Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

RAPID SUCCESS. 79
'' The whole country is starving for want of a Com-
pleat Supply of ' Tales of my Landlord,' respecting
the interest and merit of which there continues to be
but one sentiment. I make no doubt that you are
urging on the printing of new editions, which may
not stop, I calculate, until it arrives at about the
Eighth. As I told you in my last, I have never had
any copies left a day on my hands, and all that you
have been so good as to get for me have been be-
spoken."
" Notwithstanding this rapid success," Lockhart
adds, " circumstances ere long occurred which carried
the publication into the hands of Constable." These
circumstances are made sufficiently plain by the cor-
respondence between Blackwood and Ballantyne which
winds up this transaction. It is evident enough from
the beginning that as long as the author of ' Waver-
ley ' did not choose to disclose the secret of his identity
to any other publisher, it was much easier and better
on the whole to fall back upon Constable, who knew,
than to continue to negotiate painfully through James
Ballantyne, in whom the more serious business men of
" the Trade " had little confidence, and who was not a
satisfactory medium on either side. The conclusion
was inevitable, however much to be regretted. The
method, however, of the severance was as follows.
The discussion which brought it about began with
the following letter, dated 20th January 1817 :
J. Ballantyne to W. Blackwood.
As the last edition of the ' Tales ' to which our bargain was
extended is now nearly finished, and a new one—I hope many
new ones—will probably soon be wanted, I hasten to say that
—