Marmion

II. 342-45:-

                       ‘A mountain stood, 
      Threat’ning from high, and overlook’d the wood; 
      Beneath the low’ring brow, and on a bent, 
      The temple stood of Mars armipotent.’

line 745. The tent was fired so that the forces might descend amid the rolling smoke.

line 747. As a poetical critic Jeffrey was right for once when he wrote thus of this great battle piece:-

‘Of all the poetical battles which have been fought, from the days of Homer to those of Mr. Southey, there is none, in our opinion, at all comparable, for interest and animation-for breadth of drawing and magnificence of effect-with this of Mr. Scott’s.’

line 757. To this day a commanding position to the west of the hill is called the ‘King’s Chair.’

Stanza XXVI. line 795. ‘Badenoch-man,’ says Lockhart, ‘is the correction of the author’s interleaved copy of the ed. of 1830.’ Highlandman was the previous reading. Badenoch is in the S. E. of co. of Inverness, between Monagh Lea mountains and Grampians.

Stanza XXVIII. line 867 Sped, undone, killed. Cp. Merchant of Venice, ii. 9. 70: ‘ So be gone; you are sped.’ See also note on ‘Lycidas’ 122, Clarendon Press Milton, vol. i.

Stanza XXX. The two prominent features of this stanza are the sweet tenderness of the verses, and the illustration of the irony of events in the striking culmination of the hero’s career.

line 904. Cp. Pope, ‘Moral Epistles,’ II. 269:-

     ‘And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, 
      Woman’s at best a contradiction still.’

line 906. Cp. Byron’s ‘Sardanapalus,’ I. ii. 511:-

                             ‘Your last sighs 
      Too often breathed out in a woman’s hearing, 
      When men have shrunk from the ignoble care 
      Of watching the last hour of him who led them.’

Stanza XXXII. line 972. See above, III. x.

line 976. Metaphor from the sand-glass. Cp. Pericles, v. 2. 26:-

     ‘Now our sands are almost run.’

Stanza XXXIII. lines 999-1004. Charlemagne’s rear-guard under Roland was cut to pieces by heathen forces at Roncesvalles, a valley in Navarre, in 778. Roland might have summoned his uncle Charlemagne by blowing his magic horn, but this his valour prevented him from doing till too late. He was fatally wounded, and the ‘Song of Roland,’ telling of his worth and prowess, is one of the best of the mediaeval romances. Olivier was also a distinguished paladin, and the names of the two are immortalized in the proverb ‘A Rowland for an Oliver.’  Fontarabia is on the coast of Spain, about thirty miles from Roncesvalles. See Paradise Lost, I. 586, and note in Clarendon Press ed.

line 1011 Our Caledonian pride, fitly and tenderly named ‘the flowers of the forest.’

Stanza XXXIV. line 1034. Cp. ‘spearmen’s twilight wood,’ ‘Lady of the Lake,’ VI. xvii.

line 1035. Cp. Aytoun’s ‘Edinburgh after Flodden,’ vii, where Randolph Murray tells of