134 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS that they never discover until the crash comes. In the great commercial crisis of 1825 Constables' house stopped payment ; the assets proved to be very trifling in comparison with the debts, and Sir Walter Scott was found to be responsible to the startling amount of one hundred thousand pounds ! His conduct on this occasion was truly noble ; he put up his house and fur- niture in Edinburgh to auction, delivered over his personal effects plate, books, furniture, etc. to be held in trust for his creditors (the estate itself had been settled on his eldest son when he married), and bound himself to discharge annu- ally a certain amount of the liabilities of the insolvent firm. He then, with his characteristic energy, set about the performance of his herculean task. He took cheap lodgings, abridged his usual enjoyments and recreations, and labored harder than ever. The death of his beloved lady increased the gloom which the change of circumstances produced, but though he sorrowed he did not relax his exer- tions. One of his first tasks was the " Life of Bonaparte," which he completed in the short space of thirteen months. For this he received from the publishers the sum of ,14,000, and such was its great circulation that they had no reason to re- pent of their bargain. In the same year that this work appeared, he took an op- portunity of publicly avowing his authorship of the Waverley Novels, declaring " that their merits, if they had any, and their faults were entirely imputable to himself." Sir Walter Scott's celebrity made everything that he produced acceptable to the public. He did not allow these favorable impressions to fade for want of ex- ercise, and the list of the works, great and small, which he produced to satisfy his creditors, is an unexampled instance of successful labors. No one of these en- terprises was so profitable as the republication of his novels in a uniform series, with his own notes and illustrations. It was not given to Sir Walter Scott to see the complete restoration of his former position ; his exertions were too severe and pressed heavily on the springs of health, already deprived by age of their elasticity and vigor. In the short space of six years he had, by his sacrifices and exertions, discharged more than two-thirds of the debt for which he was re- sponsible, and he had fair prospects of relieving himself from the entire sum. But in 1 83 1 he was seized with a terrible attack of paralysis, to which his family had a constitutional tendency, and he was advised to try the effect of a more genial climate in Southern Europe. The British Government placed a ship at his disposal to convey him to Italy ; and when he came to London, men of every class and party vied with each other in expressing sympathy for his sufferings and hopes for his recovery. In Italy he was received with the greatest enthusiasm, and under the influ- ence of its sunny skies he seemed, for a while, to be recovering. But his strength was gone, his heart was in his own home at Abbotsford, and, almost an imbecile, he returned there. He died September 20, 1832.
