Volume 2

A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen / edited by Robert Chambers.

Date:
1854-1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen / edited by Robert Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    would be out of place in the present work ; but the mention of a few such as Mr J P. Wood’s excellent edition of Douglas’s Scottish Peerage, Mr i. .hal- mers’s Caledonia, the Edinburgh Gazetteer, in six volumes, the PhilosophiMl Works of Mr Dugald Stewart, and the Supplement to the Encycloj^dia Britannica, (the stock and copyright of which work he purchased in 1812 ) will be sufficient to suggest a career far transcending in enterprise and brilliancy anything of the kind ever known in Scotland. In 1804 Mr Constable liad assumed as partner Mr Alexander Gibson Hunter, of Blackness and from that time the business was carried on under the designation of Archibald Constable and Company. A few years afterwards, when the conrarns of the house bad become very extensive, Mr Constable thought it a hardship that so much of his wares should pass through the hands of an English agency, who at once absorbed a considerable share of his profits, and could not profea to promote his interest with so much zeal as their own. He and his Edinburgh partner therefore joined, December, 1808, with Mr Charles Hunter and Mr John Park in commencing a general bookselling business in London, under the designation of Constable, Hunter, Park, and Hunter. This speculation, however being found to be unattended with the expected advantages, was given up in 1811. In the early part of tiiis year, Mr A. G. Hunter retired from the Edinburgh house, on which occasion Mr Constable, acting on the liberal view which he usually took of the value of his stock, and perhaps not unwilling to impress the world with an exalted idea of his prosperity, allowed to his partner a greater amount of actual cash (seventeen thousand pounds is understood to have been the sum paid,) than what was justly his due. Mr Robert Cathcart of Dnim, writer to the signet, and Mr Robert Cadell, then a clerk in Mr Constable’s shop were assumed in Mr Hunter’s place, and the firm still continued under the designation of Archibald Constable and Company. Mr Cathcart being car- ried off after a few days’ illness in November, 1812, I\Ir CadeU remained I\Ir Constable’s sole partner. Mr Constable and his partner published after 1813, all the poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, and the whole of bis prose fictions (excepting the first series of the Tales of My Landlord) down to the year 1826. The vast amount of lucrative business arising from these publications, and others of nearly equal popularity and importance, produced in the subject of this memoir the sincere though erroneous conviction that he was a prosperous, and in one respect a wealthy man. He had never, it is true, possessed much free capital: he had scarcely ever known what it was to be exempt from difficulties for ready money; yet he could calculate for certain on the productivenew of several of his more important speculations, and he every day saw around him such a large and increasing amount of stock, that nothing less than the demonstration of fioures could have given him greater assurance of his affluent condition. That demonstration unfortunately was wanting. l\Ir Constable was no arithmetician. His mind was one of those which delight in forming lofty enterprises and am- bitious schemes, but are too much engrossed with the glories of the ultimate object, to regard much the details by which it is proposed to be accomplished. For very many of his publications, the literary labourer was greatly over- paid ; in most cases he printed a much larger impression than was necessary, or if the demand came nearly up to the supply, the benefits of success were lost upon an undenianded second edition. He had a magnificent way of transacting every kind of business, seeming in general less to regard the merits of the matter in hand, than the dignity of his name and profession. Proceeding in this manner, rather like a princely patron of letters, than a tradesman .liming at making them subservient to his personal interest, Mr ConsUible was easily led