the accounts due for printing the 
 ^^unjyromising^^ hterary adventures in which 
 Scott rashly embarked, and which have been 
 pretty correctly enumerated by Mr. Lockhart 
 himself f 
 
 * When the papers of Mr. John Ballantyne were, after 
 his death, examined by his executors, there was found 
 amongst them a sealed packet, superscribed, " Open not, 
 read not," and which, was taken charge of by Sir Walter 
 Scott. Qumre — Was the " Memorandum " above referred 
 to among the contents of this packet ? 
 
 t To give our readers some idea of these " adventures," 
 and at the same time to show how " the Ballantynes " con- 
 ducted themselves, we shall quote the following passage 
 from the Life (vol. ii. pp. 331, 332) :— " The publishing firm 
 was as yet little more than a twelvemonth old, and already 
 James (Ballantyne) began to apprehend that some of their 
 mightiest undertakings loould wholly disappoint Scotfs prog- 
 nostications. He speaks with particular alarm of the edi- 
 tion of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, of which Weber 
 had now dismissed several volumes from his incompetent 
 and presumptuous hand. How Scott should ever have 
 countenanced the project of an edition of an English book 
 of this class by a mere drudging German appears to me 
 quite inexplicable. He placed at Weber's disposal his own 
 annotated copy, which had been offered some years before 
 for the use of Gifford ; but Weber^s text is thoroughly dis- 
 graceful, and so are all the notes, except those which he 
 owed to his patron's own pen. James Ballantyne augurs. 
 
30 REAL CAUSE OF SCOTt's EMBARRASSMENTS. 
 
 But even the bad stock, — and none could possi- 
 bly be worse, — accumulated in consequence of 
 those rash and ill-judged speculations, was, in the 
 end, disposed of upon advantageous terms ; the 
 house met all its engagements ; and Sir Walter, 
 who ultimately became the sole creditor, ''paid 
 even himself in fiill^ with a balance of a thousand 
 pounds.'^ What, then, it has justly been asked, 
 ''becomes of the ruin which John Ballantyne had 
 entaifed upon Sir Walter, if, after all the wild 
 speculations in which Scott had involved the 
 young and starved concern, he was paid in full^ 
 and a thousand pounds more ? " To every reader 
 of Mr. Lockhart's work it must be as clear as 
 noonday that Sir Walter Scott's embarrassments 
 did not spring from his connexion with the Bal- 
 lantynes, either as printers or booksellers ; but ori- 
 ginated solely in his ambition to become a landed 
 proprietor, and to "endow a family," before he 
 had acquired the means of effecting either upon 
 
 and well might he do so, not less darkly as to the ' Aston 
 Speculation ; ' that is, the bulky collection entitled * Tixal 
 Poetry.' ' Over this,' he says, ' the (Edinburgh) Review 
 of the Sadler (Sadler's &tate Papers) has thrown a heavy 
 cloud; the fact is, it seems to me to have ruined it. Here 
 is the same editor, and the same printer, and your name 
 withdrawn. I hope you agree with John and me that this 
 Aston business ought to be got rid of at almost any sacri- 
 fice. We could not now even ask a London bookseller to 
 take a share ; and a net outlay of near £2500, upon a 
 worse than doubtful speculation, is surely ' most tolerable, 
 and not to be endured '. ' " 
 
REAL CAUSE OF SCOTT's EMBARRASSMENTS. 31 
 
 any sound or secure foundation. And it is equally 
 evident that Mr. James Ballantyne was event- 
 ually ruined by Sir Walter Scott ;— rendered pen- 
 niless at a time when he ought to have been able, 
 if so inclined, to retire with a handsome compe- 
 tence. If Sir Walter Scott had never been con- 
 nected with James Ballantyne in business, but 
 had contented himself with extending his patron- 
 age to his old schoolfellow, it would have been 
 infinitely better for both parties. Mr. Ballantyne 
 would, in that case, have realized a respectable 
 fortune ; and Sir Walter would have escaped the 
 temptations presented by the facilities of a mer- 
 cantile copartnership, to raise money for the pur- 
 chase of lands for which he had not otherwise the 
 mfeans of paying. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott's embarrassments, and the 
 consequent embarrassment and ruin of his partner, 
 arose, as we have just stated, from his extensive 
 purchases of land before he had realized money 
 to pay for it ; and from his making a free use of 
 the name of the company (with the consent of 
 his partner, of course,) to meet the payments for 
 these purchases,— a proceeding which led to a 
 series of bill transactions with Constable and Com- 
 pany, which, on the failure of that firm, brought 
 ruin both on himself and on Mr. James Ballan- 
 tyne. Money wanted was raised, first, by accep- 
 tances to James Ballantyne and Co., for a portion 
 of the amount required; and, secondly, by obtam- 
 ing from Constable and Co., as if for literary 
 
32 REAL CAUSE OF SCOTt's EMBARRASSMENTS. 
 
 'proj)erty^ promissory notes or acceptances for a 
 further portion ; for these James Ballantyne and 
 Co. granted acceptances to Constable and Co.: 
 and the remaining portion was raised by James 
 Ballantyne and Co. drawing bills on Constable 
 and Co., and granting acceptances in return; — Sir 
 Walter Scott, the sole party for whom these exten- 
 sive accommodations were arranged, remaining 
 all the while in the back-ground, unseen and 
 unnamed. Whatever accommodation the printing 
 concern may, at one period, have obtained from 
 Constable and Co., the passion for land came 
 speedily to monopolize the supplies ; and the ulti- 
 mate application of the sums raised in the man- 
 ner above stated was to pay the price of these 
 imprudent purchases. Mr. Lockhart may possi- 
 bly feel inclined to question the accuracy of this 
 statement; but we shall establish it upon the 
 authority of both Sir Walter Scott and Mr. James 
 Ballantyne, which we conceive to be the best that 
 can be produced. But, before doing so, it may 
 be proper to introduce here an extract from the 
 third volume of the Life (p. 62), illustrative of 
 that sceleratus amor terrce, and other minor but 
 expensive propensities, for which Sir Walter Scott 
 was so conspicuously distinguished. 
 
 " His preachments of regularity in book-keep- 
 ing to John, and of abstinence from good cheer to 
 James Ballantyne, were equally vain ; but, on the 
 other hand, it must be allowed that they had some 
 reason for displeasure (the more felt because they 
 
ADMISSIONS OF MR. LOCKHART ON THIS SUBJECT. 33 
 
 durst not, like him, express their feehngs), when 
 they found that scarcely had these ' hard skir- 
 mishes ' terminated, in the bargain of May 18th, 
 (1813),=^ before Scott loas 'prepariyig fresh emhar- 
 rassm.entfor himself [and others], by commencing 
 a negotiation for a considerable addition to his pro- 
 perty of Abbotsford. . . . The new property 
 which Scott was so eager to acquire was that hilly 
 tract stretching from the old Roman road near 
 Turnagain towards the Cauldshields loch ; a then 
 desolate and naked mountain-mere. To obtain 
 this lake at one extremity of his estate, as a con- 
 trast to the Tweed at the other, was a prospect 
 for which hardly any sacrifice %oould have appeared 
 too much ; and he contrived to gratify his ivishes 
 in the course of that July to which he had spoken 
 of hwnself in May as looking forioard ' icith 
 the deepest anxiety.'' Nor was he, I must add, 
 more able to control some of his minor tastes [for 
 expensive ifri^e^,! old armor, swords, guns, relics of 
 the olden time, and such like]." And, in another 
 place, — " In a word, his foibles were well known, 
 and many persons about him took care to profit 
 by them. Dance who chose, he commonly began 
 by paying the piper, from what quarter soever the 
 mo7iey might comeP 
 
 The whole of that financial system by which 
 
 * This alludes to the treaty with Constable and Co. about 
 part of the unsaleable stock of John Ballantyne and Co. 
 t Sir Walter's own expression, — see Lije^ vol. vi. p. 138. 
 
34 FINANCIAL SYSTEM ADOPTED AND FOLLOWED, 
 
 these cravings were partially satisfied must now 
 be laid open. Mr. Lockhart alone is responsible 
 for the necessity of the exposure. He has stated, 
 in broad and unqualified terms, that Sir Walter 
 Scott never drew money from the printing con- 
 cern ; and in one sense this may be said to be true. 
 But he did what was precisely the same thing. 
 For, by a document before us, dated the 17th of 
 April, 1823, entitled, " Memorandum as to James 
 Ballantyne and Co.'s Accounts," it appears that 
 the " amount of discounts paid on Sir Walter 
 Scott's account, from 15th May, 1822, to 17th 
 April, 1823, h^m^ eleven months^ was £1146, 19s. 
 3d. !" — in other words, at the rate of more than 
 £1200 a-year, exclusive of exchanges on remit- 
 tances, and bill-stamps. Two thirds of the entire 
 profits of the business were thus expended in rais- 
 ing money solely for the accommodation of Sir 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 But the real state of the case may be brought 
 out in a still more explicit and unchallengeable 
 form. In the year 1822, James Ballantyne and 
 Co. thought proper to balance their afi'airs, and, 
 Luider some new arrangements, to enter into a new 
 contract of copartnership. This instrument was 
 executed on the 1st of April that year. The vidi- 
 inus then made up by an agent mutually em- 
 ployed by the parties is now before us ; and it 
 shows that the bills then current, in the name of 
 James Ballantyne and Co., hut for Sir Walter 
 Scoffs private accommodation alone^ amounted to 
 
ACCOMMODATION BILLS. 35 
 
 £26,896, 5s. lid. ; whilst neither at that time 
 nor subsequently was there a single accommoda- 
 tion-bill current on account of the company itself. 
 No means having been taken by Sir Walter Scott 
 to clear oif any part of this large sum, it was kept 
 floating by successive renewals of accommoda- 
 tion-bills, the most expensive of all modes of rais- 
 ing money, not to say also the most precarious ; 
 and the consequence was, that a large and con- 
 stantly augmenting addition was made to the 
 original amount, by the expense attending these 
 multiplied renewals. But, further, whenever Sir 
 Walter was in want of money for any purpose, 
 ordinary or extraordinary, a new note was asked 
 for and obtained. If a builder received a bill for 
 work done at Abbotsford, it was generally made 
 payable by a note on James Ballantyne and Co. ; 
 or if a remittance was necessary to buy Sir Wal- 
 ter's eldest son a step in his regiment, James Bal- 
 lantyne and Co. were called upon to assist in the 
 same form. Thus the sum which in December, 
 1822, was only £26,896, 5s. lid. had, at the time 
 of the bankruptcy in 1826, been increased, by 
 stamps, discounts, and bank exchange, by £8085, 
 3s. Id. ; and by promissory notes granted to Sir 
 Walter Scott by James Ballantyne and Co. for 
 the other purposes enumerated, by the sum of 
 £17,142, 18s. lOd.^ It is so far from being true, 
 
 * See General Abstract of Sir Walter Scott's Accounts, 
 p. 73. 
 
36 POSITION OF MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. 
 
 therefore, as Mr. Lockhart affirms, that Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott never drew any thing from the business, 
 that there is the most conchisive evidence to show, 
 that, excepting the means necessary to carry it 
 on, and Mr. James Ballantyne's personal and 
 family expenses, he drew from it all its earnings, 
 and more than all. Mr. James Ballantyne's 
 whole share of the profits, deducting the expense 
 of his family, was floating in the business at the 
 command of Sir Walter Scott, besides the profit 
 accruing to him from his one-sixth share of all 
 the new novels after the death of his brother 
 John. He had cast his bread upon the waters, 
 but it did not return to him after many days of 
 labor and sorrow. He lost all, and was, besides, 
 stripped of every thing he possessed, except his 
 household furniture. Not a wreck was saved, — 
 not even his house, which had been bought with 
 his wife's fortune, and which, in the fulness of his 
 confidence, he had not taken any means to secure 
 to her and her children. 
 
 All this may appear to be the very excess of 
 unreflecting simplicity; and Mr. Ballantyne may 
 be blamed for his apparent facility in thus lending 
 himself to the purposes of Sir Walter Scott, and 
 carrying his accommodations to such an extent. 
 But, in judging of this matter, the relative posi- 
 tions of the parties should be duly weighed and 
 considered. Our impression is that he had no 
 choice left ; Sir Walter Scott, to use his own ex- 
 pression, "had laid down the law," and refusal 
 
POSITION OF MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. 37 
 
 was not to be thought of. Besides, Mr. Bahan- 
 tyne thought that, if matters came to the worst, 
 there was Abbotsford, which would secure every 
 one, and make up for every deficiency. Still, it 
 is certain that he had, occasionally, misgivings on 
 the subject ; for, notwithstanding Mr. Lockhart's 
 assertion to the contrary, he did " make serious 
 efforts to master these formidable balances of 
 figures." We have seen them, and cannot, there- 
 fore, admit Mr. Lockhart's assertion against incon- 
 trovertible evidence. He summed up Sir Walter 
 Scott's liabilities, or rather the liabilities of James 
 Ballantyne and Co. on his account ; and he set 
 against these Sir Walter's means of meeting them 
 summarily, should that become necessary ; con- 
 cluding his estimate of available resources with, 
 — '' then add Abbotsford, so there is the head for 
 the washing." 
 
 It is at once curious and painful to observe how 
 anxiously Mr. Lockhart labors to throw odium on 
 '' the Ballantynes," on James as well as on John, 
 though in a manner somewhat different. Where 
 he condescends in any instance to appeal to evi- 
 dence, or to profess to rest his statements upon 
 facts, we shall always be ready to join issue with 
 him ; confident of being able to refute his allega- 
 tions, and expose his misrepresentations. But, in 
 such a case as the following, where he deliberately 
 attempts, on his own authority alone, to repeat 
 the injuries he had previously inflicted, and to 
 lacerate afresh the feelings he had already wound- 
 
38 MR. lockhart's apologies for his calumnies. 
 
 ed, we can do little more than submit the outrage 
 to the judgment of the public ; asking them mere- 
 ly to apply to such representations as this the 
 same standard of criticism which we shall furnish 
 in regard to statements precise enough to be met 
 and refuted by direct disproof. 
 
 " The early history of Scott's connexion with the 
 Ballantynes," says he, " has been already given in 
 abundant detail ; and I have felt it my duty not to 
 shrink, at whatever fain to my own feelings (!) or 
 those of others, from setting down plainly and 
 directly my own impressions of the character, 
 manners, and conduct of those two very dissim- 
 ilar brothers. =^ I find, without sinyrise^ that my 
 representations of them have not proved satisfac- 
 tory to their surviving relations. That I cannot 
 help— though I sincerely regret having been com- 
 pelled, injustice to Scott, to become the instrument 
 for opening old wounds in kind bosoms, animated, 
 I doubt not, like my own, by veneration for his 
 memory, and respected by me for combining that 
 feeling with a tender concern for names so inti- 
 
 * It is much to be regretted that Mr. Lockhart should 
 have " felt it his duty not to shrink " from giving so much 
 " pain to his own feelings and those of others," by recording 
 " impressions " which are only complained of by reason of 
 his gross exaggerations and injustice. Would it not have 
 been better if he had revised his " impressions," and spared 
 his "feelings" any "pain," to which his subjecting him- 
 self on this account was altogether a penance of superero- 
 gation on his part ? 
 
MR. LOCKHARt's apologies FOR HIS CALUMNIES. 39 
 
 mately connected with his throughout long years 
 of mutual confidence. But I have been entirely 
 mistaken if those to whom I allude, or any others 
 of my readers, have interpreted any expressions 
 of mine as designed to cast the slightest imputa- 
 tion on the moral rectitude of the elder Ballantyne. 
 No suspicion of that nature ever crossed my mind. 
 I believe James to have been, from first to last, a 
 perfectly upright man ; that his principles were of 
 a lofty stamp — his feelings pure even to simplicity. 
 His brother John had many amiable, as well as 
 amLising qualities ; and I am far from wishing to 
 charge him with any deep or deliberate malver- 
 sation. Sir Walter's own epithet of ' my little 
 picaroon ' indicates all that I desire to imply on 
 that score. But John was, from mere giddiness 
 of head and temper, incapable of conducting 
 any serious business advantageously, either for 
 himself or for others ; nor dare I hesitate to ex- 
 press my conviction that, from feelings of a dif- 
 ferent sort, honest James ivas hardly a better nia^i- 
 ager than the j^icaroori. 
 
 " He had received the education, not of a print- 
 er, but a solicitor; and he never, to his dying 
 day, had the remotest knowledge or feeling of 
 what the most important business of a master- 
 printer consists in. He had a fine taste for the 
 effect of types — no establishment turned out more 
 beautiful specimens of the art than his ; but he 
 appears never to have understood that types 
 needed watching as well as setting. If the page 
 
40 FURTHER ASPERSIONS. 
 
 looked handsome, he was satisfied In a 
 
 word, James never comprehended that in the 
 greatest and most regularly employed manufac- 
 tory of this kind (or indeed of any kind) the 
 profits are likely to be entirely swallowed up, un- 
 less the acting master keeps up a most wakeful 
 scrutiny, from week to week, and from day to 
 day, as to the machinery and the materials. So 
 far was he from doing this, that, durmg several of 
 the busiest and most important years of his con- 
 nexion with the establishment in the Canongate, 
 he seldom crossed its doors. He sat in his own 
 elbow-chair, in a comfortable library, situated in 
 a different street; not, certainly, an idle man — quite 
 the reverse, though naturally indolent — but the 
 most negligent and inefficient of master-printers." 
 —{Life, vol. vi. pp. 109, 110, 111.) 
 
 We beg leave here to observe, first, that it 
 would be very satisfactory if Mr. Lockhart 
 would, in some shape or other, show the public 
 in what respect "justice to Scott" placed him 
 under the stern necessity of vilifying friends who 
 had been so " intimately connected with him 
 throughout long years of mutual confidence," 
 and, in doing so, " becoming the instrument for 
 opening old wounds in kind bosoms." For our 
 part, we are unable to discover any relation what- 
 ever between the means and the end — between 
 the evil confessedly done, and the object alleged 
 as "compelling" its commission ;' and we shall 
 be happy to receive information on a point respect- 
 
REPLY TO MR. LOCKHART's CHARGES. 41 
 
 ing which our own unaided efforts have failed to 
 enlighten us. 
 
 But, in the next place, and overlooking the 
 complimentary cant interwoven in this passage, 
 let us attend for a moment to the substance of 
 Mr. Lockhart's statements. Mr. Ballantyne, who 
 was " not, certainly, an idle man— quite the re- 
 verse, though naturally indolent," yet ''most 
 negligent and inefficient," appears to have pos- 
 sessed the most incongruous and contradictory- 
 attributes. " He was busy, indeed; and inesti-- 
 Quahly serviceable to Scott icas his labor:' " It is 
 most true that Sir Walter's hurried and careless 
 method of composition rendered it absolutely neces- 
 sary that whatever he wrote should be subjected 
 to far more than the nsiial a^nount of inspection 
 required at the hands of the printer ; and it is 
 equally so that it loould have been extremely diffi- 
 cidt to find atiother man willing and able to bestoio 
 such time ayid care on his proof-sheets as they nni- 
 formly received from James:' Now, to a less 
 ingenious person than Mr. Lockhart, it would 
 probably have occurred, that the circumstance 
 here stated might afford a satisfactory solution of 
 the anomaly by which he is so sorely vexed. 
 "Sir Walter's hurried and careless method of 
 composition," and the " extreme difficulty of find- 
 ing another man willing and able" to remove 
 its inaccuracies and imperfections, sufficiently 
 accoimt for the arrangement which Mr. Lockhart 
 at once censures and proves to have been neces- 
 
42 REPLY TO MR. LOCKHART's CHARGES. 
 
 sary. James, however, did quit his '' comfort- 
 able Hbrary," and ''occupied, during many hours 
 every day, a small cabinet on the premises in the 
 Canongate ; " but still Mr. Lockhart is not satis- 
 fied. The inevitable sins of " correcting proof- 
 sheets," and " writing critical notes and letters 
 to the Author of Waverley," — labors which, by 
 his own showing, ivere inevitable, and could be 
 performed by no one else, — shut up his bowels of 
 compassion, and draw down severe reprehension 
 on the memory of the friendly corrector. 
 
 In page 113 of the same volume, Mr. Lockhart 
 says, — " I fancy it will be only too apparent that 
 he (James Ballantyne) never made even one 
 serious effort to master the formidable balances of 
 figures thus committed to his sole trust, but in 
 which his all was not all that was involved." 
 ,The biographer is here doubly mistaken. In the 
 first place. Sir Walter Scott kept a private record 
 of these bill engagements, which his son-in-law 
 may, by possibility, have seen. Secondly, Mr. 
 James Ballantyne's account of them was so cor- 
 rectly kept, that, by a simple addition, he could 
 at any time have told their exact amount. Be- 
 sides, they were not, as Mr. Lockhart is pleased 
 to insinuate, entered into by Mr. James Ballan- 
 tyne without Sir Walter Scott's knowledge. On 
 the contrary, he had frequent interviews with 
 Scott, in which these matters formed the subject of 
 conference ; and once a month Mr. Ballantyne 
 waited upon Sir Walter with a statement of the 
 
HABITS OF SCOTT AS DESCRIBED IN THE " LIFE." 43 
 
 bills that were to become due in the course of the 
 month following, in order to determine as to the 
 means to be employed for retiring them, which, 
 of course, were found in a series of new bills. 
 What, then, can Mr. Lockhart mean by asserting 
 so broadly that Mr. Ballantyne " shut his eyes to 
 the serious liabilities in which he was involved, 
 and never made even one serious effort to master 
 the formidable balances of figures committed to 
 his sole trust? " 
 
 A few pages after {Life^ vol. vi. pp. 116, 117), 
 Mr. Lockhart says, — " The reader may perhaps 
 remember a page in a former volume where I 
 described Scott as riding with Johnny Ballantyne 
 and myself round the deserted halls of the ancient 
 family of Riddell, and remarking how much it 
 increased the wonder of their ruin that the late 
 baronet had ' kept day-book and ledger as regu- 
 larly as any cheesemonger in the Grass-market.' 
 It is, nevertheless, true that >S'ir Walter kept from 
 first to last as accurate an account of his oivn per- 
 sonal expenditure as Sir John Riddell coidd have 
 done of his extravagant outlay on agricultural 
 experiments. The instructions he gave his son, 
 when first joining the 18th Hussars, about the 
 best method of keeping accounts, were copied 
 from his own practice. I could, I believe, place 
 before my reader the sum-total of sixpences that 
 it had cost him to ride through turnpike-gates 
 during a period of thirty years. This was, of 
 course, an early habit mechanically adhered to ; 
 
44 HABITS OF SCOTT AS DESCRIBED IN THE ^' LIFE." 
 
 but hoio strange that the man who could persist, 
 however mechanically, in noting down every 
 shilling that he actually drew from his purse, 
 should have allowed others to pledge his credit^ 
 year after year, upon sheafs of accommodation- 
 paper, the time for paying which up must cer- 
 tainly come, without keeping any efficient watch 
 on their proceedings — without knoioing^ any one 
 Christmas^ for hoio onany thousands^ or rather 
 tens of thousands^ he was responsible as a printer 
 in the Canongate ! " 
 
 This alleged anomaly in Sir Walter Scott's 
 habits is indeed so very " strange," that, consi- 
 dered apart from evidence, it must appear alto- 
 gether incredible ; and, in point of fact, we have 
 already shown that it is a mere fancy of his im- 
 aginative biographer. He who was so careful in 
 noting down the sixpences and shillings, as often 
 as he drew them from his purse, was not likely 
 to be unmindful of the pounds ; far less afflicted 
 with the unparalleled infirmity here attributed to 
 him, of ^' allowing others to pledge his credit, 
 year after year, upon sheafs of accommodation- 
 paper," and at the same time remaining content- 
 edly in ignorance of ''the thousands, or rather 
 tens of thousands, for which he was responsible 
 as a printer in the Canongate." He might be 
 lavish or extravagant in his expenditure, but he 
 was never indiflerent to, or ignorant of, the na- 
 ture and extent of his liabilities. Probably no 
 man, situated as he was, ever kept a more wake- 
 
NATURE OF SCOTt's RESPONSIBILITIES. 45 
 
 ful and keen eye on the progress of the pecuniary 
 transactions in the expUcation of which he was 
 so deeply interested. Mr. Lockhart, however, 
 seems entirely to forget what we have shown to 
 be the real state of the case,— namely, that Sir 
 Walter Scott's fearful responsibility was not " as 
 a printer in the Canongate," but as an extensive 
 purchaser of land, and co-obligant with Constable 
 a^i^cl Co. ;— though, in the paragraph immediately 
 preceding the one we have quoted, he informs us 
 that, as late as May 1825, Scott was " meditating 
 a new purchase to the extent of £40,000," to be 
 paid for, of course, upon the credit of James Bal- 
 lantyne and Co., and Constable and Co.=^ Mr. 
 
 * By the month of November, however, " a change 
 came o'er the spirit of his dream ; " but, in registering his 
 « purpose to practise economics," he unconsciously lets us 
 see that, until then, the science had been known to him only 
 in theory. The following extract from the Diary is extremely 
 significant in several views :— 
 
 " I here register my purpose to practise economics, i 
 have little temptation to do otherwise. 
 
 " Abbotsford is all that I can make it, and too large for 
 the property : so I resolve,— 
 
 " No more building ; 
 
 " No purchases of land, till times are quite safe ; 
 
 " No buying books or expensive trifles—/ mean to any 
 
 extent ; — and . 
 
 "Clearing off incumbrances, with the returns ot tins 
 
 year's labors. 
 
 "Which resolutions, with my health and my habits of 
 industry, will make me ' sleep in spite of thunder.' " [Uf^ 
 of Scott, vol. vi. p. 138.) 
 
46 BILLS AND COUNTER BILLS. 
 
 Lockhart, therefore, may spare his '' sighmg 
 comments," or, if he dehghts therein, reserve 
 them for those who were the real victims of that 
 mania which destroyed all within its sphere of 
 operation. 
 
 Nor is Mr. Lockhart in any respect more for- 
 tunate in his attempt to account for the origin of 
 what he terms " counter -hills ^^'' — that is, the bills 
 drawn by Constable and Co. in lieu of those 
 granted to James Ballantyne and Co., for behoof 
 of Sir Walter Scott, — and the use which was 
 made of these bills. '' Owing to the original ha- 
 bitual irregularities of John Ballantyne," says he, 
 " it had been adopted. as the regular plan between 
 that person and Constable, that, whenever the 
 latter signed a bill for the purpose of the other's 
 raising money among the bankers, there should, 
 in case of his neglecting to take that bill up before 
 [when ?] it fell due, be deposited a counter-bill, 
 signed by Ballantyne, on which Constable might, 
 if need were, raise a sum equivalent to that for 
 which he had pledged his credit. I am told that 
 this is an usual enough course among speculative 
 merchants, and it may be so." This may or may 
 not have been as Mr. Lockhart alleges, though, 
 from the demonstrable inaccuracy of his state- 
 ments regarding Mr. James Ballantyne, we are 
 entitled to doubt ; but, whether this allegation be 
 true or the reverse, the reflections in which he 
 again indulges on the management of Sir Walter 
 Scott's confidential agent have already been 
 
BILLS AND COUNTER BILLS. 47 
 
 shown to be without foundation— mere random 
 charges preferred without consideration, and 
 wholly unsupported by evidence. But "mark 
 the issue," Mr. Lockhart continues. "The plan 
 went on under James's management, just as John 
 had begun it. Under his management, also, such 
 was the incredible looseness of it, the coin iter -hills ^ 
 meant only for being sent into the market in the 
 event of the 'primary hills being threatened with 
 dishonor — these instruments of safeguard for Con- 
 stable against contingent danger were allowed to 
 lie uninquired about in Constable's desk, until 
 they had swelled to a truly monstrous ' sheaf of 
 stamps.' Constable's hour of distress darkened 
 about him, and he rushed ivith these to the money- 
 changers. They were nearly all flung into 
 
 CIRCULATION IN THE COURSE OF THIS MADDENING PE- 
 RIOD OF PANIC ! And by this one circumstance it 
 came to pass, that, supposing James Ballantyne 
 and Co. to have, at the day of reckoning, obliga- 
 tions against them, in consequence of bill transac- 
 tions with Constable, to the extent of £25,000, 
 they were legally responsible for £50,000." {Life, 
 vol. vi. p. 1 18). What is here stated seems at 
 first view likely to be true ; the statement is, at 
 any rate, exceedingly plausible; but, unfortu- 
 nately for Mr. Lockhart' s credit and caution, it 
 is not true ; and Ave are at a loss to conceive how 
 he could have risked such a statement without 
 asking for information on the subject, which se- 
 veral persons were in a condition to afford him. 
 
48 REAL NATURE OF THESE BILLS EXEMPLIFIED. 
 
 The truth is, " the counter-bills " were not 
 " meant only for being sent into the market in 
 the event of the primary bills being dishonored." 
 They were as regularly discounted by Constable 
 and Co. as the '' primary bills" were by James 
 Ballantyne and Co. ; and they were as essential 
 to the former of these houses as the others were 
 to Sir Walter Scott. Lest this should be doubted, 
 we shall print here, as a specimen, one statement 
 of these "counters" and " primaries," which 
 will place the whole matter in a very clear light. 
 It is in the handwriting of Constable and Co.'s 
 cashier at the time, Mr. Archibald Fife, and was 
 enclosed in a letter from Mr. Cadell, then a part- 
 ner of that house. 
 
 " Edinburgh, 24ih June, 1822. 
 Messrs. James Ballantyne & Co. 
 
 With A. Constable & Co. 
 For the following bills, viz. 
 
 1822. Dr. Cr. 
 
 Oct. 9. By their acceptance payable at 
 
 Curries & Co., . . £640 7 days £0 12 3 
 
 16. To our acceptance due tliis date, 642 2 " 
 
 Dr. 2 
 18. By their acceptance at Curries 
 
 &Co., . . . 640 
 
 Cr. 638 
 28. To our acceptance due this date, 038 4 
 
 Nov. 16. To our acceptance due this date, 643 9 7 
 — By tlieirs at Curries & Co., 640 
 
 Dr. 3 9 7 5 
 21. To our acceptance due this day, 649 16 2 
 
 Dr. 653 5 9 19 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THIS SUBJECT. 49 
 
 Dr. Cr. 
 
 Brought forward £653 5 9 £ 19 3 
 
 Nov. 21. By their acceptance at Curries 
 
 and Co., . . . 640 
 
 13 5 91 « 
 
 — By exchange, interest, and stamps, 1117 8 
 
 Dr. 1 8 1 
 22. To our acceptance due this date, 638 14 3 Exchange, 10 18 5 
 
 640 2 4 
 
 — By theirs at Curries and Co., 640 2 4 £U 17 8" 
 
 This plain statement, which is only one of many, 
 may be taken as a fair sample of the whole ; and 
 it completely overthrows Mr. Lockhart's theory of 
 the bill transactions. In it we find the difference 
 of interest nicely calculated, and the place indica- 
 ted where the '^ counters " were to be negotiated; 
 the expression "payable at Curries" showing 
 that they were to be discounted in London by 
 Constable and Co., and that they were to be paya- 
 ble at the banking-house of Messrs. Curries, Raikes, 
 and Co. Besides, it will be observed that this 
 statement is dated the 24th June, 1 822, and that 
 all the bills enumerated in it fell due in October 
 and November the same year. How, then, could 
 Constable have these bills in his desk in January, 
 1826 ; or, if he had them, how could he have 
 *' rushed with them to the money-changers," when 
 they were behveen three andfotir years past due ? 
 The thing is absurd. The bills were not in Consta- 
 ble's desk. For observe the entry in the account : 
 " By their (James Ballantyne and Co.'s) accept- 
 ance payable at Curries & Co.,"— an entry which 
 shows that the '' counter-bills" were to be nego- 
 c 
 
50 OBSERVATIONS ON THIS SUBJECT. 
 
 tiated^ and not " meant only for being sent into the 
 market in the event of the primary bills being 
 threatened with dishonor ; " — and this we know 
 to have been the fact. What, then, becomes of 
 the "truly monstrous sheaf of stamps" with 
 which poor Constable, when his " hour of distress 
 darkened about him," is said to have " rushed to 
 the money-changers ? " The statement is either 
 a creature of imagination alone, or of abused 
 credulity. Supposing Constable to have been so 
 utterly devoid of principle (which he was not) as 
 to be capable of a proceeding like this, he had it 
 not in his power to carry it into effect. The only 
 bills which were in his desk, if there were any at 
 all in it, consisted of such as the money-changers 
 had 'previously refused to have any thing to do 
 with ; and, consequently, the conduct imputed to 
 him by Mr. Lockhart is at once as absurd and 
 impossible as it is untrue. 
 
 But this is not the only example of Mr. Lock- 
 hart's '' incredible looseness " of statement on this 
 subject. We have seen that, in the passage last 
 quoted, the counter-bills are said to have been 
 meant only for being sent into the market in the 
 event of the primary bills being tlireatened with 
 dishonor; yet, in page 114 of the same volume, 
 Mr. Lockhart observes—" It is easy to see that, 
 the moment the obligations became reciprocal^ there 
 arose extreme peril of their coming to be hopelessly 
 complicated^ True"; but does he imagine that 
 James Ballantyne and Co. reciprocated their obli- 
 
scott's own view of these transactions. 51 
 
 gations to Constable and Co., merely that Con- 
 stable himself might accumulate in his desk a 
 " truly monstrous sheaf of stamps," most of 
 which, if they had lain there more than a few- 
 months, would have been past due, and, of course, 
 not receivable by any "money-changer" what- 
 soever 7 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, in his Diary, takes a just and 
 proper view of these matters ; and, being the party 
 most nearly concerned, he is by far the best author- 
 ity on the subject. His testimony is surely entitled 
 to great weight, and, if so, it is given most decid- 
 edly in favor of James Ballantyne. Whence, then, 
 has originated Mr. Lockhart's inordinate desire, 
 by statements the most unfair and unfounded, to 
 blacken the character, and prejudice the interests 
 of the family, of one who never consciously in- 
 jured him, and whom he addressed on his death- 
 bed as the dear friend of Sir Walter Scott, — from 
 whom he solicited and obtained " the most 'pre- 
 cious materials " for Sir Walter's biography, — and 
 whom he prays to continue to draw on his memory 
 for more and more of these " invaluable details ^^^ 
 at the same tinie earnestly hoping that his " health, 
 for this and a thousand other good works, may be 
 strengthened and restored ? " Whence could have 
 sprung that posthumous animosity which pur- 
 sues, with unrelenting hostility, the memory of 
 the man on whom the reviler of his good name 
 lavished expressions of esteem, gratitude, and 
 friendship, at the very moment when he was 
 
52 scott's own view of these transactions. 
 
 sinking into the grave, and whose last labors on 
 earth were expended in gathering up and putting 
 together recollections calculated to brighten the 
 glory of Sir Walter Scott 7 Surely, if ever there 
 was causeless vengeance, it is here displayed ; if 
 ever there was an instance of calumny defeated 
 by its own extravagance, it is found in the charges 
 we have refuted. Mr. Lockhart, indeed, is the 
 least formidable of all accusers ; for his imputa- 
 tions are generally inconsistent with themselves, 
 as well as the evidence upon which they profess 
 to rest ; and he is so little acquainted with the 
 real nature of the pecuniary transactions which 
 he has undertaken to describe, that his statements 
 commonly carry their own refutation along with 
 them. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, however, expressed himself in 
 a very different spirit towards his old friend and 
 his companion in misfortune. When his " hour 
 of distress darkened about him," he seemed to 
 take a particular pleasure in rendering justice to 
 one who had borne prosperity with moderation, 
 and now proved himself ready to encounter ad- 
 versity with fortitude. In his Diary, under date 
 the 17th of January, Sir Walter writes, " James 
 Ballantyne called this morning, good honest fel- 
 low, with a visage as black as the crook. He 
 hopes no salvation- — has, indeed, taken measures 
 to stop. It is hard, after having fought such a 
 battle." Again, he says, " Ballantyne behaved 
 like himself^ and sinks the prospect of his own 
 
CORROBORATIVE DOCUMENTS. 53 
 
 RUIN IN CONTEMPLATING MINE." Again, in a letter 
 to Mr. Lockhart himself, written a few days after 
 the insolvency was publicly known in Edinburgh 
 (20th of January, 1826), he declares, — '' I have 
 
 BEEN FAR FROM SUFFERING BY JaMES BaLLANTYNE. 
 
 / oioe it to him to say, that his difficulties, as well 
 as his advantages, are owing to me." And at a 
 later period, when James Ballantyne wished to 
 obtain a personal discharge from the creditors, 
 such a proceeding being no longer at variance 
 with Sir Walter Scott's plans, the latter wrote to 
 him in the following terms : — 
 
 ^' Dear Sir, 
 
 1 am favored with your letter, and, so far as 
 I am concerned, give my consent with great 
 pleasure to your discharge, being satisfied that 
 
 IN ALL YOUR TRANSACTIONS WITH ME YOU HAVE ACTED 
 WITH THE UTMOST CANDOR AND INTEGRITY. 1 am, 
 
 dear sir, your most obedient servant, 
 
 (Signed) Walter Scott." 
 
 It may be added that Mr. Ballantyne' s appli- 
 cation was met in the same spirit by all the cred- 
 itors, when he addressed himself to them individ- 
 ually. This will sufficiently appear from the 
 following, out of many answers of a similar kind 
 which were received by him, and which form the 
 best attestation to the character of any man simi- 
 larly circumstanced. It is a copy of the answer 
 which Messrs. Alexander Allan & Co., bankers, 
 
54 CHARACTER OF 
 
 returned to his circular requesting their consent 
 to his discharge : — 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 '' We deeply regret that you should have been 
 exposed to such great affliction from an over con- 
 fidence in others^ knowing, as we do, that your 
 integrity and correct business habits should have 
 led to a far different result. 
 
 " We shall have much pleasure in signing your 
 discharge, accompanied by our best wishes for 
 your future prosperity. — We remain, dear sir, 
 your very obedient servants, 
 
 (Signed) Alex. Allan & Co." 
 
 Mr. Lockhart's evident aversion to James Bal- 
 lantyne ; his willing sneer ; his glibly repeated 
 nicknames ; and his desire to impute to him, 
 however unjustly, any blame in business matters 
 which might divert attention from, or serve to 
 lighten the weight of censure due to, others, — are 
 too obvious to require notice."^ And where he 
 
 * This hostile bias pervades every part of Mr. Lockhart's 
 work. We have already quoted his caricature portraits of 
 the two Ballantynes ; let us now see how he speaks of them 
 incidentally. The following is his formal introductory ac- 
 count of Mr. Constable : — 
 
 " The great bookseller of Edinburgh was a man of calibre 
 infinitely beyond these Ballantynes. Though with a strong 
 dash of the sanguine, without which, indeed, there can be 
 no great projector in any walk of life, Archibald Constable 
 was one of the most sagacious persons that ever followed 
 
MR. lockhart's procedure. 55 
 
 professes to relate facts, or ventures to make defi- 
 nite assertions of an injurious nature, it will, in 
 every instance, be found, upon examination, that 
 
 his profession. . . . Indeed, his fair and very handsome 
 physiognomy carried a bland astuteness of expression, not 
 to be mistaken by any one who could read the plainest of 
 nature's handwriting. He made no pretensions to litera- 
 ture, though he was, in fact, a tolerable judge of it gener- 
 ally, and particularly well skilled in the department of 
 Scotch antiquities. He distrusted himself, however, in 
 such matters, being conscious that his early education had 
 been very imperfect ; and, moreover, he wisely considered 
 the business of a critic as quite as much out of his proper 
 line as authorship itself. But of that ' proper line,' and 
 his own qualifications for it, his estimation was ample ; and, 
 often as I may have smiled at the lofty serenity of his self- 
 complacence, I confess I now doubt whether he rated him- 
 self too highly as a master in the true science of the book- 
 seller. He was as bold as far-sighted, and his disposition 
 was as liberal as his views were wide." 
 
 Now mark the purpose to which all this praise is imme- 
 diately turned. Poor Constable is lauded at first to be 
 damned afterwards ; but even this prolusion is intended to 
 cover the stab which, through it, is directed at the Ballan- 
 tynes. Mr. Lockhart continues : — " Had he (Constable) 
 and Scott, from the beginning, trusted as thoroughly as they 
 understood each other ; had there been no third parties to 
 step in, flattering an overweening vanity on the one hand 
 into presumption, and, on the other side, spurring the enter- 
 prise that wanted nothing but a bridle, I have no doubt their 
 joint career might have been one of unhrohen prosperity .^^ 
 Prove this, Mr. Lockhart, if you please, and then, but not 
 till then, we will believe it. " But the Ballantynes were 
 jealous of the superior mind, bearing, and authority of Con- 
 stable ; and, though he too had a liking for them both per- 
 
56 HIS APOLOGIES CONSIDERED. 
 
 he either proceeds in total ignorance, or wantonly 
 indulges in the most unpardonable distortions and 
 misrepresentations. Indeed, he appears to have 
 had a secret consciousness that his statements 
 
 sonally — esteemed James's literary tact, and was far too 
 much of a humorist not to be very fond of the younger 
 brother's company — he could never away with the feeling, 
 that they intervened unnecessarily, and left him but the 
 shadow where he ought to have had the substantial share 
 of confidence." Where, we ask, is the evidence of all this.' 
 where does a trace of such "jealousy" as is here talked of 
 appear ? and how came Scott, with all his shrewdness, and 
 who understood Constable so well, to permit these brothers 
 to stand between him and that " career of unbroken pros- 
 perity " which, it is said, he would have entered upon by 
 giving to Constable " the substantial share of confidence? " 
 But let us hear Mr. Lockhart out. " On his part, again, he 
 (Constable) was too proud a man to give entire confidence 
 where that was withheld from himself; and more especially, 
 I can well believe that a frankness of communication as to 
 the real amount of his capital and general engagements in 
 business, which would have been the reverse of painful to 
 him in habitually confidential intercourse with Scott, was 
 out of the question where Scott's proposals and suggestions 
 were to be met in conference, not with his own manly sim- 
 plicity, but the buckram potnpositi/ of the one, or the burlesque 
 levity of the other, of his plenipotentiaries." {Life. vol. ii. 
 pp. 198, 199, 200.) The good taste, as well as the consistent 
 rectitude, displayed in the close of this passage — written by 
 the man who did not wish, so he says, to wound unneces- 
 sarily the feelings of the Ballantynes — will, no doubt, be 
 appreciated by all ; and it will also be seen that the whole 
 of the preposterous theory here disclosed has been invented 
 and unfolded for the purpose of barbing these wretched per- 
 sonalities. 
 
HIS APOLOGIES CONSIDERED. 57 
 
 were ill fitted to stand the test of a searching in- 
 quiry ; for, at the close of the strange preface to 
 his seventh and last volume, there is the following 
 remarkable passage : — " As for the reclamations 
 which have been put forth on the score that I 
 have wilfully distorted the character and conduct 
 of other men, for the purpose of raising Scott at 
 their expense, 1 have already expressed my regret, 
 that my sense of duty to his memory should have 
 extorted from me the particulars in question. If 
 the complaining parties can produce documents 
 to overthrow my statements, let them do so. But, 
 even then^ I should be entitled to ask why those 
 documents were kept back from me?'''' 
 
 " Why those documents were kept back from 
 him? " The answer is obvious. No man alive, 
 without an appearance of intentional insult, could 
 have anticipated that such " documents " would 
 be required ; or that Mr. Lockhart's " sense of 
 duty " to the memory of his father-in-law should 
 have '' extorted" from him the particulars which 
 he now admits may be overthrown. No unin- 
 spired individual could have divined Mr. Lock- 
 hart's intentions, so as prophetically to forestall 
 his accusations, and provide beforehand the ma- 
 terials necessary for a defence. Nor, if this had 
 been possible, would it have been of any avail, 
 either in guarding Mr. Lockhart against error, or 
 in preventing his attempts to insult the memory 
 of individuals for whom he had conceived an 
 aversion. The circumstance which we are now 
 
58 
 
 about to relate, where accurate information loas 
 placed within his reach, but only disregarded, 
 entitles us to say so; and we here entreat the 
 attention of all who may have laid any stress on 
 Mr. Lockhart's question, why " documents " were 
 kept back from him. When the sixth volume of 
 the Life of Scott was passing through the press, 
 Mr. John Hughes, one of the trustees appointed 
 by James Ballantyne, in his last will and settle- 
 ment, observing the statements about bills intro- 
 duced into that volume, addressed to the publisher 
 of the work, Mr. Cadell, a letter, dated the 26th 
 October, 1837, of which the following is a copy : — 
 
 '' Dear Sir, 
 
 I send you the proofs of Chapter III. I have 
 not read them, but I have glanced at the last 
 pages, where I find some things that surely ought 
 to be brought under Mr. Lockhart s review. He 
 says Sir Walter never knew the amount of ' pri- 
 mary bills ' and ' counter-bills ' for which he was 
 responsible as the unseen partner of the Ballan- 
 tynes. Now, the fact is, that Sir Walter was 
 cognizant of all these bills. Once every month, 
 Mr. Ballantyne waited on Sir Walter (or if he 
 was in the country he wrote to him, or went to 
 Abbotsford personally) with a statement of the 
 bills that fell due in the succeeding month ; and 
 they conjointly settled on the means by which 
 they were to be met, which uniformly were by 
 bills of a certain amount, drawn on Constable 
 
BUT NOT ACCEPTED. 59 
 
 and Co., and by a certain sum in Constable's 
 promissory notes to Sir Walter Scott. James 
 Ballantyne and Co. granted counter-bills on Con- 
 stable and Co. for these bills and notes ; and of 
 all these obligations Sir Walter kept a regular ac- 
 count in a book of his own {a royal Svo, bound in 
 red moroccM). This matter was no further under 
 James Ballantyne's management than as he was 
 the me7^e instrument in getting the bills discount- 
 ed. The bills, also, I am in a position to show, 
 were exclusively for Sir Walter^ s accommodation^ 
 so that, as regards them, Mr. Ballantyne must 
 have lost largely. The printing-office was thriv- 
 ing, and had no need of them ; and I have not 
 the slightest doubt, when the books are balanced 
 up to the bankruptcy of 1825-1826, that, Mr. 
 Ballantyne will be found to have been Sir Walter 
 Scott's creditor to a considerable amount. 
 
 '/ The remark about the ' sheaf of counter-bills ' 
 with which, in his panic. Constable rushed to the 
 ' money-changers,' will be looked upon with sus- 
 picion by mercantile men ; and you and I know 
 that counters ivere regidarly draum for the pjima- 
 ries^ the difference of interest calculated^ and the 
 counters as regidarly discounted; so that any 
 ' sheaf in Mr. Constable's desk must have con- 
 sisted of such bills as banks had refused, and of 
 such as had been prevented by the failure from 
 being offered. 
 
 " I beg pardon for the length of my note. I 
 meant it to be a short one, but my desire that 
 
60 
 
 my late friend should not, though I believe un- 
 intentionally, be placed in so erroneous a position, 
 has led me to be too lengthy, perhaps, for your 
 patience. 
 
 J. H." 
 
 The note subjoined was sent to Mr. Cadell along 
 with the preceding, and emphatically evinces the 
 anxiety of the writer to supply Mr. Lockhart with 
 correct information. 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 I hope you will agi'ee with me in thinking the 
 enclosed should be seen by Mr. Lockhart ; or, if 
 you prefer, I have a copy which I can send him. 
 It is really too bad thai James Ballantyne should 
 he made a scape- goat for the transactions by luhich 
 he was ruined. It is notorious that these bills 
 were Sir Walter^s own, and James Ballantyne 
 did not know, till the catastrophe of 1825-1826, 
 that Abbotsford did not stand between him and 
 ruin, from the extent to which he was engaged 
 for Sir Walter. 
 
 J. H." 
 
 Here, then, we have a letter written with the 
 sole intention of supplying Mr. Lockhart, in some 
 most important particulars, with the information 
 which he complains was " kept back " from him ; 
 and we cannot entertain a doubt that this letter 
 was submitted to him, or, at least, that he was 
 
BUT NOT ACCEPTED. 61 
 
 made aware of the information it contained. This 
 excuse, therefore, will not avail him ; these state- 
 ments were amply sufficient to set him right in 
 many instances where he has gone widely and 
 absurdly astray ; and it follows that he must 
 have wilfully adhered to his own distorted views 
 of " the character and conduct " of Mr. Ballan- 
 tyne, or at least neglected to avail himself of the 
 proffered information necessary to place both in a 
 just and true light before the world. 
 
 Mr. Lockhart says boldly, " If the complaining 
 parties can produce documents to overthrow my 
 statements, let them do so." Does this imply, on 
 Mr. Lockhart' s part, a feeling of security, arising 
 from a secret belief that the complaining parties 
 cannot produce documents to overthrow his state- 
 ments, from not having access to any such ? If 
 so, we think we have undeceived him. Accord- 
 ing to the most elementary notions of justice, no 
 accused person can ever be called upon to prove 
 a negative in his defence. Among all civilised 
 nations the iniquity of such a demand has ever 
 been proclaimed and denounced. But integrity 
 and truth, however assailed, are seldom left alto- 
 gether defenceless. There is a special Providence 
 that keeps watch over both, and always, sooner 
 or later, provides the means of triumphant vindi- 
 cation. This, however, Mr. Lockhart has tried 
 to render as difficult as possible. " If the com- 
 plaining parties," says he, " can produce docu- 
 ments to overthrow my statements^ let them do 
 
62 TRANSFER OF ABBOTSFORD. 
 
 SO." We admire the modesty displayed in the 
 condition here prescribed. We confess, we did 
 not know before that Mr. Lockhart's " state- 
 ments " were so weighty and authoritative as to 
 require nothing short of " documents " to over- 
 throw them. As this, however, appears to be his 
 own opinion, it is a matter of satisfaction to us 
 that we are in a condition to gratify him ; and we 
 shaU be glad to find that Mr. Lockhart, in any 
 future edition of his work, has sufficient candor 
 to avail himself of the " documents " which, now 
 at least, he cannot say are "kept back" from 
 him. 
 
 We have already seen that in James Ballan- 
 tyne's estimate of means for meeting his liabili- 
 ties on account of Sir Walter Scott, Abbotsford 
 was always included — (" then add Abbotsford, 
 so there is the head for the washing ") — and 
 we further learn, from Mr. Hughes's note to Mr. 
 Cadell, accompanying the letter intended for Mr. 
 Lockhart's view, that Mr. Ballantyne did not 
 knoW; till the catastrophe of 1826, that Abbots- 
 ford did not stand between him and ruin, although 
 Sir Walter had divested himself of his estate a 
 year before. Let us now hear Mr. Lockhart upon 
 that subject, more particularly as the "counter- 
 bills " are again introduced in connexion with 
 another of those theories in which he is so rife. 
 No wonder he sticks to his own notion of these 
 bills ; it keeps him out of every dilemma, resolves 
 every doubt, and smooths every difficulty. 
 
MR. lockhart's observations thereon. 63 
 
 '' The firm of James Ballantyne and Co.," says 
 he, " might have allowed itself to be declared 
 bankrupt, and obtained a speedy discharge, as 
 the bookselling concern did for all its obligations, 
 but that Sir Walter Scott was a partner. Had 
 he chosen to act in a manner commonly adopted 
 by commercial men [which usually means giving 
 up the whole of one's property to one's creditors], 
 the matter would have been settled in a very 
 short time. The creditors of James Ballantyne 
 and Co., whose claims, including sheafs of bills 
 of all description, amounted to £117,000, would 
 have brought into the market whatever property>^ 
 literary or otherwise^ he at the hour of failure pos- 
 sessed ; they would have had a right to his life- 
 rent of Abbotsford, amoiig other things, and to 
 his reversionary interest in the estate, in case 
 either his eldest son or his daughter-in-law should 
 die without leaving issue, and thus void the pro- 
 visions of their marriage-contract. All this being 
 brought into the market, the result would have 
 been a dividend very far superior to what the 
 creditors of Constable and Hurst received ; and in 
 return, the partners in the printing firm would 
 have been left at liberty to reap for themselves 
 the profits of their future exertions. Things were, 
 however, complicated^ in consequence of the trans- 
 fer of Abbotsford in January, 1825. At first some 
 creditors seem to have had serious thoughts of 
 contesting the validity of the transaction, but a 
 little reflection and examination satisfied them 
 
64 THESE OBSERVATIONS SHOWN 
 
 that nothing could be gained by such an attempt. 
 But, on the other hand, Sir Walter Scott felt he 
 had done wrong in placing' any part of his pro- 
 perty beyond the reach of his creditors, by entering 
 into that marriage-contract, without a previous 
 most dehberate examination into the state of his- 
 responsibihties. He must have felt in this man- 
 ner, though I have no sort of doubt that the result 
 of such an examination in January, 1825, if ac- 
 companied by an instant calling in of all the 
 ' counter-bills,' would have been to leave him at 
 perfect liberty to do all that he did upon that 
 occasion." {Life, vol. vi. pp. 223, 224.) 
 
 That Sir Walter Scott's feelings in regard to 
 this matter were such as Mr. Lockhart has de- 
 scribed we can most readily believe ; indeed, he 
 must have felt in this manner, for there could 
 not be two opinions on the subject. But it would 
 be obliging if Mr. Lockhart would take some op- 
 portunity of explaining upo7i lohat grounds he has 
 come to the conclusion that the result of an ex- 
 amination by Scott into the state of his responsi- 
 bilities in January, 1825, "if accompanied by an 
 instant calling in of all the counter-hills, would 
 have been to leave him at perfect liberty to do all 
 that he did upon that occasion : " — namely, to di- 
 vest himself of the fee-simple of his property, and 
 thus place it beyond the reach of his creditors. 
 In the first place, no such examination was made 
 by Sir Walter previously to the execution of his 
 son's marriage-contract; and, therefore, Mr. Lock- 
 
TO BE FULL OF BLUNDERS. 65 
 
 hart is here proceeding upon a mere hypothesis 
 of his own. Secondly, we are prepared to show 
 that, if such an examination had actually been 
 made, the result would have been the opposite of 
 that which Mr. Lockhart affirms would have fol- 
 lowed; in fact, that Sir Walter would ?20^ have 
 found himself " at perfect liberty to do all that he 
 did upon that occasion." Thirdly, an instant 
 calling in of all the counter-bills could only have 
 been effected by taking them out of the banker's 
 hands— that is, by pmjing them; an operation 
 quite as impracticable in January, 1825, as it was 
 found to be in January, 1826, and therefore not 
 much calculated to reinforce the examination 
 which Mr. Lockhart has supposed. 
 
 The truth is, as our readers are already aware, 
 that, on the subject of these "counter-bills," Mr. 
 Lockhart labors under some strange hallucination, 
 of which, had he consulted any man of business 
 on the matter, he would have been instantly dis- 
 abused. He seems to be in total ignorance of the 
 fact, formerly explained, that these counter-bills 
 were as regularly discounted as the primary ones ; 
 that, after the dates at which they were drawn 
 had expired, they were of no use whatever ; and 
 that they were then literally barren " sheafs," 
 wholly inapphcable to the purposes which he has 
 imagined. What, then, does he mean by an in- 
 stant " calling in of all the counter-bills 7" To us 
 these are words without meaning, except in the 
 sense we have stated; namely, retiring them, not 
 
66 THESE OBSERVATIONS SHOWN 
 
 by the fabrication of new bills, but by actual bona 
 fide payment. 
 
 Mr. Lockhart proceeds thus : — '' However that 
 may have been, and whatever may have been his 
 (Sc6tt's) delicacy respecting this point, he re- 
 garded the embarrassment of his commercial firm, 
 on the whole, with the feelings, not of a merchant, 
 but of a gentleman. He thought that, by devot- 
 ing the rest of his life to the service of his credit- 
 ors, he could, in the upshot, pay the last farthing 
 he owed them. They (with one or two paltry 
 exceptions) applauded his honorable intentions 
 and resolutions, and partook to a large extent in 
 the self-reliance of their debtor." 
 
 Be it so. We are far from entertaining any 
 disposition to impeach or even to weaken the force 
 of this statement ; and Ave unite with all in admi- 
 ration of the prodigious, the truly glorious effort 
 which Sir Walter Scott made for his extrication, 
 and in which, to the lasting wonder of the world, 
 he nearly succeeded before death put a period to 
 his unprecedented and exhausting labors. But it 
 must, nevertheless, be kept steadily in view, that 
 the main question as to the propriety or impropri- 
 ety of '* placing any part of his property beyond 
 the reach of his creditors," by the contract of Jan- 
 uary, 1825, " without a previous most deliberate 
 examination into the state of his responsibilities," 
 still remains in statu quo ante ; — that what Mr. 
 Lockhart says about " an instant calling in of all 
 the counter-bills" is absurd; — -that James Ballan- 
 
TO BE FULL OF BLUNDERS. 67 
 
 tyne all along considered Abbotsford as standing 
 between him and ruin, from the extent to which 
 his name was engaged for Sir Walter ; — and that 
 the catastrophe of January, 1826, first revealed to 
 him the astonishing fact, that, a year before, the 
 foundation upon which he built all his hopes of 
 safety had been destroyed by the deliberate act of 
 his friend and partner. In these circumstances, 
 which we deem it sufficient merely to bring under 
 the notice of the reader, with a view to a right 
 understanding of the questions here discussed, we 
 may perhaps be permitted to say, that it would 
 have been better for all parties, and decidedly for- 
 tunate for Mr. Ballantyne, if Sir Walter Scott, 
 waving all unnecessary delicacy, had "regarded 
 the embarrassment of his commercial firm" with 
 '' the feelings of a merchant," at least equally as 
 with those " of a gentleman ;" for, in passing, we 
 would assure Mr. Lockhart that, in spite of his 
 apparent doubts on the subject, they are not 
 wholly incompatible. 
 
 We have already had occasion to notice Mr. 
 Lockhart' s extraordinary statement, that Sir Wal- 
 ter never drew any thing from the printing-house 
 business. A bolder assertion as to matter of fact 
 was never, perhaps, adventured by any man 
 writing for the public ; but the imprudence which 
 it seems to betray we ascribe to ignorance, rather 
 than to any desire to impose upon or mislead the 
 world. Sir Walter drew from the business large- 
 ly, as we have already seen, and are still further 
 
68 FICTIONS AND FACTS AS TO THE PRINTING FIRM. 
 
 to see, presently. At the date of the formation of 
 the new copartnership in 1822, the concern, as 
 formerly stated, was engaged to a large amount 
 on account of Sir Walter Scott. The bills current 
 at that time for his accommodation, and for which 
 the firm, of course, was responsible, amounted to 
 £26,896, 5s. lid. This large sum, so far from 
 being reduced, was annually augmented, as we 
 have before explained, by the amount of stamps 
 and discounts, at least £2000 ; and in less 
 than four years thereafter Sir Walter received 
 from the company, in promissory notes, for his 
 own personal use, his son's commission, and 
 builders' bills, about £14,000. If it be said that 
 this was not drawing from the business, we meet 
 the denial by asserting, what we shall immedi- 
 ately prove, that, excepting Mr. Ballantyne's 
 family expenses, Sir Walter Scott, — or, which 
 comes to the same thing ultimately, his creditors, 
 — got the whole profits realized by the company, 
 besides the profits accruing to Mr. Ballantyne as 
 proprietor of a one-sixth share of the new novels, 
 which was also floating in the business for Sir 
 Walter's accommodation; and, furthermore, all 
 the real and personal property belonging to Mr. 
 Ballantyne as an individual. This is amply 
 proved by the following extracts from the Trust 
 Accounts, to which Mr. Lockhart, of course, had 
 ready access ; but which tell a very diflerent tale 
 from that with which he has sought to entertain 
 his readers. 
 
EXTRACTS FROM THE TRUST ACCOUNTS. 69 
 
 I. Extracts from Mr. Gibson's Trust Accounts, 
 from the 1 9th January, 1826, to 15th May, 
 1827, in as far as regards funds reahzed to 
 James Ballantyne and Co., and to Mr. Ballan- 
 tyne as an individual. 
 
 1. Cash in the printing-office at the commence- 
 ment of the trust, £485 13 9i 
 
 2. Sums received from sundries in payment of 
 
 accounts for printing, .... 283C 5 8 
 
 3. Proceeds of the price of a house in Heriot 
 Row, belonging to Mr. Ballantyne, after de- 
 ducting a debt of £1000 thereon, . . 1700 
 
 4. Proceeds of sale of policies of insurance on 
 
 Mr. Ballantyne's life, . . . . 185 10 
 
 Credited in first account, independently of the 
 proceeds of shares of the Weekly Journal, be- 
 longing jointly to Sir Walter Scott and Mr. 
 Ballantyne, £5207 9 5^ 
 
 II. Extracts from Mr. Gibson's Trust Accounts, 
 from the 15th May, 1827, to the 15th May, 1828. 
 
 1. Sums recovered from sundries in payment 
 
 of accounts for printing, . . £3463 2 10 
 
 2. Balance in the hands of the printing-office 
 book-keepers^ paid over by them, . 5 15 10 
 
 3. Proceeds of printing materials sold, 1439 16 6* 
 
 £4908 15 2t 
 
 * Part only was recovered this year ; but the whole sum 
 was afterwards realized. 
 
 t This is also independent of the price of five-eighths of 
 the Weekly Journal, upwards of £2000, which belonged to 
 Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Ballantyne, in the relative proper- 
 
70 EXTRACTS FROM THE TRUST ACCOUNTS. 
 
 III. Extracts from Mr. Gibson's Trust Accounts, 
 from the 15th May, 1828, to the 15th May, 1829. 
 
 1. Sums received for printing accounts, £1294 4 3 
 
 IV. In the Account from Whitsunday 1829, to 
 
 Whitsunday 1830, there is credited, 
 
 1. Price of printing-office buildings, . . £1200 
 
 2. Sums received for printing accounts, . , 95 4 
 
 3. Ditto for paper retained in the printing-office 20 
 
 £1315 4 
 
 There is thus credited in whole, as recovered from 
 James Ballantyne and Co., and from Mr. James 
 Ballantyne's individual estate : — 
 
 1st Account, £5207 9 5^ 
 
 2d Account, 4908 15 2 
 
 3d Account, 1294 4 3 
 
 4th Account, 1315 4 
 
 Total, independently of the property of the 
 
 Weekly Journal, .... £12,725 12 lOj^ 
 
 Disbursements during the preceding period. 
 
 1. Accounts from 19th January, 1826, to 15th 
 
 May, 1827, ^£5552 12 iq 
 
 2. Ditto from 15th May, 1827, to 15th May, 1828, 487 17 2 
 
 3. Ditto from 15th May, 1828, to 15th May, 1829, 122 2 9 
 
 Total payments, .... £6102 12 9 
 
 tion of Sir Walter two-eighths and Mr. Ballantyne three- 
 eighths. 
 
REMARKS THEREON. 71 
 
 ABSTRACT. 
 
 Amount of receipts, .... £12,725 12 10^ 
 
 Amount of payments, . . . . 6162 12 9 
 
 Balance of proceeds . . . £6563 IJ 
 
 This balance, be it observed, is independent of 
 the Weekly Journal newspaper, Mr. Ballantyne's 
 interest in which reahzed fully £1400 ; his house 
 in Ann Street, which brought £800; and a con- 
 siderable claim against Constable and Co., for 
 which James Ballantyne and Co. held in hypo- 
 thec various printed works, which were made 
 over to Sir Walter Scott's representatives, when a 
 mutual release, which will afterwards be adverted 
 to,. was executed. It is evident, then, that for 
 behoof of Sir Walter Scott's creditors, Mr. James 
 Ballantyne contributed upwards of £8000, inde- 
 pendently of his share of business profits from 
 Whitsunday, 1822, till January, 1826, and his pro- 
 portion of the profits on the noA^els, mimis the 
 amount of his family expenses for the same period, 
 which last scarcely exceeded the half of his income. 
 Yet Mr. Lockhart, with all this evidence before 
 him, or at least within his reach, has, in every 
 possible way, insinuated, and even directly af- 
 firmed, that Sir Walter Scott was ''^deeply injur- 
 ec?" by " the Ballantynes," endeavoring, and to a 
 certain extent successfully, to impress the public 
 with a conviction that Sir Walter's overthrow 
 was mainly attributable to the neglect and mis- 
 
72 REMARKS THEREON. 
 
 management of Mr. James Ballantyne, who, as 
 we have just seen, was stripped of his all for 
 behoof of Sir Walter's own creditors.=^ But, 
 although the public, having nothing but Mr. Lock- 
 hart's partial representations before them, might 
 for a time be deceived, or at any rate induced to 
 suppose that there must surely have been some- 
 thing wrong; yet, now that the defence of the 
 other party has been put on record, and docu- 
 ments have been produced in support of it, we 
 have little doubt that they will reconsider their 
 original erroneous impressions, and pronounce a 
 verdict honorably acquitting the memory of Mr. 
 Ballantyne. If such be their final judgment, 
 however, how will it stand with Mr. Lockhart ? 
 We confess that we do not by any means regard 
 his position as one of a very enviable kind. He 
 is bound to make good his charge if he can — or, 
 in the event of failure, to confess that he has 
 unjustly and cruelly aspersed the name of one to 
 whom he had addressed the language of friend- 
 ship, and at whose hospitable board he had often 
 taken a place, seemingly with pleasure, assuredly 
 with a friendly welcome. 
 
 Having discussed these various matters in suffi- 
 cient detail, and refuted the injurious imputations 
 contained in the Life, wherever the author ven- 
 tures to make specific statements, we shall now, 
 
 * At the time of the bankruptcy, the debts due by James 
 Ballantyne and Co., as printers, did not amount to £1000 ; 
 and James Ballantyne's personal debts were under £100. 
 
73 
 
 in order to bring the whole matter into one view, 
 introduce a General Abstract of Sir Walter Scott's 
 Accounts ; showing clearly that he did derive 
 advantage from his connexion with James Ballan- 
 tyne, and also exhibiting the gross amount of his 
 liabilities proper^ and in consequence of the bank- 
 ruptcy. 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT'S ACCOUNTS. 
 
 Note in regard to the bills which, in any account- 
 ing between him and James Ballantyne, Sir 
 Walter Scott would have had to provide for, 
 had there been merely a dissolution of copart- 
 nership, and not a bankruptcy. 
 
 1. According to the balance-sheet made up by a 
 man of business, mutually chosen by the part- 
 ners, on 31st December, 1822, and exhibited to 
 Sir Walter Scott on the 17th April, 1823, the 
 bills payable then current, and to be provided 
 
 for by Sir Walter Scott, amounted to £36,007 5 5 
 
 But he, under an arrangement, was entitled to 
 bills receivable, and other Company funds, 
 amounting to 9,110 19 6 
 
 Which still left, at December, 1822, to be provi- 
 ded for by Sir Walter, .... £26,896 5 11 
 
 2. At the time of the bankruptcy, the bills to be 
 provided for by Sir Walter Scott had increased 
 from £26,896, 5s. lid. (their amount in De- 
 cember, 1822, after deducting the £9110, 19s. 
 6d., for which Sir Walter was allowed credit), 
 to £46,564, 10s. 5d , composed as under : — 
 
 James Ballantyne and Co.'s ac- 
 ceptances to Constable and Co. — — 
 
 on account of Sir Walter, £29,624 17 3 £26,896 5 11 
 
74 SIR WALTER SCOTT's ACCOUNTS. 
 
 Brought forward £29,624 17 3 26,896 5 11 
 
 Sir Walter's acceptances to James 
 Ballantyne and Co., also for 
 his own behoof, . . 16,272 19 10 
 
 James Ballantyne and Co.'s ac- 
 ceptance to Hurst, Robinson, 
 and Co., for ditto, . . 666 13 4 
 
 Total amount of Sir Walter's proper liabilities, £46,564 10 5 
 
 Increase since December, 1822, . . £19,668 4 6 
 
 3. This increase is more than accounted for, when 
 we take into consideration the large sum paid 
 in shape of discounts, which amounted to £5,876 8 
 
 Sum paid as exchange on remittances to London, 
 
 to retire bills due there, per account, No. II., 901 11 4 
 
 Sum paid for bill-stamps, for Sir Walter's accom- 
 modation-bills, per ditto, .... 251 13 6 
 
 Interest on advances by bankers, per ditto, . 815 17 7 
 
 Commission and postages to London bankers, 
 
 per ditto, 240 
 
 Total expense of discounts, stamps, &c. . 8,085 3 1 
 
 Add excess of payments, for Sir Walter, over 
 
 sums received from him, as per account No. III., 17,142 18 10 
 
 Giving a total of £25,228 111 
 
 This difference shows clearly that Sir Walter 
 did derive advantage from his connexion with 
 James Ballantyne. 
 4. Sir Walter Scott's liabilities are stated above at £46,564 10 5 
 But in consequence of Constable and Co.'s bank- 
 ruptcy, their acceptances also fell to be pro- 
 vided for by him, amounting to (the accom- 
 modation-bills) £29,094, 15s. lOd. ; bills for 
 his copies of Crusaders, £1890 ; bills for 
 James Ballantyne's ditto, £1890 ; and busi- 
 ness bills (the whole property of the Compa- 
 ny having been made over to his creditors,) 
 £3604, 17s. 8d 36,479 13 6 
 
 £83,044 3 11 
 
RESULTS AND OBSERVATIONS. 75 
 
 Brought forward 83,044 3 11 
 Hurst, Robinson, and Co.'s acceptances for cash 
 
 advanced to them, 5,563 15 10 
 
 Gross amount of Sir Walter's habiUties, proper, 
 and in consequence of the bankruptcy, . £88,607 19 9 
 
 This Abstract is made up from detailed ac- 
 counts, which have been most carefully prepar- 
 ed ; and its general accuracy may, therefore, be 
 relied on. It brings the whole of these matters, 
 as it were, into a focus ; showing at one view 
 the result of the system acted upon by Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott to raise money for his own purposes, — 
 the liabilities which he consequently incurred, — 
 and the positive pecuniary advantages which he 
 derived from his connexion with James Ballan- 
 tyne. In fact, his large wants swallowed up every 
 thing. The ordinary profits of the business, 
 though considerable, were very far indeed from 
 sufficing for his demands. He employed it as an 
 instrument for raising and keeping afloat as long 
 as possible the enormous sums above specified ; 
 and when the machinery would no longer work, 
 and the day of reckoning arrived, it was found 
 that the estate purchased with the funds thus 
 raised had been placed beyond the reach of cred- 
 itors. Mr. Ballantyne's all was swept into the 
 vortex of bankruptcy, and, by the acts of another, 
 his friend and partner, he became " a broken 
 man." But he lived to repair his ruined fortune, 
 and thereby to prove to the world that the busi- 
 ness, if left to itself, would have been lucrative 
 
76 NEW CONTRACT OF COPARTNERSHIP. 
 
 and prosperous ; and that, under his sole man- 
 agementj it proved a thriving concern. 
 
 If any additional proof were wanting to estab- 
 Hsh the accuracy of the view we have here taken, 
 and to show that the heavy responsibihties which 
 James Ballantyne and Co. had incurred were 
 exchisively for the accommodation of Sir WaUer 
 Scott, this would be supplied by the new contract 
 of copartnery, dated on the 1st April, 1822. In 
 that deed, which was to become effectual at 
 Whitsunday, 1822, it is expressly provided, in 
 reference to the mutual obligations of the parties 
 towards each other, that, when the new copart- 
 nership shall commence, as after specified, " the 
 said Sir Walter Scott shall remain j^ersonally lia- 
 ble for such bills and debts as shall then be due and 
 current^ excepting always such bills, if any, as 
 shall have been granted for additions to the stock 
 of the Company, if any," &c. At the date of 
 this transaction, the bills and debts for which 
 Sir Walter here made himself personally liable 
 amounted nearly to £30,000 ; and at the period 
 of the bankruptcy, in January, 1826, they had 
 increased to upwards of £46,000. As to the 
 former sum, then, there can be no doubt what- 
 ever, because the contract expressly refers to and 
 proceeds on the document in which it is ascer- 
 tained ; and the stipulations above quoted are 
 perfectly unequivocal. But the addition which 
 was made to these "bills and debts" between 
 the date of the contract and that of the bank- 
 
INFERENCES DEDUCED FROM IT. 77 
 
 ruptcy is in precisely the same situation as the 
 ascertained amount of Sir Waher's Uabilities at 
 the former period ; and, therefore, if Sir WaUer 
 was " personally liable " for the one, he must, by 
 parity of reason, have been equally liable for the 
 other. This, we think, is a conclusion which 
 cannot be shaken. At all events, Sir Walter 
 Scott's liability to the extent specified in the deed 
 is most fully and amply recognised under his own 
 signature. 
 
 It does seem to us, therefore, to require some- 
 thing more than rashness or imprudence to 
 affirm that Sir Walter never drew from the busi- 
 ness, — that he derived no positive advantage from 
 his connexion with James Ballantyne, — that he 
 was deeply injured by it, — and that Mr. Ballan- 
 tyne' s alleged mismanagement was the main 
 cause of his misfortunes. Indeed, Sir Walter 
 Scott himself, in one form or another, contradicts 
 his biographer on every point except the mere 
 ribaldry and abuse in which the latter has so 
 freely indulged ; and, in regard to Mr. Ballan- 
 tyne' s capacity for, as well as success in conduct- 
 ing the business, when left unfettered and untram- 
 melled, we submit to our readers evidence which 
 will probably have more weight in their estima- 
 tion than Mr. Lockhart's unsupported and preju- 
 diced statements. 
 
 We have now before us a document holograph 
 of Mr. Ballantyne himself, in which this is clearly 
 demonstrated. It is dated February 18, 1826, and 
 
78 MR. JAMES BALLANTYNe's 
 
 entitled, " Statement of the probable situation in 
 which James Ballantyne would be placed should 
 a sequestration take place in the affairs of James 
 Ballantyne and Co., printers in Edinburgh ; " 
 and, by a very clear and distinct process of cal- 
 culation, it shows, from data unquestionable, 
 none of them hypothetical, that the business, con- 
 ducted by himself alone, would realize a net 
 annual profit of £1777, 10s., or nearly £1800 a- 
 year. It is unnecessary to specify the details of 
 the calculation from which this result is deduced; 
 but it may be interesting to subjoin the observa- 
 tions which Mr. Ballantyne himself annexed to 
 his " Statement." 
 
 " 1 have thus shown," says he, '' by a process 
 of calculation which I am Avilling should be sub- 
 jected to the most rigorous examination, that, in 
 the event of a sequestration taking place, my 
 profits, then entirely my own,^ would amount to 
 nearly £1800 a-year ; diminished by the interest 
 of the price of my share of the Journal^ and of 
 my necessary expenditure for types and presses, 
 and other printing materials, which would not 
 exceed £120 a-year, leaving a gross (clear) profit 
 of £1600 per annum. It is clear, therefore, that 
 a sequestration would, for me, be by far the most 
 desirable step that could be taken. A compara- 
 tively brief period would disenthral me from the 
 painful bonds of dependence, and, as I trust, with 
 
 * The printing-office, materials, &c. being repurchased 
 on Mr. Ballantyne's own account. 
 
THIS "statement" CONTINUED. 79 
 
 a character not injured by any investigation lohich 
 might take place. This would be the chief part 
 of the advantages I should anticipate from the 
 measure ; but it is also a very important consid- 
 eration, that it holds out to me the additional 
 benefit of a most respectable income, from which 
 I should derive the means of future and not very 
 distant competence. The term (sequestration) is 
 a harsh one, no doubt ; and the measure itself 
 would be accompanied by many painful feelings, 
 — but independence and quiet security would 
 accrue to me from its adoption, unaccompanied, 
 as I trust, by any, even the smallest portion of 
 disgrace or discredit. 
 
 ''I do not, however, desire, or even wish, for 
 a sequestration ; because there are motives more 
 powerful still than those which I have stated in 
 its favor, which would render it nearly the bit- 
 terest potion I could swallow. But I owe a great 
 duty, and which must be obeyed as the most pa- 
 ramount of all duties, to my family. They have 
 been reduced, by no partictdar error of my own, 
 from affluence to beggary ; have been turned out 
 of their habitation, and have no other barrier than 
 my precarious life and health, betwixt their pre- 
 sent dependent state and the still worse misery of 
 total destitution. My death would leave them 
 without a home and without a meal. It is not 
 for a husband and a father to contemplate this, 
 without feeling that all other considerations must 
 hold only a second place in his mind. I am will- 
 
80 THIS " STATEMENT " CONTINUED. 
 
 ing to postpone my prospects of freedom, and to 
 forego my well-founded expectations of affluence. 
 But I must not be driven, during an indefinite 
 period of years, out of my station in society. I 
 must not see my wife and children degraded to 
 sordidness of food, habitation, and raiment. I 
 must not see the education of my children stinted, 
 nor their young hearts chilled by privation and 
 penury. In a word, I must not be lowered, for 
 possibly the remainder of my life, to the rank of 
 a mere overseer. This, I think, I can prevent, 
 and this, therefore, I must prevent. There is no 
 man, who considers my situation, who will not 
 appreciate the motives that lead me to this deter- 
 mination ; and I should think there are very few 
 who will not sympathize with, and approve of 
 them. But, at all events, I must be myself the 
 sole ultimate judge of the conduct to which I shall 
 be led by my own sense of duty. 
 
 '' I have formerly stated to Mr. Gibson, through 
 Mr. Cowan, what I respectfully think my services 
 are worth, should the affairs bearing my name be 
 wound up under a trust-deed ; and I have now, 
 as I conceive, shown that, according to a reason- 
 able calculation, I could more than double its 
 amount, in the event of a sequestration. I have 
 nothing further to submit, save my request, that 
 my claims may be dispassionately considered, as 
 I have no reason to doubt they will be, and as 
 early a decision come to upon them as is consist- 
 ent with the convenience of the respectable trus- 
 tees." 
 
REMARKS ON THIS DOCUMENT. ' 81 
 
 There are but few, we think, who could read 
 this manly and touching exposition without being 
 moved by it. It breathes the language of an 
 honorable man, sustained in adversity by the 
 consciousness of unimpeachable integrity, and 
 actuated by a spirit of independence, and a purity 
 of feeling, which it is impossible not to respect. 
 But it is not for the purpose of displaying the 
 praiseworthy qualities of James Ballantyne's 
 mind that we have here introduced it. We have 
 laid it before our readers, partly to give them a 
 just idea of the nature of the business out of 
 which, Mr. Lockhart says. Sir Walter Scott drew 
 nothing, whilst Ballantyne was involved in ruin 
 and reduced to beggary ; and partly, also, to fur- 
 nish them with another proof of the incorrectness 
 of this assertion, by showing how far the calcula- 
 tions here made were verified in the sequel. 
 
 The sequestration above contemplated was not 
 judged advisable, and the affairs of James Ballan- 
 tyne and Co. were Avound up under a trust. Mr. 
 Ballantyne made an entire surrender of his pro- 
 perty to the creditors of the Company, or rather 
 to those of Sir Walter Scott ; all he had in the 
 world passed into their hands ; and, after so many 
 years of labor, and toil, and anxiety, he had to 
 begin life a second time, with diminished energies 
 and clouded prospects. But his honorable con- 
 duct, acknowledged probity, and virtuous princi- 
 ples, had secured to him friends, who now, in his 
 day of difficulty, came voluntarily forward to 
 
82 REMARKS ON THIS DOCUMENT. 
 
 help him. The printing-house and the materials 
 were sold by the trustees to Mr. Cowan, who 
 purchased them on account of Mr. Ballantyne; 
 and from and after May, 1827, the business was 
 carried on for his own behoof, though, as must 
 be obvious from the circumstances in which he 
 was placed, under considerable disadvantages. 
 Yet, in spite of every drawback, the result was 
 such as at once to disprove all that is said by Mr. 
 Lockhart as to his alleged incapacity for manag- 
 ing such a concern, and to afford some idea of 
 the extent to which Sir Walter Scott must have 
 profited by his connexion Avith Mr. Ballantyne 
 anterior to the catastrophe of 1826. At the period 
 of his death, in the beginning of 1833, the latter 
 had not only cleared off all incumbrances, but 
 had realized a considerable amount of property 
 over and above. 
 
 This simple fact shows, in the first place, the 
 utter improbability of all Mr. Lockhart' s unsup- 
 ported statements and insinuations about mis- 
 management and negligence on the part of Mr. 
 Ballantyne; and, secondly, it places beyond all 
 doubt the important fact, that, if Sir Walter Scott's 
 representatives had had any claim against Mr. 
 Ballantyne' s estate, there were funds to meet it. 
 But they had none^ and they pretended none ; as 
 we shall prove on the authority, i7iter alios, of 
 Mr. Lockhart himself. 
 
 Soon after Sir Walter Scott's death, and when 
 a settlement of the trust affairs had been effected, 
 
MUTUAL DISCHARGE PROPOSED. 83 
 
 under a deed of assignment executed by him and 
 James Ballantyne and Co., application was made 
 to Mr. Ballantyne to concur with Sir Walter's 
 representatives in granting a discharge, or release, 
 to the trustees under the assignment ; and it was 
 also proposed that this should be accompanied 
 with a mutual discharge between Sir Walter's 
 representatives and Mr. Ballantyne. The latter 
 was then upon his death-bed ; and in a personal 
 interview which his friend Mr. Alexander Doug- 
 las had with him on the subject, he stated, in 
 feeling language, that he had experienced much 
 kindness and friendship on the part of Sir Walter 
 Scott, and that, whatever might be the state of 
 accounts between them, he wished every trans- 
 action which had taken place between them, 
 prior to their misfortunes, to be considered as set- 
 tled ; and that he should offer no opposition to 
 the arrangement of all claims against Sir Walter 
 Scott, which his representatives were desirous of 
 carrying into effect. But Mr. Ballantyne died 
 before this mutual release could be executed or 
 even prepared. 
 
 After his death, application was made to his 
 trustees and executors to carry through this ar- 
 rangement ; and, upon a statement by Mr. Doug- 
 las of the conference which he had had with Mr. 
 Ballantyne on the subject, and which was corro- 
 borated by the late Mr. John Patterson, brother- 
 in-law of the deceased, the trustees at once agreed 
 to meet the views of Sir Walter Scott's represent- 
 
84 ITS HISTORY AND COMPLETION. 
 
 atives. They accordingly joined with these rep- 
 resentatives in a discharge, or release, to Messrs. 
 Gibson, JolUe, and Monypenny, the trustees under 
 the deed of assignment which had been executed 
 for behoof of Sir Walter's creditors. At the same 
 time, there was executed a mutual discharge or 
 release between Sir Walter Scott's testamentary 
 trustees, and Mr. Ballantyne's trustees and exec- 
 utors. This deed, which now lies before us, is 
 executed on the one hand by the present Sir 
 Walter Scott, Baronet, his. brother Mr. Charles 
 Scott, and by Mr. John Gibson Liockhart^ the 
 trustees of the late Sir Walter Scott; and upon 
 the other, by Mr. Alexander Ballantyne, the late 
 Mr. Patterson, Mr. Alexander Douglas, and Mr. 
 John Hughes, as four and a quorum of the trus- 
 tees and executors of Mr. James Ballantyne. It 
 proceeds on the narrative of the deed of assign- 
 ment which had been executed for behoof of the 
 creditors, the discharge of these creditors, and 
 lastly, the discharge which Sir W^alter Scott's 
 representatives, and Mr. Ballantyne's trustees and 
 executors, had executed in favor of the trustees 
 under the deed of assignment ; and then it sub- 
 sumes as follows : — 
 
 " And, further, considering that the whole debts 
 and obligations of the said James Ballantyne and 
 Company, and of the said deceased Sir Walter 
 Scott, Baronet, and of the said James Ballantyne, 
 at and precedmg the 24th February, 1826, the 
 date of the foresaid trust-disposition, having now 
 
NARRATIVE AND SUBSUMPTIONS OF THIS DEED. 85 
 
 been settled and discharged by the creditors of 
 the said Company and individual partners, it is 
 right and proper, to prevent all after-disputes and 
 differences, that a settlement should also take place 
 betv^eeii the representatives of the said individual 
 partners : And, seeing that the said Sir Walter 
 Scott, now of Abbotsford, Baronet, John Gibson 
 Lockhartj and Charles Scott, as testamentary 
 trustees of the said deceased Sir Walter Scott, 
 Baronet; — and the said Alexander Ballantyne, 
 David Hogarth, John Patterson, David Walker, 
 Robert Hogarth, John Hughes, and Alexander 
 Douglas, as trustees of the said deceased James 
 Ballantyne ; — have reason to believe, and are 
 therefore satisfied, that the estates, heritable and 
 movable, of the said James Ballantyne and 
 Company, of the said deceased Sir Walter Scott, 
 Baronet, and James Ballantyne, made over to the 
 foresaid trustees, for behoof of their creditors, and 
 funds subsequently made available to said credi- 
 tors, were so made over, realized, and subse- 
 quently made available, in fair proportion, to the 
 respective debts and obligations of said Company, 
 and of the said deceased Sir Walter Scott and 
 James Ballantyne, at the date of said trust ; and 
 that the heirs and representatives of the said de- 
 ceased Sir Walter Scott, Baronet, on the one hand, 
 have no claim of relief for 'payment of any of said 
 debts against the representatives of the said de- 
 ceased James BaUanty7ie, or property or effects 
 left by him ; and that the heirs and representatives 
 
86 EFFECTS OF THE MUTUAL RELEASE: 
 
 of the said James Ballantyne, on the other hand, 
 have no claim of rehef against the heirs and rep- 
 resentatives of the said deceased Sir WaUer Scott, 
 Baronet, or property or effects left by him, or re- 
 maining trust-property, made over as aforesaid to 
 the testamentary trustees of the said deceased Sir 
 Walter Scott, Baronet : Therefore the said par- 
 ties hereto, as trustees foresaid, do hereby mutu- 
 ally exoner, acquit, and simjiliciter discharge each 
 other," &c.^ 
 
 The document from which the above extract 
 has been made, is, of itself, independently of all 
 the other evidence we have produced, conclusive 
 as to the utter groundlessness of what has so fre- 
 quently been said or insinuated, in the Life of Sir 
 Walter Scott, respecting the alleged pecuniary 
 '^ injury " which Scott is alleged to have sustained 
 in consequence of his connexion with Mr. James 
 Ballantyne ; and it is certainly very satisfactory 
 to find the accuser himself a party to such a deed ; 
 embodying, as it does, a formal contradiction of 
 all that he has since promulgated to the dispar- 
 agement of Mr. Ballantyne. The case, therefore, 
 may now be brought within a very narrow com- 
 pass. We are not aware that the representatives 
 of Sir Walter Scott would have felt disposed to 
 abandon claims which were capable of being 
 
 * This deed of mutual release is recorded in the Books of 
 Council and Session, under date the 5th of March, 1834. It 
 was prepared by Mr. Isaac Bayley, the professional agent of 
 the present Sir Walter Scott. 
 
THE PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 87 
 
 maintained, merely out of delicacy to particular 
 individuals ; and as to one of their number, Mr. 
 Lockhart, he is wholly free from any imputation 
 of having shown either respect for the feelings or 
 consideration for the interests of the representa- 
 tives and children of Mr. James Ballantyne, the 
 intimate and confidential friend of Sir Walter 
 Scott. But it has already been stated, and was 
 well known to Mr. Lockhart, that Mr. Ballantyne 
 had left property, realized subsequently to the 
 insolvency of 1826. If, therefore, he had con- 
 ceived that Sir Walter Scott's estate was likely to. 
 be benefited by going into a count and reckoning 
 with that of Mr. Ballantyne, we do not consider 
 it as any want of liberality to maintain, — and we 
 have no doubt we shall be generally borne out in 
 the opinion, — that Mr. Lockhart is the very last 
 man who would have been a party to the mutual 
 discharge or release to which his signature is 
 affixed. On the contrary, if a proper accounting 
 had been gone into between Sir Walter Scott's 
 representatives and those of Mr. James Ballan- 
 tyne, the latter, as we have alr'eady had occasion 
 to show, would have been able to establish a very 
 considerable claim against the former ; and of this 
 Mr. Lockhart could scarcely fail to be aware. 
 
 The facts, we think, speak for themselves. 
 That the printing establishment was a most pro- 
 fitable concern, had been placed beyond all doubt 
 by the profits realized from it since Sir Walter 
 Scott's insolvency, in 1826, and the property 
 
88 
 
 which Mr. Ballantyne acquired in the interval 
 between that period and the time of his death. 
 May it not, therefore, be fairly and legitimately 
 inferred, that if Mr. Ballantyne had previously 
 carried on the business upon his own account, 
 without having had Scott as a partner, and had 
 come under no engagemeyits for Sir JValter, he 
 would have realized proportional profits, and thus 
 left a large fortune to his family 7 This conclu- 
 sion appears to us to be a legitimate one. The 
 business before the bankruptcy was not less, but 
 greater than after it. What, then, became of the 
 profits, unless they were all absorbed by Scott, 
 minus only the expenses of Mr. Ballantyne's 
 fam'ily % James Ballantyne was ruined, and left 
 penniless. Sir Walter Scott, or, which comes to 
 the same thing, his creditors, must, therefore, have 
 got all. How this was effected, we have already 
 explained pretty fully. In purchases of land, 
 made contrary to every rule of prudence ; in 
 buildings, plantings, and improvements, carried 
 on with a total disregard of expense ; and in the 
 gratification of a -taste for splendid hospitality, 
 and articles of vertu^ habitually indulged, — were 
 employed the immense sums raised by means of 
 discounts obtained at the different banks, which 
 deprived Mr. Ballantyne of all hope of escape, 
 and in the end brought about his ruin. 
 
 Mr. Lockhart's repeated allusions to Mr. Bal- 
 lantyne's exterior manner, and to his alleged en- 
 joyment of the pleasures of the table, are in that 
 
DIFFERENCE WITH MR. CONSTABLE. 89 
 
 peculiar vein in which he dehghts to indulge, and 
 which we gladly and safely surrender to the judg- 
 ment of all honorable and right-hearted men. 
 Convinced, however, that Sir Walter Scott would 
 have been the very last man to hold up to ridicule 
 his intimate friend, however much he may have 
 joked on the subject in the bosom of his own 
 family, we beg, in taking leave of the topic, sim- 
 ply to ask, — Does Mr. Lockhart discharge his 
 duty to the memory of his illustrious connexion, 
 by doing that which Sir Walter, if alive, would 
 unquestionably have been bound, by every high- 
 minded and honorable feeling, to resent and repri- 
 mand as a personal affront to himself 7 
 
 Having thus disposed of the principal charges 
 against " the Ballantynes," and produced evi- 
 dence in refutation of every tangible assertion 
 made by Mr. Lockhart, we shall now advert to 
 some incidental matters, the account of which 
 betrays the same animus which we have already 
 had occasion to expose and reprehend. 
 
 And, first of ah, Mr. Lockhart, speaking of a 
 quarrel, or dispute, which took place in the year 
 1808 between Sir Walter and Messrs. Constable 
 and Hunter, and for a time interrupted Scott's 
 connexion with these gentlemen, proceeds to 
 say : — '' Mr. Constable had then for his partner 
 Mr. Alexander Gibson Hunter, afterwards Laird 
 of Blackness, to whose intemperate language, 
 much more than to any part of Constable's own 
 conduct, Scott ascribed this unfortunate aliena- 
 
90 DIFFERENCE WITH MR. CONSTABLE. 
 
 tion ; which, however, as well as most of my 
 friend's subsequent misadventures, / am inclined 
 to trace, in no small degree, to the influence which 
 a third person, hitherto unnamed [viz. Mr. John 
 Ballantyne], was about this time beginning to 
 exercise over the concerns of James Ballantyne." 
 {Life, vol. ii. pp. 195, 196.) Then follow several 
 pages of unsupported assertions and contemptible 
 personalities, intended to turn the Ballantynes 
 into ridicule, and render them objects of contempt 
 to the thoughtless and unreflecting, who take 
 their impressions on trust, and believe merely be- 
 cause it is written. But, happily, there exists a 
 document which will not only set this incident in 
 its true light, but show that, in regard to the quar- 
 rel between Scott and Constable, Mr. Lockhart 
 has drawn as freely on his imagination as in any 
 of the more pecuniary matters and transactions 
 we have had occasion to notice. We allude to a 
 Diary commenced by Mr. James Ballantyne in 
 the end of October, 1808, and continued till the 
 beginning of April, 1809, where the progress of 
 this afl'air is carefully noted down.^ 
 
 * It is a matter of deep regret to the family and connex- 
 ions of Mr. Ballantyne, that he did not persevere in the de- 
 sign he appears to have formed of keeping a regular Diary 
 of passing events. Such a record would have been highly 
 valuable ; and, from the fulness, distinctness, and accuracy, 
 with which the entries are made in the portion which he 
 actually executed, we are amply warranted in believing 
 that, if he had prosecuted his original intention, there would 
 
EXTRACTS FROM MR. BALLANTYNe's DIARY. 91 
 
 The first entry in reference to this matter is 
 dated November 11, 1808, and thus expressed : — 
 " This day distinguished by Mr. Scott's observa- 
 tion of a growing coohiess on the part of Con- 
 stable. In what will it terminate ? In this sacred 
 repository of my thoughts let me indulge in con- 
 jecture. This coolness I have long noticed." 
 Then follows the conjecture formed at the mo- 
 ment. " This coolness may arise either from 
 Constable's increasing political violence, and the 
 trammels, partly with his own consent, partly 
 without it, into which he is daily more and more 
 led by the Whig party ; or from his idea that Mr. 
 Scott makes his name too common, and therefore 
 too cheap, which will injure his edition of Swift ; 
 or from jealousy of Murray's visit, and appre- 
 hension of Mr. Scott's having contracted some 
 new literary engagement with him." After more 
 to the same purport, and some speculation how 
 far the coolness, if it issued in an open rupture, 
 might affect the printing-house, he concludes 
 thus : — " We owe, and we will pay, gratitude to 
 Mr. Constable for all the. acts of kindness he has 
 shown us, and will strive to retain his regard by 
 temper, patience, and respect." So, in his private 
 diary, writes James Ballantyne, — who, indeed, it 
 is evident, instead of any conceivable motive to 
 
 have been no occasion for making elaborate researches in 
 quest of materials to refute any slander that might be levelled 
 at his memory. • 
 
92 EXTRACTS FROM THIS DIARY CONTINUED. 
 
 foment this quarrel, had the strongest interest in 
 preventing and appeasing it. And we shall pres- 
 ently show, that it can as little be attributed to 
 the " influence exerted over his concerns," either 
 by John Ballantyne or any one else. 
 
 " December 5. — Was sent for by Constable in 
 the afternoon. Found him civil, and got a new 
 edition of Carleton to print. Hunter came in, 
 and becoming rude, not to me, but of my friends, 
 
 I left the room December 8. — Called on 
 
 Mr. Constable before dinner, and communicated 
 to him the plan of the ' Register.' He claimed 
 it as his own, asserting he had communicated it 
 to me on our journey from London in spring. I 
 strongly and truly denied all recollection of it. 
 Our conversation was civil, and we parted, to all 
 appearance, friends. His whole deportment was 
 calmer than I had expected. I consider all inter- 
 course betwixt us as nearly broken off"; but I re- 
 solve to show him all the friendship and regard he 
 will permit me to show him. Called on Mr. Scott, 
 
 and communicated all that had passed 
 
 December 9th. — Breakfasted with Mr. Scott, to 
 talk over further the ' Register,' and to commu- 
 nicate a letter from Mr. Constable, received the 
 night before, suggesting to me the propriety and 
 necessity of not bringing forth my Prospectus of 
 the ' Register,' as he knew he could bring to my 
 recollection his having imparted the plan to me 
 on our journey from London. Mr. Scott and I 
 agreed in thinking that, even if he could do so 
 
EXTRACTS FROM THIS DIARY CONTINUED. 93 
 
 (which I beUeved and was satisfied he could 
 not), it was nothing to the purpose ; for nothing 
 he could say to me respecting an intention exclu- 
 sively his own, could, in common sense, be expect- 
 ed to influence me either in one way or another. 
 
 I therefore wrote civilly in answer, and about 
 two o'clock published my Prospectus." 
 
 The next entry on this subject is dated the llth 
 December, and is in these terms : — " Called on 
 Mr. Jefl"rey, in consequence of his own desire, 
 and talked over the ' Register.' He was extremely 
 civil, approving the plan in general, and giving 
 several useful hints respecting the possibility of 
 improving it. Called afterwards on Mr. Scott, 
 communicating to him what Mr. Jeffrey had said. 
 While in the act of leaving him, a coach stopped 
 at the door, from which ahghted Mr. Constable. 
 Not wishing to meet him, I stepped into the 
 dining-room till he had passed into the library, 
 and then left the house. In the evening, in con- 
 sequence of a line from Mr. Scott, I waited on 
 him, and heard what had passed betwixt him 
 and Mr. Constable. The summary is shortly 
 this ; Mr. Scott spoke indignantly of the conduct 
 and language of Mr. Hunter towards him, ofl^ered 
 to relinquish the engagement respecting Swift, 
 and took every means to show Mr. Constable the 
 indignation he felt towards Hunter, for the liber- 
 ties he had taken with his literary character, and 
 the general deportment of their house. Respect- 
 ing Hunter, he said, '- Sir, he might as well have 
 
94 MR. lockhart's statement refuted. 
 
 taken a lighted candle through your warehouses 
 as have spoken as he has done of my literary 
 reputation. He talks of me as having made my 
 name cheap. For whom have I made it cheap ? 
 For yoUj sir, and for nothing. Did I not do 
 Hodgson, Carey, Carleton, &c. to serve you ; and 
 did I ever ask or receive any remuneration 7 Sir, 
 if Mr. Hunter had taken the same liberties with 
 my personal as he has done with my literary char- 
 acter, he should have heard from me in different 
 terms.' Mr. Constable seemed deeply distressed 
 — pressed that Swift might go on — offered money 
 for Mr. Scott's gratuitous labors — confessed Mr. 
 Hunter's rashness ; and so they parted. At this 
 meeting the ' Register ' became the subject of con- 
 versation. Mr. Constable expressed his resolution 
 to drop all ideas of rivalry, though not concealing 
 his dissatisfaction with me ; of which, of course, 
 Mr. Scott took little or no notice." 
 
 It is evident, from what we have quoted, that 
 the quarrel with Mr. Constable originated in the 
 rudeness of Mr. Hunter towards Sir Walter Scott ; 
 and it seems equally evident that Sir Walter 
 viewed it without regret. Though, by his own 
 confession, in a letter to Mr. Ellis {Life^ vol. ii. p. 
 215), he had charged a brace of '' bombs," in- 
 tended to burst on Constable's devoted head, he 
 had, nevertheless, the address, at the interview 
 described by Mr. Ballantyne in his Diary, to be- 
 come the accuser ; and appears to have played 
 the part so well, that the great bibliopole, with all 
 
MR. LOCKHART's statement REFUTED. 95 
 
 his shrewdness, conceded every thing; — "pressed 
 that Swift might go on — offered money for Mr. 
 Scott's gratuitous labors — confessed Mr. Hunter's 
 rashness ;" in a word, surrendered at discretion. 
 
 So far, therefore, from John Ballantyne having 
 been concerned in this quarrel, or instrumental in 
 provoking it, his name is not once mentioned in 
 James Ballantyne' s account of the affair, written 
 day by day during the period of its progress ; and 
 there is not a particle of evidence to sustain Mr. 
 Lockhart's allegation, that the misunderstanding 
 might be traced, in no small degree, to the influ- 
 ence which John was about this time beginning 
 to exercise over his brother's concerns. The real 
 influence lay in a different quarter. Sir Walter 
 was himself the first mover in every thing. Al- 
 though he represents himself to his friend Mr. 
 Ellis as only the " adviser " of James Ballantyne 
 in the matter of the " Register," it is notorious 
 that the work was projected by him, and that he 
 was a proprietor thereof; and it is equally certain, 
 that the scheme of starting " a new bookselling- 
 house in Edinburgh," which Mr. Lockhart ac- 
 knowledges to have been ''begun in the short- 
 sighted heat of pique on the part of Sir Walter," 
 was also exclusively his own, notwithstanding 
 that the matter is disguised in his correspondence. 
 How, then, are we to account for, or explain the 
 insinuations against John Ballantyne ? How, 
 with so many facts of this nature staring him in 
 the face, can Mr. Lockhart imagine that the 
 
96 MR. lockhart's account of 
 
 world will impute the misfortunes of the house of 
 James Ballantyne and Co. to any other than the 
 true cause, namely, the rash projects of Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott himself? 
 
 Mr. Lockhart gives an account of the memora- 
 ble affair of the Beacon newspaper, which involv- 
 ed Sir Walter in much discredit, and led event- 
 ually to a very melancholy catastrophe.^ " Mr. 
 Lockhart's account of this matter," says the Spec- 
 tator^ "is such as might be expected from his 
 own political spirit. He finds no fault with the 
 scheme for establishing a newspaper, whose ob- 
 ject was the most violent Tory partisanship : his 
 censure is directed against the blunders which 
 rendered the scheme abortive. This was, per- 
 
 * The event here alluded to is thus noticed by Mr. Lock- 
 hart ; — " The results were lamentable : the Beacon was made 
 the subject of Parliamentary discussion, from which the 
 then heads of Scotch Toryism did not escape in any very 
 consolatory plight ; but, above all, the Beacon bequeathed 
 its rancor and rashness, though notits ability, to a Glasgow 
 paper, of a similar form and pretensions, entitled the Sentinel. 
 By that organ the personal quarrels of the Beacon were 
 taken up and pursued with relentless industry ; and, finally, 
 the Glasgow editors disagreeing, some moment of angry 
 confusion betrayed a box of MSS., by which the late Sir 
 Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck was revealed as the writer 
 of certain truculent enough pasquinades. A leading Edin- 
 burgh Whig, who had been pilloried in one or more of these, 
 challenged Boswell; and the baronet fell, in as miserable a 
 quarrel as ever cost the blood of a high-spirited gentleman." 
 (Lt/e, vol. V. pp. 153, 154.) 
 
97 
 
 haps, to be expected. 'The Beacon,'' he says, 
 ' originated in the alarm with which the Edin- 
 burgh Tories contemplated the progress of Radi- 
 cal doctrines during the agitation of the Queen's 
 business in 1820, and the want of any adequate 
 counteraction on the part of ministerial newspa- 
 pers in the North. James Ballantyne had, on that 
 occasion, swerved from his banner^ and, by so do- 
 ing, given not a little offence to Scott. He ap- 
 proved, therefore, of the project of a new weekly 
 journal, to be conducted by some steadier hand; 
 and, when it was proposed to raise the requisite 
 capital for the speculation by private subscription, 
 expressed his willingness to contribute whatever 
 sum should be named by other gentlemen of his 
 standing.' Mr. Lockhart here treats James Bal- 
 lantyne with an injustice of which too many in- 
 stances have occurred in this work."^ His cen- 
 
 * " No part of Mr. Ballantyne's conduct," continues the 
 Spectator, "does him higher honor than the manly firmness 
 with which, Tory as he was, he refused to permit his jour- 
 nal to be prostituted to the mean objects of a faction, and 
 with which, notwithstanding his habitual respect and defer- 
 ence for Scott, he not only withstood his remonstrances and 
 frowns, but even saw him transfer his favor and support to 
 a newspaper established in express opposition to Ballan- 
 tyne's own. From an impartial biographer such conduct 
 would have drawn a willing tribute of admiration." The 
 same journal adds, " that it was the very steadiness of Bal- 
 lantyne's hand that rendered him obnoxious to the displeas- 
 ure of the Edinburgh Tories, and to that of one of the most 
 violent among them — Sir Walter Scott." 
 
yy REMARKS ON HIS ACCOUNT OF 
 
 sure of Mr, Ballantyne in this matter we hold to 
 be the very highest praise he could unwittingly 
 bestow on that gentleman. But, as usual, Mr. 
 Lockhart is inaccurate in his facts. The Beaco7i, 
 he says, was established because James Ballan- 
 tyne had swerved from his banner, and because 
 Sir Walter Scott wished for a journal to be con- 
 ducted by some steadier hand. But, if such was 
 Sir Walter's motive, it is curious that he should 
 have offered the editorship of the neiv journal to 
 his old friend, with a salary of no less than £500 
 a-year ; an offer, however, which Mr. Ballan- 
 tyne, to his infinite honor, refused to accept. His 
 pen was not that of a hireling, his integrity was 
 not to be bought. He may have been mistaken 
 in his views of certain public matters, but he was 
 ever honest and sincere ; nor could any consider- 
 ation induce him to swerve from what he believed 
 to be the truth. In several well-known instances 
 he gave the most convincing proofs of manly firm- 
 ness and independence of character ; and in the 
 particular case before us, his refusal to accept the 
 editorship of the Beacon — a fact which we state 
 upon undoubted authority — reflects the highest 
 honor on his memory. The nature of the con- 
 nexion which Mr. Ballantyne would have,formed) 
 had not his spirit and his principles secured him 
 against the possibility of ever making himself the 
 tool of a party, may easily be conjectured from 
 the following letter on the subject, which Scott 
 addressed to Mr. Croker, Secretary of the Admi- 
 
THE DEATH OF MRS. BALLANTYNE. 99 
 
 ralty, after the whole concern had been blown to 
 pieces : — 
 
 '' I had the fate of Cassandra in the Beacon 
 matter from beginning to end: I endeavored in 
 vain to impress on them the necessity of having 
 an editor who was really up to the business, and 
 could mix spirit with discretion, one of those 
 ' gentlemen of the press ' who understand the ex- 
 act lengths to which they can go in their voca- 
 tion. Then I wished them, in place of that bond, 
 to have each thrown down his hundred pounds, 
 and never inquired more about it ; and, lastly, I 
 exclaimed against the crown counsel being at all 
 concerned. In the two first remonstrances, I was 
 not listened to ; in the last I thought myself suc- 
 cessful, and it was not till long afterwards that I 
 heard they had actually subscribed the bond. 
 Then the hasty renunciation of the thing, as if we 
 had been doing something very atrocious, put me 
 mad altogether. The fact is, it is a blasted busi- 
 ness, and will continue long to have bad conse- 
 quences." 
 
 The only other matter which we deem of sufli- 
 cient importance to deserve particular notice, oc- 
 curs in the seventh and last volume of Mr. Lock- 
 hart's work. About the middle of February, 
 1829, Mr. Ballantyne had the irreparable misfor- 
 tune of losing, by fever, in the prime of life, and 
 under family circumstances pecuharly painful, a 
 most excellent and amiable wife, to whom he 
 was strongly attached. " With his domestic ha- 
 
 lofC. 
 
100 COOLNESS BETWEEN SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 bits," says Sir Walter Scott, in his Diary of the 
 17th of February, " the blow is irretrievable. 
 What can he do, poor fellow, at the head of such 
 a family of children ] I should not be surprised 
 if he were to give way to despair." He was, in 
 fact, overwhelmed with grief; but, so far from 
 giving way to despair, he, like a true Christian, 
 ^humbly applied for comfort and support at the 
 only Source of all lasting consolation. He was 
 not able to appear at his wife's funeral ; and this, 
 it seems, Scott viewed " with something more 
 than pity," which, we presume, means contempt 
 Mr. Ballantyne, however, rallied a little; and, 
 having made some settlement of his affairs, inti- 
 mated to Sir Walter his intention of retiring for a 
 few weeks to the country, there to straggle in 
 solitude with an overpowering sorrow. Let us 
 now hear Mr. Lockhart : — 
 
 " Ballantyne retired, accordingly, to some se- 
 questered place near Jedburgh, and there, indulg- 
 ing his grief in solitude, fell into a condition of 
 religious melancholy, from which, I think, he 
 never wholly recovered. Scott regarded this as 
 a weakness, and, in part at least, as wilful weak- 
 ness, and addressed to him several letters of 
 strong remonstrance and rebuke. I have read 
 them, but do not possess them, nor perhaps would 
 it have been proper for me to print them. In 
 writing of the case to myself, he says, ' I have a 
 sore grievance in poor Ballantyne' s increasing 
 lowness of heart, and I fear he is sinking rapidly 
 
AND MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. 101 
 
 into the condition of a religious dreamer. His 
 retirement from Edinburgh was the worst ad- 
 vised scheme in the world. I in vain reminded 
 him that when our Saviour himself was to be led 
 into temptation, the first thing the devil thought 
 of was to get him into the wilderness.' Ballan- 
 tyne, after a feio loeeks^ resumed his place in the 
 printing-office, but he addicted himself more and 
 more to what his friend considered as erroneous 
 and extravagant notions of religious doctrine ; 
 and I regret to say, that in this difference origi- 
 nated a certain alienation, not of affection, but of 
 confidence, which was visible to every near ob- 
 server of their subsequent intercourse. Towards 
 the last, indeed, they saw but little of each other. 
 I suppose, however, it is needless to add that, 
 down to the very last, Scott watched over Bal- 
 lantyne's interest with undiminished attention." 
 
 Perhaps it may be so ; but in this instance his 
 anxiety had reference, also, to his own affairs. 
 It has already been seen how necessary James 
 Ballantyne's critical emendations had become to 
 a writer whose compositions were thrown off with 
 such haste and rapidity. At this time the print- 
 ing-office was busily occupied with the novel 
 entitled Anne of Geierstein^ and Mr. Ballantyne 
 could ill be spared. His absence, indeed, was a 
 serious inconvenience to Scott ; and, with all re- 
 spect for the latter, we believe that Mr. Ballan- 
 tyne's opinions on religious doctrine, — in which 
 there was neither extravagance nor " dreaming," 
 
 E^ 
 
102 COOLNESS BETWEEN SIR WALTER SCOTT 
 
 — would have caused him much less uneasiness 
 had not that gentleman thus withdrawn himself 
 for a time from business, to indulge and thereby 
 subdue the grief by which he was overwhelmed. 
 Sir Walter, in his Diary, April 18th, says, — " I 
 find J. B. has not returned to his business, though 
 I wrote to say how necessary it was. Mij pity 
 begins to give way to anger. I have written to 
 him letter third, and, I am determined, last." 
 Mr. Ballantyne, however, did return to his busi- 
 ness, with his faculties unimpaired, and his feel- 
 ings, which had received so deep a wound, com- 
 posed ; — he did not subside into the condition of 
 a religious dreamer, as Sir Walter had feared ; — 
 and, notwithstanding all he had suffered, his fidel- 
 ity, watchful affection, and unequalled services, 
 never failed Scott, either upon this or any other 
 occasion. His opinion, indeed, of the work then 
 in progress (^Anne of Geie?^stein) was but too 
 faithfully given : and, in whatever may have 
 originated the " alienation " alluded to in the pre- 
 ceding extract and in the following correspond- 
 ence, the disapprobation Mr. Ballantyne felt him- 
 self compelled to express regarding this novel and 
 those which succeeded it, added to the more mo- 
 derate tone which he had adopted in politics, — 
 coming upon Scott, too, at a time when his own 
 health and spirits were very indifferent, — contri- 
 buted largely, Ave have no doubt, to increase the 
 feeling ; till, on Sir Walter's part, it became a set- 
 lied coolness towards his old friend, which lasted 
 during the short remainder of his life. 
 
AND MR. JAMES BALLANTYNE. 103 
 
 Of this breach between Sir Walter Scott and 
 himself, Mr. Ballantyne, in writing to Mr. Lock- 
 hart shortly before his death, had spoken ; and, 
 as a curious contrast to the tone assumed by the 
 latter gentleman in the work which has called 
 forth these strictures, we shall insert here his re- 
 ply to that and another letter from Mr. Ballan- 
 tyne, written about the same time. 
 
 " London, JYov. 1, 1832. 
 " My Dear Sir, 
 
 " If any feeling had really existed of the na- 
 ture which your letter begins with mentioning, 
 that most touching^ most manly letter would have 
 been a thousand times m,ore than enough to do 
 aivay loith it for ever. I can, however, speak for 
 myself, that, though I did observe a certain dif- 
 ference in your relations with your dear friend 
 Sir Walter, I never even for one moment dreamed 
 that any thing had occurred to disturb the old^ 
 genial feelings which had through your lives 
 been equally marked in both of you as friends. 
 For two years before his death, Sir Walter Scott 
 was no longer, in all respects, the man of his 
 earlier days ; and I can perfectly understand, that 
 his political impressions should have been con- 
 veyed within that period in a style which would 
 not before have been possible for him. Let us 
 draw a veil over the infirmities of those few sad 
 and weary months, and now endeavor to think 
 of him only as he was when you and I so often 
 
104 CURIOUS DOCUMENTS. 
 
 shared together the dehghts of his friendship and 
 conversation. 
 
 '' Your Memoranda of him will be expected by 
 me as among the most precious materials for his 
 biography. You kncAV the man from a boy ; and 
 his literary life may be said to have been all in 
 your presence, even from the working of its small- 
 est springs. I earnestly hope your health may 
 soon be entirely re-established ; and I am joined 
 in this wish by all the members of my wife's 
 family (they are all at this moment here), as well 
 as in the expression of sincere regret that you 
 should have had the pain of writing such a letter 
 at such a time. 
 
 " Believe me truly and cordially yours, 
 
 (Signed) " J. G. Lockhart. 
 
 " James Ballantyne, Esq. Printer, Edinburgh." 
 
 Mr. Lockhart, having received the Memoranda 
 alluded to, again writes to Mr. Ballantyne in the 
 same '^ cordial" and affectionate manner : — 
 
 " London, December 6, 1832. 
 
 ^' My Dear Sir, 
 
 '' I have received your packet, and read with 
 infinite interest its precious contents. Your out- 
 line of your intercourse with Sir W. Scott is quite 
 sufficient to keep ins rigid as to some, most indeed, 
 of the literary epochs of his life. The anecdotes 
 interwoven and appended are even more vahia- 
 ble. Perhaps what you say as to his early felt 
 
EXEMPLIFIED. 105 
 
 superiority over all that came into contact with 
 his judgment, temper, and intellectual resources 
 generally, will be to posterity a most satisfactory 
 piece of evidence, how true that in him the boy- 
 was father to the man. I feel as if I had known 
 him in the days of Kelso, and the Tavern-club, 
 and the Stage-coach Journey. 
 
 ^^ I pray you to continue to draw on your inem- 
 ory for more and more of these invaluable details ; 
 and may your health, for this and a thousand 
 other good works to follow, be strengthened and 
 restored. 
 
 '' Ever yours, most sincerely, 
 (Signed) ''J. G. Lockhart. 
 
 " To James Ballantijne, Esq. Printer, Edinburgh." 
 
 " Trtdy and cordially yours ! " Are we, then, 
 to take as evidence of his '' cordiality " the man- 
 ner in which Mr. Lockhart has, throughout the 
 whole of his work, treated the memory of the 
 man whom he thus addresses ; — endeavoring to 
 stigmatise his habits, ridicule his person, and 
 blacken his character, by holding him up to the 
 world as a mere fanfaro?i, overblown with vanity, 
 pomposity, and gluttony — negligent, conceited, 
 and full of vain imaginations 7 Is it thus, we 
 ask, that Mr. Lockhart shows his regard for the 
 old and intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott, whom 
 he is also fain to claim as his own 1 Is it thus 
 that he usually adjusts his practice to his profes- 
 sions, and evinces his cordiality towards those 
 whom he honors with his friendship 7 
 
106 A CASE IN POINT. 
 
 But these letters require no commentary. They 
 are, as the reader will observe, filled with expres- 
 sions of regard for Mr. Ballantyne, and of grati- 
 tude for the important contribution he had made 
 towards the projected Memoirs of his illustrious 
 friend ; a contribution which Mr. Lockhart him- 
 self describes as quite sufficient to " keep him 
 right as to some, most indeed, of the literary 
 epochs '^ of Sir Walter's life. Yet, at the very 
 time when he was writing in these terms to 
 Mr. Ballantyne, then on his death-bed, and ex- 
 hausting his last energies in the labor of love he 
 had undertaken, Mr. Lockhart must have been 
 engaged in concocting those unjust, ungenerous, 
 and derogatory reflections, the refutation of which 
 has formed the subject of the present publication. 
 For the honor of Letters, we sincerely trust that 
 the duplicity here displayed is of but rare occur- 
 rence in the intercourse of literary men, and that 
 the cause of literature will not soon again be dis- 
 credited by such a humbling disclosure. 
 
 Finally, in taking a retrospect of all that we 
 have written, we confess our total inability to 
 reconcile with any principle known to us the 
 extraordinary animosity with which, from first to 
 last, the name of Ballant^me is pursued ; far less 
 to account for that unparalleled pertinacity of 
 misrepresentation which it has been our painful 
 task to expose in the course of this pamphlet. 
 But, in a recent volume of the (Quarterly Revmo^ 
 
A CASE IN POINT. 107 
 
 we are furnished with a theory on this subject, 
 which, as it is evidently the production of one 
 well acquainted with the principles of that species 
 of biography in which Mr. Lockhart excels, we 
 shall, without scruple, submit to the considera- 
 tion of our readers, as a fitting conclusion to 
 strictures which, from their very nature, could 
 scarcely assume a methodical form. The solution 
 in question is to be found in the introduction to a 
 review of the Memoirs of the Life of Sir James 
 Mackintosh, contained in that journal. 
 
 " Whether a man writes his own life or that of 
 some dear friend lately deceased, it is evident that 
 there must be such a favorable color spread over 
 the picture thdit its fidelity must be rather worse 
 than dubious ; for even in a court of law the evi- 
 dence of a party can only be admitted in the rare case 
 in which it shall be against himself Unfavorable 
 or discreditable circumstances are generally passed 
 over in silence ; or, if they should be of too much 
 notoriety to be wholly unnoticed, they are so 
 covered by the veil of partiality as hardly to be 
 
 recognized Nor is it with regard to the 
 
 principal subject only, that contemporaneous biog- 
 raphy, by a man's own or friendly hands, is 
 unsatisfactory ; many, and in some instances 
 almost all, of the secondary characters in the 
 drama of his life are still upon the stage. If the 
 writer should possess good-nature and delicacy, 
 these persons will probably be treated with insipid 
 or exaggerated complaisance — ^justly enough in 
 
APR 4 1904 
 
 108 CONCLUSION. 
 
 one respect: being brought involimtarily before 
 the "public as mere subordinates to the principal 
 figure, it would be cruel to treat them otherwise 
 than civilly ; and the keejjing of the picture for- 
 bids their being treated with more than civility. 
 But, on the other hand, if the pen happens to be 
 caustic^ and the hero of the book has had much deal- 
 ings with mankind^ it is almost impossible that 
 there should not supervene a great deal of preju- 
 dice and consequent misrej^resentation ; so that, 
 what between cautious good-breeding on the one 
 hand, and rivalry and scandal on the other, the 
 secondary characters of a contemporaneous biogra- 
 phy are^ in general^ still less justly delineated than 
 the hero himself^ — and, upon the whole, we feel 
 corroborated in our doubts whether the very best 
 of this species of biography can be considered in 
 any higher light than a romance of real life — a 
 picture of which the principal figure must be con- 
 siderably flattered, and every thing else sacri- 
 ncED TO its prominence and effect.'' 
 
 Quara temere in nosmet legem sanciinus iniquam ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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