a clever piece of handiwork, and Sir Walter felt at first great relief from the use of it: inasmuch that his spirits rose to quite the old pitch, and his letter to me upon the occasion overflows with merry applications of sundry maxims and verses about Fortune. "Fortes Fortuna adjuvat "- he says-"never more sing I!" Lockhart, Chapter lxxix. The first stanza is an old Elizabethan song. The second, Scott's palinode, appears to be his last effort in verse. The incident was in February, 1831.

FORTUNE, my Foe, why dost thou frown

on me?

And will my Fortune never better be?

ds in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky clouds of smoke, which still as they asire,

heir dark sides there bursts the glowing fire;

ther times huge balls of fire are tossed,

t lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost; etimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn,

huge rocks, which instantly are borne id explosions to the starry skies,

nes made liquid as the huge mass flies, 1 pack again with greater weight recoils, le Etna thundering from the bottom boils.

ON A THUNDER-STORM

Scott's Introduction to the Lay, he s to an original effusion of these "schoolays," prompted by a thunder-storm, which 3" was much approved of, until a malevoitic sprung up in the shape of an apotheblue-buskined wife; she affirmed that Jost sweet poetry was copied from an old zine."- Lockhart, Chapter iii. The were written in 1783.

'er my head though awful thunders roll, vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole, is thy voice, my God, that bids them fly,

arm directs those lightnings through the sky.

et the good thy mighty name revere, ardened sinners thy just vengeance fear.

ON THE SETTING SUN

'These lines, as well as the foregoing, were found wrapped in a paper with the inscription, by Dr. Adam,-"Walter Scott, July, 1783." i - Lockhart, Chapter iii.

-

THOSE evening clouds, that setting ray,
And beauteous tints, serve to display
Their great Creator's praise;

Then let the short-lived thing called man,
Whose life's comprised within a span,
To Him his homage raise.

We often praise the evening clouds,
And tints so gay and bold,

But seldom think upon our God,

Who tinged these clouds with gold.

II. MOTTOES FROM THE NOVELS

The scraps of poetry, which have been in most cases tacked to the beginning of chapters in these novels, are sometimes quoted either from reading or from memory, but, in the general case, are pure invention. I found it too troublesome to turn to the collection of the British Poets to discover apposite mottoes, and in the situation of the theatrical machinist, who, when the white paper which represented his shower of snow was exhausted, continued the shower by snowing brown, I drew on my memory as long as I could, and when that failed, eked it out with invention. I believe that in some cases, where actual names are affixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works of the authors referred to. In some cases I have been entertained when Dr. Watts and other graver authors have been ransacked in vain for stanzas for which the novelist alone was responsible.' · Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate.

'It may be worth noting that it was in correcting the proof-sheets of The Antiquary that Scott first took to equipping his characters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he happened to ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to hunt for a particu