“WAVERLEY NOVELS.”

Up to this period, the secret of the authorship of the novels was not generally known, though more extensively so than was at the time imagined.  The public had made up their minds to the fact; but the identity was not proven.  The adjustment of Messrs. Constable’s affairs, however, rendered it impossible longer to conceal the authorship, which was revealed by Sir Walter, at the anniversary dinner of the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund, in February, 1827.  Thus he acknowledged before three hundred gentlemen “a secret which, considering that it was communicated to more than twenty people, had been remarkably well kept.”  His avowal was as follows:—­

“He had now to say, however, that the merits of these works, if they had any, and their faults, were entirely imputable to himself.” [Here the audience broke into an absolute shout of surprise and delight.] “He was afraid to think on what he had done.  ’Look on’t again I dare not.’  He had thus far unbosomed himself, and he knew that it would be reported to the public.  He meant, then, seriously to state, that when he said he was the author, he was the total and undivided author.  With the exception of quotations, there was not a single word written that was not derived from himself, or suggested in the course of his reading.  The wand was now broken, and the rod buried.  His audience would allow him further to say, with Prospero, ’Your breath has filled my sails.’”

The copyright of the novels was soon afterwards sold for 8,400_l._, and they have since been republished, with illustrations, and notes and introductions by the author, in forty-one volumes, monthly; the last volume appearing within a few days of the author’s death.

FATAL ILLNESS.

Towards the close of 1830, Sir Walter retired from his office, retaining a portion of his salary, but declining a pension which had been offered to him by the present administration.  He was now in his 60th year; his health broke apace; it was evident that the task of writing to pay off debts, which were not of his own contracting, was alike too severe for his mental and physical powers; and in the succeeding winter they became gradually paralyzed.  He somewhat rallied in the spring, and, unfortunately for his health, embroiled himself in the angry politics of the day, at a county meeting at Jedburgh, upon the Reform question.  He was then very feeble, but spoke with such vehemence as to draw upon him the hisses of some of his auditors:  this ebullition of feeling is said to have much affected him; and he is stated (we know not how truly) to have been observed on his way home in tears.

In the autumn of last year Sir Walter, at the recommendation of his physicians, resolved to winter in the more congenial climate of Italy; though it required the most earnest entreaties of his friends to induce him to consent to the change, so strong was his love of country and apprehension of dying in a foreign land.  He accordingly set sail in H.M.S. the Barham for Malta, on the 27th of October; previous to which he appended to the Fourth and Last Series of Tales of my Landlord the following affecting, and, as we lately observed, almost prophetic, passage: