_
As Scott had always forestalled his income,--spending the
purchase-money of his poems and novels before they were written,--such
a failure as this, at the age of fifty-five, when all the freshness of
his youth was gone out of him, when he saw his son's prospects
blighted as well as his own, and knew perfectly that James Ballantyne,
unassisted by him, could never hope to pay any fraction of the debt
worth mentioning, would have been paralysing, had he not been a man of
iron nerve, and of a pride and courage hardly ever equalled. Domestic
calamity, too, was not far off. For two years he had been watching the
failure of his wife's health with increasing anxiety, and as
calamities seldom come single, her illness took a most serious form at
the very time when the blow fell, and she died within four months of
the failure. Nay, Scott was himself unwell at the critical moment, and
was taking sedatives which discomposed his brain. Twelve days before
the final failure,--which was announced to him on the 17th January,
1826,--he enters in his diary, "Much alarmed.
Pages:
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233