1. 36. See Introd . to Canto II.
1. 37. 'The Old Town of Edinburgh was secured on the north side by a lake, now drained , and on the south by a wall, which there was some attempt to make defensible even so late as 1745. The gates, and the greater part of the wall, have been pulled down, in the course of the late extensive and beautiful enlargement of the city. My ingenious and valued friend, Mr. Thomas Campbell, proposed to celebrate Edinburgh under the epithet here borrowed. But the "Queen of the North" has not been so fortunate as to receive from so eminent a pen the proposed distinction.'—Scott.
1. 57. 'Since writing this line, I find I have inadvertently borrowed it almost verbatim, though with somewhat a different meaning, from a chorus in "Caractacus":—
She flung her white arms o'er the sea,
Proud in her leafy bosom to enfold
The freight of harmony." '—Scott
1. 58. For = instead of
ll. 60-1. gleam'st, with trans. force, is an Elizabethanism. Cp. Shakespeare's Lucrece, 1. 1378:—
'Dying eyes gleamed forth their ashy lights.'
l. 67. See 'Faerie Queene,' III. iv.
l.78. "For every one her liked, and every one her loved." Spenser, as above.'—SCOTT.
l. 106. A knosp is an architectural ornament in form of a bud.
ll. 111-12. See Genesis xviii.
l. 118. 'Henry VI, with his Queen, his heir, and the chiefs of his family, fled to Scotland after the battle of Towton. In this note a doubt was formerly expressed whether Henry VI came to Edinburgh, though his Queen certainly did; Mr. Pinkerton inclining to believe that he remained at Kirkcudbright. But my noble friend, Lord Napier, has pointed out to me a grant by Henry, of an annuity of forty marks to his Lordship's ancestor, John Napier, subscribed by the King himself, at Edinburgh, the 28th day of August, in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, which corresponds to the year of God, 1461. This grant, Douglas, with his usual neglect of accuracy, dates in 1368. But this error being corrected from the copy of Macfarlane's MSS., p. 119, 20, removes all scepticism on the subject of Henry VI being really at Edinburgh. John Napier was son and heir of Sir Alexander Napier, and about this time was Provost of Edinburgh. The hospitable reception of the distressed monarch and his family,
