Scott said in taking farewell of his work—
Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel Harp!
Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway,
And little reck I of the censure sharp
May idly cavil at an idle lay.
Much have I owed thy strains on life’s long way,
Through secret woes the world has never known,
When on the weary night dawn’d wearier day,
And bitterer was the grief devour’d alone,
That I o’erlive such woes, Enchantress! is thine own.
He had shown more of his heart than he cared to show, and passed the confession off with a quotation from Master Stephen, who deemed melancholy “a gentlemanly thing.”
Scott’s gains from The Lady of the Lake must have been considerable, though of course not nearly so great as the profits of a modern dealer in fustian novels. A prudent poet would have regarded the money as capital, and Scott, as we said, did place at least £9,000 in his Ballantyne companies. But it appears that the money was no sooner in than the profits were taken out again for the private expenditure of the partners.
“WAVERLEY”
It really seems that Scott often was deceived, or at least confused, as to the state of his commercial accounts. He used to write to John Ballantyne, his book-keeper, in the strain of an affectionate elder brother, imploring “dear John” to “have the courage to tell disagreeable truths to those whom you hold in regard,” “not to shut your eyes or blind those of your friends upon the actual state of business.” The advice was given in vain, says Lockhart, and he explains that Scott’s own conduct made his counsels of no avail. The Ballantynes could not inquire strictly into Scott’s “uncommercial expenditure,” because, while he was the only moneyed partner, they had “trespassed largely, for their own purposes, on the funds of the companies.” The same reason, namely that the money was not theirs, made it impossible for them to check Scott’s commercial expenditure on the publication of huge antiquarian volumes, exquisitely ill done by the many literary hangers-on for whom he wished to procure a livelihood. These piles of waste paper remained on the hands of his publishing company, which was also bearing the weight of that Old Man of the Sea, his Annual Register, irregularly published at a loss of £1,000 a year. Thus, although the excitements of the Peninsular and other wars did not prevent the public from buying Scott’s poetry largely, the Ballantyne companies went from one bank to another in search of accommodation, while Scott lived as joyously as La Fontaine’s grasshopper, in the summer weather of his genius.
In 1810 he showed the fragment of Waverley to James Ballantyne, who looked on it without enthusiasm. James was to Scott what the old housekeeper was to Molière, a touchstone of public taste; his remarks on the margins of Scott’s proof-sheets show that he was rather below the level of general ignorance, and rather more morally sensitive than the common prude of the period. He could throw cold water on Waverley, but could not restrain Scott from publishing Dr. Jamieson’s History of the Culdees, and Weber’s egregious “Beaumont and Fletcher.” Business looked so bad that in 1810 Scott entertained the notion of seeking a judicial office in India.
His next poem, Don Roderick—“this patriotic puppet show” he called it—he gave, since silver and gold he had none, as a subscription to the fund for ruined Portuguese. Scott, in Don Roderick, passed Sir John Moore over in silence, not because Moore was a Whig, but because Scott did not appreciate the much disputed strategy of that great soldier and good man. Neither Moore’s glorious death, nor his stand at Corunna, expiated, in Scott’s opinion, the disasters of his hurried retreat. It was at this time that his friend, Captain Fergusson, read The Lady of the Lake aloud, the sixth canto, to the men of his command, under artillery fire.
ABBOTSFORD