back to Homer and Shakespeare, one thinks of them surrounded by the beings to whom they have given a mysterious life, so Scott also lies among the real though shadowy world of his own creation. This, and the memory of his great-heartedness, is what he has left us. Travellers from all lands still throng to visit the scenery of his neighbourhood, the hillsides he planted, the garden he laid out, the house filled with the relics sanctified in his eyes by the love of poetry and of Scotland. To save that house he fought and suffered. But it was never tenanted by his family; it stands there like the castle of a dream; as if ready for the master's return, but silent meanwhile and uncheered by life. His children have been long gathered to their rest; the lands which he bought at the price of genius have passed to another race; and one young girl, the child of his daughter's daughter, now preserves alone the blood of Walter Scott of Abbotsford.

F. T. PALGRAVE

May: 1866

THE

LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL:

A POEM.

IN SIX CANTOS.

Dum relego, scripsisse pudet; quia plurima cerno,
Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

CHARLES, EARL OF DALKEITH,

THIS POEM IS INSCRIBED

BY THE AUTHOR.

B

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The

The Poem now offered to the Public, is intended to illustrate the customs and manners which anciently prevailed on the Borders of England and Scotland. inhabitants, living in a state partly pastoral and partly warlike, and combining habits of constant depredation with the influence of a rude spirit of chivalry, were often engaged in scenes highly susceptible of poetical ornament. As the description of scenery and manners was more the object of the Author than a combined and regular narrative, the plan of the Ancient Metrical Romance was adopted, which allows greater latitude, in this respect, than would be consistent with the dignity of a regular Poem. The same model offered other facilities, as it permits an occasional alteration of measure, which, in some degree, authorises the change of rhythm in the text. The machinery, also, adopted from popular belief, would have seemed puerile in a Poem which did not partake of the rudeness of the old Ballad, or Metrical Romance.

For these reasons, the Poem was put into the mouth of an ancient Minstrel, the last of the race, who, as he is supposed to have survived the Revolution, might have caught somewhat of the refinement of modern poetry, without losing the simplicity of his original model. The date of the Tale itself is about the middle of the sixteenth century, when most of the personages actually flourished. The time occupied in the action is Three Nights and Three Days.

THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

A PECULIAR interest attaches to "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," not only as the first disclosure of the poet's powers, but as that, among all his works, which is perhaps most closely identified with his personal career and character. Even if Scott had not himself told us, it would not be difficult to trace the various influences under which he composed this poem. His grandmother, in whose youth the Border raids were still matters of comparatively recent tradition, used to amuse him with many a tale of Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, and other Moss-trooping heroes. This prepared his mind for the deep impression which was made on it, when he was about twelve years old, by Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry." It was under a large platanus-tree in his aunt's garden at Kelso that he first read them, forgetting even the dinner-hour in his enjoyment of this new treasure. "To read and to remember was in this instance," he says, "the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were not common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm.

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In the compilation of his own Border Minstrelsy he followed the impulse thus derived; and when, after having for some years dabbled in poetry, he aspired to distinguish himself by something higher than mere translations or occasional verses, his partiality for the Border legends governed his choice of a subject as well as the style of treatment. He hesitated for a while as to the particular story he should illustrate, but all those he thought of belonged to the same class. At one time he contemplated a Border ballad, in the comic manner," founded on his ancestor's (Sir William Scott, of Harden) marriage with ugly Meg Murray, as the alternative of being hanged by his father-in-law. But finally he decided on a romance of Border chivalry, in a light-horseman sort of stanza." Having, at the request of the Countess of Dalkeith, undertaken a ballad about the adventures of a brownie or goblin, called Gilpin Horner, he was discouraged in the attempt by the apparent coldness with which his two friends, Erskine and Cranstoun, listened to the first stanzas, and abandoned the idea till tempted to resume it by learning that, on second thoughts, his critics had formed a more favourable opinion of the effort. He applied himself to the work as an amusement during his enforced leisure, when disabled by the kick of a horse at yeomanry drill on Portobello Sands. As soon as he got into the vein, he dashed it off at the rate of about a canto a week. The goblin page sank into a mere minor feature as the poem grew upon his hands. The metre was borrowed from Coleridge's "Lady Christabel." The beautiful freedom and variety of this metre Scott appreciated all the more, because it enabled him to introduce much of the style and phraseology of the old minstrels. The ballad measure in quatrains, which