Marmion (ed. Henry Morley) | Page 4

the
impulse upon his mind of a preceding great success, took more than
usual pains, and thoroughly enjoyed the writing. On pleasant knolls,
under trees, and by the banks of Yarrow, many lines were written; and
trotting quietly over the hills in later life he said to Lockhart, his
son-in-law, "Oh, man, I had many a grand gallop among these bracs
when I was thinking of 'Marmion.'" The description of the battle of
Flodden was shaped in the autumn of 1807, when Scott was out
practising with the Light Horse Volunteers, which had been formed in
prospect of an invasion from France, and of which Scott was
quartermaster and secretary. Scott at those gatherings was full of
companionable mirth, and in intervals between drill he would
sometimes ride his charger at full speed up and down on the sands of
Portobello within spray of the wave, while his mind was at work on
such lines as -
"They close, in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword-sway and with
lance's thrust;
And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if
men fought in upper earth,

And fiends in upper air."
"Marmion" was published early in the year 1808; its first edition of two
thousand, in the form, then usual, of a quarto volume, priced at a
guinea and a half, was sold in a month. Then came the editions in
octavo, of which there were twelve, between 1808 and 1825.
Francis Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, complained of antiScottish
feeling, and otherwise criticised his friend's work in a
way that
alienated Scott, not from Jeffrey, but from the Review, and opened to
John Murray a prospect of securing Scott for a contributor to another
Review, the Quarterly, which he would found as a representative of
other political opinions with which Scott would be more in accord.
"Marmion" thus has a place in the story of the origin of the Quarterly
Review. Of the great popularity of "Marmion," Scott himself said at the
time that it gave him "such a heeze that he had almost lost his footing."
The Letters introducing the several Books are, in all Scott's verse,
perhaps the poems that most perfectly present to us his own personality.
They form no part of "Marmion," in fact there had been a plan for their
publication as a distinct book. As they stand they interweave the poet
with his poem, making "Marmion," too, a "Lay of the Last Minstrel," in
the first days of its publication. George Ellis playfully observed to Scott
that "the personal appearance of the Minstrel who, though the Last, is
by far the most charming of all minstrels, is by no means compensated
by the idea of an author shorn of his picturesque beard, deprived of his
harp, and writing letters to his intimate friends." The Minstrel of the
Lay was but a creature of imagination; the Minstrel of "Marmion" is
Scott himself.
H. M.
MARMION
INTRODUCTION TO CANTO FIRST.
TO WILLIAM
STEWART ROSE, ESQ.
Ashestiel, Ettrick Forest.

November's sky is chill and drear,
November's leaf is red and sear:

Late, gazing down the steepy linn
That hems our little garden in,

Low in its dark and narrow glen
You scarce the rivulet might ken,

So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble thrilled the streamlet
through:
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen
Through bush
and briar, no longer green,
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,

Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And foaming brown, with
doubled speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.
No longer Autumn's glowing red
Upon our forest hills is shed;
No
more, beneath the evening beam,
Fair Tweed reflects their purple
gleam:
Away hath passed the heather-bell
That bloomed so rich on
Needpath Fell;
Sallow his brow, and russet bare
Are now the
sister-heights of Yair.
The sheep, before the pinching heaven,
To
sheltered dale and down are driven,
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?"
Yes, prattlers, yes. The daisy's flower
Again shall paint your summer
bower;
Again the hawthorn shall supply
The garlands you delight to
tie;
The lambs upon the lea shall bound,
The wild birds carol to the
round,
And while you frolic light as they,
Too short shall seem the
summer day.

To mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;

The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory reappears.
But
oh! my country's wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?

What powerful call