Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

"THE window of a turret, which projected at an angle with the wall, and thus came to be very near Lovel's apartment, was half open, and from that quarter he heard again the same music which had probably broken short his dream. With its visionary character it had lost much of its charms-it was now nothing more than an air on the harpsicord, tolerably well performed-such is the caprice of imagination as affecting the fine arts. A female voice sung, with some taste and great simplicity, something between a song and a hymn, in words to the following effect :"

"WHY sit'st thou by that ruin'd hall, Thou aged carle so stern and grey? Dost thou its former pride recal,

Or ponder how it pass'd away?"

"Know'st thou not me?" the Deep Voice cried; "So long enjoy'd, so oft misusedAlternate, in thy fickle pride,

Desired, neglected, and accused!

"Before my breath, like blazing flax,
Man and his marvels pass away!
And changing empires wane and wax,
Are founded, flourish, and decay.

1 Mr., afterwards Sir William Arbuthnot, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, who had the honour to entertain the GrandDuke, now Emperor of Russia, was a personal friend of Sir

(3.)-ELSPETH'S BALLAD.

"As the Antiquary lifted the latch of the hut, he was surprised to hear the shrill tremulous voice of Elspeth chanting forth an old ballad in a wild and doleful recitative:"

THE herring loves the merry moon-light,
The mackerel loves the wind,
But the oyster loves the dredging sang,
For they come of a gentle kind.

Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle,
And listen great and sma',

And I will sing of Glenallan's Earl
That fought on the red Harlaw.

The cronach's cried on Bennachie,
And doun the Don and a',
And hieland and lawland may mournfu' be
For the sair field of Harlaw.-

They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds,
They hae bridled a hundred black,
With a chafron of steel on each horse's head,
And a good knight upon his back.

They hadna ridden a mile, a mile,
A mile, but barely ten,

Walter Scott's; and these Verses, with their heading, are now given from the newspapers of 1816.

[blocks in formation]

MOTTOES IN THE ANTIQUARY.

"THE scraps of poetry which have been in most cases tacked to the beginning of chapters in these Novels, are sometimes quoted either from reading or from memory, but, in the general case, are pure invention. I found it too troublesome to turn to the collection of the British Poets to discover apposite mottoes, and, in the situation of the theatrical mechanist, who, when the white paper which represented his shower of snow was exhausted, continued the shower by snowing brown, I drew on my memory as long as I could, and when that

1.

I knew Anselmo. He was shrewd and prudent,
Wisdom and cunning had their shares of him;
But he was shrewish as a wayward child,
And pleased again by toys which childhood please;
As-book of fables graced with print of wood,
Or else the jingling of a rusty medal,
Or the rare melody of some old ditty,
That first was sung to please King Pepin's cradle.

(2.)-CHAP. IX.

"Be brave," she cried, "you yet may be our guest.
Our haunted room was ever held the best:
If, then, your valour can the fight sustain
Of rustling curtains, and the clinking chain;
If your courageous tongue have powers to talk,
When round your bed the horrid ghost shall walk,
If you dare ask it why it leaves its tomb,
I'll see your sheets well air'd, and show the room.'
True Story

(3.)-CHAP. XI.

Sometimes he thinks that Heaven this vision sent, And order'd all the pageants as they went; Sometimes that only 'twas wild Fancy's play,The loose and scatter'd relics of the day.

(4.)-CHAP. XII.

Beggar!-the only freemen of your Commonwealth Free above Scot-free, that observe no laws,

Obey no governor, use no religion

But what they draw from their own ancient customs, Or constitute themselves, yet they are no rebels. Brome.

(5.)-CHAP. XIX.

Here has been such a stormy encounter,
Betwixt my cousin Captain, and this soldier,
About I know not what!-nothing, indeed;
Competitions, degrees, and comparatives
Of soldiership!-

(6.)-CHAP. XX.

A Faire Quarrel,

If you fail honour here, Never presume to serve her any more; Bid farewell to the integrity of arms, And the honourable name of soldier Fall from you, like a shiver'd wreath of laurel By thunder struck from a desertlesse forehead. A Faire Quarrel.

[blocks in formation]

(20.)-CHAP. XLIV.

Nay, if she love me not, I care not for her:
Shall I look pale because the maiden blooms?
Or sigh because she smiles-and smiles on others?
Not I, by Heaven!--I hold my peace too dear,
To let it, like the plume upon her cap,
Shake at each nod that her caprice shall dictate.
Old Play.

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

["It may be worth noting, that it was in correcting the proof-sheets of The Antiquary that Scott first took to equipping his chapters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he happened to ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to hunt for a particular passage in Beaumont and Fletcher. John did as he was bid, but did not succeed in discovering the lines. Hang it, Johnnie,' cried Scott, I believe I I can make a motto sooner than you will find one.' He did so accordingly; and from that hour, when-cording to the taste of the period: "— ever memory failed to suggest an appropriate epigraph, he had recourse to the inexhaustible mines of 'old play' or old ballad,' to which we owe some of the most exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen"-Life, vol. v., p. 145.]

(2.)-VERSES FOUND IN BOTHWELL'S POCKET-BOOK.

"WITH these letters was a lock of hair wrapped in a copy of verses, written obviously with a feeling which atoned, in Morton's opinion, for the roughness of the poetry, and the conceits with which it abounded, ac

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

THY hue, dear pledge, is pure and bright,
As in that well-remember'd night,
When first thy mystic braid was wove,
And first my Agnes whisper'd love.

Since then how often hast thou press'd
The torrid zone of this wild breast,
Whose wrath and hate have sworn to dwell
With the first sin which peopled hell,

A breast whose blood's a troubled ocean,

Each throb the earthquake's wild commotion!—
O, if such clime thou canst endure,

Yet keep thy hue unstain'd and pure,
What conquest o'er each erring thought

Of that fierce realm had Agnes wrought!

I had not wander'd wild and wide,

With such an angel for my guide;

Nor heaven nor earth could then reprove me,

If she had lived, and lived to love me.

Not then this world's wild joys had been
To me one savage hunting scene,
My sole delight the headlong race,
And frantic hurry of the chase;
To start, pursue, and bring to bay,
Rush in, drag down and rend my prey,
Then-from the carcass turn away!

Mine ireful mood had sweetness tamed,
And soothed each wound which pride inflamed!
Yes, God and man might now approve me,
If thou hadst lived, and lived to love me.
Chap. xxiii.

From Old Mortality.

1816.

(1.)-MAJOR BELLENDEN'S SONG. AND what though winter will pinch severe Through locks of grey and a cloak that 's old,

(3.)—EPITAPH ON BALFOUR OF BURLEY

"GENTLE reader, I did request of mine honest friend Peter Proudfoot, travelling merchant, known to many of this land for his faithful and just dealings, as well in muslins and cambrics as in small wares, to procure

[blocks in formation]

Yet fear not, ladies, the naïve detall
Given by the natives of that land canorous;
Italian license loves to leap the pale,

We Britons have the fear of shame before us, And, if not wise in mirth, at least must be de

corous.

II.

In the far eastern clime, no great while since,
Lived Sultaun Solimaun, a mighty prince,
Whose eyes, as oft as they perform'd their round,
Beheld all others fix'd upon the ground;
Whose ears received the same unvaried phrase,
"Sultaun! thy vassal hears, and he obeys!"
All have their tastes-this may the fancy strike
Of such grave folks as pomp and grandeur like;
For me, I love the honest heart and warm
Of Monarch who can amble round his farm,
Or, when the toil of state no more annoys,
In chimney corner seek domestic joys-
I love a prince will bid the bottle pass,
Exchanging with his subjects glance and glass;
In fitting time, can, gayest of the gay,
Keep up the jest, and mingle in the lay-
Such Monarchs best our free-born humours suit,
But Despots must be stately, stern, and mute.

III.

This Solimaun, Serendib had in sway—

And where's Serendib? may some critic say.-
Good lack, mine honest friend, consult the chart,
Scare not my Pegasus before I start!

If Rennell has it not, you'll find, mayhap,
The isle laid down in Captain Sindbad's map,-
Famed mariner! whose merciless narrations
Drove every friend and kinsman out of patience,
Till, fain to find a guest who thought them shorter.
He deign'd to tell them over to a porter-3

The last edition see, by Long. and Co.,
Rees, Hurst, and Orme, our fathers in the Row.

IV.

Serendib found, deem not my tale a fiction-
This Sultaun, whether lacking contradiction-
(A sort of stimulant which hath its uses,
To raise the spirits and reform the juices,
-Sovereign specific for all sorts of cures
In my wife's practice, and perhaps in yours,)
The Sultaun lacking this same wholesome bitter,
Or cordial smooth for prince's palate fitter-
Or if some Mollah had hag-rid his dreams
With Degial, Ginnistan, and such wild themes
Belonging to the Mollah's subtle craft,

I wot not-but the Sultaun never laugh'd,
Scarce ate or drank, and took a melancholy
That scorn'd all remedy-profane or holy;

2 The hint of the following tale is taken from La Camiscia Magica, a novel of Giam Battista Casti.

3 See the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

« AnteriorContinuar »