tancy:--

"O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light, quivering aspen made,--
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou."

The sale of "Marmion" ultimately reached fifty thousand copies in Great
Britain. The poem was originally published in a luxurious quarto at
thirty-one and a-half shillings. Besides one thousand guineas in
advance, half the profits went to Scott, and must have reached several
thousand pounds,--a great sale, when we remember that it was confined to
libraries and people of wealth. In America, the poem was sold for two or
three shillings,--less than one-tenth of what it cost the English
reader. A successful poem or novel in England is more remunerative to
the author, from the high price at which it is published, than in the
United States, where prices are lower and royalties rarely exceed ten
per cent. It must be borne in mind, however, that in England editions
are ordinarily very small, sometimes consisting of not more than two
hundred and fifty copies. The first edition of "Marmion" was only of two
thousand copies. The largest edition published was in 1811, of five
thousand copies octavo; but even this did not circulate largely among
the people. The popularity of Scott in England was confined chiefly to
the upper classes, at least until the copyright of his books had
expired. The booksellers were not slow in availing themselves of Scott's
popularity. They employed him to edit an edition of Swift for L1500, and
tried to induce him to edit a general edition of English poets. That
scheme was abandoned in consequence of a disagreement between Scott and
Murray, the London publisher, as to the selection of poets.

I think the quarrels of authors eighty or one hundred years ago with
their publishers were more frequent than they are in these times. We
read of a long alienation between Scott and Constable, the publisher,
who enjoyed a sort of monopoly of the poet's contributions to
literature. Constable soon after found a great rival in Murray, who was
at this time an obscure London bookseller in Fleet Street. Both these
great publishers were remarkable for sagacity, and were bold in their
ventures. The foundation of Constable's wealth was laid when he was
publishing the Edinburgh Review. In 1809, Murray started the Quarterly
Review, its great political rival, with the aid of Scott, who w