"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, 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, Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle, And I will sing of Glenallan's Earl The cronach's cried on Bennachie, They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds, They hadna ridden a mile, a mile, Walter Scott's; and these Verses, with their heading, are now given from the newspapers of 1816. 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, (2.)-CHAP. IX. "Be brave," she cried, "you yet may be our guest. (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, (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. (20.)-CHAP. XLIV. Nay, if she love me not, I care not for her: ["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 THY hue, dear pledge, is pure and bright, Since then how often hast thou press'd A breast whose blood's a troubled ocean, Each throb the earthquake's wild commotion!— Yet keep thy hue unstain'd and pure, 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 Mine ireful mood had sweetness tamed, 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 Yet fear not, ladies, the naïve detall 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, III. This Solimaun, Serendib had in sway— And where's Serendib? may some critic say.- If Rennell has it not, you'll find, mayhap, The last edition see, by Long. and Co., IV. Serendib found, deem not my tale a fiction- I wot not-but the Sultaun never laugh'd, 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. |