Marmion Part 28

Stanza x.x.xII. lines 585-91. It is impossible not to connect this striking picture with that of Virgil's Sibyl (Aeneid, VI. 45):--

'Ventum erat ad limen, c.u.m virgo, 'poscere fata Tempus,' ait; 'deus, ecce, deus.' Cui talia fanti Ante fores subito non voltus, non color unus, Non comptae mansere comae; sed pectus anhelum, Et rabie fera corda tument; maiorque videri Nec mortale sonans, adflata est numine quando Iam propiore dei.'

line 588. Stared, stood up stiffly. Cp. Julius Caesar, iv. 3. 280, and Tempest, i. 2. 213, 'with hair UPSTARING.'

line 600. See above, line 468, and note.

Stanza x.x.xIII. line 616. for terror's sake = because of terror. Cp.

'For fashion's sake,' As You Like It, iii. 2. 55.

line 620. The custom of ringing the Pa.s.sING bell grew out of the belief that a church bell, rung when the soul was pa.s.sing from the body, terrified the devils that were waiting to attack it at the moment of its escape. 'The tolling of the pa.s.sing bell was retained at the Reformation; and the people were instructed that its use was to admonish the living, and excite them to pray for the dying. But by the beginning of the l8th century the pa.s.sing bell in the proper sense of the term had almost ceased to be heard. 'A mourning bell is still rung during funeral services as a mark of respect. See s. v.

'Bell,' Chambers's Encyclopaedia. Cp. Byron's 'Parisina,' St. xv.

'The convent bells are ringing, But mournfully and slow; In the grey square turret swinging With a deep sound to and fro.'

In criticising 'Marmion,' in the Edinburgh Review, Lord Jeffrey says that the sound of the knell rung for Constance 'is described with great force and solemnity;' while a writer in the Scots Magazine of 1808 considers that 'the whole of this trial and doom presents a high-wrought scene of horror, which, at the close, rises almost to too great a pitch.'

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO THIRD.

'William Erskine, Esq. advocate, sheriff-depute of the Orkneys, became a Judge of the Court of Session by the t.i.tle 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, c.u.m 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sertion 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 'hea.r.s.e,' 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.serting that she is the first worthy successor of Shakespeare. 'Count Basil' and 'De Montfort' are the two most remarkable of her 'Plays of the Pa.s.sions,' 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 pa.s.sage and Pope's 'Essay on Man,' II. 133-148.

line 134. Cp. Goldsmith's 'Traveller,' 293:--

'The slow ca.n.a.l, the yellow-blossom'd vale, The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.'

Batavia is the capital of the Dutch East Indies, with ca.n.a.ls, 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 compa.s.s. It is a cla.s.sic 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 pa.s.sage in Dryden's beautiful epistle to John Driden of Chesterton.' Dryden's lines are:--