planning rooms,
working away at _Rokeby_ and _Triermain_ in the general sitting-room of
the makeshift house, with hammering all about him (now, the hammer and
the pen are perhaps of all manual implements the most deadly and
irreconcilable foes!), corresponding with all sorts and conditions of
men; furnishing introductions and contributions (in some cases never yet
collected) to all sorts and conditions of books, and struggling, as best
he saw his way, though the way was unfortunately not the right one, with
the ever-increasing difficulties of Ballantyne & Company. I forget
whether there is any evidence that Dickens consciously took his humorous
incarnation of the duties of a 'Co.' from Scott's own experience. But
Scott as certainly had to provide the money, the sense, the good-humour,
and the rest of the working capital as Mark Tapley himself. The merely
pecuniary part of these matters may be left to the next chapter; it is
sufficient to say that, aggravated by misjudgment in the selection and
carrying out of the literary part, it brought the firm in 1814
exceedingly near the complete smash which actually happened ten years
later. One is tempted to wish that the crash had come, for it was only
averted by the alliance with Constable which was the cause of the final
downfall. Also, it would have come at a time when Scott was physically
better able to bear it; it could hardly in any degree have interfered
with the appearance of _Waverley_ and its followers; and it would have
had at least a chance of awakening their author to a sense of the double
mistake of engaging his credit in directly commercial concerns, and of
sinking his money in land and building. However, things were to be as
they were, and not otherwise.

How anxious Constable must have been to recover Scott (Hunter, the stone
of stumbling, was now removed by death) is evident from the mere list of
the titles of the books which he took over in whole or part from the
Ballantynes. Even his Napoleonic audacity quailed before the _Edinburgh
Annual Register_, with its handsome annual loss of a thousand a year, at
Brewster's _Persian Astronomy_, in 4to and 8vo, and at _General Views of
the County of Dumfries_. But he saddled himself with a good deal of the
'stock' (which in this case most certainly had not its old sense of
'assets'), and in May 1813, Scott seems to have thought that if John
Ballantyne would curb his taste for long-dated bills, things might go
well. Un