their words and charms, and the power of the evil spirits whom they evoked.'
line 181. Lees is properly pl. of lee (Fr.lie = dregs), the sediment or coarser parts of a liquid which settle at the bottom, but it has come to be used as a collective word without reference to a singular form. For phrase, cp. Macbeth, ii. 3. 96:—
Is left this vault to brag of.'
line 185. Cp. Byron's 'Age of Bronze':—
Of sullen earth divide each winding-sheet.'
line 199. hearse, from Old Fr. herce = harrow, portcullis. In early English the word is used in the sense of 'harrow' and also of 'triangle,' in reference to the shape of the harrow. By-and-by it came to be used variously for 'bier,' 'funeral carriage,' ornamental canopy with lighted candles over the coffins of notable people during the funeral ceremony, the permanent framework over a tomb, and even the tomb itself. Cp. Spenser's Shep. Cal., November Eclogue:—
Dead, and lyeth wrapt in lead.
O heavie herse!'
The gloss to this is, 'Herse is the solemne obsequie in funeralles.' Cp. also Ben Jonson's 'Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke':—
Lies the subject of all verse.'
line 203. The 'Border Minstrel' is an appropriate designation of the author of 'Contributions to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border' and the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.' In the preface to the latter work, written in 1830, Scott refers to the two great statesmen as having 'smiled on the adventurous minstrel.' This is the only existing evidence of Fox's appreciation. Pitt's praise of the Lay his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, reported to W. S. Rose, who very naturally passed it on to Scott himself. The Right Hon. William Dundas, in a letter to Scott, mentions a conversation he had had with Pitt at his table, in 1805, and says that Pitt both expressed his desire to advance Scott's professional interests and quoted from the Lay the lines describing the embarrassment of the harper when asked to play. 'This,' said he, 'is a sort of thing which I might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being given in poetry.'—Lockhart's Life of Scott, ii. 34.
