As an instance of the freedom Constable left to Jeffrey in the conduct of the _Review_, we are not a little astonished to read that the venture, in which he had risked so much, was attacked in a most slashing manner in his own journal. Jeffrey, thinking nothing of so ordinary a circumstance, sent the article to Scott with a note stating that he would come to dinner on the following Tuesday. Scott, though wounded by the tone of the _Review_, did his best to conceal it. Mrs. Scott, however, was very cool in her manner, and, as Jeffrey was taking leave, could no longer restrain her pique, and in her broken English--“Well, guid night, Mr. Jeffrey; dey tell me you have abused Scott in the _Review_; and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you well for writing it.” This anecdote, insignificant in itself, prepares us to some extent for the coldness between them, which led Scott to originate the _Quarterly Review_. Emboldened still further by the success of _Marmion_, Constable now engaged Scott to edit the works of Swift, and as Scott had several like engagements on hand--he held, in fact, five separate agreements at the same time, for the London publishers--offered him £1500 for his new undertaking. Constable was at this time in an apparently assured line of success. Though of a very sanguine nature--a quality without which no projector could possibly succeed--he was one of the most sagacious persons who ever followed his profession. A brother poet of Scott says of him: “Our butteracious friend turns up a deep draw-well;” and another eminent writer still more intimately connected had already christened him “the Crafty”--a title which, of all the flying burrs, was the one that stuck the firmest. His fair and handsome physiognomy was marked by an unmistakable and bland astuteness of expression. He generally avoided criticism as well as authorship, both being out of his “proper line.” But of this “proper line,” and his own qualification for it, his esteem was ample. The one flaw, and the fatal flaw, in his character as a business man was his hatred of accounts, for he systematically refused during the most vigorous years of his life to examine or sign a balance sheet. Scott, in describing his appearance, says, “Ay, Constable is indeed a grand-looking chield. He puts me in mind of Fielding’s apology for Lady Booby--to wit that Joseph Andrews had an air which to those who had not seen many noblemen, would give an idea of nobility.” His conversation was manly and vigorous, abounding in Scotch anecdotes of the old times, and he could, when he had a mind, control the extravagant vanity which at times made him ridiculous. His advice was often useful to Scott, and more than one of the subjects of the novels, and many of the titles, were due to his recommendations. Cadell, his partner, says that in his high moods he used to stalk up and down the room exclaiming, “By God! I am all but the author of the Waverley novels!”