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the claim of fealty asserted over Scotland by the English monarchs.

der his thigh bone, and killed him on the spot. But ere he could obtain James's pardon for this alaughter, Angus was obliged to yield his castle 13. Where Lennel's convent closed their march.-P. 94. of Hermitage, in exchange for that of Bothwell, This was a Cistertian house of religion, now al which was some diminution to the family great- most entirely demolished. Lennel house is now ness. The sword, with which he struck so remark- the residence of my venerable friend Patrick Bryable a blow, was presented by his descendant, done, esquire, so well known in the literary world. James, earl of Morton, afterwards regent of Scot-It is situated near Coldstream, almost opposite to land, to lord Lindesay of the Byres, when he de- Cornhill, and consequently very near to Flodden fied Bothwell to single combat on Carberry-hill.See Introduction to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, p. 9.

11. And hopest thou hence unscathed to go?-
No, by St. Bride of Bothwell, no!

Up drawbridge, grooms,-what, warder, ho!
Let the portcullis fall.-P. 93.′

field.

14. The Till by Twisel bridge.-P. 94.

On the evening previous to the memorable battle of Flodden, Surrey's head-quarters were at Barmoor-wood, and king James held an inaccessible position on the ridge of Flodden-hill, one of the last and lowest eminences detached from the ridge This ebullition of violence in the potent earl of of Cheviot. The Till, a deep and slow river, windAngus is not without its example in the real his-ed between the armies. On the morning of the tory of the house of Douglas, whose chieftains pos- ninth September, 1513, Surrey marched in a northsessed the ferocity, with the heroic virtues, of a westerly direction, and crossed the Till, with his savage state. The most curious instance occurred van and artillery, at Twisel bridge, nigh where in the case of Maclellan, tutor of Bomby, who, that river joins the Tweed, his rear-guard column having refused to acknowledge the pre-eminence passing about a mile higher, by a ford. This moveclaimed by Douglas over the gentlemen and barons ment had the double effect of placing his army of Galloway, was seized and imprisoned by the between king James and his supplies from Scotearl in his castle of the Thrieve, on the borders land, and of striking the Scottish monarch with of Kirkcudbright-shire. Sir Patrick Gray, com- surprise, as he seems to have relied on the depth mander of king James the second's guard, was of the river in his front. But as the passage, both uncle to the tutor of Bomby, and obtained from over the bridge and through the ford, was difficult the king a "sweet letter of supplication," praying and slow, it seems possible that the English might the earl to deliver his prisoner into Gray's hand. have been attacked to great advantage while strugWhen sir Patrick arrived at the castle, he was gling with these natural obstacles. I know not if we received with all the honour due to a favourite are to impute James's forbearance to want of militaservant of the king's household; but while he was ry skill, or to the romantic declaration which Pitsat dinner, the earl, who suspected his errand, cottie puts in his mouth, "that he was determined caused his prisoner to be led forth and beheaded. to have his enemies before him on a plain field,” After dinner, sir Patrick presented the king's let-and therefore would suffer no interruption to be ter to the earl, who received it with great affecta-given, even by artillery, to their passing the river. tion of reverence; "and took him by the hand, The ancient bridge of Twisel, by which the and led him forth to the green, where the gentleman was lying dead, and showed him the manner, and said, Sir Patrick, you are come a little too late; yonder is your sister's son lying, but he wants the head: take his body and do with it what you will.' Sir Patrick answered again with a sore heart, and said, My lord, if ye have taken from him his head, dispone upon the body as ye please: and with that called for his horse, and leaped thereon; and when he was on horseback, he said to the earl on this manner, My lord, if I live, you shall be rewarded for your labours, that you have used at this time, according to your demerits.

"At this saying the earl was highly offended, and cried for horse. Sir Patrick, seeing the earl's fury, spurred his horse, but he was chased near Edinburgh ere they left him; and had it not been his led horse was so tried and good, he had been taken."-Pitscottie's History, p. 39.

English crossed the Till, is still standing beneath Twisel castle, a splendid pile of Gothic architecture, as now rebuilt by sir Francis Blake, bart. whose extensive plantations have so much improved the country round. The glen is romantie and delightful, with steep banks on each side, covered with copse, particularly with hawthorn. Beneath a tall rock, near the bridge, is a pienufuč fountain, called St. Helen's well.

15. Hence might they see the full array

Of either host, for deadly fray.-P. 95.
The reader cannot here expect a full account of
the battle of Flodden; but, so far as is necessary
to understand the romance, I beg to remind him,
that when the English army, by their skilful coun-
termarch, were fairly placed between king James
and his own country, the Scottish monarch resolv-
ed to fight; and, setting fire to his tents, descended
from the ridge of Flodden to secure the neighbour-
ing eminence of Branksome, on which that village
is built. Thus the two armies met, almost with-
out seeing each other, when, according to the old
poem of " Flodden Field,”

The English line stretch'd east and west,
And southward were their faces set;
The Scottish northward proudly prest,
And manfully their foes they met.

12. A letter forged! St. Jude to speed! Did ever knight so foul a deed?-P. 94. Lest the reader should partake of the earl's astonishment, and consider the crime as inconsistent with the manners of the period, I have to remind him of the numerous forgeries (partly executed by a female assistant) devised by Robert of Artois, to forward his suit against the countess Matilda; The English army advanced in four divisions. On which, being detected, occasioned his flight into the right, which first engaged, were the sons of England, and proved the remote cause of Edward earl Surrey, namely, Thomas Howard, the admithe third's memorable wars in France. John Hard- ral of England, and sir Edmund, the knight maring, also, was expressly hired by Edward IV, to shal of the army. Their divisions were separated forge such documents as might appear to establish from each other; but, at the request of sir Edmund,

16.

17. View not that corpse mistrustfully,
Defaced and mangled though it be;

Nor to yon border castle high

his brother's battalion was drawn very near to his was defeated, and in which conflict Marmion is own. The centre was commanded by Surrey in supposed to have fallen. person; and the left wing by sir Edward Stanley, Brian Tunstall, stainless knight.-P. 96. with the men of Lancashire, and of the palatinate Sir Brian Tunstall, called in the romantic lanof Chester. Lord Dacre, with a large body of guage of the time, Tunstall the undefiled, was one horse, formed a reserve. When the smoke, which of the few Englishmen of rank slain at Flodden. the wind had driven between the armies, was some- He figures in the ancient English poem, to which what dispersed, they perceived the Scots, who had I may safely refer my reader; as an edition, with moved down the hill, in a similar order of battle, full explanatory notes, has been published by my and in deep silence. The earls of Huntly and of friend Mr. Henry Weber. Tunstall perhaps deHome commanded their left wing, and charged sir rived his epithet of undefiled from his white arEdmund Howard with such success, as entirely to mour and banner, the latter bearing a white cock defeat his part of the English right wing. The about to crow, as well as from his unstained loyadmiral, however, stood firm; and Dacre, advanc-alty and knightly faith. His place of residence was ing to his support with the reserve of cavalry, prob- Thurland castle. ably between the intervals of the divisions commanded by the brothers Howard, appears to have kept the victors in effectual check. Home's men, chiefly borderers, began to pillage the baggage of Look northward with upbraiding eye,-P, 98. both armies; and their leader is branded, by the There can be no doubt that king James fell in Scottish historians, with negligence or treachery. the battle of Flodden. He was killed, says tho On the other hand, Huntley, on whom they bestowcurious French gazette, within a lance's length of many encomiums, is said, by the English histori- the earl of Surrey; and the same account adds, ans, to have left the field after the first charge. that none of his division were made prisoners, Meanwhile the admiral, whose flank these chiefs though many were killed; a circumstance that tes ought to have attacked, availed himself of their in-tifies the desperation of their resistance. The activity and pushed forward against another large Scottish historians record many of the idle reports division of the Scottish army in his front, headed which passed among the vulgar of their day. Home by the earls of Crawford and Montrose, both of was accused, by the popular voice, not only of whom were slain, and their forces routed. On the failing to support the king, but even of having carleft, the success of the English was yet more de- ried him out of the field and murdered him. And cisive; for the Scottish right wing, consisting of this tale was revived in my remembrance, by an undisciplined highlanders, commanded by Lenox unauthenticated story of a skeleton, wrapped in a and Argyle, was unable to sustain the charge of bull's hide, and surrounded with an iron chain, sir Edward Stanley, and especially the severe exe- said to have been found in the well of Home cas cution of the Lancashire archers. The king and tle; for which, on inquiry, I could never find any Surrey, who commanded the respective centres of better authority than the sexton of the parish their armies, were meanwhile engaged in close having said, that if the well were cleaned out, he and dubious conflict. James, surrounded by the would not be surprised at such a discovery. Home flower of his kingdom, and impatient of the gall- was the chamberlain of the king, and his prime ing discharge of arrows, supported also by his re-favourite; he had much to lose, (in fact did lose serve under Bothwell, charged with such fury, all,) in consequence of James's death, and nothing that the standard of Surrey was in danger. At that earthly to gain by that event: but the retreat, or critical moment, Stanley, who had routed the left inactivity of the left wing, which he commanded, wing of the Scottish, pursued his career of victory, after defeating sir Edmund Howard, and even the and arrived on the right flank, and in the rear of circumstance of his returning unhurt, and loaded James's division, which, throwing itself into a cir- with spoil, from so fatal a conflict, rendered the ele, disputed the battle till night came on. Surrey propagation of any calumny against him easy and then drew back his forces, for the Scottish centre acceptable: other reports gave a still more ro not having been broken, and their left wing being mantic turn to the king's fate, and averred, that victorious, he yet doubted the event of the field. James, weary of greatness after the carnage among The Scottish army, however, felt their loss, and his nobles, had gone on a pilgrimage to merit ababandoned the field of battle in disorder before solution for the death of his father, and the breach dawn. They lost, perhaps, from eight to ten thou- of his oath of amity to Henry. In particular, it was sand men, but that included the very prime of their objected to the English, that they could never nobility, gentry, and even clergy. Scarce a family show the token of the iron belt; which, however, of eminence but has an ancestor killed at Flodden; he was likely enough to have laid aside on the day and there is no province in Scotland, even at this of battle, as encumbering his personal exertions. day, where the battle is mentioned without a sen- They produce a better evidence, the monarch's sation of terror and sorrow. The English lost also sword and dagger, which are still preserved in the a great number of men, perhaps within one-third Herald's college in London. Stowe has recorded of the vanquished, but they were of inferior note. a degrading story of the disgrace with which the -See the only distinct detail of the field of Flod-remains of the unfortunate monarch were treated den in Pinkerton's History, book xi, all former in his time. An unhewn column marks the spot accounts being full of blunder and inconsistency. where James fell, still called the king's stone. The spot, from which Clara views the battle, must be supposed to have been on a hillock commanding the rear of the English right wing, which

“Lesquels Ecossois descendirent la montagne en bon o dre, en la maniere que marchent les Allemans, sans parler, ni faire aucun bruit." Gazette of the Battle, Pinkerton's History, Appendix, vol. ii, p. 456.

13.

fanatic Brook

The fair cathedral storm'd and took.-P. 98. This storm of Litchfield cathedral, which had been garrisoned on the part of the king, took place in the great civil war. Lord Brooke, who, with sir John Gill, commanded the assailants, was shot with a musket-ball through the visor of his hal

met. 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 principal spire being ruined by the fire of the besiegers.

Upon revising the poem, it seems proper to mention the following particulars:

The lines in page 68,

Whose doom discording neighbours sought,
Content with equity unbought;

have been unconsciously borrowed from a passage in Dryden's beautiful epistle to John Driden of Chesterton, The ballad of Lochinvar, p. 83, is in a very slight degree founded on a ballad called "Katherine Janfarie," which may be found in the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border."

The Lady of the Lake.

TO THE MOST NOBLE JOHN JAMES, MARQUIS OF ABERCORN, ETC.

THIS POEM IS INSCRIBED, BY THE AUTHOR.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The scene of the following poem is laid chiefly in the vicinity of Loch-Katrine, in the Western Highlands of Perthshire. The time of action includes six days, and the transactions of each day Occupy a canto.

THE LADY OF THE LAKE.

CANTO I. THE CHASE.

HARP of the North! that mouldering long hast hung

On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring,

And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung,
Till envious ivy did around thee cling,
Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,-
O minstrel harp, still must thine accents sleep?
Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring,

Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep; Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid to weep? Not thus, in ancient days of Caledon,

Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd, When lay of hopeless love, or glory won,

Aroused the fearful or subdued the proud. At each according pause was heard aloud

Thine ardent symphony sublime and high!
Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bowed;
For still the burthen of thy minstrelsy
Was knighthood's dauntless deed and beauty's
matchless eye.

O wake once more! how rude soe'er the hand
That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray;
O wake once more! tho' scarce my skill command
Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay:
Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away,
And all unworthy of thy nobler strain;
Yet, if one heart throb higher at its sway,
The wizard note has not been touched in vain.
Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake again!

I.

THE Stag at eve had drunk his fill, Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,

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As chief, who hears his warder call,
"To arms! the foemen storm the wall,”—
The antlered monarch of the waste

Sprung from his heathery couch in haste.
But, e'er his fleet career he took,
The dew drops from his flanks he shook;
Like crested leader proud and high,
Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky;
A moment gazed adown the dale,
A moment snuffed the tainted gale,
That thickened as the chase drew nigh;
A moment listened to the cry,
With one brave bound the copse he cleared,
Then, as the headmost foes appeared,
And, stretching forward free and far,
Sought the wild heaths of Uam-Var.

III.

Yelled on the view the opening pack,
Rock, glen, and cavern paid them back;
To many a mingled sound at once
The awakened mountain gave response.
An hundred dogs bayed deep and strong,
Clattered a hundred steeds along,
Their peal the merry horns rung out,
An hundred voices joined the shout:
With hark and whoop, and wild halloo,
Far from the tumult filed the roe,
No rest Benvoirlick's echoes knew.
Close in her covert cowered the doe,
The falcon, from her cairn on high,
Cast on the rout a wondering eye,
The hurricane had swept the glen.
Till far beyond her piercing ken
Faint, and more faint, its failing din
Returned from cavern, cliff, and linn,
And silence settled, wide and still,
On the lone wood and mighty hill.

Less loud t' Disturbed

IV.

THE LADY OF THE LAKE.

ounds of sylvan war Leights of Uam-Var,

And roused the cavern, where, 'tis told,
A giant made his den of old:1

For ere that steep ascent was won,
High in his pathway hung the sun,
And many a gallant, stayed per force,
Was fain to breathe his faltering horse;
And of the trackers of the deer
Scarce half the lessening pack was near;
So shrewdly, on the mountain side,
Had the bold burst their mettle tried.
V.

The noble stag was pausing now,
Upon the mountain's southern brow,
Where broad extended, far beneath,
The varied realms of fair Menteith.
With anxious eye he wandered o'er
Mountain and meadow, moss and moor,
And pondered refuge from his toil,
By far Lochard or Aberfoyle.
But nearer was the copse-wood gray,
That waved and wept on Loch-Achray,
And mingled with the pine-trees blue
On the bold cliffs of Ben-venue.
Fresh vigour with the hope returned,
With flying foot the heath he spurned,
Held westward with unwearied race,
And left behind the panting chase.

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VII.

Alone, but with unbated zeal,
That horseman plied the scourge and steel;
For jaded now, and spent with toil,
Embossed with foam, and dark with soil,
While every gasp with sobs he drew,
The labouring stag strained full in view.
Two dogs of black Saint Hubert's breed,
Unmatched for courage, breath, and speed,2
Fast on his flying traces came,

And all but won that desperate game;
For, scarce a spear's length from his haunch,
Vindictive toiled the blood-hounds staunch;
Nor nearer might the dogs attain,
Nor farther might the quarry strain.
Thus up the margin of the lake,
Between the precipice and brake,
O'er stock and rock their race they take.

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But thundering as he came prepared,
With ready arm and weapon bared,
The wily quarry shunned the shock,
And turned him from the opposing rock;
Then, dashing down a darksome glen,
Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
In the deep Trosach's wildest nook
His solitary refuge took.

There while, close couched, the thicket shed
Cold dews and wild flowers on his head,

He heard the baffled dogs in vain
Rave through the hollow pass amain,
Chiding the rocks that yelled again.

IX.

Close on the hounds the hunter came,
To cheer them on the vanished game;
But, stumbling in the rugged deil,
The gallant horse exhausted fell.
The impatient rider strove in vain
To rouse him with the spur and rein,
For the good steed, his labours o'er,
Stretched his stiff limbs to rise no more.
Then touched with pity and remorse,
He sorrowed o'er the expiring horse:
"I little thought, when first thy rein
I slacked upon the banks of Seine,
That highland eagle e'er should feed
On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed;
Wo worth the chase, wo worth the day,
That costs thy life, my gallant gray!"-

X.

Then through the dell his horn resounds,
From vain pursuit to call the hounds.
Back limped, with slow and crippled pace,
The sulky leaders of the chase;
Close to their master's side they pressed,
With drooping tail and humbled crest;
But still the dingle's hollow throat
Prolonged the swelling bugle-note.
The owlets started from their dream,
The eagles answered with their scream,
Round and around the sounds were cast,
Till echo seemed an answering blast;
And on the hunter hied his way,
To join some comrades of the day;
Yet often paused, so strange the road,
So wond'rous were the scenes it showed.

XI.

The western waves of ebbing day
Rolled o'er the glen their level way;
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire,
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below,
Where twined the path in shadow.hid,
Round many a rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splintered pinnacle;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,
Huge as the tower which builders vain
Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
The rocky summits, split and rent,
Formed turret, dome, or battlement,
Or seemed fantastically set
With cupola or minaret,
Wild crests as pagod ever decked,
Or mosque of eastern architect.
Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
Nor lacked they many a banner fair;

For, from their shiver'd brows display'd,
Far o'er the unfathomable glade,

All twinkling with the dew-drops sheen,
The briar-rose fell in streamers green,
And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes,
Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs.
XIL

Boon nature scatter'd, free and wild,
Each plant, or flower, the mountain's child.
Here eglantine embalm'd the air,
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale, and violet flower,
Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side,
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Group'd their dark hues with every stain
The weather-beaten crags retain.
With boughs that quaked at every breath,
Gray birch and aspen wept beneath;
Aloft, the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky.
Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced,
The wanderer's eye could barely view
The summer heaven's delicious blue;
So wond'rous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.

XIII.

Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep
A narrow inlet, still and deep,
Affording scarce such breadth of brim,
As served the wild duck's brood to swim.
Lost for a space, through thickets veering,
But broader when again appearing,
Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face
Could on the dark-blue mirror trace;
And farther as the hunter strayed,
Still broader sweep its channels made.
The shaggy mounds no longer stood,
Emerging from entangled wood,
But, wave-encircled, seemed to float,
Like castle girdled with its moat;
Yet broader floods extending still,
Divide them from their parent hill,
Till each, retiring, claims to be
An islet in an inland sea.

XIV.
And now, to issue from the glen,
No pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
Unless he climb, with footing nice,
Aar projecting precipice.4

The broom's tough root his ladder made,
The hazel saplings lent their aid;
And thus an airy point he won,
Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
One burnished sheet of living gold,
Loch-Katrine lay beneath him rolled,
In all her length far winding lay,
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light,

And mountains, that like giants stand,
To sentinel enchanted land.

High on the south, huge Ben-venue
Down on the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world;

A wildering forest feathered o'er
His ruined sides and summit hoar,
While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.
XV.

From the steep promontory gazed
The stranger, raptured and amazed.
And "What a scene were here," he cried,
"For princely pomp, or churchman's pride!
On this bold brow, a lordly tower;
In that soft vale, a lady's bower:
On yonder meadow, far away,
The turrets of a cloister gray.
How blithly might the bugle horn
Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn!
How sweet, at eve, the lover's lute
Chime, when the groves were still and mute!
And, when the midnight moon should lave
Her forehead in the silver wave,

How solemn on the ear would come
The holy matin's distant hum,
While the deep peal's commanding tone
Should wake, in yonder islet lone,
A sainted hermit from his cell,
To drop a bead with every knell-
And bugle, lute, and bell, and all,
Should each bewildered stranger call
To friendly feast, and lighted hall.

XVI.

"Blith were it then to wander here!
But now,-beshrew yon nimble deer,-
Like that same hermit's, thin and spare,
The copse must give my evening fare;
Some mossy bank my couch must be,
Some rustling oak my canopy.

Yet pass we that;-the war and chase
Give little choice of resting place;-
A summer night, in green wood spent,
Were but to-morrow's merriment:-
But hosts may in these wilds abound,
Such as are better missed than found;
To meet with highland plunderers here
Were worse than loss of steed or deer.5
I am alone;-my bugle strain
May call some straggler of the train;
Or, fall the worst that may betide,
Ere now this falchion has been tried."

XVII.

But scarce again his horn he wound,
When lo! forth starting at the sound,
From underneath an aged oak,
That slanted from the islet rock,
A damsel guider of its way,
A little skiff shot to the bay,
That round the promontory steep
Led its deep line in graceful sweep,
Eddying, in almost viewless wave,
The weeping-willow twig to lave,
And kiss, with whispering sound and slow,
The beach of pebbles bright as snow.
The boat had touched this silver strand,

Just as the hunter left his stand,

And stood concealed amid the brake,
To view this lady of the lake.
The maiden paused, as if again

She thought to catch the distant strain.
With head up-raised, and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,

And locks flung back, and lips apart,
Like monument of Grecian art,

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