hoped that, by engaging him on the new and complete edition of his works, they might detach him from the attempt at imaginative creation for which he was now so much less fit.  But Sir Walter’s will survived his judgment.  When, in the previous year, Ballantyne had been disabled from attending to business by his wife’s illness (which ended in her death), Scott had written in his diary, “It is his (Ballantyne’s) nature to indulge apprehensions of the worst which incapacitate him for labour.  I cannot help regarding this amiable weakness of the mind with something too nearly allied to contempt,” and assuredly he was guilty of no such weakness himself.  Not only did he row much harder against the stream of fortune than he had ever rowed with it, but, what required still more resolution, he fought on against the growing conviction that his imagination would not kindle, as it used to do, to its old heat.

When he dictated to Laidlaw,—­for at this time he could hardly write himself for rheumatism in the hand,—­he would frequently pause and look round him, like a man “mocked with shadows.”  Then he bestirred himself with a great effort, rallied his force, and the style again flowed clear and bright, but not for long.  The clouds would gather again, and the mental blank recur.  This soon became visible to his publishers, who wrote discouragingly of the new novel—­to Scott’s own great distress and irritation.  The oddest feature in the matter was that his letters to them were full of the old terseness, and force, and caustic turns.  On business he was as clear and keen as in his best days.  It was only at his highest task, the task of creative work, that his cunning began to fail him.  Here, for instance, are a few sentences written to Cadell, his publisher, touching this very point—­the discouragement which James Ballantyne had been pouring on the new novel.  Ballantyne, he says, finds fault with the subject, when what he really should have found fault with was the failing power of the author:—­“James is, with many other kindly critics, perhaps in the predicament of an honest drunkard, when crop-sick the next morning, who does not ascribe the malady to the wine he has drunk, but to having tasted some particular dish at dinner which disagreed with his stomach....  I have lost, it is plain, the power of interesting the country, and ought, injustice to all parties, to retire while I have some credit.  But this is an important step, and I will not be obstinate about it if it be necessary....  Frankly, I cannot think of flinging aside the half-finished volume, as if it were a corked bottle of wine....  I may, perhaps, take a trip to the Continent for a year or two, if I find Othello’s occupation gone, or rather Othello’s reputation."[57] And again, in a very able letter written on the 12th of December, 1830, to Cadell, he takes a view of the situation with as much calmness and imperturbability as if he were an outside spectator.  “There were many circumstances in the matter which you and