The gloss to this is, ‘
line 203. The ‘Border Minstrel’ is an appropriate designation of the author of ‘Contributions to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ and the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel.’ In the preface to the latter work, written in 1830, Scott refers to the two great statesmen as having ‘smiled on the adventurous minstrel.’ This is the only existing evidence of Fox’s appreciation. Pitt’s praise of the Lay his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, reported to W. S. Rose, who very naturally passed it on to Scott himself. The Right Hon. William Dundas, in a letter to Scott, mentions a conversation he had had with Pitt at his table, in 1805, and says that Pitt both expressed his desire to advance Scott’s professional interests and quoted from the Lay the lines describing the embarrassment of the harper when asked to play. ‘This,’ said he, ‘is a sort of thing which I might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being given in poetry.’-Lockhart’s Life of Scott, ii. 34.
line 204. Gothic. This refers to both subject and style, neither being classical.
line 220. Lockhart quotes from Rogers’s ‘Pleasures of Memory’:-
lines 233-48. In these lines the poet indicates the sphere in which he had previously worked with independence and success. Like Virgil when proceeding to write the AEneid, he is doubtful whether his devotion to legendary and pastoral themes is sufficient warrant for attempting heroic verse. The reference to the tales of shepherds in the closing lines of the passage recalls the advice given (about 1880) to his students by Prof. Shairp, when lecturing from the Poetry Chair at Oxford. ‘To become steeped,’ he said, ‘in the true atmosphere of romantic poetry they should proceed to the Borders and learn their legends, under the twofold guidance of Scott’s “Border Minstrelsy” and an intelligent local shepherd.’
line 256. steely weeds = steel armour. ‘Steely’ in Elizabethan times was used both literally and figuratively. Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. ii. 3. 16, has ‘The steely point of Clifford’s lance,’ and Fisher in his ‘Seuen Psalmes’ has ‘tough and
line 258. The Champion is Launcelot, the most famous of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. See Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King,’ especially ‘Lancelot and Elaine,’ and William Morris’s ‘Defence of Guenevere.’
line 263. Dame Ganore is Guenevere, Arthur’s Queen.
lines 258-262. Scott annotates these lines as follows:-
‘The Romance of the Morte Arthur contains a sort of abridgment of the most celebrated adventures of the Round Table; and, being written in comparatively modern language, gives the general reader an excellent idea of what romances of chivalry actually were. It has also the merit of being written in pure old English; and many of the wild adventures which it contains are told with a simplicity bordering upon the sublime. Several of these are referred to in the text; and I would have illustrated them by more full extracts, but as this curious work is about to be republished, I confine myself to the tale of the Chapel Perilous, and of the quest of Sir Launcelot after the Sangreal.
‘“Right so Sir Lanncelot departed, and when he came to the Chapell Perilous, he alighted downe, and tied his horse to a little gate. And as soon as he was within the churchyard, he saw, on the front of the chapell, many faire rich shields turned upside downe; and many of the shields Sir Launcelot had seene knights have before; with that he saw stand by him thirtie great knights, more, by a yard, than any man that ever he had seene, and all
