nt
train. And all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever done
before."[29] The illustration of this true confidence between Scott
and his servants and labourers might be extended to almost any length.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 6.]

[Footnote 26: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iv. 3.]

[Footnote 27: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 238--242.]

[Footnote 28: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 218.]

[Footnote 29: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 170.]

CHAPTER IX.

SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES.

Before I make mention of Scott's greatest works, his novels, I must
say a few words of his relation to the Ballantyne Brothers, who
involved him, and were involved by him, in so many troubles, and with
whose name the story of his broken fortunes is inextricably bound up.
James Ballantyne, the elder brother, was a schoolfellow of Scott's at
Kelso, and was the editor and manager of the _Kelso Mail_, an
anti-democratic journal, which had a fair circulation. Ballantyne was
something of an artist as regarded "type," and Scott got him therefore
to print his _Minstrelsy of the Border_, the excellent workmanship of
which attracted much attention in London. In 1802, on Scott's
suggestion, Ballantyne moved to Edinburgh; and to help him to move,
Scott, who was already meditating some investment of his little
capital in business other than literary, lent him 500l. Between this
and 1805, when Scott first became a partner of Ballantyne's in the
printing business, he used every exertion to get legal and literary
printing offered to James Ballantyne, and, according to Mr. Lockhart,
the concern "grew and prospered." At Whitsuntide, 1805, when _The Lay_
had been published, but before Scott had the least idea of the
prospects of gain which mere literature would open to him, he
formally, though secretly, joined Ballantyne as a partner in the
printing business. He explains his motives for this step, so far at
least as he then recalled them, in a letter written after his
misfortunes, in 1826. "It is easy," he said, "no doubt for any friend
to blame me for entering into connexion with commercial matters at
all. But I wish to know what I could have done better--excluded from
the bar, and then from all profits for six years, by my colleague's
prolonged life. Literature was not in those days what poor Constable
has made it; and with my little capital I was too glad to make
commercially the