expired. The booksellers were not slow in availing themselves of Scott's
popularity. They employed him to edit an edition of Swift for £1500, and
tried to induce him to edit a general edition of English poets. That
scheme was abandoned in consequence of a disagreement between Scott and
Murray, the London publisher, as to the selection of poets.

I think the quarrels of authors eighty or one hundred years ago with
their publishers were more frequent than they are in these times. We
read of a long alienation between Scott and Constable, the publisher,
who enjoyed a sort of monopoly of the poet's contributions to
literature. Constable soon after found a great rival in Murray, who was
at this time an obscure London bookseller in Fleet Street. Both these
great publishers were remarkable for sagacity, and were bold in their
ventures. The foundation of Constable's wealth was laid when he was
publishing the Edinburgh Review. In 1809, Murray started the Quarterly
Review, its great political rival, with the aid of Scott, who wrote many
of its most valuable articles; and William Gilford, satirist and critic,
became its first editor. Growing out of the quarrel between Scott and
Constable was the establishment of John Ballantyne & Co. as publishers
and booksellers in Edinburgh.

Shortly after the establishment of the Quarterly Review as a Tory
journal, Scott began his third great poem, "The Lady of the Lake," which
was published in 1810, in all the majesty of a quarto, at the price of
two guineas a copy. He received for it two thousand guineas. The first
edition of two thousand copies disappeared at once, and was followed the
same year by four octavo editions. In a few months the sale reached
twenty thousand copies. The poem received great commendation both from
the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Review.