Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart (Volume 6) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X. WOODSTOCK RECEPTION OF THE NOVEL MRS BROWN's LODGINGS--EXTRACT FROM A DIARY OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL--BUONAPARTE RESUMED, AND CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE BEGUN--UNIFORM LABOUR DURING SUMMER AND AUTUMN EXTRACTS FROM SIR WALTER'S JOURNAL JUNE--OCTOBER, 1826. The price received for Woodstock shows what eager competition had heen called forth among the booksellers when, after the lapse of several years, Constable's monopoly of Sir Walter's novels was abolished by their common calamity. The interest excited, not only in Scotland and England, but all over civilized Europe, by the news of Scott's misfortunes, must also have had its influence in quickening this commercial rivalry. The reader need hardly be told, that the first meeting of James Ballantyne and Company's creditors witnessed the transformation, a month before darkly prophesied, of the" Great Unknown" into the " Too-well-known." Even for those who had long ceased to entertain any doubt as to the main source at least of the Waverley romances, there would have been something stirring in the first confession of the author; but it in fact included the avowal, that he had stood alone in the work of creation; and when the mighty claim came in the same breath with the announcement of personal ruin, the effect on the community of Edinburgh was electrical. It is, in my opinion, not the least striking feature in the foregoing Diary, that it contains no allusion (save the ominous one of 18th December) to this long withheld revelation. He notes his painful anticipation of returning to the Parliament-House--monstraridigito--as an insolvent. It does not seem even to have occurred to him, that when he appeared there the morning after his creditors had heard his confession, there could not be many men in the ...