s a curious fact, noted by
Lockhart, that many of Scott's senses were blunt; he could scarcely,
for instance, tell one wine from another by the taste, and once sat
quite unconscious at his table while his guests were manifesting extreme
uneasiness over the approach of a too-long-kept haunch of venison, but
his sight was unusually keen, as his hunting exploits proved. His little
son once explained his father's popularity by saying that "it was him
that commonly saw the hare sitting." What with hunting, fishing,
salmon-spearing by torchlight, gallops over the hills into the Yarrow
country, planting and transplanting of his beloved trees, Scott's life
at Ashestiel, during the hours when he was "his own man," was a very
full and happy one.

Unfortunately, he had already embarked in an enterprise which was
destined to overthrow his fortunes just when they seemed fairest. While
at school in Kelso he had become intimate with a school fellow named
James Ballantyne, and later, when Ballantyne set up a small printing
house in Kelso, he had given him his earliest poems to print. After the
issue of the _Border Minstrelsy_, the typographical excellence of which
attracted attention even in London, he set Ballantyne up in business in
Edinburgh, secretly entering the firm himself as silent partner. The
good sale of the _Lay_ had given the firm an excellent start; but more
matter was presently needed to feed the press. To supply it, Scott
undertook and completed at Ashestiel four enormous tasks of
editing--the complete works of Dryden and of Swift, the Somers' Tracts,
and the Sadler State Papers. The success of these editions, and the
subsequent enormous sale of Scott's poems and novels, would have kept
the concern solvent in spite of Ballantyne's complete incapacity for
business, but in 1809 Scott plunged recklessly into another and more
serious venture. A dispute with Constable, the veteran publisher and
bookseller, aggravated by the harsh criticism delivered upon _Marmion_
by Francis Jeffrey, editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, Constable's
magazine, determined Scott to set up in connection with the Ballantyne
press a rival bookselling concern, and a rival magazine, to be called
the _Quarterly Review_. The project was a daring one, in view of
Constable's great ability and resources; to make it foolhardy to madness
Scott selected to manage the new business a brother of James Ballantyne,
a dissipated little buffoon, with about as much bus