On the whole Scott could be patient, he knew that his copyrights and library were valuable enough to secure all his creditors from ultimate loss. But to avoid loss by the hurried sale of copyrights, he obtained a guarantee for £4,000 from his friend and chief, the Duke of Buccleuch, backed, it seems, by Messrs. Longman. At the same time he declined an offer of the Poet Laureateship—vacant by the death of Pye—from the Prince Regent. He supposed that the Laureateship was worth three or four hundred pounds annually, a mistake. But as he held two other offices, the Clerkship and Sheriffship, he deemed it wrong to take the money, and secured the office for Southey, who lived solely by his pen. Another motive, felt by Scott and urged by the Duke of Buccleuch, was the ridicule which then was attached to the bays, and the necessity of writing a Birthday Ode every year. The Regent removed that obsolete necessity, and Southey, despite one famous error, redeemed the honour of the laurels, next held by Wordsworth, and then by Tennyson. “Sir Walter’s conduct,” Southey said, “was, as it always was, characteristically generous, and in the highest degree friendly.”
Thus in temper, in generosity, and in determination that no man should be a loser by him, we see Scott at his best, while in the sanguine hopefulness which led him to go on buying land, books, and old armour, during the crisis, we mark the cause of his final misfortunes; and, in his ceaseless industry
Sir Walter Scott and His Friends.
From the painting by Thomas Faed, R.A.
LAUREATESHIP
during these distractions, we note the courageous perseverance by which he saved his honour at the expense of his life. Through his financial troubles he worked doggedly at his Edition and Life of Swift, and began The Lord of the Isles, though already he was the butt of every bore, and the host of tedious uninvited guests, “the thieves of time.” Simultaneously, he was assisting Maturin and other literary strugglers with money, his constant practice. But he did cause the Income Tax collectors to “abandon their claim upon the produce of literary labour.” Lockhart chronicles this fact “in case such a demand should ever be renewed hereafter!”
It is renewed, of course, and with perfect justice. What Scott resisted was double taxation of literary earnings, first under the property tax, next, yearly, under the Income Tax. He must not first be taxed on the full price, say, of Marmion, as income, and then again yearly on the interest of the price.[6]