A History of English Literature

the appointment of Southey, who was his friend. In 1811 he moved from the
comparatively modest country house which he had been occupying to the
estate of Abbotsford, where he proceeded to fulfill his ambition of
building a great mansion and making himself a sort of feudal chieftain. To
this project he devoted for years a large part of the previously
unprecedented profits from his writings. For a dozen years before, it
should be added, his inexhaustible energy had found further occupation in
connection with a troop of horse which he had helped to organize on the
threat of a French invasion and of which he acted as quartermaster,
training in barracks, and at times drilling for hours before breakfast.
The amount and variety of his literary work was much greater than is
understood by most of his admirers today. He contributed largely, in
succession, to the 'Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly' reviews, and having become a
secret partner in the printing firm of the Ballantyne brothers, two of his
school friends, exerted himself not only in the affairs of the company but
in vast editorial labors of his own, which included among other things
voluminously annotated editions of Dryden and Swift. His productivity is
the more astonishing because after his removal to Abbotsford he gave a
great part of his time not only to his family but also to the entertainment
of the throngs of visitors who pressed upon him in almost continuous
crowds. The explanation is to be found partly in his phenomenally vigorous
constitution, which enabled him to live and work with little sleep; though
in the end he paid heavily for this indiscretion.
The circumstances which led him to turn from poetry to prose fiction are
well known. His poetical vein was really exhausted when in 1812 and 1813
Byron's 'Childe Harold' and flashy Eastern tales captured the public fancy.
Just about as Scott was goodnaturedly confessing to himself that it was
useless to dispute Byron's supremacy he accidentally came across the first
chapters of 'Waverley,' which he had written some years before and had
thrown aside in unwillingness to risk his fame by a venture in a new field.
Taking it up with renewed interest, in the evenings of three weeks he wrote
the remaining two-thirds of it; and he published it with an ultimate
success even greater than that of his poetry. For a long time, however,
Scott did not acknowledge the authorship of 'Waverley' and the novels which
followed it (which, however, was obvious to every one), chiefly because he
feared that the writing of prose fiction would seem undignified in a Clerk
of Session. The rapidity of the appearance of his novels testified to the
almost unlimited accumulation of traditions and incidents with which his
astonishing memory was stored; in seventeen years he published nearly
thirty 'Waverley' novels, equipping most of them, besides, with long
fictitious introductions, which the present-day reader almost universally
skips. The profits of Scott's works, long amounting apparently to from ten
to twenty thousand pounds a year, were beyond the wildest dream of any
previous author, and even exceeded those of most popular authors of the
twentieth century, though partly because the works were published in
unreasonably expensive form, each novel in several volumes. Still more
gratifying were the great personal popularity which Scott attained and his
recognition as the most eminent of living Scotsmen, of which a symbol was
his elevation to a baronetcy in 1820.
But the brightness of all this glory was to be pathetically dimmed. In 1825
a general financial panic, revealing the laxity of Scott's business
partners, caused his firm to fail with liabilities of nearly a hundred and
twenty thousand pounds. Always magnanimous and the soul of honor, Scott
refused to take advantage of the bankruptcy laws, himself assumed the
burden of the entire debt, and set himself the stupendous task of paying it
with his pen. Amid increasing personal sorrows he labored on for six years