Marmion

Stanza XXXIII. line 616. for terror’s sake = because of terror. Cp. ‘For fashion’s sake,’ As You Like It, iii. 2. 55.

line 620. The custom of ringing the passing bell grew out of the belief that a church bell, rung when the soul was passing from the body, terrified the devils that were waiting to attack it at the moment of its escape. ‘The tolling of the passing bell was retained at the Reformation; and the people were instructed that its use was to admonish the living, and excite them to pray for the dying. But by the beginning of the l8th century the passing bell in the proper sense of the term had almost ceased to be heard. ‘A mourning bell is still rung during funeral services as a mark of respect. See s. v. ‘Bell,’ Chambers’s Encyclopaedia. Cp. Byron’s ‘Parisina,’ St. xv.

     ‘The convent bells are ringing, 
        But mournfully and slow; 
      In the grey square turret swinging 
        With a deep sound to and fro.’

In criticising ‘Marmion,’ in the Edinburgh Review, Lord Jeffrey says that the sound of the knell rung for Constance ‘is described with great force and solemnity;’ while a writer in the Scots Magazine of 1808 considers that ‘the whole of this trial and doom presents a high-wrought scene of horror, which, at the close, rises almost to too great a pitch.’

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO THIRD.

‘William Erskine, Esq. advocate, sheriff-depute of the Orkneys, became a Judge of the Court of Session by the title of Lord Kinnedder, and died in Edinburgh in August, 1823. He had been from early youth the most intimate of the Poet’s friends, and his chief confidant and adviser as to all literary matters. See a notice of his life and character by the late Mr. Hay Donaldson, to which Sir Walter Scott contributed several paragraphs.’- LOCKHART.

There are frequent references to Erskine throughout Lockhart’s Life of Scott. The critics of the time were of his opinion that Scott as a poet was not giving his powers their proper direction. Jeffrey considered Marmion ‘a misapplication in some degree of extraordinary talents.’ Fortunately, Scott decided for himself in the matter, and the self-criticism of this Introduction is characterised not only by good humour and poetic beauty but by discrimination and strong common-sense.

line 14. a morning dream. This may simply be a poetic way of saying that his method is unsystematic, but Horace’s account of the vision he saw when he was once tempted to write Greek verses is irresistibly suggested by the expression:-

                   ‘Vetuit me tali voce Quirinus 
      Post mediam noctem visus, cum somnia vera: 
      “In silvam non ligna feras insanius, ac si 
      Magnas Graecorum malis implere catervas?’

                                       Sat. I. x. 32.

line 24. all too well. This use of ‘all too’ is a development of the Elizabethan expression ‘all-to’ = altogether, quite, as ‘all to topple,’ Pericles, iii. 2. 17; ‘all to ruffled,’ Comus, 380. In this usage the original force of to as a verbal prefix is lost sight of. Chaucer has ‘The pot to breaketh’ in Prologue to Chanon Yeomanes Tale. See note in Clarendon Press Milton, i. 290.

line 26. Desultory song may naturally command a very wide class of those intelligent readers, for whom the Earl of Iddesleigh, in ‘lectures and Essays,’ puts forward a courageous plea in his informing and genial address on the uses of Desultory Reading.

line 28. The reading of the first edition is ‘loftier,’ which conveys an estimate of his own achievements more characteristic of Scott than the bare assertion of his ability to ‘build the lofty rhyme’ which is implied in the line as it stands. Perhaps the expression just quoted from ‘Lycidas’ may have led to the reading of all subsequent editions.

line 46. The Duke of Brunswick commanded the Prussian forces at Jena, 14 Oct., 1806, and was mortally wounded. He was 72. For ‘hearse,’ cp. above, Introd. to I. 199.

line 54. The reigning house of Prussia comes from the Electors of Brandenburg. In 1415 Frederick VI. of Hohenzollern and Nuremberg became Frederick the First, Elector of Brandenburg. The Duchy of Prussia fell under the sway of the Elector John Sigismund (1608-19), and from that time to the present there has been a very remarkable development of government and power. See Carlyle’s ‘Frederick the Great,’ and Mr. Baring-Gould’s ‘Germany’ in the series ‘Stories of the Nations.’

lines 57-60. The Duke of Brunswick was defeated at Valmy in 1792, and so failed to crush the dragon of the French Revolution in its birth, as in all likelihood he would have done had he been