24] From March to May 1819 he had a series of attacks of the cramp, so
violent that he once took solemn leave of his children in expectation of
decease, that the eccentric Earl of Buchan forced a way into his
bedchamber to 'relieve his mind as to the arrangements of his funeral,'
and that he entirely forgot the whole of the _Bride_ itself. This, too,
was the time of his charge to Lockhart (_Familiar Letters_, ii. 38), as
to his successor in Tory letters and politics--

'Take thou the vanguard of the three,
And bury me by the bracken-bush
That grows upon yon lily lee.'

[25] It has always struck me that the other form of the legend
itself--that in which the 'open window' suggests that the bridegroom's
wounds were due to his rival--has far greater capabilities.

[26] Said to embody certain mental peculiarities of that ingenious
draughtsman, but rather unamiable person, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.

[27] He had said in a letter to Terry, as early as November 20, 1822,
that he feared _Peveril_ 'would smell of the apoplexy.' But he made no
definite complaint to any one of a particular seizure, and the date,
number, and duration of the attacks are unknown.

CHAPTER V

THE DOWNFALL OF BALLANTYNE & COMPANY

_Redgauntlet_, it has been said, was the last novel on the full scale
before the downfall of Scott's prosperity. But before this he had begun
_The Life of Napoleon_ and _Woodstock_, and, in June 1825, had published
the _Tales of the Crusaders_, which contain some work almost, if not
quite, equal to his best, and which obtained at first a greater
popularity than their immediate predecessors. It was, and generally is,
held that _The Betrothed_, the earlier of the two, was saved by _The
Talisman_; and there can be no doubt that this latter is the better.
Contrary to the wont of novelists, Scott was at least as happy with
Richard here as he had been in _Ivanhoe_, and though he owed a good deal
in both to the presentation of his hero in the very interesting romance
published by his old secretary Weber,--one of the best of all the
English verse romances and the first English poem to show a really
English patriotism,--he owed nothing but suggestion. The duel at the
Diamond in the Desert is admittedly one of the happiest things of the
kind by a master in that kind, and if the adventures in the chapel of
Engedi are both a little farcical and a little 'apropos of nothing in
particular,' the story now