'William Erskine, Esq. advocate, sheriff-depute of the Orkneys,
became a Judge of the Court of Session by the title of Lord
Kinnedder, and died in Edinburgh in August, 1823. He had been from
early youth the most intimate of the Poet's friends, and his chief
confidant and adviser as to all literary matters. See a notice of
his life and character by the late Mr. Hay Donaldson, to which Sir
Walter Scott contributed several paragraphs.'--LOCKHART.
There are frequent references to Erskine throughout Lockhart's Life
of Scott. The critics of the time were of his opinion that Scott as
a poet was not giving his powers their proper direction. Jeffrey
considered Marmion 'a misapplication in some degree of extraordinary
talents.' Fortunately, Scott decided for himself in the matter, and
the self-criticism of this Introduction is characterised not only by
good humour and poetic beauty but by discrimination and strong
common-sense.
line 14. a morning dream. This may simply be a poetic way of saying
that his method is unsystematic, but Horace's account of the vision
he saw when he was once tempted to write Greek verses is
irresistibly suggested by the expression:--
'Vetuit me tali voce Quirinus
Post mediam noctem visus, cum somnia vera:
"In silvam non ligna feras insanius, ac si
Magnas Graecorum malis implere catervas?'
Sat. I. x. 32.
line 24. all too well. This use of 'all too' is a development of the
Elizabethan expression 'all-to' = ALTOGETHER, QUITE, as 'all to
topple,' Pericles, iii. 2. 17; 'all to ruffled,' Comus, 380. In this
usage the original force of TO as a verbal prefix is lost sight of.
Chaucer has 'The pot to breaketh' in Prologue to Chanon Yeomanes
Tale. See note in Clarendon Press Milton, i. 290.
line 26. Desultory song may naturally command a very wide class of
those intelligent readers, for whom the Earl of Iddesleigh, in
'lectures and Essays,' puts forward a courageous plea in his
informing and genial address on the uses of Desultory Reading.
line 28. The reading of the first edition is 'loftier,' which
conveys an estimate of his own achievements more characteristic of
Scott than the bare assertion of his ability to 'build the lofty
rhyme' which is implied in the line as it stands. Perhaps the
expression just quoted from 'Lycidas' may have led to the reading of
all subsequent editions.
line 46. The Duke of Brunswick commanded the Prussian forces at
Jena, 14 Oct., 1806, and was mortally wounded. He was 72. For
'hearse,' cp. above, Introd. to I. 199.
line 54. The reigning house of Prussia comes from the Electors of
Brandenburg. In 1415 Frederick VI. of Hohenzollern and Nuremberg
became Frederick the First, Elector of Brandenburg. The Duchy of
Prussia fell under the sway of the Elector John Sigismund (1608-19),
and from that time to the present there has been a very remarkable
development of government and power. See Carlyle's 'Frederick the
Great,' and Mr. Baring-Gould's 'Germany' in the series 'Stories of
the Nations.'
lines 57-60. The Duke of Brunswick was defeated at Valmy in 1792,
and so failed to crush the dragon of the French Revolution in its
birth, as in all likelihood he would have done had he been
victorious on the occasion.
line 64. Prussia, without an ally, took the field instead of acting
on the defensive.
line 67. seem'd = beseemed, befitted; as in Spenser's May eclogue,
'Nought seemeth sike strife,' i.e. such strife is not befitting or
seemly.
line 69. Various German princes lost their dominions after Napoleon
conquered Prussia.
line 78. By defeating Varus, A. D. 9, Arminius saved Germany from
Roman conquest. See the first two books of the Annals of Tacitus, at
the close of which this tribute is paid to the hero: 'liberator
haud dubie Germaniae et qui non primordia populi Romani, sicut alii
reges ducesque, sed florentissimum imperium lacessierit, proeliis
ambiguus, bello non victus.'
lines 46-80. This undoubtedly vigorous and well-sustained tribute is
not without its special purpose. The Princess Caroline was daughter
of the Duke of Brunswick, and Scott was one of those who believed in
her, in spite of that 'careless levity' which he did not fail to
note in her demeanour when presented at her Court at Blackheath in
1806. This passage on the Duke of Brunswick had been read by the
Princess before the appearance of 'Marmion.' Lockhart (Life of
Scott, ii. 117) says: 'He seems to have communicated fragments of
the poem very freely during the whole of its progress. As early as
the 22nd 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.'
line 81. The Red-Cross hero is Sir Sidney Smith, the famous admiral,
who belonged to the Order of Knights Templars. The eight-pointed
Templar's cross which he wore throughout his career is said to have
belonged to Richard Coeur-de-Lion. In early life, with consent of
the Government, Smith distinguished himself with the Swedes in their
war with Russia. He was frequently entrusted with the duty of
alarming the French coast, and once was captured and imprisoned, in
the Temple at Paris, for two years. His escape was effected by a
daring stratagem on the part of the French Royalist party. He and
his sailors helped the Turks to retain St. Jean d'Acre against
Napoleon, till then the 'Invincible,' who retired baffled after a
vain siege of sixty days (May, 1799). Had Acre been won, said
Napoleon afterwards, 'I would have reached Constantinople and the
Indies--I would have changed the face of the world.' See Scott's
'Life of Napoleon,' chap. xiii.
line 91. For metal'd see above, Introd. to I. 308.
line 92. For warped = 'frozen,' cp. As You Like It, ii. 7. 187,
where, addressing the bitter sky, the singer says:--
'Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp,
As friends remember'd not.'
line 94. The reference is to Sir Ralph Abercromby, who commanded the
expedition to Egypt, 1800-1, and fell at the battle of Alexandria.
Sir Sidney Smith was wounded in the same battle, and had to go home.
lines 100-10. Scott pays compliment to his friend Joanna Baillie
(1764-1851), with chivalrous courtesy asserting that she is the
first worthy successor of Shakespeare. 'Count Basil' and 'De
Montfort' are the two most remarkable of her 'Plays of the
Passions,' of which she published three volumes. 'De Montfort' was
played in London, Kemble enacting the hero. Several of Miss
Baillie's Scottish songs are among standard national lyrics.
line 100. Cp. opening of 'Lady of the Lake.'
lines 115-28. Lockhart notes the resemblance between this passage
and Pope's 'Essay on Man,' II. 133-148.
line 134. Cp. Goldsmith's 'Traveller,' 293:--
'The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.'
Batavia is the capital of the Dutch East Indies, with canals,
architecture, &c., after the home model.
line 137. hind, from Early Eng. hyne, servant (A. S. hina) is quite
distinct from hind, a female stag. Gavin Douglas, translating Tyrii
coloni of Aen. I. 12, makes them 'hynis of Tyre.' Shakespeare (Merry
Wives, iii. 5. 94) uses the word as servant, 'A couple of Ford's
knaves, his HINDS, were called forth.' The modern usage implies a
farm-bailiff or simply a farm-servant.
line 149. Lochaber is a large district in the south of
Invernesshire, having Ben Nevis and other Grampian heights within
its compass. It is a classic name in Scottish literature owing to
Allan Ramsay's plaintive lyric, 'Lochaber no more.'
line 153. For early influences, see Lockhart's Life, vol. i.
line 178. 'Smailholm Tower, in Berwickshire, the scene of the
author's infancy, is situated about two miles from Dryburgh Abbey.'-
-LOCKHART.
line 180. The aged hind was 'Auld Sandy Ormiston,' the cow-herd on
Sandyknows, Scott's grandfather's farm. 'If the child saw him in the
morning,' says Lockhart, 'he could not be satisfied unless the old
man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep him
company as he lay watching his charge.'
line 183. strength, stronghold. Cp. Par. Lost, vii. 141:--
'This inaccessible high strength...
He trusted to have seiz'd.'
line 194. slights, as pointed out by Mr. Rolfe, was 'sleights' in
the original, and, as lovers' stratagems are manifestly referred to,
this is the preferable reading. But both spellings occur in this
sense.
line 201. The Highlanders displayed such valour at Killiecrankie
(1689), and Prestonpans (1745).
line 207. 'See notes on the Eve of St. John, in the Border
Minstrelsy, vol. iv; and the author's Introduction to the
Minstrelsy, vol. i. p. 101.'--LOCKHART.
line 211. 'Robert Scott of Sandyknows, the grandfather of the
Poet.'--LOCKHART.
line 216. doom, judgment or decision. 'Discording,' in the sense of
disagreeing, is still in common use in Scotland both as an adj. and
a participle. 'They discorded' indicates that two disputants
approached without quite reaching a serious quarrel. In a note to
the second edition of the poem Scott states that the couplet
beginning 'whose doom' is 'unconsciously borrowed from a passage in
Dryden's beautiful epistle to John Driden of Chesterton.' Dryden's
lines are:--
'Just, good, and wise, contending neighbours come,
From your award to wait their final doom.'
line 221. 'Mr. John Martin, minister of Mertoun, in which parish
Smailholm Tower is situated.'--LOCKHART. With the tribute to the
clergyman's worth, cp. Walton's eulogy on George Herbert, 'Thus he
lived, and thus he died, like a saint,' &c.
line 225. For imp, cp. above Introd. to I. 37. A 'grandame's child'
is almost certainly spoiled. Shakespeare (King John, ii. i. 161)
utilizes the fact:--
'It grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig.'