How, when the taste for his verse seemed to cool, he struck out a new line in prose and achieved yet more fame and yet more money than the verse had ever given him, will concern us in the next chapter. But as it would be cumbrous to make yet a third division of his work, the part of his prose which is not fiction may be included here, as well as the rest of his life. He had written much criticism for the _Edinburgh_, until he was partly disgusted by an uncivil review of _Marmion_, partly (and more) by the tone of increasing Whiggery and non-intervention which Jeffrey was imposing on the paper; and when the _Quarterly_ was founded in opposition he transferred his services to that. He edited a splendid and admirably done issue of Dryden (1808) and another not quite so thoroughly executed of Swift (1814), and his secret connection with the Ballantynes induced him to do much other editing and miscellaneous work. In the sad last years of his life he laboured with desperation at a great _Life of Napoleon_, which was a success pecuniarily but not in many other ways, produced the exquisite _Tales of a Grandfather_ on Scottish history, and did much else. He even wrote plays, which have very little merit, and, except abstract philosophy, there is hardly a division of literature that he did not touch; for he composed a sermon or two of merit, and his political pamphlets, the _Letters of Malachi Malagrowther_, opposing what he thought an interference with Scottish privileges in currency matters, are among the best of their kind.