t this time 'coin money.' He was offered a
thousand pounds for one of the Lardner volumes; and as his sketch
swelled beyond the limit, he received fifteen hundred. The entire work,
much of which was simple paraphrase of the _Tales_, occupied him, it
would seem, about six working weeks, or not quite so much. Can it be
wondered that both before and after the crash this power of coining
money should have put him slightly out of focus with pecuniary matters
generally? Mediaeval and other theorisers on usury have been laughed at
for their arguments as to the 'unnatural' nature of usurious gain, and
its consequent evil. One need not be superstitious more than reason, to
scent a certain unnaturalness in the gift of turning paper into gold in
this other way also. Every _peau de chagrin_ has a faculty of revenging
itself on the possessor.

For the time, however, matters went with Scott as swimmingly as they
could with a man who, by his own act, was, as he said, 'eating with
spoons and reading books that were not his own,' and yet earning by
means absolutely within his control, and at his pleasure to exercise or
not, some twenty thousand a year. _The Fair Maid of Perth_, a title
which has prevailed over what was its first, _St. Valentine's Eve_, and
has entirely obscured the fact that it was issued as a second series of
the _Chronicles of the Canongate_, provided money for a new scheme. This
scheme, outlined by Constable himself, and now carried out by Cadell and
accepted by Scott's trustees, was for buying in the outstanding
copyrights belonging to the bankrupt firm, and issuing the entire series
of novels, with new introductions and notes by Scott himself, with
attractive illustrations and in a cheap and handy form. Scott himself
usually designates the plan as the _Magnum Opus_, or more shortly (and
perhaps not without remembrance of more convivial days) 'the _Magnum_'.
_The Fair Maid_ itself was very well received, and seems to have kept
its popularity as well as any of the later books. Indeed, the figures of
the Smith, of Oliver Proudfute (the last of Scott's humorous-pathetic
characters), of the luckless Rothsay, and of Ramornie (who very
powerfully affected a generation steeped in Byronism), are all quite up
to the author's 'best seconds.' The opening and the close are quite
excellent, especially the fight on the North Inch and 'Another for
Hector!' and the middle part is full of attractive bits of the old kind.
But Conacha