, the very last man in the world who could, under such
circumstances, have been a serviceable agent. Moreover, John, too, had
his professional ambition: he was naturally proud of his connection,
however secondary, with the publication of these works--and this
connection, though subordinate, was still very profitable; he must
have suspected, that should his name disappear altogether from the
list of booksellers, it would be a very difficult matter for him to
retain any concern in them; and I cannot, on the whole, but consider
it as certain that, the first and more serious embarrassments being
overcome, he was far from continuing to hold by his patron's anxiety
for the total abolition of their unhappy copartnership. He, at all
events, unless when some sudden emergency arose, flattered Scott's own
gay imagination, by uniformly representing everything in the most
smiling colors; and though Scott, in his replies, seldom failed to
introduce some passing hint of caution--such as "_Nullum numen abest
si sit prudentia_"--he more and more took home to himself the
agreeable cast of his _Rigdum's_ anticipations, and wrote to him in a
vein as merry as his own;--_e. g._--"As for our stock,

"'T will be wearing awa', John,
Like snaw-wreaths when it's thaw, John," etc., etc., etc.

I am very sorry, in a word, to confess my conviction that John
Ballantyne, however volatile and light-headed, acted at this period
with cunning selfishness, both by Scott and by Constable. He well knew
that it was to Constable alone that his firm had more than once owed
its escape from utter ruin and dishonor; and he must also have known,
that had a fair straightforward effort been made for that purpose,
after the triumphant career of the Waverley series had once commenced,
nothing could have been more easy than to bring all the affairs of his
"back-stock," etc., to a complete close, by entering {p.110} into a
distinct and candid treaty on that subject, in connection with the
future works of the great Novelist, either with Constable or with any
other first-rate house in the trade. But John, foreseeing that, were
that unhappy concern quite out of the field, he must himself subside
into a mere clerk of the printing company, seems to have parried the
blow by the only arts of any consequence in which he ever was an
adept. He appears to have systematically disguised from Scott the
extent to which the whole Ballantyne concern had been sustained by
Constable