FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 59: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 63.]

[Footnote 60: _The Antiquary_, chap. x.]

CHAPTER XVII.

THE END OF THE STRUGGLE.

Sir Walter certainly left his "name unstained," unless the serious
mistakes natural to a sanguine temperament such as his, are to be
counted as stains upon his name; and if they are, where among the sons
of men would you find many unstained names as noble as his with such a
stain upon it? He was not only sensitively honourable in motive, but,
when he found what evil his sanguine temper had worked, he used his
gigantic powers to repair it, as Samson used his great strength to
repair the mischief he had inadvertently done to Israel. But with all
his exertions he had not, when death came upon him, cleared off much
more than half his obligations. There was still 54,000_l._ to pay. But
of this, 22,000_l._ was secured in an insurance on his life, and there
were besides a thousand pounds or two in the hands of the trustees,
which had not been applied to the extinction of the debt. Mr. Cadell,
his publisher, accordingly advanced the remaining 30,000_l._ on the
security of Sir Walter's copyrights, and on the 21st February, 1833,
the general creditors were paid in full, and Mr. Cadell remained the
only creditor of the estate. In February, 1847, Sir Walter's son, the
second baronet, died childless; and in May, 1847, Mr. Cadell gave a
discharge in full of all claims, including the bond for 10,000_l._
executed by Sir Walter during the struggles of Constable and Co. to
prevent a failure, on the transfer to him of all the copyrights of Sir
Walter, including "the results of some literary exertions of the sole
surviving executor," which I conjecture to mean the copyright of the
admirable biography of Sir Walter Scott in ten volumes, to which I
have made such a host of references--probably the most perfect
specimen of a biography rich in great materials, which our language
contains. And thus, nearly fifteen years after Sir Walter's death, the
debt which, within six years, he had more than half discharged, was at
last, through the value of the copyrights he had left behind him,
finally extinguished, and the small estate of Abbotsford left cleared.

Sir Walter's effort to found a new house was even less successful than
the effort to endow it. His eldest son died childless. In 1839 he went
to Madras, as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 15th Hussars, and subsequently
commanded that regim