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 favourite 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 to visit the castle; and when the poem was published, I remember he laughed, and asked me how I liked Tantallon."*

* Mr Guthrie Wright, in his letter to me (Edinburgh, April 5th, 1837), adds- -" You have said a good deal about Sir Walter's military career, and truly stated how much he was the life and soul of the corps, and that at quarters he used to set the table in a roar.' Numberless anecdotes of him might be given about that time. I shall only mention one. Our Adjutant, Jack Adams, was a jolly fat old fellow, a great favourite, who died one day,

VOL. III.

B

Just a year had elapsed from his beginning the poem, when he penned the Epistle for Canto IV. at Ashestiel; and who, that considers how busily his various pursuits and labours had been crowding the interval, can wonder to be told that

"Even now, it scarcely seems a day

Since first I tuned this idle lay

We were all very sor

and was buried with military honours. rowful on the occasion-had marched to the Greyfriars churchyard to the Dead March in Saul, and other solemn music, and after having fired over the grave, were coming away - but there seemed to be a moment's pause as to the tune which should be played by the band, when Scott said, If I might venture an opinion, it should be, I hae laid a herrin in saut,' and we marched off in quick time to that tune accordingly.

"As an instance of the fun and good-humour that prevailed among us, as well as of Sir Walter's ready wit, I may likewise mention an anecdote personal to myself. My rear-rank man rode a great brute of a carriage horse, over which he had not sufficient control, and which therefore not unfrequently, at a charge, broke through the front rank, and he could not pull him up till he had got several yards a-head of the troop. One day as we were standing at ease after this had occurred, I was rather grumbling, I suppose, at one of my legs being carried off in this unceremonious way, to the no small danger of my being unhorsed, when Scott said, Why, Sir, I think you are most properly placed in your present position, as you know it is your especial business to check overcharges,' alluding to my official duty, as Auditor of the Court of Session, to check overcharges in bills of costs."

[1839.]

6

A task so often laid aside

When leisure graver cares denied
That now November's dreary gale,

Whose voice inspired my opening tale,
That same November gale once more

Whirls the dry leaves on Yarrow shore."

The fifth Introduction was written in Edinburgh in the month following; that to the last Canto, during the Christmas festivities of Mertoun-house, where, 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. The bulky appendix of notes, including a mass of curious antiquarian quotations, must have moved somewhat slowly through the printer's hands; but Marmion was at length ready for publication by the middle of February 1808.

Among the " graver cares" which he alludes to as having interrupted his progress in the poem, the chief were, as has been already hinted, those arising from the altered circumstances of his brother. These are mentioned in a letter to Miss Seward, dated in August 1807. The lady had, among other things, announced her pleasure in the prospect of a visit from the author of "Madoc," expressed her admiration of "Master Betty, the Young Roscius," and lamented the father's design of placing that "miraculous boy" for three years under a certain

"schoolmaster of eminence at Shrewsbury." ""* Scott savs in answer—

"Since I was favoured with your letter, my dear Miss Seward, I have brought the unpleasant transactions to which my last letter alluded, pretty near to a conclusion, much more fortunate than I had ventured to hope. Of my brother's creditors, those connected with him by blood or friendship showed all the kindness which those ties are in Scotland peculiarly calculated to produce; and, what is here much more uncommon, those who had no personal connexion with him, or his family, showed a liberality which would not have misbecome the generosity of the English. Upon the whole, his affairs are put in a course of management which I hope will enable him to begin life anew with renovated hopes, and not entirely destitute of the means of recommencing business.

"I am very happy-although a little jealous withal that you are to have the satisfaction of Southey's personal acquaintance. I am certain you will like the Epic bard exceedingly. Although he does not deign to enter into the mere trifling intercourse of society, yet when a sympathetic spirit calls him forth, no man talks with more animation on

* See Miss Seward's Letters, vol. vi. p. 364.

literary topics; and perhaps no man in England has read and studied so much, with the same powers of making use of the information which he is so indefatigable in acquiring. I despair of reconciling you to my little friend Jeffrey, although I think I could trust to his making some impression on your prepossession, were you to converse with him. I think Southey does himself injustice in supposing the Edinburgh Review, or any other, could have sunk Madoc, even for a time. But the size and price of the work, joined to the frivolity of an age which must be treated as nurses humour children, are sufficient reasons why a poem, on so chaste a model, should not have taken immediately. We know the similar fate of Milton's immortal work, in the witty age of Charles II., at a time when poetry was much more fashionable than at present. As to the division of the profits, I only think that Southey does not understand the gentlemen of the trade, emphatically so called, as well as I do. Without any greater degree of fourberie than they conceive the long practice of their brethren has rendered matter of prescriptive right, they contrive to clip the author's proportion of profits down to a mere trifle. It is the tale of the fox that went a-hunting with the lion, upon condition of equal division of the spoil; and yet I do not quite blame the booksellers, when I consider the very singular nature of their mystery.