Thus stood the "pure contents" of Abbotsford, when, in January, 1826, the failure of Messrs. Constable threw a gloom over Sir Walter's affairs. The eminent publisher had been one of his earliest friends. "Archie Constable," he once said, "was a good friend to me long ago, and I will never see him at a loss." The sums given by Mr. Constable for the copyright of Sir Walter's novels were nominally immense; but they were chiefly paid in bills, which were renewed as the necessities of the publisher increased, till, on his failure, Sir Walter found himself responsible for various debts, amounting to 102,000l. About this time Lady Scott died, and her loss was an additional affliction to him. Various modes of settlement were proposed to Sir Walter for the liquidation of these heavy debts; but, "like the elder Osbaldistone of his own immortal pages, considering commercial honour as dear as any other honour," he would only consent to payment in full; and, in the short space of six years, he paid off 60,000l. "by his genius alone; but he crushed his spirit in the gigantic struggle, or, in plain words, sacrificed himself in the attempt to repair his broken fortunes." He sold his house and furniture in Edinburgh, and, says Chambers, "retreated into a humble lodging in a second-rate street (St. David-street, where David Hume had formerly lived.)" He reduced his establishment at Abbotsford, and retired, as far as his official duties would permit, from public life, accompanied only by his younger daughter. In this domestic retreat, at fifty-five years of age, he commenced
THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE
—visiting France, in 1826, for some information requisite to the work. In the following summer the Life appeared in nine volumes, an extent much beyond the original project. As might be expected, from the aristocratical turn of Sir Walter's political tenets, the opinions on this work were more various than on any other of his productions: it is, to say the best, the most faulty and unequal of them all; and, considering how clearly this has been shown, it is somewhat surprising to hear so clever a critic as Mr. Cunningham pronounce The Life of Napoleon as "one of the noblest monuments of Scott's genius." We pass from these considerations to the excellence of the purpose to which the proceeds (12,000l.) of this work were applied—namely, to the payment of 6s. 8d. in the pound, as the first dividend of the debts of the author.
In parting with the Napoleon, we might notice the conflicting opinions of the French critics on its merits; but, as that task would occupy too much space we content ourselves with the following passage from a journal published a few days subsequent to the melancholy intelligence of the death of Sir Walter Scott being received in Paris. The criticism is in every sense plain-spoken:—
"If Sir Walter Scott's politics did not square with the natural state of things—if upon this subject he still remained the victim of early prejudices, and, perhaps, of the predilections of a poetical mind, yet he was fortunate enough to promote, by his writings, the real improvement of the people. France has reason to reproach him severely for the unaccountable statements in his "Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk," and in the "History of Bonaparte." But those errors were imputable to carelessness much more than to malice. A prose writer, a poet, a novelist—he yielded, during his long and laborious career, to the impulse of a fancy, rich, copious, and entirely independent of present circumstances, aloof from the agitations of the day, delighting in the memory of the past, and drawing from the surviving relics of ancient times the traditionary tale, to revive and embellish it. He was one of those geniuses in romance who may be said to have been impartial and disinterested, for he gave a picture of ordinary life exactly as it was. He painted man in all the varieties produced in his nature by passion and the force of circumstances, and avoided mixing up with these portraits what was merely ideal. Persons gifted with this power of forgetting themselves, as it were, and of assuming in succession an infinite series of varied characters, who live, speak, and act before us in a thousand ways that affect or delight us, such men are often susceptible of feelings the most ardent on their own account, although they may not directly express as much. It is difficult to believe that Shakspeare and Moliere, the noblest types of this class of exalted minds, did not contemplate life with feelings of deep and, perhaps, melancholy emotion. It was not so, however, with Scott, who certainly belonged not to their kindred, possessing neither the vigour of combination, nor the style which distinguished those men. Of great natural benevolence, gentle and kind, ardent in the pursuit of various knowledge, accommodating himself to the manners and sentiments of his day, good-humoured, and favoured by happy conjunctures of circumstances, Scott came forth under the most brilliant auspices, accomplishing his best and most durable works almost without an effort, and without impressing on these productions any sort of character which would connect them with the personal character of the author. If he be represented, indeed, in any part of his writings, it is in such characters as that of Morton (one of the Puritans), a sort of ambiguous, undetermined, unoffending, good sort of person."
"WAVERLEY NOVELS."
Up to this period, the secret of the authorship of the novels was not generally known, though more extensively so than was at the time imagined. The public had made up their minds to the fact; but the identity was not proven. The adjustment of Messrs. Constable's affairs, however, rendered it impossible longer to conceal the authorship, which was revealed by Sir Walter, at the anniversary dinner of the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund, in February, 1827. Thus he acknowledged before three hundred gentlemen "a secret which, considering that it was communicated to more than twenty people, had been remarkably well kept." His avowal was as follows:—
"He had now to say, however, that the merits of these works, if they had any, and their faults, were entirely imputable to himself." [Here the audience broke into an absolute shout of surprise and delight.] "He was afraid to think on what he had done. 'Look on't again I dare not.' He had thus far unbosomed himself, and he knew that it would be reported to the public. He meant, then, seriously to state, that when he said he was the author, he was the total and undivided author. With the exception of quotations, there was not a single word written that was not derived from himself, or suggested in the course of his reading. The wand was now broken, and the rod buried. His audience would allow him further to say, with Prospero, 'Your breath has filled my sails.'"
The copyright of the novels was soon afterwards sold for 8,400l., and they have since been republished, with illustrations, and notes and introductions by the author, in forty-one volumes, monthly; the last volume appearing within a few days of the author's death.