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 oy snowing brown, I drew on my memory as long as I could, and when that failed, eked it out with invention. I believe that, in some cases, where actual names are affixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works of the authors referred to. In some cases, I have been entertained when Dr. Watts and other graver authors have been ransacked in vain for stanzas for which the novelist alone was responsible.”—Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate.
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,
About I know not what !-nothing, indeed;
Competitions, degrees, and comparatives
Of soldiership!-
A Faire Quarrel.
(6.) CHAP. XX.
If you fail honor here,
Never presume to serve her any more;
Bid farewell to the integrity of arms,
And the honorable name of soldier
Fall from you, like a shiver'd wreath of laurel
By thunder struck from a desertlesse forehead.
A Faire Quarrel.
(7.)-CHAP. XXI.
The Lord Abbot had a soul
Subtile and quick, and searching as the fire:
By magic stairs he went as deep as hell,
And if in devils' possession gold be kept,
He brought some sure from thence-'tis hid in
Known, save to me, to none
The Wonder of a Kingdome.
Would part with half their states, to have the plan
That first was sung to please King Pepin's cradle. And credit to beg in the first style.
Who is he?-One that for the lack of land
Shall fight upon the water-he hath challenged
Formerly the grand whale; and by his titles
Of Leviathan, Behemoth, and so forth.
He tilted with a sword-fish-Marry, sir,
Th' aquatic had the best-the argument
Still galls our champion's breech.
Tell me not of it, friend-when the young weep, Their tears are lukewarm brine;-from our old eyes
Sorrow falls down like hail-drops of the North, Chilling the furrows of our wither'd cheeks, Cold as our hopes, and harden'd as our feelingTheirs, as they fall, sink sightless-ours recoil, Heap the fair plain, and bleaken all before us. Old Play.
Remorse she ne'er forsakes us !-
A bloodhound stanch-she tracks our rapid step
Through the wild labyrinth of youthful phrensy,
Unheard, perchance, until old age hath tamed us;
Then in our lair, when Time hath chill'd our joints,
And maim'd our hope of combat, or of flight,
Let those go see who will-I like it not-
For, say he was a slave to rank and pomp,
And all the nothings he is now divorced from
By the hard doom of stern necessity;
Yet is it sad to mark his alter'd brow,
Where Vanity adjusts her flimsy veil
O'er the deep wrinkles of repentant Anguish.
Old Play.
Fortune, you say, flies from us-She but circles,
Like the fleet sea-bird round the fowler's skiff,—
Lost in the mist one moment, and the next
Brushing the white sail with her whiter wing,
As if to court the aim.-Experience watches,
And has her on the wheel-
Old Play.
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.
["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 can make a motto sooner than you will find one.' He did so accordingly; and from that hour, whenever 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.]
THE bleakest rock upon the loneliest heath Feels, in its barrenness, some touch of spring; And, in the April dew, or beam of May,
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 humors suit,
But Despots must be stately, stern, and mute.
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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.
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;
In his long list of melancholies, mad,
Or mazed, or dumb, hath Burton none so bad.1
Physicians soon arrived, sage, ware, and tried,
As e'er scrawl'd jargon in a darken'd room; With heedful glance the Sultaun's tongue they eyed,
Peep'd in his bath, and God knows where beside,
And then in solemn accent spoke their doom,
"His majesty is very far from well."
Then each to work with his specific fell:
The Hakim Ibrahim instanter brought
His unguent Mahazzim al Zerdukkaut,
While Roompot, a practitioner more wily,
Relied on his Munaskif al fillfily."
More and yet more in deep array appear,
And some the front assail, and some the rear;
Their remedies to reinforce and vary,
Came surgeon eke, and eke apothecary;
Till the tired Monarch, though of words grown
chary,
Yet dropt, to recompense their fruitless labor,
Some hint about a bowstring or a sabre.
* See the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
4 See Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.
5 For these hard words see D'Herbelot, or the learned editor
of the Recipes of Avicenna.
E'en let the learn'd go search, and tell me if I'm Where grave physicians lose their time and wit)
The Omrahs, each with hand on scymitar,
Gave, like Sempronius, still their voice for war"The sabre of the Sultaun in its sheath
Too long has slept, nor own'd the work of death; Let the Tambourgi bid his signal rattle,
Resolved to take advice of an old woman;
His mother she, a dame who once was beauteous,
And still was called so by each subject duteous.
Now, whether Fatima was witch in earnest,
Or only made believe, I cannot say-
But she profess'd to cure disease the sternest,
By dint of magic amulet or lay;
And, when all other skill in vain was shown,
Bang the loud gong, and raise the shout of bat- She deem'd it fitting time to use her own.
This dreary cloud that dims our sovereign's day, Shall from his kindled bosom flit away,
When the bold Lootie wheels his courser round,
And the arm'd elephant shall shake the ground.
Each noble pants to own the glorious summons-
And for the charges-Lo! your faithful Com-
mons!"
The Riots who attended in their places
(Serendib language calls a farmer Riot)
Look'd ruefully in one another's faces,
From this oration auguring much disquiet,
Double assessment, forage, and free quarters;
And fearing these as China-men the Tartars,
Or as the whisker'd vermin fear the mousers,
Each fumbled in the pocket of his trowsers.
And next came forth the reverend Convocation, Bald heads, white beards, and many a turban green,
Imaum and Mollah there of every station,
Santon, Fakir, and Calendar were seen. Their votes were various-some advised a Mosque With fitting revenues should be erected, With seemly gardens and with gay Kiosque, To recreate a band of priests selected; Others opined that through the realms a dole Be made to holy men, whose prayers might profit
The Sultaun's weal in body and in soul.
1 See Sir John Malcolm's admirable History of Persia.
"Sympathia magica hath wonders done"
(Thus did old Fatima bespeak her son),
"It works upon the fibres and the pores,
And thus, insensibly, our health restores,
And it must help us here.-Thou must endure
The ill, my son, or travel for the cure.
Search land and sea, and get, where'er you can,
The inmost vesture of a happy man,
I mean his SHIRT, my son; which, taken warm
And fresh from off his back, shall chase your harm,
Bid every current of your veins rejoice,
And your dull heart leap light as shepherd-boy's."
Such was the counsel from his mother came;-
I know not if she had some under-game,
As Doctors have, who bid their patients roam
And live abroad, when sure to die at home;
Or if she thought, that, somehow or another,
Queen-Regent sounded better than Queen-Mo-
ther;
But, says the Chronicle (who will go look it),
That such was her advice-the Sultaun took it.
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