sing on the paper; and when the _Quarterly_ was founded
in opposition he transferred his services to that. He edited a splendid
and admirably done issue of Dryden (1808) and another not quite so
thoroughly executed of Swift (1814), and his secret connection with the
Ballantynes induced him to do much other editing and miscellaneous work.
In the sad last years of his life he laboured with desperation at a
great _Life of Napoleon_, which was a success pecuniarily but not in
many other ways, produced the exquisite _Tales of a Grandfather_ on
Scottish history, and did much else. He even wrote plays, which have
very little merit, and, except abstract philosophy, there is hardly a
division of literature that he did not touch; for he composed a sermon
or two of merit, and his political pamphlets, the _Letters of Malachi
Malagrowther_, opposing what he thought an interference with Scottish
privileges in currency matters, are among the best of their kind.

His life was for many years a very happy one; for his marriage, if not
passionately, was fairly successful, he was extremely fond of his
children, and while his poems and novels began before he had fully
reached middle life to make him a rich man, his Sheriffship, and a
Clerkship of Session which was afterwards added (though he had to wait
some time for its emoluments), had already made him secure of bread and
expectant of affluence. From a modest cottage at Lasswade he expanded
himself to a rented country house at Ashestiel on the Tweed, having
besides a comfortable town mansion in Edinburgh; and when he was turned
out of Ashestiel he bought land and began to build at Abbotsford on the
same river. The estate was an ill-chosen and unprofitable one. The house
grew with the owner's fortunes, which, founded in part as they were on
the hardest and most honest work that author ever gave, were in part
also founded on the quicksand of his treacherous connection with men,
reckless, ill-judging, and, though perhaps not in intention dishonest,
perpetually trading on their secret partner's industry and fame. In the
great commercial crash of 1825, Constable, the publisher of most of the
novels, was involved; he dragged the Ballantynes down with him; and the
whole of Scott's fortune, except his appointments and the little
settled on his wife and children, was liable for the Ballantynes' debts.
But he was not satisfied with ruin. He must needs set to work at the
hopeless task of paying debts