It was not quite the proper thing for an eminent legal gentleman to write novels, so Scott published the books anonymously, and always denied their authorship; but he did not refuse to take the money. He was a fluent writer, and could turn out a volume in a month or six weeks, and would get a thousand pounds before he had finished it. Never was there such prosperity, since the days of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. Our Tory novelist was a big overgrown boy; he could never have written such propaganda otherwise. He began to spend his money as a boy would spend it--to make real the world of chivalry and romance in nineteenth century Scotland, fully launched into the age of capitalist industrialism! He built himself an imitation castle of colossal size, “with a tall tower at either end ... sundry zigzagged gables ... a myriad of indentations and parapets, and machicolated eaves; most fantastic waterspouts; labelled windows, not a few of them painted glass ... stones carved with heraldries innumerable.” And inside, of course, were all the stage properties, “cuirasses, helmets, swords of every order, from the claymore and rapier to some German executioner’s swords.” Here our hero kept open house to all the world of rank and fashion, with gay hunting parties and dances, drinking bouts, and singing of ballads and the sounding of pibrochs. It was his aim, in his own words, “to found a family”; besides becoming a baron, he married his eldest son to an heiress, and the climax of his career came when King George IV came to visit his northern dominion, and to be the novelist’s guest. It so happened that this king was an odious fat lecher; but that made no difference, he was Sir Walter’s Most Gracious and Sovereign Lord. In an ecstasy of loyalty, the novelist took possession of a glass from which His Majesty had drunk a toast. This was to be preserved as the most sacred of the treasures of Abbotsford; but, alas, the novelist put it in his pocket, and in a moment of absent-mindedness sat down on it, and cut himself severely! It did not occur to his pious soul that this might be an effort of Providence to teach him something about drinking, or about the worship of lecherous kings.