The Ballantynes were quite unfit for this
function; first, they had not the experience requisite for it; next,
they were altogether too much under Scott's influence. No wonder that
the partnership came to no good, and left behind it the germs of
calamity even more serious still.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 30: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 221.]
[Footnote 31: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 218.]
CHAPTER X.
THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.
In the summer of 1814, Scott took up again and completed--almost at a
single heat,--a fragment of a Jacobite story, begun in 1805 and then
laid aside. It was published anonymously, and its astonishing success
turned back again the scales of Scott's fortunes, already inclining
ominously towards a catastrophe. This story was _Waverley_. Mr.
Carlyle has praised _Waverley_ above its fellows. "On the whole,
contrasting _Waverley_, which was carefully written, with most of its
followers which were written extempore, one may regret the extempore
method." This is, however, a very unfortunate judgment.
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