Correct and sagacious, then came my Lord Hailes, And weigh'd every letter in critical scales, VII. The stout Gothic yeditur, next on the roll, more. One volume more, &c. VIII. Since by these single champions what wonders were done, What may not be achieved by our Thirty and One? Law, Gospel, and Commerce, we count in our corps, And the Trade and the Press join for one volume mora One volume more, &c. IX. Ancient libels and contraband books, I assure ye, We'll print as secure from Exchequer or Jury; Then hear your Committee and let them count o'er The Chiels they intend in their three volumes more. Three volumes more, &c. X. They'll produce you King Jamie, the sapient and Sext, But left out some brief words, which the prudish ab- Ore tome miscellaneous they'll add to your store, Jonn Pinkerton next, and I'm truly concern'd One volume more, my friends, one volume more, more. VI. As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor, And feeding on herbs as a Nebuchadnezzar Sir Walter Scott was the first President of the Club, and wrote these verses for the anniversary dinner of March, 1823. -See Life, vol. vii., p. 137. 2 In accordance with his own regimen, Mr. Ritson published a volume entitled, "An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty. 1802." This club was instituted in the year 1822, for the publica tion or reprint of rare and curious works connected with the history and antiquities of Scotland. It consisted, at first, of a very few members,-gradually extended to one hundred, at which number it has now made a final pause. They as sume the name of the Bannatyne Club from George Bannatyne, of whom little is known beyond that prodigious effort which produced his present honours, and is, perhaps, one of the most singular instances of its kind which the literature of any country exhibits. His labours as an amanuensis were undertaken during the time of pestilence, in 1568. The dread of infection had induced him to retire into solitude, and under such circumstances he had the energy to form and exe of Pinkerton, Ritson, and Herd, &c. in the Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry, ante, p. 537, et seq. 4 James Sibbald, editor of Scottish Poetry, &c. "The Yeditur," was the name given him by the late Lord Eldin. then Mr. John Clerk, advocate. The description of him here is very accurate. 5 David Herd, editor of Songs and Historical Ballads. 2 rois. He was called Greysteel by his intimates, from having 8 See at account of the Metrical Antiquarian Researches been long in unsuccessful quest of the romance of that name. cute the plan of saving the literature of the whole nation; and, undisturbed by the general mourning for the dead, and general fears of the living, to devote himself to the task of collecting and recording the triumphs of human genius in the poetry of his age and country;-thus, amid the wreck of all that was mortal, employing himself in preserving the lays by which immortality is at once given to others, and obtained for the writer himself. He informs us of some of the numerous difficulties he had to contend with in this self-imposed task. The volume containing his labours, deposited in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh, is no less than eight hundred pages in length, and very neatly and closely written, containing nearly all the ancient poetry of Scotland now known to exist. This Caledonian association, which boasts several names of distinction, both from rank and talent, has assumed rather a broader foundation than the parent society, the Roxburghe Club in London. which, in its plan, being restricted to the reprinting of single tracts. each executed at the expense of an individual member, it follows as almost a necessary consequence, that no volume of considerable size has emanated from it, and its range has been thus far limited in point of utility. The Bannatyne, holding the same system with respect to the ordinary species of club reprints, levies, moreover, a fund among its members of about L.500 a-year, expressly to be applied for the editing and printing of works of acknowledged importance, and likely to be attended with expense beyond the reasonable bounds of an individual's contribution. In this way either a member of the Club, or a competent person under its patronage, superintends a particular volume, or set of volumes. Upon these occasions, a very moderate number of copies are thrown off for general sale; and those belonging to the Club are only distinguished from the others by being printed on the paper, and ornamented with the decorations, peculiar to the Society. In this way several useful and eminently valuable works have recently been given to the public for the first time, or at least with a degree of accuracy and authenticity which they had never before attained.-Abridged from the Quarterly Review-ART. cairn's Ancient Criminal Trials. February, 1831. To J. E. Lockhart, Esq. ON THE COMPOSITION OF MAIDA'S EPITAPH. 1824. "Maida Marmorea dormis sub imagine Maida! Ad januam domini sit tibi terra levis." You, perhaps, may observe that one Lionel Berguer, By a rout in the papers-fine place for such matters. That my gudeson shall leave the whole thing in my hand, sir, And by no means accomplish what James says you Some banter in Blackwood to claim your dog-Latin. By not having writ what I clearly engraved? Whereas the said heathens might rather look serious See Life of Scott, vol. vii., pp. 275–281. "DEAR JOHN,-I some time ago wrote to inform his 1 There is an excellent story (but too long for quotation) in the Memoire of the Somervilles (vol. i. p. 240) about an old Lord of that family, who, when he wished preparations to be made for high feasting at his Castle of Cowthally, used to send on a billet inscribed with this laconic phrase," Speates and raxes," ie. spits and ranges. Upon one occasion, Lady Somerville (being newly married, and not yet skilled in her husoand's hieroglyphics; read the mandates as spears and jacks, and sent Invade not, I say, my own dear little dactyl; And we'll soothe Priscian's spleen with a canny third A fig for ail dactyls, a fig for all spondees, A fig for dry thrapples, south, north, east, and west, Speates and raxes1 ere five for a famishing guest, sir; he'll Be invited, I hope, to meet me and Dame Peveril, forth 200 armed horsemen, whose appearance on the moors greatly alarmed Lord Somerville and his guest, who happened to be no less a person than King James III.-See SCOTT'S Miscellaneous Prose, vol. xxii. p. 312. 2 Fatsman was one of Mr. James Ballantyne's many aliases. Another (to which Constable mostly adhered) was Mr. "Basketfill"-an allusion to the celebrated printer Basker ville. |