while the sufferer is strong and young--almost
exhilarating, with a glee in the relief and the power to surmount every
difficulty, and a faith strengthened by numberless examples of the
certainty--however dark things might seem up to the very last moment--of
bursting through, with an exquisite sensation of success, the hardest
coil of circumstance. But as Scott grew older these obstacles grew
stronger; he could not put sense or prudence into the heads of his
colleagues, and it was hard to teach himself, the most liberal, the most
hospitable and princely of entertainers, those habits of frugality which
are never harder to learn than by a Scots gentleman of the ancient
strain accustomed to keep open house. I do not think it has ever been
acknowledged that there is in this desperate struggle to keep afloat a
certain intoxication of its own. To foil your pursuers, your enemies,
whether they take the form of armed assailants or of pressing creditors,
by ever another and another daring combination, by sudden reliefs
unthought of, by a bold _coup_ executed at the very moment when the
crisis seems inevitable, by all the happy yet desperate chances of
warfare, has a fascination in it which no one could conceive as
attending a sordid struggle for money. The pursuit becomes exciting,
breathless, in proportion as it becomes desperate. Sometimes, when all
the stars in their courses have seemed to be fighting against the
combatant, a sudden aid like the very interposition of heaven will bring
him safety; and a confidence in this interposition takes possession of
him. He does not see how deliverance can come, but it will come. His
labouring breast strains, his brain whirls, he is at his last gasp: when
all at once the heart leaps up in his bosom, the wheels in his head
stand still, a flash of satisfaction comes over him. Once more and once
more, again and again, at the last gasp of the struggle he is saved.

No doubt something of this was in the long and desperate fight which
Scott waged with the creditors of the Ballantynes, who were also his
own. The worst of the struggle is that it almost legalises a prodigality
which to men always fixed on solid ground would be impossible. The
conviction that the money will come somehow, added to the still more
intoxicating conviction that this somehow depends oftenest upon your own
unrivalled power of work, and the confidence which all men have in you,
permits, almost sanctions, a yielding to pers