CHAPTER IX.
SCOTT'S PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE BALLANTYNES.
Before I make mention of Scott's greatest works, his novels, I must say a few words of his relation to the Ballantyne Brothers, who involved him, and were involved by him, in so many troubles, and with whose name the story of his broken fortunes is inextricably bound up.
James Ballantyne, the elder brother, was a schoolfellow of Scott's at Kelso, and was the editor and manager of the _Kelso Mail_, an anti-democratic journal, which had a fair circulation.

Ballantyne was something of an artist as regarded "type," and Scott got him therefore to print his _Minstrelsy of the Border_, the excellent workmanship of which attracted much attention in London.

In 1802, on Scott's suggestion, Ballantyne moved to Edinburgh; and to help him to move, Scott, who was already meditating some investment of his little capital in business other than literary, lent him 500l.

Between this and 1805, when Scott first became a partner of Ballantyne's in the printing business, he used every exertion to get legal and literary printing offered to James Ballantyne, and, according to Mr.Lockhart, the concern "grew and prospered." At Whitsuntide, 1805, when _The Lay_ had been published, but before Scott had the least idea of the prospects of gain which mere literature would open to him, he formally, though secretly, joined Ballantyne as a partner in the printing business.

He explains his motives for this step, so far at least as he then recalled them, in a letter written after his misfortunes, in 1826.