co-operation with both, was greatly founded on his feeling that they were simply creatures of his, to whom he could pretty well dictate what he wanted,—­colleagues whose inferiority to himself unconsciously flattered his pride.  He was evidently inclined to resent bitterly the patronage of publishers.  He sent word to Blackwood once with great hauteur, after some suggestion from that house had been made to him which appeared to him to interfere with his independence as an author, that he was one of “the Black Hussars” of literature, who would not endure that sort of treatment.  Constable, who was really very liberal, hurt his sensitive pride through the Edinburgh Review, of which Jeffrey was editor.  Thus the Ballantynes’ great deficiency—­that neither of them had any independent capacity for the publishing business, which would in any way hamper his discretion—­though this is just what commercial partners ought to have had, or they were not worth their salt,—­was, I believe, precisely what induced this Black Hussar of literature, in spite of his otherwise considerable sagacity and knowledge of human nature, to select them for partners.

And yet it is strange that he not only chose them, but chose the inferior and lighter-headed of the two for far the most important and difficult of the two businesses.  In the printing concern there was at least this to be said, that of part of the business—­the selection of type and the superintendence of the executive part,—­James Ballantyne was a good judge.  He was never apparently a good man of business, for he kept no strong hand over the expenditure and accounts, which is the core of success in every concern.  But he understood types; and his customers were publishers, a wealthy and judicious class, who were not likely all to fail together.  But to select a “Rigdumfunnidos,”—­a dissipated comic-song singer and horse-fancier,—­for the head of a publishing concern, was indeed a kind of insanity.  It is told of John Ballantyne, that after the successful negotiation with Constable for Rob Roy, and while “hopping up and down in his glee,” he exclaimed, “’Is Rob’s gun here, Mr. Scott?  Would you object to my trying the old barrel with a few de joy?’ ‘Nay, Mr. Puff,’ said Scott, ’it would burst and blow you to the devil before your time.’  ‘Johnny, my man,’ said Constable, ’what the mischief puts drawing at sight into your head?’ Scott laughed heartily at this innuendo; and then observing that the little man felt somewhat sore, called attention to the notes of a bird in the adjoining shrubbery.  ‘And by-the-bye,’ said he, as they continued listening, ’’tis a long time, Johnny, since we have had “The Cobbler of Kelso."’ Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with an awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they were schoolboys, and a blackbird,