it is true or at
least probable, this settlement might have been upset; but the trustees
of Mrs. Walter Scott would probably also have felt bound to resist this,
and leave to unsettle could only have been obtained on the humiliating
and even slightly disgraceful plea that the granter, being practically
insolvent at the time, was acting beyond his rights. It seems to have
been proposed by the Bank of Scotland, during the negotiations for the
arrangement which followed, that this should be done; and the reasons
which dictated Scott's refusal would have equally, no doubt, prevented
him from doing it in the other case.

Accordingly, it was resolved, as he declined to go into bankruptcy, that
his whole property should, under a procedure half legal, half amicable,
be vested in trustees for the benefit of his creditors; nothing except
the Castle Street house and some minor chattels being actually sold. He,
on the other hand, undertook to devote to the liquidation of the balance
of his debts all the proceeds of his future work, except a bare
maintenance for himself and (on a reduced scale) for Abbotsford. How
'this fatal venture of mistaken chivalry' (to borrow a most applicable
phrase of Kingsley's about another matter) was carried out we shall see,
but how grossly unfair it was to Scott himself must appear at once. In
return for his sacrifices he had no real legal protection; any creditor
could, as a Jew named Abud actually did, threaten at any time to force
bankruptcy unless he were paid at once and in full. Instead of retaining
(as he would have done had the whole of his property been actually
surrendered, and had he allowed the debts which came with the law to go
with it) complete control of his future earnings and exertions, and
making, as he might have made, restitution by instalments as a free
gift, he was in such a plight that any creditor was entitled to regard
him as a kind of thrall, paying debt by service as a matter of course,
and deserving neither rest, nor gratitude, nor commendation. One really
sometimes feels inclined to regret that Abud or somebody else was not
more relentless--to pray for a Sir Giles Overreach or a Shylock among
the creditors. For such a one, by his apparently malevolent but really
beneficent grasping, would have in effect liberated the bondsman, who,
as it was, was compelled to toil at a hopeless task to his dying day,
and to hasten that dying day by the attempt.

Mention has been made abo