[14] James Ballantyne was the printer of Scott's books and his partner in the firm of James Ballantyne & Co., which failed in 1826, in consequence of being involved in the bankruptcy of the publishing house of Constable & Co., with which also Scott was connected.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Born in 1772, died in 1834; educated at Cambridge, but was not graduated; formed an unsuccessful scheme for a communistic settlement on the Susquehanna River, in Pennsylvania; married a sister of Southey's wife in 1795; published at Bristol a volume of poems in 1796; "The Ancient Mariner" in 1798; settled at Keswick with Southey and Wordsworth in 1800; lectured in London to fashionable audiences, becoming in 1816 the guest of Mr. Gillman, a London physician, at Highgate, where he spent the remainder of his life; published "Christabel" in 1816, "Aids to Reflection" in 1825, his "Literary Remains" appearing in 1836-39.
I
DOES FORTUNE FAVOR FOOLS?[15]
"Does Fortune favor fools? Or how do you explain the origin of the proverb, which, differently worded, is to be found in all the languages of Europe?"
This proverb admits of various explanations, according to the moods of mind in which it is used. It may arise from pity, and the soothing persuasion that Providence is eminently watchful over the helpless, and extends an especial care to those who are not capable of caring for themselves. So used, it breathes the same feeling as "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"—or the more sportive adage, that "the fairies take care of children and tipsy folk." The persuasion itself, in addition to the general religious feeling of mankind, and the scarcely less general love of the marvelous, may be accounted for from our tendency to exaggerate all effects that seem disproportionate to their visible cause, and all circumstances that are in any way strongly contrasted with our notions of the persons under them. Secondly, it arises from the safety and success which an ignorance of danger and difficulty sometimes actually assists in procuring; inasmuch as it precludes the despondence which might have kept the more foresighted from undertaking the enterprise, the depression which would retard its progress, and those overwhelming influences of terror in cases where the vivid perception of the danger constitutes the greater part of the danger itself. Thus men are said to have swooned and even died at the sight of a narrow bridge, over which they had ridden the night before in perfect safety, or at tracing the footmarks along the edge of a precipice which the darkness had concealed from them. A more obscure cause, yet not wholly to be omitted, is afforded by the undoubted fact that the exertion of the reasoning faculties tends to extinguish or bedim those mysterious instincts of skill, which, tho for the most part latent, we nevertheless possess in common with other animals.