[36] It may be interesting to reproduce here the statement of accounts, &c., of the paper at the time of the sale: RECEIPTS Sale of Newspapers £2390 Advertisements 1055 ------ Total £3445 EXPENDITURE Annual cost of stamps and paper £1425 Printing 570 Advertisement duty 360 Clerks’ salaries, office rent, &c. 250 Allowance for bad debts 230 Profits 610 ------ Total £3445 —_Edinburgh Newspapers, Past and Present_ (1891). [37] Andrew’s “British Journalism,” &c. [38] See also a letter of Scott to Ellis (Lockhart’s “Life,” iii. 145):—“An Edinburgh Annual Register, to be conducted under the auspices of James Ballantyne, _who is himself no despicable composer_.” [39] “The Greville Memoirs,” i. 251. [40] _Tait’s Magazine_ (1839), pp. 657, 658, 668. [41] “Leaves from My Autobiography.” By Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D. [42] Miss Martineau’s “Biographical Sketches,” pp. 347, 348. [43] “No man was better fit to arbitrate in this difficult dispute than Chambers was.”—Claudius Clear, in the _British Weekly_, January 1907. [44] _Fraser’s Magazine_, 1835. [45] See footnote, pp. 47-48. [46] Letter of James Ballantyne in “Constable and his Literary Correspondents,” iii. 5. [47] Lockhart’s “Life of Scott,” ii. 125. [48] “Constable and his Literary Correspondents,” ii. 197. [49] Journal, Aug. 29, 1826. [50] In connection with this a curious fraud may be noted here. At the sale of Dr. Laing’s library there was disposed of a number of odd lots of pamphlets and papers, and amongst these a quantity of undamaged sheets of the Ballads and Poems of Dunbar. Whoever bought these was determined to make a profit out of them, for an Edinburgh “book-hunter” discovered one day in a second-hand bookseller’s shop a nicely bound gilt-top quarto volume, bearing the title “Ancient Poetry of Scotland. Edinburgh, 1508,” and having the device of Andro Myllar on it. Facing the title was “Imprinted Glasgow, 1800. Limited to 50 copies, 10 on thick paper, 1 on vellum.” The book looked tempting, and was bought; but, to the bibliophile’s disappointment, it proved most fragmentary, as it contained only a limited portion of the sheets of the Ballantyne reprint several times repeated, irrespective of consecutiveness, throughout the book, and many of the pages bore traces of the accident which befell the original work. [51] “Constable and his Literary Correspondents,” iii. 305, 310.