What I have to say respecting this poem may be briefly told. In the Introduction to The Lay of the Last Minstrel I have mentioned the circumstances, so far as my literary life is concerned, which induced me to resign the active pursuit of an honorable profession for the more precarious resources of literature. My appointment to the Sheriffdom of Selkirk called for a change of residence. I left, therefore, the pleasant cottage I had upon the side of the Esk, for the pleasanter banks of the Tweed,' in order to comply with the law, which requires that the sheriff shall be resident, at least during a certain number of months, within his jurisdiction. We found a delightful retirement, by my becoming the tenant of my intimate friend and cousin-german, Colonel Russel, in his mansion of Ashestiel, which was unoccupied during his absence on military service in India. The house was adequate to our accommodation and the exercise of a limited hospitality. The situation is uncommonly beautiful, by the side of a fine river whose streams are there very favorable for angling, surrounded by the remains of natural woods, and by hills abounding in game. In point of society, according to the heartfelt phrase of Scripture, we dwelt amongst our own people;' and as the distance from the metropolis was only thirty miles, we were not out of reach of our Edinburgh friends, in which city we spent the terms of the summer and winter sessions of the court, that is, five or six months in the year.

it so.

An important circumstance had, about the same time, taken place in my life. Hopes had been held out to me from an influential quarter, of a nature to relieve me from the anxiety which I must have otherwise felt, as one upon the precarious tenure of whose own life rested the principal prospects of his family, and especially as one who had necessarily some dependence upon the favor of the public, which is proverbially capricious; though it is but justice to add that in my own case I have not found Mr. Pitt had expressed a wish to my personal friend, the Right Honorable William Dundas, now Lord Clerk Register of Scotland, that some fitting opportunity should be taken to be of service to me; and as my views and wishes pointed to a future rather than an immediate provision, an opportunity of accomplishing this was soon found. One of the Principal Clerks of Session, as they are called (official persons who occupy an important and responsible situation, and enjoy a considerable income), who had served upwards of thirty years, felt himself, from age and the infirmity of deafness with which it was accompanied, de

sirous of retiring from his official situation. As the law then stood, such official persons were entitled to bargain with their successors, either for a sum of money, which was usually a considerable one, or for an interest in the emoluments of the office during their life. My predecessor, whose services had been unusually meritorious, stipulated for the emoluments of his office during his life, while I should enjoy the survivorship on the condition that I discharged the duties of the office in the mean time. Mr. Pitt, however, having died in the interval, his administration was dissolved, and was succeeded by that known by the name of the Fox and Grenville Ministry. My affair was so far completed that my commission lay in the office subscribed by his Majesty; but, from hurry or mistake, the interest of my predecessor was not expressed in it, as had been usual in such cases. Although, therefore, it only required payment of the fees, I could not in honor take out the commission in the present state, since, in the event of my dying before him, the gentleman whom I succeeded must have lost the vested interest which he had stipulated to retain. I had the honor of an interview with Earl Spencer on the subject, and he, in the most handsome manner, gave directions that the commission should issue as originally intended; adding, that the matter having received the royal assent, he regarded only as a claim of justice what he would have willingly done as an act of favor. I never saw Mr. Fox on this or on any other occasion, and never made any application to him, conceiving that in doing so I might have been supposed to express political opinions contrary to those which I had always professed. In his private capacity, there is no man to whom I would have been more proud to owe an obligation, had I been so distinguished.

By this arrangement I obtained the survivorship of an office the emoluments of which were fully adequate to my wishes; and as the law respecting the mode of providing for superannuated officers was, about five or six years after, altered from that which admitted the arrangement of assistant and successor, my colleague very handsomely took the opportunity of the alteration to accept of the retiring annuity provided in such cases, and admitted me to the full benefit of the office.

But although the certainty of succeeding to a considerable income, at the time I obtained it, seemed to assure me of a quiet harbor in my old age, I did not escape my share of inconvenience from the contrary tides and currents by which we are so often encountered in our jour

Where yet some faded herbage pines,
And yet a watery sunbeam shines;
In meek despondency they eye
The withered sward and wintry sky,
And far beneath their summer hill
Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill.
The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold,
And wraps him closer from the cold:
His dogs no merry circles wheel,
But shivering follow at his heel;
A cowering glance they often cast,
As deeper moans the gathering blast.

My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild,
As best befits the mountain child,
Feel the sad influence of the hour,
And wail the daisy's vanished flower,
Their summer gambols tell, and mourn,
And anxious ask, Will spring return,
And birds and lambs again be gay,
And blossoms clothe the hawthorn spray

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Nor mourn ye less his perished worth Who bade the conqueror go forth, And launched that thunderbolt of war On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar; Who, born to guide such high emprise, For Britain's weal was early wise; Alas! to whom the Almighty gave, For Britain's sins, an early grave! His worth who, in his mightiest hour, A bauble held the pride of power, Spurned at the sordid lust of pelf, And served his Albion for herself; Who, when the frantic crowd amain Strained at subjection's bursting rein, O'er their wild mood full conquest gained, The pride, he would not crush, restrained, Showed their fierce zeal a worthier cause, And brought the freeman's arm to aid the freeman's laws.

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Thy strength had propped the tottering throne.

Now is the stately column broke,

The beacon-light is quenched in smoke,
The trumpet's silver sound is still,

The warder silent on the hill!

Oh, think, how to his latest day, When Death, just hovering, claimed his prey,

With Palinure's unaltered mood,
Firm at his dangerous post he stood,
Each call for needful rest repelled,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till, in his fall, with fateful sway,
The steerage of the realm gave way!
Then, while on Britain's thousand plains
One unpolluted church remains,
Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around
The bloody tocsin's maddening sound,
But still, upon the hallowed day,
Convoke the swains to praise and pray;
While faith and civil peace are dear,
Grace this cold marble with a tear,
He who preserved them, PITT, lies here.

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Nor yet suppress the generous sigh Because his rival slumbers nigh, Nor be thy requiescat dumb Lest it be said o'er Fox's tomb; For talents mourn, untimely lost, When best employed and wanted most; Mourn genius high, and lore profound, And wit that loved to play, not wound; And all the reasoning powers divine, To penetrate, resolve, combine; And feelings keen, and fancy's glow, They sleep with him who sleeps below: And, if thou mourn'st they could not save From error him who owns this grave, Be every harsher thought suppressed, And sacred be the last long rest. Here, where the end of earthly things Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings; Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue, Of those who fought, and spoke, and

sung;

Here, where the fretted aisles prolong The distant notes of holy song,

As if some angel spoke again,

All peace on earth, good-will to men;' If ever from an English heart, Oh, here let prejudice depart, And, partial feeling cast aside, Record that Fox a Briton died!

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With more than mortal powers endowed, How high they soared above the crowd! Theirs was no common party race, Jostling by dark intrigue for place; Like fabled Gods, their mighty war Shook realms and nations in its jar; Beneath each banner proud to stand, Looked up the noblest of the land, Till through the British world were known The names of PITT and Fox alone. Spells of such force no wizard grave F'er framed in dark Thessalian cave, Though his could drain the ocean dry, And force the planets fro:n the sky. These spells are spent, and, spent with

these,

The wine of life is on the lees, Genius and taste and talent gone, Forever tombed beneath the stone, Where- taming thought

pride!

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to

human

The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.
Drop upon Fox's grave the tear,
'T will trickle to his rival's bier;

O'er PITT's the mournful requiem sound,
And Fox's shall the notes rebound.
The solemn echo seems to cry,
'Here let their discord with them die.
Speak not for those a separate doom
Whom Fate made brothers in the tomb;
But search the land, of living men,
Where wilt thou find their like again ?'

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That throbs through bard in bardlike mood,
Were here a tribute mean and low,
Though all their mingled streams could
flow-

Woe, wonder, and sensation high,
In one spring-tide of ecstasy !—
It will not be - it may not last —
The vision of enchantment's past:
Like frostwork in the morning ray,
The fancy fabric melts away;
Each Gothic arch, memorial-stone,
And long, dim, lofty aisle are gone;
And, lingering last, deception dear,
The choir's high sounds die on my ear.
Now slow return the lonely down,
The silent pastures bleak and brown,
The farm begirt with copse wood wild,
The gambols of each frolic child,
Mixing their shrill cries with the tone
Of Tweed's dark waters rushing on.

Prompt on unequal tasks to run,
Thus Nature disciplines her son:
Meeter, she says, for me to stray,
And waste the solitary day

In plucking from yon fen the reed,
And watch it floating down the Tweed,
Or idly list the shrilling lay

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