negative." Again, in v. 212, Scott's "For royal were his garb and mien" is turned by Lockhart, or his printers, into “For royal was,” etc. In iv. 597, Scott has " 'peace and wealth . . . has blessed;" but, as any schoolboy could explain, that is not a parallel case. The archaisms to which I have just referred have proved, as in The Lady of the Lake, a stumbling-block to editors or their proof-readers. I have seen an edition of Shakespeare in which every instance of the obsolete vail (= lower, let fall) is "corrected" to veil, the difference being assumed to be one of spelling merely; and in Marmion, iii. 234, where the early editions all have vail, the recent ones all have veil. In vi. 608, where Scott uses the word again (if we may trust the early editions) Lockhart prints 'vails. Here a question may possibly be raised as to the true reading; but in iii. 194 I have no doubt that Scott's word was sleights, as in all the early editions, and not slights, as in Lockhart's and all the later ones. Lockhart is also responsible, I believe, for the bad corruption of "For me," etc. for "From me," etc. in iii. ind. 228. In iii. ind. 28, the first edition has "Some transient fit of loftier. rhyme;" but every other edition that I have seen has "lofty rhyme." We may be sure that Scott wrote the former, and that he would never have altered it to the latter. For further examples of the corruptions in former texts, as well as for further comments on those cited here, I must refer the reader to my Notes. may add that Lockhart did not collate the early editions with sufficient care while comparing the printed text with the original MS.; for in several instances (see, for example, on iv. 635, 647, etc.), as in The Lady of the Lake, he gives readings as found only in the MS. which really occur in the first edition. I have given most of Scott's own notes in full, and also those of Lockhart. A few have been slightly abridged, or partially rewritten. All the other notes are original, for I have met with no annotated edition of the poem except Scott's and Lockhart's. As I said in the preface to The Lady of the Lake, there are of course many notes that many readers will not need, but I think there are none that may not be of service, or at least of interest, to some reader; and I hope that no one will turn to them for help without finding it. If, as is not unlikely, I have overlooked errors of my own while correcting those of others, I shall be grateful to any reader who will favor me with a memorandum of such as he may detect. CAMBRIDGE, April 6, 1885. |