warm Conservatism, and his rather inadequate critical powers, he might
himself have become a Roman Catholic.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 47: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 328.]

[Footnote 48: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 47.]

[Footnote 49: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 34.]

[Footnote 50: Ibid., ix. 305.]

CHAPTER XV.

SCOTT IN ADVERSITY.

With the year 1825 came a financial crisis, and Constable began to
tremble for his solvency. From the date of his baronetcy Sir Walter
had launched out into a considerable increase of expenditure. He got
plans on a rather large scale in 1821 for the increase of Abbotsford,
which were all carried out. To meet his expenses in this and other
ways he received Constable's bills for "four unnamed works of
fiction," of which he had not written a line, but which came to exist
in time, and were called _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_,
_St. Ronan's Well_, and _Redgauntlet_. Again, in the very year before
the crash, 1825, he married his eldest son, the heir to the title, to
a young lady who was herself an heiress, Miss Jobson of Lochore, when
Abbotsford and its estates were settled, with the reserve of
10,000_l._, which Sir Walter took power to charge on the property for
purposes of business. Immediately afterwards he purchased a captaincy
in the King's Hussars for his son, which cost him 3500_l._ Nor were
the obligations he incurred on his own account, or that of his family,
the only ones by which he was burdened. He was always incurring
expenses, often heavy expenses, for other people. Thus, when Mr.
Terry, the actor, became joint lessee and manager of the Adelphi
Theatre, London, Scott became his surety for 1250_l._, while James
Ballantyne became his surety for 500_l._ more, and both these sums had
to be paid by Sir Walter after Terry's failure in 1828. Such
obligations as these, however, would have been nothing when compared
with Sir Walter's means, had all his bills on Constable been duly
honoured, and had not the printing firm of Ballantyne and Co. been so
deeply involved with Constable's house that it necessarily became
insolvent when he stopped. Taken altogether, I believe that Sir Walter
earned during his own lifetime at least 140,000_l._ by his literary
work alone, probably more; while even on his land and building
combined he did not apparently spend more than half that sum. Then he
had a certain income, about 1000_l._ a year, from his own and Lady
Scott'