He sent word to Blackwood once with great hauteur, after some suggestion from that house had been made to him which appeared to him to interfere with his independence as an author, that he was one of "the Black Hussars" of literature, who would not endure that sort of treatment.

Constable, who was really very liberal, hurt his sensitive pride through the _Edinburgh Review_, of which Jeffrey was editor.

Thus the Ballantynes' great deficiency--that neither of them had any independent capacity for the publishing business, which would in any way hamper his discretion--though this is just what commercial partners ought to have had, or they were not worth their salt,--was, I believe, precisely what induced this Black Hussar of literature, in spite of his otherwise considerable sagacity and knowledge of human nature, to select them for partners.
And yet it is strange that he not only chose them, but chose the inferior and lighter-headed of the two for far the most important and difficult of the two businesses.

In the printing concern there was at least this to be said, that of part of the business--the selection of type and the superintendence of the executive part,--James Ballantyne was a good judge.

He was never apparently a good man of business, for he kept no strong hand over the expenditure and accounts, which is the core of success in every concern.