for the exiled family was so great, that he swore he would not shave his beard till they were restored: a mark of attachment, which, I suppose, had been common during Cromwell's usurpation; for, in Cowley's "Cutter of Coleman Street," one drunken cavalier upbraids another, that, when he was not able to afford to pay a barber, he affected to wear a beard for the King. " I sincerely hope this was not absolutely the original reason of my ancestor's beard; which, as appears from a portrait in the possession of Sir Henry Hay Macdougal, Bart., and another painted for the famous Dr. Pitcairn, was a beard of a most dignified and venerable appearance.'— Scott.
l.111. 'see introduction to the 'Minstrelsy.' vol. iv. p.59'—Lockhart.
ll. 117–20. The Tweed winds and loiters around Mertoun and its grounds as if fascinated by their attractiveness. With 1. 120 cp. clipped in with the sea,' I Henry IV, iii. I. 45.
1. 126. Cp. 2 Henry IV, iii. 2. 228: We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow!'
l. 132. Scott quotes from Congreve's 'Old Bachelor,' — 'Hannibal was a pretty fellow, sir— a very pretty fellow in his day,' which is part of a speech by Noll Bluffe, one of the characters.
l. 139. With 'Limbo lost,' cp. the 'Limbo large and broad' of Paradise Lost,' iii. 495. Limbo is the borders of hell, and also hell itself.
l. 143. 'John Leyden, M.D., who had been of great service to Sir Walter Scott in the preparation of the 'Border Minstrelsy,' sailed for India in April, 1803, and died at Java in August, 1811, before completing his 36th year.
His brief and bright career is o'er,
And mute his tuneful strains;
Quench'd is his lamp of varied lore,
That loved the light of song to pour;
A distant and a deadly shore
Has Leyden's cold remains."
Lord of the Isles, Canto IV.
'See a notice of his life in the Author's Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iv.'— Lockhart..
l. 146. For the solemn and powerful interview of Hercules and Ulysses, see close of Odyssey XI. Wraith (Icel. vördhr, guardian) is here used for shade. In Scottish superstition it signifies the shadow of a person seen before death, as in 'Guy Mannering,' chap.
