“An Historical Enquiry respecting the Harp in the Highlands of Scotland” should find its proper place here, though not in any way connected with Scott. It has the date 1807, and was printed at Paul’s Work for Constable.
Mr. John Murray, in a letter to Constable, bears this early and remarkable testimony to the worth of James Ballantyne as a printer:
“June 6, 1807.—I am quite delighted with the appearance of Mr. Gunn’s work upon the Harp, which is a splendid and honourable specimen of Scotch typography, which I think cannot be surpassed in Britain. I showed the book to Mr. Wright, a printer who stands foremost in the second class, and he admired and praised it greatly, and said that he thought that Ballantyne’s general style of printing was superior to that of any other printer, and that it was a matter of nicety if Bentley and Bulmer exceeded him even occasionally.”[16]
“Marmion” was begun in 1807 and published in February 1808, as a splendid quarto volume, price one guinea and a half. Of this work 4000 copies were printed in the year of its publication, 6000 in the year following, and prior to 1836 as many as 50,000 in all.
In April 1808 William Miller of Albemarle Street published an edition of the Works of John Dryden in eighteen volumes. This was edited by Scott and printed at the Ballantyne Press. The speculation was considered a bold one at the time, but it must have been a success, as the entire work was reprinted in 1821.
“Queenhoo Hall,” in four volumes, Carleton’s “Memoirs of the War of the Spanish Succession,” and the “Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth,” published in 1808, also Sadler’s “Life and State Papers,” three volumes quarto, published in 1809, followed by the Somers Tracts, in thirteen volumes quarto, were all edited by Scott, and printed by Ballantyne.
In May 1810 there appeared “The Lady of the Lake,” perhaps the most popular of all Scott’s poems. The first edition was in quarto, and the second in octavo; and the successive editions, as in the case of “Marmion,” amounted in 1836 to 50,000 copies.
The “Poetical Works of Miss Seward,” in three volumes, with a Prefatory Memoir by Scott, was published from Paul’s Work in the autumn of 1810. This was one of the unfortunate speculations of Scott, and the unsaleable stock had afterwards to be taken over by Constable at a ruinous loss.[17] “It is most curious,” says Professor Saintsbury, “how Scott, the shrewdest and sanest of men in the vast majority of affairs, seems to have lost his head whenever books or lands were concerned.”
In 1810 were also issued the two first volumes of the Edinburgh Annual Register, in the production of which Scott largely aided. James Ballantyne was editor, and other contributors included the poet Southey, Professor Leslie, the “Man of Feeling,” and William Erskine.