Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE STATE OF LITERATURE. 25
face of the country, and this had been accompanied
by a generation of booksellers, scarcely accustomed as
yet to the larger name of publisher, and not quite
certain of the powers of that Pegasus which they
were eagerly endeavouring on all sides to yoke to
their private chariot^. But they overvalued rather
than undervalued his powers. The Ballantynes, who
have a fictitious importance through their connection
with Scott, and Constable, who has left autobio-
graphical notes of his own progress, throw much light
upon the eagerness with which their eyes were directed
to everybody who showed any signs of literary merit.
Such a discovery as Scott, such an adventure as the
' Edinburgh Review,' disclosing in the heart of the
small capital a very nest of men capable of entertain-
ing and dazzling the whole world, went a little to the
heads of these new men in the new business which
for the moment seemed about to take its place at
the top of all commercial affairs.
It is a common belief in the literary world that
publishers are the most grasping of middlemen, eager
only to have the lion's share of the profits. But in
those days there was a certain spirit of daring and
romance in " the Trade." The Revival of Literature
was like the opening of a new mine :
it was more than
that, a sort of manufactory out of nothing, to which
there seemed no limit. You had but to set a man of
genius spinning at that shining thread which came
from nowhere, which required no purchase of materials
or "plant" of machinery, and your fortune was made.
"We remember that, later. Constable went gravely to
the Bank of England to negotiate a loan upon the sole
security of the unwritten books to be drawn from the