Stanza XII. 1. 379. With the use of fall befall cp. Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 7. 38 :—

'No disgrace

Shall fall you for refusing him at sea.'

Stanza XIV. 1. 435. Saint Bride is Saint Bridget of Ireland, who became popular in England and Scotland under the abbreviated form of her name. She was a favourite saint of the house of Douglas, and of the Earl of Angus in particular.' See note to Clarendon Press 'Lay of Last Minstrel,' VI. 469.

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1. 437. This ebullition of violence in the potent Earl of Angus is not without its example in the real history of the house of Douglas, whose chieftains possessed the ferocity, with the heroic virtues, of a savage state. The most curious instance occurred in the case of Maclellan, Tutor of Bombay, who, having refused to acknowledge the pre-eminence claimed by Douglas over the gentlemen and Barons of Galloway, was seized and imprisoned by the Earl, in his castle of the Thrieve, on the borders of Kirkcudbrightshire. Sir Patrick Gray, commander of King James the Second's guard, was uncle to the Tutor of Bombay, and obtained from the King a “sweet letter of supplication," praying the Earl to deliver his prisoner into Gray's hand. When Sir Patrick arrived at the castle, he was received with all the honour due to a favourite servant of the King's household; but while he was at dinner, the Earl, who suspected his errand, caused his prisoner to be led forth and beheaded. After dinner, Sir Patrick presented the King's letter to the Earl, who received it with great affectation of reverence; "and took him by the hand, and led him forth to the green, where the gentleman was lying dead, and showed him the manner, and said, 'Sir Patrick, you are come a little too late; yonder is your sister's son lying, but he wants the head; take his body, and do with it what you will.'-Sir Patrick answered again with a sore heart, and said, 'My lord, if ye have taken from him his head, dispone upon the body as ye please;' and with that called for his horse, and leaped thereon; and when he was on horseback, he said to the Earl on this manner: 'My Lord, if I live, you shall be rewarded for your labours, that you have used at this time, according to your demerits.'

"At this saying the Earl was highly offended, and cried for horse. Sir Patrick, seeing the Earl's fury, spurred his horse, but he was chased near Edinburgh ere they left him; and had it not been his led horse was so tried and good, he had been taken."-PITSCOTTIE'S History, p. 39.'-SCOTT.

Stanza XV. 1. 456. Cp. above, III. 429, and see As You Like It, i. 2. 222: 'Hercules be thy speed!' The short epistle of St. Jude is uncompromising in its condemnation of those who have fallen from their faith-who have forgotten, so to speak, their vows of true knighthood. It closes with the beautiful ascription-'To Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.' There is deep significance, therefore, in this appeal of the venerable and outraged knight for the protection of St. Jude.

1. 457. 'Lest the reader should partake of the Earl's astonishment, and consider the crime as inconsistent with the manners of the period, I have to remind him of the numerous forgeries (partly executed by a female assistant) devised by Robert of Artois, to forward his suit against the Countess Matilda; which, being detected, occasioned his flight into England, and proved the remote cause of Edward the 'Third's memorable wars in France. John Harding, also, was expressly hired by Edward IV to forge such documents as might appear to establish the claim of fealty asserted over Scotland by the English monarchs.'-SCOTT.

1. 458. It likes was long used impersonally, in the sense of it pleases. Cp. King John, ii. 2. 234: It likes us well.'

1.460. St. Bothan, Bythen, or Bethan is said to have been a cousin of St. Columba and his successor at Iona.

His name is preserved in the Berwickshire parish, Abbey-Saint-Bathan's; where, towards the close of the twelfth century, a Cistertian nunnery, with the title of a priory, was dedicated to him by Ada, daughter of William the Lion. There is no remaining trace of this structure. 1. 461. The other sons could at least sign their names. Their signatures are reproduced in facsimile in 'The Douglas Book' by Sir William Fraser, 4 vols. 4to, Edin. 1886 (privately printed).

1. 468. Fairly, well, elegantly, as in Chaucer's Prol. 94 :'Well cowde he sitte on hors, and faire ryde';

and in Faerie Queene,' I. i. 8:—

'Full jolly knight he seemed, and faire did sitt.' Stanza XVI. 1. 498. This line is a comprehensive description of a perfectly satisfactory charger or hunter.

1. 499. Sholto is one of the Douglas family names. One of the Earl's sons, being sheriff, could not go with his brothers to the war. 1. 500. His eldest son, the Master of Angus.'-Scott.

Stanza XVII. 1. 532. In Bacon's ingenious essay, 'Of Simulation and Dissimulation,' he states these as the three disadvantages of

the qualities:-The first, that Simulation and Dissimulation commonly carry with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any business, doth spoil the feathers of round flying up to the mark. The second, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many, that would otherwise co-operate with him, and makes a man almost alone to his own ends. The third, and greatest, is that it depriveth a man of one of the most principal instruments for action; which is trust and belief.' Stanza XVIII. 1.540. This was a Cistertian house of religion, now almost entirely demolished. Lennel House is now the residence of my venerable friend, Patrick Brydone, Esquire, so well known in the literary world.1 It is situated near Coldstream, almost opposite Cornhill, and consequently very near to Flodden Field.'-SCOTT.

1. 568. traversed, moved in opposition, as in fencing. Cp. Merry Wives, ii. 3. 23: 'To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee traverse,' &c.

Stanza XIX. 1. 573. "On the evening previous to the memorable battle of Flodden, Surrey's headquarters were at Barmoor Wood, and King James held an inaccessible position on the ridge of Floddenhill, one of the last and lowest eminences detached from the ridge of Cheviot. The Till, a deep and slow river, winded between the armies. On the morning of the 9th September, 1513, Surrey marched in a north-westerly direction, and crossed the Till, with his van and artillery, at Twisel Bridge, nigh where that river joins the Tweed, his rear-guard column passing about a mile higher, by a ford. This movement had the double effect of placing his army between King James and his supplies from Scotland, and of striking the Scottish monarch with surprise, as he seems to have relied on the depth of the river in his front. But as the passage, both over the bridge and through the ford, was difficult and slow, it seems possible that the English might have been attacked to great advantage while struggling with these natural obstacles. I know not if we are to impute James's forbearance to want of military skill, or to the romantic declaration which Pitscottie puts in his mouth, "that he was determined to have his enemies before him on a plain field," and therefore would suffer no interruption to be given, even by artillery, to their passing the river.

'The ancient bridge of Twisel, by which the English crossed the Till, is still standing beneath Twisel Castle, a splendid pile of Gothic architecture, as now rebuilt by Sir Francis Blake, Bart., whose exten

First Edition-Mr. Brydone has been many years dead. 1825.'

sive plantations have so much improved the country around. The glen is romantic and delightful, with steep banks on each side, covered with copse, particularly with hawthorn. Beneath a tall rock, near the bridge, is a plentiful fountain, called St. Helen's Well.'-Scott. That James was credited by his contemporaries with military skill and ample courage will be seen by reference to Barclay's 'Ship of Fooles,' formerly referred to. The poet proposes a grand general European movement against the Turks, and suggests James IV as the military leader. The following complimentary acrostic is a

feature of the passage :

'I n prudence pereles is this moste comely kinge;
And as for his strength and magnanimitie
Concerning his noble dedes in every thinge,

O ne founde on grounde like to him can not be.

B

y birth borne to boldenes and audacitie,

Under the bolde planet of Mars the champion,

S urely to subdue his enemies eche one.'

1. 583. Sullen is admirably descriptive of the leading feature in the appearance of the Till just below Twisel Bridge. No one contrasting it with the Tweed at Norham will have difficulty in understanding the saying that :

'For a'e man that Tweed droons, Till droons three.'

Stanza XX. 1. 608. The earlier editions have vails, 'lowers' or 'checks '; as in Venus and Adonis, 956, 'She vailed her eyelids.' The edition of 1833 reads 'vails, contr. for 'avails.'

1. 610. Douglas and Randolph were two of Bruce's most trusted leaders.

1. 611. See anecdote in 'Border Minstrelsy,' ii. 245 (1833 ed.), with its culmination, ‘O, for one hour of Dundee!' Cp. 'Pleasures of Hope' (close of Poland passage) :

'Oh! once again to Freedom's cause return

The Patriot Tell-the Bruce of Bannockburn!'

and Wordsworth's sonnet, 'In the Pass of Killicranky,' in which the aspiration for one hour of that Dundee' is prompted by the fear of an invasion in 1803.

Stanza XXI. 1. 626. Hap what hap, come what may. Cp. above tide what tide,' III. 416.

1. 627. Basnet, a light helmet.

Stanza XXIII. 1. 682. 'The reader cannot here expect a full account of the Battle of Flodden: but, so far as is necessary to understand the romance, I beg to remind him, that, when the

English army, by their skilful countermarch, were fairly placed between King James and his own country, the Scottish monarch resolved to fight; and, setting fire to his tents, descended from the ridge of Flodden to secure the neighbouring eminence of Brankstone, on which that village is built. Thus the two armies met, almost without seeing each other, when, according to the old poem of "Flodden Field,"

"The English line stretch'd east and west,
And southward were their faces set;
The Scottish northward proudly prest,

And manfully their foes they met."

The English army advanced in four divisions. On the right, which first engaged, were the sons of Earl Surrey, namely, Thomas Howard, the Admiral of England, and Sir Edmund, the Knight Marshal of the army. Their divisions were separated from each other; but, at the request of Sir Edmund, his brother's battalion was drawn very near to his own. The centre was commanded by Surrey in person; the left wing by Sir Edward Stanley, with the men of Lancashire, and of the palatinate of Chester. Lord Dacres, with a large body of horse, formed a reserve. When the smoke, which the wind had driven between the armies, was somewhat dispersed, they perceived the Scots, who had moved down the hill in a similar order of battle, and in deep silence 1. The Earls of Huntley and of Home commanded their left wing, and charged Sir Edmund Howard with such success as entirely to defeat his part of the English right wing. Sir Edmund's banner was beaten down, and he himself escaped with difficulty to his brother's division. The Admiral, however, stood firm; and Dacre advancing to his support with the reserve of cavalry, probably between the interval of the divisions commanded by the brothers Howard, appears to have kept the victors in effectual check. Home's men, chiefly Borderers, began to pillage the baggage of both armies; and their leader is branded, by the Scottish historians, with negligence or treachery. On the other hand, Huntley, on whom they bestow many encomiums, is said, by the English historians, to have left the field after the first charge. Meanwhile the Admiral, whose flank these chiefs ought to have attacked, availed himself of their inactivity,

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Lesquelz Escossois descendirent la montaigne en bonne ordre, en la maniere que marchent les Allemans, sans parler, ne faire aucun bruit."-Gazette of the Battle, PINKERTON'S History, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 456.'