And give the aid he begged before. MARMION A TALE OF FLODDEN FIELD INTRODUCTORY NOTE In August, 1791, when Scott was twenty 580 mained together; and that the Scots, behind whom the country was opened to Scotland, had nothing to do but to wait for the attack as they were posted. Yet, did two thirds of the army, actuated by the perfervidium ingenium Scotorum, rush down and give an opportunity to Stanley to occupy the ground they had quitted, by coming over the shoulder of the hill, while the other third, under Lord Home, kept their ground, and having seen their king and about 10,000 of their countrymen cut to pieces, retired into Scotland without loss. For the reason of the bridge not being destroyed while the English passed, I refer you to Pitscottie, who narrates at large, and to whom I give credit for a most accurate and clear description, agreeing perfectly with the ground.' Seventeen years later Scott availed himself of this visit to make the battle on Flodden Field the culminating scene of the second great poem which he gave the public. As he states in his Introduction, printed below, he had retired from his profession, and since the publication of The Lay of the Last Minstrel had been engaged in editing Dryden. But he was also now the quarry at which the publishers were flying, and Constable especially was spreading his wings for that large enterprise in which Scott was to play so promiAs Scott further states in his nent a part. Introduction, Constable made him a munificent offer of a thousand guineas for the as yet un finished poem of Marmion, and the offer came just as Scott was in special need of money to aid his brother Thomas, then withdrawing from his profession as Writer to the Signet. The first reference which Scott makes to his poem is in a letter to Miss Seward dated Edinburgh, 20 February, 1807: 'I have at length fixed on the title of my new poem, which is to be christened, from the principal character, Marmion, or A Tale of Flodden Field. There are to be six Cantos, and an introductory Epistle to each, in the style of that which I send to you as a specimen. In the legendary part of the work, "Knights, Squires and Steeds shall enter on the stage." I am not at all afraid of my patriotism being a sufferer in the course of the tale. It is very true that my friend Leyden has said : "Alas! that Scottish maid should sing That Scottish Bard should wake the string But we may say with Francis I. "that at Flodden all was lost but our honor," an exception which includes everything that is desirable for a poet.' The difficulties into which his brother Thomas had fallen were connected with the business affairs of the Marquis of Abercorn, for whom Thomas Scott had been manager. The consequence of my brother's failure,' Scott wrote later to Miss Seward,' was that the whole affairs of these extensive estates were thrown upon my hands in a state of unutterable confusion, so that to save myself from ruin [he was security for his brother] I was obliged to lend my constant and unremitting attention to their reëstablishment.' All this, however, though it delayed his poem, produced no estrangement from Lord and Lady Abercorn, and on 10 September, 1807, he writes to the latter from Ashestiel, 'I have deferred writing from day to day, my dear Lady Abercorn, until I should be able to make good my promise of sending you the first two cantos of Marmion;' and on 22 January, 1808, he writes to the same, I have finished Marmion, and your Ladyship will do me the honor, I hope, to accept a copy very soon. In the sixth and last canto I have succeeded better than I had ventured to hope, for I had a battle to fight, and I dread hard blows almost as much in poetry as in common life.' He had thought of asking Lord Abercorn to let him dedicate Marmion to him, but was deterred by hearing him express his general dislike to dedications. Lockhart points out that Scott was doubtless indebted for the death scene in Marmion to Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand, which Scott had translated ten years before; but Scott himself, as was his wont made but few allusions to the origin of any parts of the poem. He did, indeed, in a letter to Miss Seward, 23 November, 1807, give a slight explanation of one point, when he wrote, My reason for transporting Marmion from Lichfield was to make good the minstrel prophecy of Constance's song. Why I should ever have taken him there I cannot very well say. Attachment to the place, its locality with respect to Tamworth, the ancient seat of the Marmions, partly, perhaps, the whim of taking a slap at Lord Brooke en passant, joined in suggesting the idea which I had not time to bring out or finish.' And in a letter to Lady Louisa Stuart from Edinburgh, 3 March, 1808, he writes this unusually full explanation of one passage in the poem : sons. I have thought on your reading about the death of Constance, and with all the respect which (sans phrase) I entertain for everything you honor me with, I have not made up my mind to the alteration, and here are my reaClare has no wish to embitter Marmion's last moments, and is only induced to mention the death of Constance because she observes that the wounded man's anxiety for her deliverance prevents his attending to his own spiritual affairs. It seems natural, however, that knowing by the Abbess, or however you please, the share which Marmion had in the fate of Constance, she should pronounce the line assigned to her in such a manner as perfectly conveyed to his conscience the whole truth, although her gentleness avoided convey. ing it in direct terms. We are to consider, too, that Marmion had from various workings of his own mind been led to suspect the fate of Constance, so that, the train being ready laid, the slightest hint of her fate communicated the whole tale of terror to his conviction. Were I to read the passage, I would hesitate a little, like one endeavoring to seek a soft mode of conveying painful intelligence : and re Perhaps after all this is too fine spun, quires more from my gentle readers to fill up my sketch than I am entitled to exact. But I would rather put in an explanatory couplet describing Clare's manner of speaking the words, than make her communication more full and specific.' But the couplet he did not add. Lockhart in his Life throws a little further light on the construction of Marmion by quot ing from a narrative by Mr. Guthrie Wright, who had succeeded Thomas Scott in the charge of the Abercorn estate. 'In the sum mer of 1807,' he writes, 'I had the pleasure of 3 # me, 66 making a trip with Sir Walter to Dumfries, for the purpose of meeting the late Lord Abercorn on his way with his family to Ireland. His Lordship did not arrive for two or three days after we reached Dumfries, and we employed the interval in visiting Sweetheart Abbey, Caerlaverock Castle, and some other ancient buildings in the neighborhood. [Sir Walter] recited poetry and old legends from morn till night, and in short it is impossible that anything could be more delightful than his society; but what I particularly allude to is the circumstance, that at that time he was writing Marmion, the three or four first cantos of which he had with him, and It is which he was so good as to read to me. unnecessary to say how much I was enchanted with them; but as he good-naturedly asked me to state any observations that occurred to I said in joke that it appeared to me he had brought his hero by a very strange route says I, "did ever Why,' into Scotland. mortal coming from England to Edinburgh go by Gifford, Crichton Castle, Borthwick Castle, and over the top of Blackford Hill? Not only is it a circuitous détour, but there never was a road that way since the world was created!" "That is a most irrelevant objection," said Sir Walter; "it was my good pleasure to bring Marmion by that route, for the purpose of describing the places you have mentioned, and the view from Blackford Hill it was his business to find his road and pick But, pray, his steps the best way he could. how would you have me bring him? Not by the post-road, surely, as if he had been trav "No," I replied ; elling in a mail-coach ?" "there were neither post- roads nor mailcoaches in those days; but I think you might have brought him with a less chance of getting into a swamp, by allowing him to travel the natural route by Dunbar and the sea-coast; and then he might have tarried for a space with the famous Earl of Angus, surnamed Bell-the-Cat, at his favorite residence of Tantallon Castle, by which means you would have had not only that fortress with all his feudal followers, but the Castle of Dunbar, the Bass, and all the beautiful scenery of the Forth, to describe." This observation seemed to strike him much, and after a pause he exclaimed "By Jove, you are right! I ought to have brought him that way;" and he added, "but before he and I part, depend upon it he shall visit Tantallon.' He then asked me if I had ever been there, and upon saying I had frequently, he desired me to describe it, which I did; and I verily believe it is from what I then said, that the accurate description contained in the fifth canto was given-at least I never heard him say he had afterwards gone 66 to visit the castle; and when the poem was published, I remember he laughed, and asked me how I liked Tantallon.' The dating of the several poetical Introductions gives a hint of Scott's abodes when he was engaged upon Marmion. The first four are from Ashestiel, and the scenes about that spot became identified in his mind with the composition of the poem. 'I well remember his saying,' writes Lockhart, as I rode with him across the hills from Ashestiel to Newark one "Oh, man, I had day in his declining years many a grand gallop among these braes when I was thinking of Marmion, but a trotting His friend, canny pony must serve me now." Mr. Skene, however, informs me that many of the more energetic descriptions, and particularly that of the battle of Flodden, were struck out while he was in quarters again with his cavalry, in the autumn of 1807. "In the intervals of drilling," he says, "Scott used to delight in walking his powerful black steed up and down by himself upon the Portobello sands, within the beating of the surge; and now and then you would see him plunge in his spurs, and go off as if at the charge, with the spray dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh, he often came and placed himself beside me, to repeat the verses that he had been composing during these pauses of our exercise." It was a year after he began the poem that he wrote the Introductory Epistle for Canto IV. at Ashestiel. The next month he wrote the fifth introduction in Edinburgh; the last was written during the Christmas festivities of Mertoun house, where, as Lockhart says, 'from the first days of his ballad-rhyming, down to the close of his life, he, like his bearded ancestor, usually spent that season with the immediate head of the race.' These epistles, it should be remarked, were not designed in the first instance to be in woven with the romance. They were, in fact, announced early in 1807 in an advertisement as Six Epistles from Ettrick Forest, and were to have been published in an independent volume. It is perhaps a happier fortune for readers of this day than for the first readers of Marmion that the epistles were thus inwoven, since they serve so emphatically to connect Scott's friendships with his poetry; the personal side of authorship in Scott's case is written thus indelibly in the poem. Marmion was published February 23, 1808, and was seized with avidity by Scott's personal friends, and by the public, which called for new editions in rapid succession. Every one naturally compared it with The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Southey wrote frankly: The story is made of better materials than the Lay, yet they are not so well fitted together. As a whole, it has not pleased me so much - in parts, it has pleased me more. There is nothing so finely conceived in your former poem as the death of Marmion: there is nothing finer in its conception anywhere. The introductory epistles I did not wish away, because, as poems, they gave me great pleasure; but i wished them at the end of the volume, or at the beginning — anywhere except where they were. My taste is perhaps peculiar in disliking all interruptions in narrative poetry.' In Wordsworth, too, wrote with the freedom of an accepted friend, and the frankness of these brother poets implies the candor also of Scott's nature. I think your end has been attained. That it is not the end which I should wish you to propose to yourself, you will be well aware, from what you know of my notions of composition, both as to matter and manner. the circle of my acquaintance, it seems as well liked as the Lay, though I have heard that in the world it is not so. Had the poem been much better than the Lay, it could scarcely have satisfied the public, which has too much of the monster, the moral monster, in its composition.' Mr. George Ellis, the accomplished antiquarian scholar who had made the acquaintance of Scott in the days of the Border Minstrelsy, also wrote at length, reflecting in his leisurely letter the best judgment of the men of letters of the day. After balancing the opinions of critics respecting the two poems, he concludes: My own opinion is, that both the productions are equally good in their different ways: yet, upon the whole, I had rather be the author of Marmion than of the Lay, because I think its species of excellence of much more difficult attainment. What degree of bulk may be essentially necessary to the corporeal part of an Epic poem, I know not; but sure I am that the story of Marmion might have furnished twelve books as easily as six-that the masterly character of Constance would not have been less bewitching had it been much more minutely painted-and that De Wilton might have been dilated with great ease, and even to considerable advantage; - in short, that had it been your intention merely to exhibit a spirited romantic story, instead of making that story subservient to the delineation of the manners which prevailed at a certain period of our history, the number and variety of your characters would have suited any scale of painting.' Scott himself in a letter to Surtees, who had offered him the subject of Prince Charlie, says: When you have read over Marmion, which has more individuality of character than the Lay, although it wants a sort of tenderness which the personage of the old minstrel gave to my first-born romance, you will be a better judge whether I should undertake a work which will depend less on incident and descrip tion than on the power of distinguishing and marking the dramatis persona.' And it is a commentary on the confusion of literature and politics so characteristic of the day, that we find him writing to Lady Abercorn: All the Whigs here (in Edinburgh) are in arms against Marmion. If I had satirized Fox, they could have borne it, but a secondary place for the god of their idolatry puts them beyond the slender degree of patience which displaced patriots usually possess. I make them welcome to cry till they are hoarse against both the book and author, as they are not in the habit of having majorities upon their side. I suppose the crossed critics of Holland House will take the same tone in your Metropolis.' The allusion, of course, is to the lines in the Introduction to Canto I., beginning with line 126. In illustration of the asperity of politics at the time, Scott writes to the same correspondent: The Morning Chronicle of the 29th March [1808] has made a pretty story of the cancel of page 10th of Marmion which your Ladyship cannot but recollect was reprinted for the sole purpose of inserting the lines suggested so kindly by the Marquis: — "For talents mourn, untimely lost, When best employed and wanted most;" I suppose from the carelessness of those who arranged the book for binding, this sheet may not in a copy or two have been right placed, and the worthy Editor affirms kindly that this was done that I might have copies to send to Mr. Pitt's friends in which these lines do not occur!!! My publishers here, who forwarded the books, have written in great wrath to contradict the story, and were surprised to find I had more inclination to laugh at it. This is a punishment for appropriating my neighbor's goods. I suppose it would surprise Mr. Morning Chronicle considerably to know that the couplet in question was written by so distinguished a friend of Mr. Pitt as Lord Abercorn.' We noted how Scott's youthful excursion into the Cheviot Hills found expression later in Marmion. It is pleasant to recall that later journey made with his family when Marnion had made Flodden Field famous. Halting at Flodden,' is Lockhart's narrative, 'to expound the field of battle to his young folks, he found that Marmion had, as might have been expected, benefited the keeper of the public house there very largely; and the village Boniface, overflowing with gratitude, expressed his anxiety to have a Scott's Head for his sign-post The poet demurred to this proposal, and assured mine host that nothing could be more appropriate than the portraiture of a foaming tankard, which already surmounted his doorway. Why, the painter-man has not made an ill job," said the landlord, "but I would fain have something more connected with the book that has brought me so much good custom." He produced a well-thumbed copy, and handing it to the author, begged he would at least suggest a motto from the tale of Flodden Field. Scott opened the book at the death scene of the hero, and his eye was immediately caught by the inscription" in black letter . It is hardly to be expected that an author whom the public have honored with some degree of applause should not be again a trespasser on their kindness. Yet the author of Marmion must be supposed to feel some anxiety concerning its success, since he is sensible that he hazards, by this second intrusion, any reputation which his first poem may have proenred him. The present story turns upon the private adventures of a fictitious character, but is called a Tale of Flodden Field, because the hero's fate is connected with that memorable defeat and the causes which led to it. The design of the author was, if possible, to apprise his readers, at the outset, of the date of his story, and to prepare them for the manners of the age in which it is laid. Any historical narrative, far more an attempt at epic composition, exceeded his plan of a romantic tale; yet he may be permitted to hope, from the popularity of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, that an attempt to paint the manners of the feudal times, upon a broader scale, and in the course of a more interesting story, will not be unacceptable to the public. The poem opens about the commencement of August, and concludes with the defeat of Flodden, 9th September, 1513. ASHESTIEL, 1808.' The poem, as Scott wrote to Lady Abercorn, in consequence of an unexampled demand was hurried through the press again and a second edition was quickly issued; but second editions in those days were not second impressions from the same type or from plates, and the author had an opportunity to make corrections. Scott heeded Lady Abercorn's criticism on the speech of Constance, but after much consideration placed a single dash in the line, as it now stands (page 105, line 522), to express her confusion. A few weeks after, when he could look back deliberately on the whole poem, he wrote his friend from Edinburgh 9 June, 1808: 'No one is so sensible as I am of what deficiencies occur in my poetry from the want of judicious criticism and correction, above all from the extreme hurry in which it has hitherto been composed. The worst is that I take the pet at the things myself after they are finished, and I fear I shall never be able to muster up the courage necessary to revise Marmion as he should be revised. But if I ever write another poem, I am determined to make every single couplet of it as perfect as my uttermost care and attention can possibly effect. In order to ensure the accomplishment of these good resolutions, I will consider the whole story in humble prose, and endeavor to make it as interesting as I can before I begin to write it out in verse, and thus I shall have at least the satisfaction to know where I am going, my narrative having been hitherto much upon the plan of blind man's buff. Secondly, having made my story, I will write my poem with all deliberation, and when finished lay it aside for a year at least, during which quarantine I would be most happy if it were suffered to remain in your escritoire or in that of the Marquis, who has the best ear for English versification of any person whom, in a pretty extensive acquaintance with literary characters, I have ever had the fortune to meet with; nor is his taste at all inferior to his power of appreciating the harmony of verse.' When Marmion was reissued in the collective edition of 1830, it carried the following --- |