it off.”  In fact the hyoscyamus had, combined with his anxieties, given him a slight attack of what is now called aphasia, that brain disease the most striking symptom of which is that one word is mistaken for another.  And this was Scott’s preparation for his failure, and the bold resolve which followed it, to work for his creditors as he had worked for himself, and to pay off, if possible, the whole 117,000_l._ by his own literary exertions.

There is nothing in its way in the whole of English biography more impressive than the stoical extracts from Scott’s diary which note the descent of this blow.  Here is the anticipation of the previous day:  “Edinburgh, January 16th.—­Came through cold roads to as cold news.  Hurst and Robinson have suffered a bill to come back upon Constable, which, I suppose, infers the ruin of both houses.  We shall soon see.  Dined with the Skenes.”  And here is the record itself:  “January 17th.—­James Ballantyne this morning, good honest fellow, with a visage as black as the crook.  He hopes no salvation; has, indeed, taken measures to stop.  It is hard, after having fought such a battle.  I have apologized for not attending the Royal Society Club, who have a gaudeamus on this day, and seemed to count much on my being the praeses.  My old acquaintance Miss Elizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, died suddenly.  I cannot choose but wish it had been Sir W. S., and yet the feeling is unmanly.  I have Anne, my wife, and Charles to look after.  I felt rather sneaking as I came home from the Parliament-house—­felt as if I were liable monstrari digito in no very pleasant way.  But this must be borne cum coeteris; and, thank God, however uncomfortable, I do not feel despondent."[51] On the following day, the 18th January, the day after the blow, he records a bad night, a wish that the next two days were over, but that “the worst is over,” and on the same day he set about making notes for the magnum opus, as he called it—­the complete edition of all the novels, with a new introduction and notes.  On the 19th January, two days after the failure, he calmly resumed the composition of Woodstock—­the novel on which he was then engaged—­and completed, he says, “about twenty printed pages of it;” to which he adds that he had “a painful scene after dinner and another after supper, endeavouring to convince these poor creatures” [his wife and daughter] “that they must not look for miracles, but consider the misfortune as certain, and only to be lessened by patience and labour.”  On the 21st January, after a number of business details, he quotes from Job, “Naked we entered the world and naked we leave it; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  On the 22nd he says, “I feel neither dishonoured nor broken down by the bad, now truly bad, news I have received.  I have walked my last in the domains I have planted—­sat the last time in the halls I have built.  But death would have taken them from me, if misfortune