The first four of the Introductory Epistles are dated Ashestiel, and they point out very distinctly some of the "spots" which, after the lapse of so many years, he remembered with pleasure for their connexion with particular passages of Marmion. There is a knoll with some tall old ashes on the adjoining farm of the Peel, where he was very fond of sitting by himself, and it still bears the name of the Sheriff's Knowe. Another favourite seat was beneath a huge oak hard by the Tweed, at the extremity of the haugh of Ashestiel. It was here, that while meditating his verses, he used

"to stray,

And waste the solitary day

In plucking from yon fen the reed,

And watch it floating down the Tweed;

Or idly list the shrilling lay

With which the milkmaid cheers her way,

Marking its cadence rise and fail,

As from the field, beneath her pail,

She trips it down the uneven dale.”

He frequently wandered far from home, however, attended only by his dog, and would return late in the evening, having let hours after hours slip away among the soft and melancholy wildernesses where Yarrow creeps from her fountains. The lines,

"Oft in my mind such thoughts awake,
By lone Saint Mary's silent like," &c.,

paint a scene not less impressive than what Byron. found amidst the gigantic pines of the forest of Ravenna; and how completely does he set himself before us in the moment of his gentler and more solemn inspiration, by the closing couplet,

"Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,

So stilly is the solitude."

But when the theme was of a more stirring order, he enjoyed pursuing it over brake and fell at the full speed of his Lieutenant. I well remember his

saying, as I rode with him across the hills from Ashestiel to Newark one day in his declining years

"Oh, man, I had many a grand gallop among these braes when I was thinking of Marmion, but a trotting canny pony must serve me now." His friend, 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 Mussel

burgh, he often came and placed himself beside me, to repeat the verses that he had been composing during these pauses of our exercise."

He seems to have communicated fragments of the poem very freely during the whole of its progress. As early as the 22d February 1807, I find Mrs Hayman acknowledging, in the name of the Princess of Wales, the receipt of a copy of the Introduction to Canto III., in which occurs the tribute to Her Royal Highness's heroic father, mortally wounded the year before at Jena a tribute so grateful to her feelings that she herself shortly after sent the poet an elegant silver vase as a memorial of her thankfulness. And about the same time the Marchioness of Abercorn expresses the delight with which both she and her lord had read the generous verses on Pitt and Fox in another of those epistles. But his connexion with this noble family was no new one; for his father, and afterwards his brother Thomas, had been the auditors of their Scotch rental.

In March his researches concerning Dryden carried him again to the south. During several weeks he gave his day pretty regularly to the pamphlets and MSS. of the British Museum, and the evening to the brilliant societies that now courted him whenever he came within their sphere. His recent political demonstrations during the brief reign of the Whigs, seem to have procured for him on this

the

But

occasion a welcome of redoubled warmth among leaders of his own now once more victorious party. "As I had," he writes to his brother-in-law, in India, "contrary to many who avowed the same opinions in sunshine, held fast my integrity during the Foxites' interval of power, I found myself of course very well with the new administration." he uniformly reserved his Saturday and Sunday either for Mr Ellis, at Sunninghill, or Lord and Lady Abercorn, at their beautiful villa near Stanmore; and the press copy of Cantos I. and II. of Marmion attests that most of it reached Ballantyne in sheets, franked by the Marquis, or his son-in-law, Lord Aberdeen, during April 1807.

Before he turned homeward he made a short visit to his friend William Stewart Rose, at his cottage of Gundimore, in Hampshire, and enjoyed in his company various long rides in the New Forest, a day in the dock-yard of Portsmouth, and two or three more in the Isle of Wight.* Several sheets

* I am sure I shall gratify every reader by extracting some lines alluding to Scott's visit at Mr Rose's Marine Villa, from an unpublished poem, entitled "Gundimore," kindly placed at my disposal by his host.

"Here Walter Scott has woo'd the northern muse;

Here he with me has joyed to walk or cruise;

And hence has pricked through Yten's holt, where we
Have called to mind how under greenwood tree,

of the MS., and corrected proofs of Canto III., are also under covers franked from Gundimore by Mr

Pierced by the partner of his 'woodland craft,'
King Rufus fell by Tyrrell's random shaft.

Hence have we ranged by Celtic camps and barrows,
Or climbed the expectant bark, to thread the Narrows
Of Hurst, bound westward to the gloomy bower
Where Charles was prisoned in yon island tower;
Or from a longer flight alighted where

Our navies to recruit their strength repair
And there have seen the ready shot and gun;
Seen in red steam the molten copper run;
And massive anchor forged, whose iron teeth
Should hold the three-decked ship when billows seethe;
And when the arsenal's dark stithy rang

With the loud hammers of the Cyclop-gang,

Swallowing the darkness up, have seen with wonder,
The flashing fire, and heard fast-following thunder.
Here, witched from summer sea and softer reign,
Foscolo courted Muse of milder strain.

On these ribbed sands was Coleridge pleased to pace,
While ebbing seas have hummed a rolling base
To his rapt talk. Alas! all these are gone,
'And I and other creeping things live on.'
The flask no more, dear Walter, shall I quaff
With thee, no more enjoy thy hearty laugh!
No more shalt thou to me extend thy hand,
A welcome pilgrim to my father's land!

"Alone, such friends and comrades I deplore,

And peopled but with phantoms is the shore: