"Of all the poetical battles which have been fought, from the days of Homer to those of Mr. Southey, there is none, in our opinion, at all comparable, for interest and animation--for breadth of drawing and magnificence of effect--with this of Mr. Scott"s."
line 757. To this day a commanding position to the west of the hill is called the "King"s Chair."
Stanza XXVI. line 795. "Badenoch-man," says Lockhart, "is the correction of the author"s interleaved copy of the ed. of 1830."
HIGHLANDMAN was the previous reading. Badenoch is in the S. E. of co. of Inverness, between Monagh Lea mountains and Grampians.
Stanza XXVIII. line 867 Sped, undone, killed. Cp. Merchant of Venice, ii. 9. 70: " So be gone; you are sped." See also note on "Lycidas" 122, Clarendon Press Milton, vol. i.
Stanza x.x.x. The two prominent features of this stanza are the sweet tenderness of the verses, and the ill.u.s.tration of the irony of events in the striking culmination of the hero"s career.
line 904. Cp. Pope, "Moral Epistles," II. 269:--
"And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, Woman"s at best a contradiction still."
line 906. Cp. Byron"s "Sardanapalus," I. ii. 511:--
"Your last sighs Too often breathed out in a woman"s hearing, When men have shrunk from the ign.o.ble care Of watching the last hour of him who led them."
Stanza x.x.xII. line 972. See above, III. x.
line 976. Metaphor from the sand-gla.s.s. Cp. Pericles, v. 2. 26:--
"Now our sands are almost run."
Stanza x.x.xIII. lines 999-1004. Charlemagne"s rear-guard under Roland was cut to pieces by heathen forces at Roncesvalles, a valley in Navarre, in 778. Roland might have summoned his uncle Charlemagne by blowing his magic horn, but this his valour prevented him from doing till too late. He was fatally wounded, and the "Song of Roland,"
telling of his worth and prowess, is one of the best of the mediaeval romances. Olivier was also a distinguished paladin, and the names of the two are immortalized in the proverb "A Rowland for an Oliver." Fontarabia is on the coast of Spain, about thirty miles from Roncesvalles. See Paradise Lost, I. 586, and note in Clarendon Press ed.
line 1011 Our Caledonian pride, fitly and tenderly named "the flowers of the forest."
Stanza x.x.xIV. line 1034. Cp. "spearmen"s twilight wood," "Lady of the Lake," VI. xvii.
line 1035. Cp. Aytoun"s "Edinburgh after Flodden," vii, where Randolph Murray tells of the "riven banner":--
"It was guarded well and long By your brothers and your children, By the valiant and the strong.
One by one they fell around it, As the archers laid them low, Grimly dying, still unconquered, With their faces to the foe."
line 1059. Lockhart here gives an extract from Jeffrey:--"The powerful poetry of these pa.s.sages can receive no ill.u.s.tration from any praise or observations of ours. It is superior, in our apprehension, to all that this author has. .h.i.therto produced; and, with a few faults of diction, equal to any thing that has ever been written upon similar subjects. From the moment the author gets in sight of FIodden Field, indeed, to the end of the poem, there is no tame writing, and no intervention of ordinary pa.s.sages. He does not once flag or grow tedious; and neither stops to describe dresses and ceremonies, nor to commemorate the harsh names of feudal barons from the Border. There is a flight of five or six hundred lines, in short, in which he never stoops his wing, nor wavers in his course; but carries the reader forward with a more rapid, sustained, and lofty movement, than any epic bard that we can at present remember."
Stanza x.x.xV. 1. 1067. Lockhart quotes from Byron"s "Lara" as a parallel,--
"Day glimmers on the dying and the dead, The cloven cuira.s.s, and the helmless head," &c.
line 1084. "There can be no doubt that King James fell in the battle of Flodden. He was killed, says the curious French Gazette, within a lance"s length of the Earl of Surrey; and the same account adds, that none of his division were made prisoners, though many were killed; a circ.u.mstance that testifies the desperation of their resistance. The Scottish historians record many of the idle reports which pa.s.sed among the vulgar of their day. Home was accused, by the popular voice, not only of failing to support the King, but even of having carried him out of the field, and murdered him. And this tale was revived in my remembrance, by an unauthenticated story of a skeleton, wrapped in a bull"s hide, and surrounded with an iron chain, said to have been found in the well of Home Castle, for which, on enquiry, I could never find any better authority than the s.e.xton of the parish having said, that, IF THE WELL WERE CLEANED OUT, HE WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED AT SUCH A DISCOVERY. Home was the chamberlain of the King, and his prime favourite; he had much to lose (in fact did lose all) in consequence of James"s death, and nothing earthly to gain by that event: but the retreat, or inactivity, of the left wing, which he commanded, after defeating Sir Edmund Howard, and even the circ.u.mstance of his returning unhurt, and loaded with spoil, from so fatal a conflict, rendered the propagation of any calumny against him easy and acceptable.
Other reports gave a still more romantic turn to the King"s fate, and averred, that James, weary of greatness after the carnage among his n.o.bles, had gone on a pilgrimage, to merit absolution for the death of his father, and the breach of his oath of amity to Henry.
In particular, it was objected to the English, that they could never show the token of the iron belt; which, however, he was likely enough to have laid aside on the day of battle, as enc.u.mbering his personal exertions. They produce a better evidence, the monarch"s sword and dagger, which are still preserved in the Herald"s College in London. Stowe has recorded a degrading story of the disgrace with which the remains of the unfortunate monarch were treated in his time. An unhewn column marks the spot where James fell, still called the King"s Stone."--SCOTT. See also Mr. Jerningham"s "Norham Castle," chap. xi.
line 1084. See above, V. vii, &c.
Stanza x.x.xVI. line 1096. "This storm of Lichfield Cathedral, which had been garrisoned on the part of the King, took place in the Great Civil War. Lord Brook, who, with Sir John Gill, commanded the a.s.sailants, was shot with a musket-ball through the vizor of his helmet. The royalists remarked that he was killed by a shot fired from St. Chad"s Cathedral, and upon St. Chad"s day, and received his death-wound in the very eye with which, he had said, he hoped to see the ruin of all the cathedrals in England. The magnificent church in question suffered cruelly upon this, and other occasions; the princ.i.p.al spire being ruined by the fire of the besiegers."--SCOTT.
Ceadda, or Chad, after resigning the bishopric of York in 669 A. D., was appointed Bp. of Lichfield, where he "lived for a little while in great holiness." See Hunt"s "English Church in the Middle Ages,"
p. 17.
line 1110. The allusion is to the old fragment on Flodden, which has been so skilfully extended by Jean Elliot and also by Mrs. c.o.c.kburn in their national lyrics, "The Flowers o" the Forest."
line 1117. Once more the poet uses the irony of events with significant force.
Stanza x.x.xVII. line 1125. There is now a font of stone with a drinking cup, and an inscription on the back of the font runs thus:- -
"Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and stay, Rest by the well of Sybil Grey."
Stanza x.x.xVIII. In this stanza the poet indicates the spirit in which romances are written, clearly indicating that those only that have ears will be able to hear. "Phonanta sunetoisin" might be the watchword of all imaginative writers. Cp. Thackeray"s "Rebecca and Rowena."
line 1155. Hall and Holinshed were chroniclers of the sixteenth century, to both of whom Shakespeare was indebted for pliant material.
line 1168. Sir Thomas More, Lord Sands, and Anthony Denny. See Henry VIII.
lines 1169-70. The references are to old homely customs at weddings.
See Brand"s "Popular Antiquities."
L"ENVOY.
Scott"s fondness for archaisms makes him add his L"Envoy in the manner of early English and Scottish poets. See e.g. Spenser"s "Shepherd"s Calendar" and the "Phoenix" of James VI.
line 4. Rede, "used generally for TALE or DISCOURSE."--SCOTT.
line 6. Cp. William Morris"s introduction to "Earthly Paradise,"
where the poet calls himself
"The idle singer of an empty day."
line 17. This hearty wish is uttered, no doubt, with certain reminiscences of the author"s own school days. His youthful spirit, and his genial sympathy with the young, are prominent features in the character of Sir Walter Scott.
Footnotes:
{1} Lockhart quotes:--"He resumed the bishopric of Lindisfarne, which, owing to bad health, he again relinquished within less than three months before his death."--RAINE"S St. Cuthbert.
{2} See, on this curious subject, the Essay on Fairies, in the "Border Minstrelsy," vol. ii, under the fourth head; also Jackson on Unbelief, p. 175. Chaucer calls Pluto the "King of Faerie"; and Dunbar names him, "Pluto, that elrich incubus." If he was not actually the devil, he must be considered as the "prince of the power of the air." The most curious instance of these surviving cla.s.sical superst.i.tions is that of the Germans, concerning the Hill of Venus, into which she attempts to entice all gallant knights, and detains them there in a sort of Fools" Paradise.
{3} See Pennant"s Tour in Wales.
{4} "First Edition--Mr. Brydone has been many years dead. 1825."
{5} ""Lesquels Escossois descendirent la montaigne in bonne ordre, en la maniere que marchent Its Allemans, sans parler, ne faire aucun bruit"--Gazette of the Battle, PINKERTON"S History, Appendix, vol.
ii. p. 456."