The Ballantynehumbug handled Author:John Gibson Lockhart Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: able to put them much into shape ; but this is to bring no disparagement on my taste, for I shall give you them all unboulted. I fear me I have few letters of an... more »y the least consequence, for our epistolary intercourse was chiefly on matters of business; but my brother will look them carefully over, and send you all those that may appear to him to have any value. In short, with all the feelings of the fly on the wheel, I beg to assure you ' of my zealous co-operation.'— I am, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours, James Ballantyne." The result of the correspondence thus begun, was that I received from Mr Ballantyne very shortly before his death, the scattered memoranda of his intercourse with Scott, which were, three years afterwards, interwoven into my book, and which, when I did make that use of them, I of course still considered as " curious," and "precious;" though by that time, unquestionably, I could not by any means have been justified in describing them as containing data sufficient to " keep me right," as to the most important parts of Scott's connexion with his printer. No. The materials for Sir Walter's biography were not to be collected either easily or rapidly. Many months elapsed after James Ballantyne's death, before I even dreamt of beginning to arrange and study them, and after I had begun, I was repeatedly thrown back, or called to a halt, by the unlooked- for arrival of fresh documents. The Ashestiel Fragment was, as mentioned in my preface, one of these discoveries. The " Open not, Read not" volume was a second—and one which was of itself sufficient to perplex some, and reverse others, of the notions which I had previously entertained concerning both the Ballan- tynes. A third, of even greater moment, was a packet of States and Calendars in the handwriting of ...« less