PART IV. 234. never a saint. See note to Alex. Feast, 69. 137. 245. or ever. See note to Hymn Nat. 86. PART V. 138. 295. See 2 Hen. IV. III. i. 6. 297. silly. See note to Hymn Nativity, 92. 302. dank is closely connected with damp. Milton uses the word several times, as in his translation of Hor. Od. I. 310. anear is a corruption of on near, the on standing in a quasi-prepositional relation to the advb. of place. The word is still current in Somerset (Halliwell). 140. 358. adropping. See note to a Maying, L'Alleg. 20. 367. [What is the force of on here?] 142. 427. belated. = made late. The [Give other instances of this force of be-.] 144. 512. shrieve. Scrifan is A. S. PART VI. prefix be- converts an adj. into a causative verb. My soul, seemingly the direct object, is therefore strictly the case of the nearer object. Similarly confess is used. PART VII 145. 535. ivy-tod. “Tod, a bush generally of ivy. In Suffolk, a stump at the top of a pollard." Halliwell, who quotes from Drayton : 540. a-feard. The a- is a corruption of the oldest English of, which strengthens the simple verb; so añó and ab sometimes in Gk. and Lat. Comp. a-hungred (af-yngred, Piers Pl. vi. 269), a-weary, &c. 145. 565. [What is the force of go here?] SCOTT. (1) 1771-1789. WALTER SCOTT was born in Edinburgh, Aug. 15, 1771,-which lies midway between the birth-years of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Delicate health led to his passing his boyhood in the country-in the Borders, at Sandy-knowe, and at Kelso. He was presently sent to the High School, and then to the University, of Edinburgh. (2) 1789--1805. He commenced his man's career as a lawyer; but literature soon began to prevail with him. He studied German, which was then an almost unknown tongue in this country, and translated some German pieces (Bürger's Leonore and The Wild Huntsman, Göthe's Götz von Berlichingen, publ. 1799); he collected ballads, and composed himself in the ballad style (see Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, publ. 1802 and 1803); he read old medieval romances, and edited one of them (Sir Tristrem, publ. 1804). Meanwhile, in 1797, he married Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, the daughter of a French refugee. In 1799 he was appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire; in 1804 he removed from Lasswade to Ashestiel. (3) 1805-1814. In 1805 appeared the first great fruit of all his past studies, the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which made him at once the most popular writer of the day; no greater contrast to the reigning school of poetry can be conceived. It was followed by Marmion in 1808, The Lady of the Lake in 1810, and other less successful 'lays.' As the novelty of the style wore off, the imperfections of his poetry became apparent. Moreover a greater master of the art, Byron to wit, began to attract all ears to himself. He "beat" Scott, to use Scott's own phrase when asked why he quitted the poetical field. To turn to his private life: in 1805 he entered into partnership with James Ballantine, a rising Edinburgh printer-a connection kept studiously secret; in 1806 he was appointed a clerk of the Court of Session; in 1811 he bought land on the banks of the Tweed, near Melrose, and began the erection of Abbotsford. (4) 1814-1832. In 1814 Scott, finding his popularity as a poet on the wane, set himself to finish a tale in prose, which he had begun some nine years before, and thrown aside as of no promise. This was no other than Waverley, or Sixty years since-with the publication of which commenced the most brilliant period of Scott's life. He had at last discovered where his strength lay. In the next six years appeared his other masterpieces, Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, The Antiquary, Old Mortality. These immortal works were followed by others inferior only to them. Amongst other results was a very considerable income. Scott made various additions to his estate. His hospitality was unbounded. He was baroneted in 1820. A terrible financial reverse befell him in the winter of 1825-6, a time of wide-spread commercial distress. The firm of Ballantine and Co. failed for some £117,000. The bankruptcy of another publisher, Constable, involved Scott in losses and engagements to the amount of some £60,000. Scott did not allow himself to be prostrated by these severe blows. He bore up nobly against them; there was in him no slight element of that high chivalrous nature, which he delighted to pourtray in his writings. So, though now in his fifty-fifth year, this "knight without fear and without reproach" armed himself with stern resolve for the struggle. His remaining years were spent in this same struggle. All that he could do to redeem himself he did, and it was much; but his adversities were too strong for his physical strength. Early in 1830 he suffered a stroke of paralysis; still he toiled on. In April 1831 came a second attack. Some months later he visited Malta and Naples and Rome, in the hope that change and a milder air might recruit him. During this tour he still worked at Romances; but his mental powers were rapidly decaying. He was brought back to England in June, 1832, a mere wreck physical and intellectual. In the following September he at last rested from all his labours. Of these many are As a poet, the "virtue" and power of Scott appear best in his songs. of the highest excellence, and may even take rank with some of Shakspere's. They come from the very depths of a deep passionate nature, that never in any other form so openly confessed its inmost character, but was for the most part reserved and seemingly conventional. They are the very cries of Scott's most secret spirit; sometimes, as he writes them, he becomes almost inarticulate with feeling; at least, he cannot find current words that are adequate to his emotion. This is the real explanation of those wild burdens, composed of strange fancy-woven melodious syllables, that he used in his Lyrics with such a weird effect (as "Eleu Loro" in "Where shall the lover rest," &c. Marmion. They are the voice of Nature herself, speaking a certain mysterious tongue of her own, not according to any human grammar. Shakspere, too, often has recourse to these rudimentary sounds-this primitive, unorganised language; and so other Elizabethan poets, often with a most pathetic accent. During the latter part of the seventeenth century and during the eighteenth these refrains are unknown-a significant fact. The poets of those days felt no need of any mystic utterances. They could say well enough all they had to say in the ordinary speech. It was a sign of the revival of a profounder poetry about the beginning of this century, that once more the imperfectness of the current dialects was felt, once more men were visited by thoughts too deep for received phraseologies. Scott was no supreme master of language like Wordsworth, or Shelley, or Coleridge. He could not utter the thoughts that arose in him with any fine subtilty of analysis. When his nature was deeply stirred within him, it found its relief in melodized unworded sounds, which in fact often speak more significantly and deeply than the seemingly distincter utterances to which they form a sort of diapason. In his longer pieces Scott's poetical genius shines less manifestly. One reason is that his "Lays" were for the most part inspired by other than poetical motives. The writer's object in them is antiquarian and historical, both in their form and in their subject-matter. For their form, he aims at reproducing the Metrical Romances of Chivalry. It is true that he does not quite succeed in doing that-it was impossible that he should succeed; but that is his aim. His ambition was to be what he calls a "Minstrel "-to be a Trouvère. He adopted with certain variations the favourite measures of those medieval rhapsodists; he threw himself with the utmost ardour into their times; he recalled the scenes and forms of life amid which they lived. The Lay of the Last Minstrel is a fine poetic handbook of the Middle Ages, as Scott could see them. It is the work of an enthusiastic archæologist with no contemptible gift of measure and of rhyme, rather than of a purely poetizing spirit. It displays much imaginative power, but it is rather historical imagination than artistic. So in Marmion we have six brilliant chapters describing the life of the early sixteenth century-the Castle, the Convent, the Inn, the Camp, the Court, the Battle. To convey information about an olden time, which had supreme fascinations for Scott, is in short the prime impelling purpose of these infant Epics. Apollo lays aside his singing-robe, and leaving the heights of Parnassus for the Professor's chair delivers glowing, though not always accurate, lectures on the Manners and Customs of the Middle Ages. In these labours of revival and imitation and learning, Scott's creative power never at all worthily expressed itself. It is a most notable fact that his wonderful gift of humour found no place for itself in them. It cannot be said that they contain a single figure in any way comparable with those numerous real living and moving human beings that spring into life in his prose works. They are indeed rather echoes than voices. The only poetical form which could possibly have comprehended Scott's genius in all its breadth was the Dramatic. Dramatic power, in the untechnical sense, he possessed in the highest degree. It is difficult to believe that, had he lived in the Elizabethan age, he would not have ranked high amongst the "old masters" of our drama, to whom as towards his spiritual brothers he felt himself always strongly drawn in his sympathies. He is one of the very few who since Shakspere's time have seemed to be endowed with something of Shakspere's nature. But, as it proved, he could express himself in the dramatic form even less worthily than in the metrical romance. It would seem as if every great age and every great genius have their own form of expression, which dies with them. The Drama in Scott's time was an obsolete CC thing, incapable of resuscitation; with all Scott's dramatic faculties he could not write dramas. The one shape in which all the richness of his genius was to be revealed was the Novel. The Novel was for his day and for him what the Drama was for Shakspere and his age. There all his various talents were to find free play-his descriptive and narrative powers, his shrewd observation, his tragic intensity, his lyrical excellence, his infinite humour. Perhaps our own day supplies us with a somewhat parallel instance of failure in the Drama, technically so styled, by one possessed of the highest dramatic spirit in the more general sense of the word. Adam Bede is certainly worth a whole tribe of Spanish Gipsys, great as is the interest of the Spanish Gipsy. It may be remembered that Dickens essayed playwriting with but slight success. CADYOW CASTLE. Scott composed this piece the Christmas of 1801 when visiting at Hamilton Palace, Lanarkshire. It has this interest: that it is the first "work in which he grapples with the world of picturesque incident unfolded in the authentic annals of Scotland.” It is inserted here from a wish not to omit Scott's name in this collection, and an unwillingness to represent him by any fragment of a poem; certainly it cannot be regarded as of any great intrinsic merit. It is the work of a 'prentice hand; but the works of such 'prentice hands as Scott must not be neglected. Cadyow or Cadzow Castle was the old baronial seat of the Hamiltons. It stood, where its ruins may still be seen, on the banks of the Evan some two miles from the junction of that stream with the Clyde. Close by are some remains of the Caledonian forest that once covered the whole of southern Scotland. For accounts of the assassination of the Regent Murray (Jan. 23, 1569-70), see Robertson's History of Scotland, Book V., Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, chap. xxxii. The ballad follows the facts pretty closely. The murderer escaped to France. In the civil wars of that country an attempt was made to engage him, as a known desperado, in the assassination of the Admiral Coligni; but he resented it as a deadly insult. "He had slain a man in Scotland," he said, "from whom he had sustained a mortal injury; but the world could not engage him to attempt the life of one against whom he had no personal cause of quarrel." 148. 1. [What is the meaning of abode here?] Cadyow was dismantled at the close of the Scotch Civil Wars for its devotion to the cause of Queen Mary. 2. [What is the force of Gothic here? In what other senses is the word used? See Trench's Study of Words.] 4. revel is etymologically but a various form of rebel. 6. [Explain so here.] 10. vaults. See Gray's Elegy, 39. 12. Evan. See Introduction. [What is the force of hoarser here? Is it the same as in Gray's Bard, 26?] 14. [What "part of speech" is minstrel here ?] 15. Scott was at this time busy completing his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 17. thou. He uses thou here, rather than you as in l. 14, because he wishes to be more pointed and emphatic. All this stanza is given to the description of the thou-the Right Hon. Lady Anne Hamilton. 149. 27. As at his own Abbotsford in later years. 31. ashler. Fr. pierre-de-taille, Ital. Pietra riquadrata, Germ. Bunderwerke, Quaterstein. Various forms of the word are achelor, ashlar, aschelere, astler, &c. See Gloss. of Arch., which work quotes, amongst other passages from Hist. Dunelm. Scrip. tres, CLXXX: "et erit [murus] exterius de puro lapide, vocato achiler, plane inscisso, interius vero de fracto lapide, vocato roghwall." Chambers' Etym. Dict. suggests a Celtic derivation, but it looks anything but satisfactory. 32. battled battlemented. 33. keep. Fr. donjon. It may perhaps be doubted whether Castle chapels were ever surmounted with spires. Such ornaments would have made excellent marks for the enemy. But spire here may = the turret pinnacles. 37. [Explain their.] 40. bower. See Prothal. 93. 43. route. The e belongs to the old Eng. form; see Palsg. apud Wedgwood, and also to the old Fr., which Brachet derives from the Eng. rout. According to Wedgwood, this rout is connected with rout, "to snore, to bellow as oxen," and denotes first, a confusion, tumult, and then a mob. It is certainly of the same house with the Germ. rotte. Rout = a defeat, is of different origin. 50. scud is connected with A. S. scéotan, our modern shoot. The grammatical construction here is noticeable, scud not usually governing an object. case without a preposition to help it. Comp. the boating phrase "to shoot a bridge." Walk is used in a similar way, when people speak colloquially of "walking a country." So "walked the waves," in Milton's Lyc. 173, where see note. 53. See Introduction. 60. the Mountain Bull. "There was long preserved in this forest the breed of the Scottish wild cattle, until their ferocity occasioned their being extirpated about forty years ago. Their appearance was beautiful, being milk-white, with black muzzles, horns, and hoofs. The bulls are described by ancient authors as having white manes; but those of latter days had lost that peculiarity, perhaps by intermixture with the tame breed." (Globe Ed. of Scott.) See Scott's note to Castle Dangerous. This breed survives now only at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland. 62. swarthy is cognate with Germ. schwartz. 150. 68. sound the pryse. The Prise was the note or notes blown at the death of the stag. See Sir Tristrem, Fytte Third, xli. : i.e. three notes or more. "He blew priis as he can Thre mot other mare. Sir Eglamour of Artois, 298-300 (Camd. Soc.): "Then had Syr Egyllamoure don to dedd A grete herte, & tan the hedd, The pryce he blewe fulle schylle." See notes to According to some, the pryce consisted of "two longe notes and the recl ate." Syr Gawayne, p. 322. The word, like nearly all other words in English connected with the chase, is Norman-French. It is in fact the same word with the Fr. prise, lit. a capture, and our prize. 72. dight. A. S. dihtan, to arrange, dress, &c. [What is meant by cheer here?] 73. clan is a Keltic word, of the Gadhelic branch. Gael. and Irish clann. 78. [Explain still here.] 81. Claud Lord Claud Hamilton, second son of the Duke of Chatelherault and "Commentator" of the Abbey of Paisley; a firm adherent of Queen Mary, for whom he fought at Langside. 83. buxom. See note to L'Alleg. 24. |