A second edition was called for in 1776, and the proprietors offered Smellie a share in the undertaking if he would edit it; but having other pressing work on hand, he declined the proposal, and Joseph Tytler, a man of varied attainments, was engaged. He was born in 1747, and was the son of a minister of a rural parish in Scotland. After receiving a liberal education, he was placed with a surgeon at Forfar. He subsequently made a couple of voyages as a doctor in a whaling-ship to Greenland. Next he proceeded to Edinburgh with the money he had earned, with a view of completing his medical education at the University. He had no sooner got nicely settled in the Northern capital, than he married a girl in humble circumstances, a step which did not help to advance his worldly interests. He made many attempts to succeed, but always failed. Keen poverty kept his nose to the grindstone. His faculty in projecting works was much larger than his energy in carrying them out. Before he had reached the age of thirty, he commenced his labours as the editor of the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” The remuneration he received was very small; and while the work was in progress, he lodged, with his wife and family, with a poor washerwoman at the village of Duddingston, and for his writing-desk turned her wash-tub upside down.
The poor fellow never attempted to hide his poverty. It is said by a gentleman who once waited upon him, that he found him making a repast on a cold potato, which he continued eating with as much composure as if he were dining in the most sumptuous style.
The Encyclopædia was a great success, and sold to the extent of ten thousand copies; the owners of the copyright cleared £42,000. Moreover two of the owners, one a printer and the other an engraver, were paid for their respective work; yet in spite of this handsome profit, the result of Tytler’s ability, they permitted him to live with his wife and children in penury.
He could write almost on any topic, and at any time. As a proof of this, his biographer tells a good anecdote. “A gentleman in Edinburgh,” he states, “once told him he wanted as much matter as would form a junction between a certain history and its continuance to a later period. He found Tytler lodged in one of those elevated apartments called garrets, and was informed by the old woman with whom he resided that he had gone to bed rather the worse for liquor. Determined, however, not to depart without fulfilling his errand, he was shown into Mr. Tytler’s apartment by the light of a lamp, where he found him in the situation described by the landlady. The gentleman having acquainted him with the nature of the business which brought him at so late an hour, Mr. Tytler called for pen and ink, and in a short time produced about a page and a half of letterpress, which answered the end as completely as if it had been the result of the most mature deliberation, previous notice, and a mind undisturbed by any liquid capable of deranging its ideas.”
Tytler was a poet of some skill, and wrote a number of popular songs, three of which find a place in “The Celebrated Songs of Scotland.” He enjoyed the friendship of Robert Burns. In 1792 he published a prospectus of a paper to be named the Political Gazetteer; when it came under the notice of Burns he wrote to him as follows: – “Go on, sir; lay bare with undaunted heart and steady hand that horrid mass of corruption called politics and state-craft.” At the time he penned this he was an officer in the Excise, and for this and similar expressions he was rebuked by the Board of Excise. Burns described Tytler as an “obscene, tippling, but extraordinary body; a mortal who, though he drudges about Edinburgh with leaky shoes, a skylighted hat, yet that same drunken mortal is author and compiler of three-fourths of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ which he composed at half-a-guinea a week.”
We must, before dismissing Tytler, give another anecdote, although it does not relate to literature. We read that “he constructed a huge bag, and filled it full of gas, and invited the inhabitants of Edinburgh to witness his flight through the regions of space.” Mr. Tytler, it appears, slowly rose in his bag as high as a garden wall, when something went wrong with the machinery, and he was deposited head foremost “softly on an adjoining dunghill.” The “gaping crowd nearly killed themselves with laughter.” He was afterwards known as “Balloon Tytler.” He wrote a seditious placard, and had to flee to save his neck. He found a home in America, and for some time edited a paper at Salem. After a life of toil and trouble, he died in the year 1803.
Much has been said about the habits and earnings of Sir Walter Scott, and it is only necessary for us to observe that he wrote in his neatly-arranged library, where at any moment he could refer to his books. He was a most methodical man, and never had to waste time hunting up lost papers and books. He usually commenced writing between five and six, and worked until ten in the morning, and during this period it was his practice to fast. When pressed with work, he would often take breakfast at nine, and lounge about until eleven, and then write with a will until two o’clock. During the closing years of Sir Walter Scott’s life he employed William Laidlaw as his amanuensis. Laidlaw was a poet and prose writer of some merit, possessed of superior shrewdness, and highly esteemed by Sir Walter and his family. He was for many years steward at Abbotsford.
Another famous son of the North was Professor Wilson, perhaps more widely known as “Christopher North,” of Blackwood’s Magazine. He entered in a large ledger skeletons of intended articles; when he felt in the humour for working, he turned to his skeletons, selected one, and quickly clothed it with flesh and nerve. Wilson in a short time could produce a considerable quantity of original matter. Mr. J. S. Roberts, the editor of the volume of “Scottish Ballads” in the Chandos Classics series, was a boy at Blackwood’s when Wilson was the chief contributor to “Maga.” It was one of Roberts’ duties to go to Christopher North for his “copy.” He was wont to sit and amuse himself whilst the great, lion-headed man wrote or furnished an article on all manner of scraps of waste paper. One day there was a high wind, and Roberts was indiscreet enough to put Professor Wilson’s article in his hat. The result was hugely disastrous. The head-gear was blown off, and Wilson’s article was distributed in small portions over all the streets of Edinburgh. It was a frightful thing to have to go to the author and explain the catastrophe. John Wilson would swear, as the boy knew; and for a while he swore most stormily, but eventually calmed his choler, and wrote the article over again.
Professor Wilson was the author of a severe critique on the earlier poems of Alfred Tennyson, and in reply to it the poet wrote the following lines: —
“You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise,
Rusty Christopher.
“When I learnt from whom it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could not forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.
After penning the foregoing, the Laureate does not appear to have troubled himself further respecting Professor Wilson.
Let us now look at the method of a famous French author. Like many able writers, Balzac thought out every detail of a story before he commenced writing it. The places he proposed describing were visited, and the special features carefully noted. His note-books were filled with particulars of all classes of characters, for reproduction in his novels. No sooner had he made up his mind to write on a certain subject, and collected materials for his work, than he retired from the haunts of men, and declined to see even his closest friends. Letters might come, but they were not opened; he was dead to the outer world. His blinds were drawn, the sunlight shut out, and candles lighted. His ordinary costume was changed for a loose white monkish gown. The round of his daily toil was as follows: – At two in the morning he commenced writing, and continued it until six; a bath was then indulged in; at eight he took coffee, and rested until the clock marked the hour of nine. He resumed writing until noon, when an hour was occupied over breakfast. He again laboured with his pen from one to six, when his work closed for the day. He dined and conferred with his publisher, and at eight o’clock he retired to rest. This daily round often occupied two months, in which period he