Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/170

136 CONSTABLE, C A DELL, AND BLACK. Knowledge, by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, who, following Constable, had the "honour of leading the way in that fearful inroad upon dear- ness of the good old times of publishing, which first de- veloped itself in the wicked birth of what the literary exclusives called the Sixpenny Sciences' 1 Constable's prospects were brightening ; he had now gathered round him all the younger literary men of the day, when, in the midst of his struggles, his old disease of dropsy again attacked him, and he died on the 2 ist July, 1827. His widow and family were left in sorry circum- stances, but his son Thomas eventually attained the position of an eminent and well-known printer in Edinburgh. The Ballantynes, with whom he had been so intimately connected, disproved many of Lockhart's assertions, by showing that, by dint of hard work and good business habits, they were capable of success, unaided by the help of Sir Walter Scott. Constable, if not the most successful, was certainly the most eminent of the Scotch publishers. It is pleasant where the two lives have been so curiously blended to be able to quote Scott's estimate of his character : " His vigorous intellect and vigorous ideas have not only rendered his native country the merit of her own literature, but established there a court of letters which commanded respect even from those most inclined to dissent from many of its canons. The effect of these changes operated, in a great measure, by the strong sense and sagacious calculation of an individual who knew how to avail himself, to an unhoped-for extent, of the various kinds of talents which his country pro-