In his nineteenth year while still apprenticed to his father, Scott fell in love with Margaret, daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane Stuart Belches of Ivernary. For some reason, most probably the difference in their social position, the hope that he might one day marry her was, six years later, definitely abandoned. Shortly afterward, during a visit to the English lakes, Scott met Miss Margaret Carpenter, or Charpentier, the daughter of a French royalist who had fallen a victim to the excesses of the French Revolution. This lady he married on Christmas eve, 1797, and her affectionate thoughtfulness contributed much to the happiness of his life. She died in 1826, leaving two sons and two daughters, the elder of whom married J. G. Lockhart, the translator of the Spanish Ballads.

In 1799 Scott was appointed to the office of Sheriff depute of Selkirk, which secured him an annual salary of £300. The duties of the office were very slight, and the income relieved him from any anxiety as to the chances either of his profession or his pen. In 1806 he was appointed one of the clerks of session (on the retirement of Mr. Home), with the understanding that he should not receive the salary (£800 per annum) until after Mr. Home's death, which did not take place for more than five years afterward. When Scott obtained this situation, he gave up his practice at the bar, and at once decided that literature should thereafter form the main business of his life. His first real literary success was his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, published in 1802. To the old ballads, the collected results of many years of research, Scott added a few new ones of his own composition, written in imitation of the old. The edition was at once exhausted, and Scott suddenly found himself famous.

He was living now in a cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, six miles from Edinburgh. Scott had made the dining table with his own hands, and was very proud of his various exploits in carpentering. Here he used to sit up late, and work far into the morning hours; but this gave rise to serious headaches, which induced him to change his habits of life.

In 1804 Scott quitted Lasswade for Ashestiel, in Selkirkshire, where he lived in a house belonging to his cousin. Here he began his life of sport. He would rise at five and work steadily till breakfast; by noon he had finished his day's work, and was ready to ride forth with dog and gun or fishing tackle. Salmon spearing by torchlight was a favorite amusement with him. His dogs and horses he treated as personal friends. On the death of his deerhound Samp, he refused an invitation to dinner, giving as his reason "the death of an old

friend."

In 1805 his first great poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, was completed, and forty-four thousand copies were sold before 1830. For this work Scott received £769, a large sum in those days. In 1808 Marmion was published. It was the success of the Lay which produced Marmion. It is said that Scott received £1000 from his publisher for this poem before he had written a line of it. The popularity of Marmion in turn encouraged him to another attempt in the same vein, and in 1810 he published The Lady of the Lake.

Five years earlier he had formed a secret partnership with James Ballantyne, already mentioned, and had embarked in the printing business. In order to keep his presses supplied with work, he soon after founded, with John Ballantyne, a publishing house; neither John Bal

lantyne nor Scott was a business man, and the business was unprofitable almost from the start.

66

Meanwhile he removed to Abbotsford on the Tweed, where he bought a hundred acres of land, to which property he soon added the adjoining farms. He says, We had twenty-five cartloads of the veriest trash in nature, besides dogs, pigs, ponies, poultry, cows, and calves." The ruins of Melrose Abbey could be seen from the grounds, which had, in fact, once belonged to the abbot. Shortly after he was offered the laureateship, an honor which he declined.

Up to this time Scott's literary fame depended entirely on his poetry, but in 1814 his first novel, Waverley, took the reading world by storm. The story was published anonymously, and for many years the secret of the author's identity was preserved. The great publishers of London and Edinburgh vied with each other in their efforts to buy a share in Waverley, and the series of novels which followed it. They were finally sold to Constable, but by the terms of sale that publisher was required to buy at the same time a large part of the stock of John Ballantyne & Co., the luckless publishing house in which Scott was a shareholder. The purchase of so much of the stock of the old concern seriously impaired Constable's working capital, and the new firm faced the future burdened with debts, largely to the printing-house of James Ballantyne & Co., in which business also Scott was a stockholder.

The remarkable success of Waverley was, however, followed by a series of no less remarkable successes. Guy Mannering was published in 1815, The Antiquary, The Black Dwarf, and Old Mortality in 1816, Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian in 1818, Ivanhoe in 1820, and

Kenilworth in 1821, all of which attained a large measure of popular favor.

On the 31st of March, 1820, Scott was created a baronet by King George IV. At the time the honor was conferred the king observed to the poet, "I shall always reflect with pleasure on Sir Walter Scott's having been the first creation of my reign." Scott had already been elected President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and seemed almost beyond the reach of adverse fortune. Five years later the crash came. In the commercial excitement of 1825-1826 the house of Constable & Co. was declared bankrupt. The printing firm of James Ballantyne & Co. held Constable's notes for large sums, and it soon became necessary for Scott and his partner to declare their inability to meet their business obligations. In this same year Scott's wife, who had long been an invalid, died, and he himself began to fail in health.

These were blows enough to daunt most men; perhaps the blow to his pride was the heaviest. He says in his diary: "I felt rather sneaking as I came home from the Parliament House- felt as if I were liable monstrari digito in no very pleasant way. But this must be borne cum cæteris; and, thank God, however uncomfortable, I do not feel despondent."

No; Scott came of a line of fighting ancestors, and he was not one to sit down tamely under difficulties. This misfortune was the touchstone of his character, and brought out all its beauty and generosity. He might have declared himself bankrupt, and have risen again with debts partly paid off; but "for this," he says, "in a court of honor I should deserve to lose my spurs. No; if they permit me, I will be their vassal for life, and dig in the mine of my imagination to find dia

monds to make good my engagements, not to enrich myself."

As soon as his situation became public, it caused one universal burst of sympathy, and incredible offers of assistance were made to Scott. When the Earl of Dudley heard of his failure, he exclaimed: "Scott ruined! the author of Waverley ruined! Why, let every man to whom he has given months of delight, give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than a Rothschild."

Scott's liabilities were about £117,000. Two days after the failure he unreservedly assigned the whole of his property to his creditors, together with all his future labors. He then sat down at fifty-five years of age to the task of redeeming this enormous debt. In the first place, he sold his furniture and house in Edinburgh, and took a humble lodging in a side street. During the vacations, when living at Abbotsford, he almost entirely gave up seeing company-a resolution the more easily carried into effect as Lady Scott was no longer living. "I have been rash," he writes in his diary, "in anticipating funds to buy land; but then I made from £5000 to £10,000 a year, and land was my temptation. I think nobody can lose a penny by me, that is one consolation. My children are provided for: thank God for that! I was to have gone home on Saturday to see my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is foolish, but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have put down. Poor things! I must get them kind masters." Again he writes in a more cheerful strain: “I experience a sort of determined pleasure in confronting the very worst aspect of this sudden reverse; in standing,