t frightened him. In fact,
though his harsher judges are wrong in attributing to him any undue
haste to be rich, he certainly does seem to have been under a dread of
being poor; a dread no doubt not wholly intelligible and partly morbid
in a young man still under thirty-five, with brilliant literary and some
legal prospects, who had, independently of fees, literary or legal, a
secured income of about a thousand a year. He probably thought, and was
right in thinking, that the book trade was going to 'look up' to a
degree previously unknown; he seems throughout to have been under one of
those inexplicable attractions towards the Ballantynes which now and
then exist, as Hobbes says, 'in the greater towards the meaner, but not
contrary'; and perhaps there was another cause which has not been
usually allowed for enough. Good Christian and good-natured man as he
was, Scott was exceedingly proud; and though joining himself with
persons of dubious social position in mercantile operations seems an odd
way of pride, it had its temptations. I do not doubt but that from the
first Scott intended, more or less vaguely and dimly, to extend the
printing business into a publishing one, and so to free himself from any
necessity of going cap-in-hand to publishers.

However, for good or for ill,--I think it was mainly for ill,--for this
reason or for that, the partnership was formed, at first indirectly by
way of loan, then directly by further advance on security of a share in
the business, and finally so that Scott became, though he did not
appear, the leading partner. And the very first letter that we have of
his about business shows the fatal flaw which he, the soul of honour,
seems never to have detected till too late, if even then. The scheme for
an edition of Dryden was already afloat, and the first editor proposed
was a certain Mr. Foster, who 'howled about the expense of printing.' 'I
still,' says Scott to Ballantyne, 'stick to my answer that _I know
nothing of the matter_, but that, settle it how he and you will, _it
must be printed by you or be no concern of mine. This gives you an
advantage in driving the bargain._' Perhaps; but how about the advantage
to Mr. Foster of being advised by Ballantyne's partner to employ
Ballantyne, while he was innocent of the knowledge of the identity of
partner and adviser, and was even told that Scott 'knew nothing of the
matter'?

Even before the quarrel which soon occurred with Constable estab