[1] Written by R. Plumer Ward, author of _Tremaine_ and other works. Mr.
Ward's _Political Life_, including a _Diary_ to 1820, was published in
1850. in two vols. 8vo, edited by Hon. E. Phipps.
[2] See _post_, p. 60, note.
[3] See _ante_, vol. i. pp. 101-2.
[4] _Napoleon_.
[5] Archibald Campbell Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
[6] David Hume, the historian, died August 25, 1776.
[7] To please the king, Canning appointed the Duke of Clarence as first
Lord of the Admiralty, but Greville says it was a most judicious stroke
of policy, and nothing served so much to disconcert his opponents. Lord
Melville had held the office from March 25, 1812, to April 13, 1827. The
Duke resigned in the following year.--See Croker's _Correspondence_,
vol. i. pp. 264 (letter to Blomfield), 427, 429; also _ante_, vol. i. p.
262. Lord Melville was President of the India Board in the Duke of
Wellington's administration in 1828, and again First Lord from Sept. 17
of the same year until Nov. 22, 1830.
[8] The Rev. William Stephen Gilly, D.D., Vicar of Norham, author of
_Narrative of an Excursion to the Mountains of Piemont_, 1823;
_Researches among the Vaudois or Waldenses_, 1827-31.
[9] See Raine's _St. Cuthbert_, 4to, Durham, 1828.
[10] See _Danvers_ in First Series of _Sayings and Doings_.
[11] _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_, a play by "T.B.," which has also
been attributed to Anthony Brewer.
[12] Right Hon. Thomas Francis Kennedy, M.P. for Ayr Burghs, 1818-34.
Died at the age of ninety at Dalquharran in 1879.
[13] This powerful drama, entitled _Witchcraft: a Tragedy in Prose_, was
suggested, as the author says in her preface, by reading a scene in _The
Bride of Lammermoor_.
[14] Did Constable ruin Scott, as has been generally supposed? It is
right to say that such a charge was not made during the lifetime of
either. Immediately after Scott's death Miss Edgeworth wrote to Sir
James Gibson-Craig and asked him for authentic information as to Sir
Walter's connection with Constable. Sir James in reply stated that to
his personal knowledge Mr. Constable had, in his anxiety to save Scott,
about 1814 [1813], commenced a system of accommodation bills which could
not fail to produce, and actually did produce, the ruin of both parties.
To another correspondent, some years later, he wrote still more strongly
(_Memoirs,_ vol. iii. p. 457).
Scott appears to have been aware of the facts so far, as he says to
Laidlaw, in a letter of December 16, 1825, "The confusion of 1814 is a
joke to this ... but it arises out of the nature of the same connection
which gives, and has given, me a fortune;" and Mr. Lockhart says that
the firm of J.B. & Co. "had more than once owed its escape from utter
ruin and dishonour" through Constable's exertions.--_Life_, vol. v. p.
150.
On reading the third volume of Constable's Memoirs (3 vols. 8vo, 1873),
one cannot fail to see that all the three parties--printer, publisher,
and author--were equal sharers in the imprudences that led to the
disaster in 1826. Whether Mr. Constable was right in recommending
further advances to the London house is doubtful; but if it was an error
of judgment, it was one which appears to have been shared by Mr. Cadell
and Mr. James Ballantyne. It must be admitted that the three firms were
equally culpable in maintaining for so many years a system of fictitious
credit. Constable, at least, from a letter to Scott, printed in vol.
iii. p. 274, had become seriously alarmed as early as August 8, 1823.
That Constable was correct in his estimate of the value of the literary
property has been shown by the large sums realised from the sale of
Scott's works since 1829; and that his was the brain ("the pendulum of
the clock" as Scott termed it) to plan is also shown by the fact that
the so-called "favourite" edition, the _magnum opus_, appears to have
been Constable's idea (_Memoirs_, vol. iii. p. 255), although, according
to the _Annual Register_ of 1849, Mr. Cadell claimed the merit of a
scheme which he had "quietly and privately matured."
[15] Thomas Thomson, Depute-Clerk Register for Scotland under Lord
Frederick Campbell.
[16] Johnson's _Epitaph on Claude Phillips_.