chief confidant and adviser as to all literary matters. See a notice of his life and character by the late Mr. Hay Donaldson, to which Sir Walter Scott contributed several paragraphs.'—Lockhart.
There are frequent references to Erskine throughout Lockhart's Life of Scott. The critics of the time were of his opinion that Scott as a poet was not giving his powers their proper direction. Jeffrey considered 'Marmion' 'a misapplication in some degree of extraordinary talents.' Fortunately, Scott decided for himself in the matter, and the self-criticism of this Introduction is characterised not only by good humour and poetic beauty but by discrimination and strong common-sense.
l. 14. a morning dream. This may simply be a poetic way of saying that his method is unsystematic, but Horace's account of the vision he saw when he was once tempted to write Greek verses is irresistibly suggested by the expression:—
Post mediam noctem visus, cum somnia vera:
"In silvam non ligna feras insanius, ac si
Magnas Graecorum malis implere catervas?"':
Sat. I. x. 32.
l. 24. all too well. This use of 'all too' is a development of the Elizabethan expression 'all-to' = altogether, quite, as 'all to topple,' Pericles, iii. 2. 17; 'all to ruffled,' Comus, 380. In this usage the original force of to as a verbal prefix is lost sight of. Chaucer has 'The pot to breaketh' in Prologue to Chanon Yeomanes Tale. See note in Clarendon Press Milton, i. 290.
l. 26. Desultory song may naturally command a very wide class of those intelligent readers, for whom the Earl of Iddesleigh, in 'Lectures and Essays,' puts forward a courageous plea in his informing and genial address on the uses of Desultory Reading.
l. 28. The reading of the first edition is 'loftier,' which conveys an estimate of his own achievements more characteristic of Scott than the bare assertion of his ability to 'build the lofty rhyme' which is implied in the line as it stands. Perhaps the expression just quoted from 'Lycidas' may have led to the reading of all subsequent editions.
l. 46. The Duke of Brunswick commanded the Prussian forces at Jena, 14 Oct., 1806, and was mortally wounded. He was 72. For 'hearse,' cp. above, Introd. to I. 199.
54. The reigning house of Prussia comes from the Electors of Brandenburg. In 1415 Frederick VI. of Hohenzollern and Nurem-
