"Young Lochinvar."-Percy's Reliques.

the ballad was composed soon afterward, although | positions the famous and favorite ballad of
the language has been modernized in the course of
its transmission to us through the inaccurate chan-
nel of oral tradition." "The hero of the ballad,"

he adds, "was a knight of great bravery, called
Scott;" and he believes it refers to a duel fought
at Deucharswyre, of which Annan's Treat is a
part, betwixt John Scott of Tushielaw and his
brother-in-law Walter Scott, third son of Robert
of Thirlstane, in which the latter was slain.
Annan's Treat is a low muir on the banks of the
Yarrow, lying to the west of Yarrow kirk. Two
tall unhewn masses of stone are erected about
eighty yards distant from each other, and the
least child, that can herd a cow, will tell the pas-
senger that there lie "the two lords who were
slain in single combat." Sir Walter also informs
us that, according to tradition, the murderer was
the brother of either the wife or the betrothed
bride of the murdered, and that the alleged cause
of quarrel was the lady's father having proposed
to endow her with half of his property upon her
marriage with a warrior of such renown. The
name of the murderer is said to have been Annan,
hence the place of combat is still called Annan's
Treat.-Percy's Reliques.

Page 387.-HARTLEAP WELL.-Hartleap Well is a small spring of water about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second part of the following poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.- Wordsworth, 8vo ed.

Page 393.-KATHARINE JANFARIE. Of this
ballad-first published in the Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border-the editor informs us that it
is "given from several recited copies." It has
obviously undergone some alteration, yet much
of the rugged character of the original has been
retained. The scenery of the ballad is said by
tradition to lie upon the banks of the Cadden-
water,"
a small rill which joins the Tweed (from
the north) betwixt Inverleithen and Clovenford."
It is also traditionally stated that Katharine Jan-
farie "lived high up in the glen" -a beautiful
and sequestered vale connected with Traquair, and
situated about three miles above Traquair House.
The recited copies, from which it is probable Sir
Walter Scott collected the verses he has here
brought together, exist in Buchan's Ancient Bal-
lads and Songs, and in Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Ancient and Modern. It derives interest and im-
portance, however, less from its intrinsic merit
than from the circumstance of its having given
to Scott the hint upon which he founded one of
the most brilliant and spirit-stirring of his com-

Page 395.-O'CONNOR'S CHILD.-The poem of "O'Connor's Child" is an exquisitely finished and pathetic tale. The rugged and ferocious features of ancient feudal manners and family pride are there displayed in connection with female suffering, love, and beauty, and with the romantic and warlike coloring suited to the country and times. It is full of antique grace and passionate energy -the mingled light and gloom of the wild Celtic character. Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature.

Page 398.-PRISONER OF CHILLON. — François de Bonnivard was born in Seyssel, in the department of Ain, in 1496. Having adopted republican opinions, he took sides with the Genevese against Duke Charles III. of Savoy; but he had the misfortune in 1530 to fall into the power of the latter, who confined him six years in the castle of Chil

lon. The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of the Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent; below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of eight hundred feet (French measure); within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early Reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or rather eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and fettered; in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces.

Page 402.-FAIR HELEN.-The story upon which this ballad is founded is thus related in the first edition of the Statistics of Scotland: "In the burialground of Kirkconnell are still to be seen the tombstones of Fair Helen and her favorite lover, Adam Fleeming. She was a daughter of the family of Kirkconnell, and fell a victim to the jealousy of a lover. Being courted by two young gentlemen at the same time, the one of whom, thinking himself slighted, vowed to sacrifice the other to his resentment when he again discovered him in her company. An opportunity soon presented itself when the faithful pair, walking along the romantic banks of the Kirtle, were discovered from the opposite banks by the assassin. Helen, perceiving him lurking among the bushes, and dreading the fatal resolution, rushed to her lover's bosom to rescue him from the danger, and thus receiving the wound intended for another, sank and expired in her favorite's arms. He immedi

flicted him both day and night, and would not suffer him to take his rest in any place. Whereupon the Prelate, thinking he should be secure from the injury of Mice if he were in a certain tower, that standeth in the Rhine near to the towne, betook himself unto the said tower as to a safe refuge and sanctuary from his enemies, and locked himself in. But the innumerable troupes of Mice chased him continually very eagerly, and swumme unto him upon the top of the water to execute the just judgment of God, and so at last he was most miserably devoured by those sillie creatures; who pursued him with such bitter hostility, that it is recorded they scraped and knawed out his very name from the walls and tapistry wherein it was written, after they had so cruelly devoured his body. Wherefore the tower wherein he was eaten up by the Mice is shewn to this day, for a perpetual monument to all succeeding ages of the barbarous and inhuman tyranny of this impious Prelate, being situate in a little green Island in the midst of the Rhine near to the towne of Bingen, and is commonly called in the German Tongue the Mowse-turn.-Coryat's Crudities.

Page 417.-BARBARA ALLEN'S CRUELTY.-There are several versions of this popular ballad, and we have chosen the one adopted by Mr. Allingham in his Ballad Book. Allingham says: doubt, however, those who have been bred up, as it were, in a particular form of a ballad will be apt, at least at first, to mislike any other form. One who has had impressed upon his youthful

wwww

zearch, among which was the celebrated one
headed by the late Dr. E. K. Kane, Lady Frank-
lin, especially, being indefatigable in her endeav-
ors to ascertain his fate, but without any success
until 1854, when Dr. Rae found some relics, and
in 1859, Captain McClintock discovered on the
shore of King William's Land a record deposited
in a cairn by the survivors of Franklin's company.
This document was dated April 25, 1848, and
stated that Sir John died June 11, 1847-that
the Erebus and Terror were abandoned April 22,
1848, when the survivors, 105 in number, started
for the Great Fish River. Many relics were also
found of this party, who perished on their journey,
probably soon after leaving the vessels. It ap-
pears also that Sir John really did discover the
long-sought-for north-west passage, but the know-
ledge of its whereabouts perished with him, al-
though subsequent expeditions have been sent
out to find it.

Page 456.-THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.—
The verse beginning—

"And then I think of one who in her youthful
beauty died,"

is an allusion to the memory of the poet's sister,
who died of consumption in 1824.-Duyckinck's
Cyclopædia of American Literature.

Page 504.-LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.-
The Mermaid Tavern was the resort of Ben
Jonson and his literary friends, members of a
club established by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603,
and numbering among them Shakespeare, Beau-
mont, Fletcher, Donne, Selden, and the noblest
names in English authorship. Truly might Beau-
mont, in his poetical epistle to Jonson, exclaim—
"What things have seen

Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have
been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whom they came
Had mean'd to put his whole wit in a jest!"
-Chambers's Book of Days.

Page 513.-ALNWICK CASTLE.-Alnwick Castle
is one of the finest in England. It is built of
freestone, in the Gothic style, and covers five
acres of ground, and was restored in 1830 at an
outlay of $1,000,000. It belongs to the Duke of
Northumberland, a descendant of the Percys so
famed in ancient ballads, and especially for their
feuds with their neighbors on the other side of
the border, the noble Douglases. One of the
Percys was an emperor of Constantinople, anoth-
er was a major in the British army, and "fought
for King George at Lexington" and at the battle
of the Brandywine.

Page 514.- HELLVELLYN.-In the spring of 1805 a young gentleman of talents, and of a most

amiable disposition, perished by losing his way on the mountain Hellvellyn. His remains were not discovered till three months afterward, when they were found guarded by a faithful terrier bitch, his constant attendant during frequent solitary rambles through the wilds of Cumberland and Westmoreland.-Scott's Poems.

Page 517.-THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. "The Meeting of the Waters" forms a part of that beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow, in the county of Wicklow, and these lines were suggested by a visit to this romantic spot in the summer of the year 1807.Moore's Works, 8vo.

Page 522.-THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.Moore's "Lake of the Dismal Swamp," written at Norfolk, in Virginia, is founded on the following legend: "A young man who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never afterward heard of. As he had frequently said in his ravings that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger or had been lost in some of its dreadful morasses.”—Frederick Saunders's Festival of Song.

Page 523.-ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. This magnificent ode, called by Hallam "perhaps the finest in the English language," was composed, as we learn from Milton's own heading of it in the edition of 1645, in the year 1629. Milton was then twenty-one years of age, in the sixth academic year at Cambridge, and a B. A. of a year's standing. There is an interesting allusion to the ode by Milton himself, when he was in the act of composing it, in the sixth of his Latin elegies. In that elegy, addressed to his friend Charles Diodati, residing in the country, in answer to a friendly epistle which Diodati had sent to him on the 13th of December, 1629, there is a distinct description of the "Ode on the Nativity as then finished, or nearly so, and ready to be shown to Diodati, together with the express information that it was begun on Christmas Day, 1629.-Milton, Masson's ed.

Page 549.-EMIGRANTS IN THE BERMUDAS.Representative government was introduced into the Bermudas in 1620, and in 1621 the Bermuda Company of London issued a sort of charter to the colony, including rights and liberties-among them liberty of worship-that attracted many of those English emigrants whose feeling Marvell has here fashioned into song.-Morley's Shorter Poems of the English Language.

Page 550.-REBECCA'S HYMN.-It was in the twilight of the day when her trial-if it could be called such-had taken place, that a low knock

བ་ཧཀ ལ

dle Marches. Whether these are the original words will admit of a doubt.-Sir Walter Scott.

was heard at the door of Rebecca's prison-cham- | John Carmichael of Edrom, Warden of the Midber. It disturbed not the inmate, who was then engaged in the evening prayer recommended by her religion, and which concluded with a hymn which we have ventured thus to translate into English.-Ivanhoe.

Page 593.-I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAY.-This hymn was written without the remotest idea that any portion of it would ever be employed in the devotions of the Church. Whatever service it has done in that way is owing to the late Bishop (of Pennsylvania, then the rector of St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn, who made the selection of verses out of the whole which constitutes the present hymn, and offered it to the Committee on Hymns appointed by the General Convention of The hymn was at first rejected by the committee, of which the unknown author was a member, who, upon a satirical criticism being made upon it, earnestly voted against its adoption. It was admitted on the importunate application of Dr. Onderdonk to the bishops on the committee.-Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature.

Page 630.-ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.-As he was floating down the river to attack Quebec, General Wolfe read the "Elegy" in low tones to his officers, and upon its conclusion said: "I had rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec"-a remark which has perhaps done as much to perpetuate Wolfe's name as the capture of Quebec, great as that achievement was.

Page 637.-STANZAS.-These beautiful lines were composed by Hood on his death-bed.

Page 642.—To A SKELETON. The manuscript of this poem was found near a skeleton in the London Royal College of Surgeons about 1820. The author has never been found, though a reward of fifty guineas was offered for his discovery. Single Famous Poems.

This is one of the songs which so touched Goldsmith in his youth that nothing he heard sung in after years had an equal charm for him. "The music of the finest singer," he wrote in the Bee, October 13, 1759, "is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy maid sung me into tears with 'Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-Night' or the 'Cruelty of Barbara Allen;"" and in a letter to his Irish friend Hodson, December 27, 1757, he says: "If I go to the opera where Signora Columba pours out all the mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for 'Lishoy's Fireside' and 'Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-Night,' from Peggy Golden."-Mary Carlyle Aitken.

Page 655.-THE LIE. This celebrated poem has been attributed to Joshua Sylvester. In a note of Mr. Peter Cunningham's to his edition of Campbell's Lives of the Poets, referring to the passage in which Campbell says, "We would willingly ascribe the 'Soul's Errand' to him (Raleigh)," we read, "The Lie' is ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh in an answer to it written at the time, and recently discovered in the Cheetham Library at Manchester. That it was written by Raleigh is now almost past a doubt."- Bellew's Poets' Corner.

Page 656.-ARMSTRONG'S GOOD-NIGHT.-These verses are said to have been composed by one of the Armstrongs, executed for the murder of Sir

Page 672. THE OLD AND YOUNG COURTIER.— The whole of the sixteenth century was marked by important changes of every kind-political, religious, and social. The wars with France and the internal contests of the Roses were over, and the energy of the nation was directed to new objects. Trade and commerce were extended; fresh sources of wealth were developed; and new classes of society sprang up into importance whose riches enabled them to outvie the old landed gentry, but who had few of their hereditary tastes and habits. Hence the innovation of old customs and the decay of ancient manners to which the gentry themselves were compelled to conform. This old song, which is printed in the Percy Reliques from an ancient black-letter copy in the Pepys Collection, is a lament over the changes which had taken place in the early part of the seventeenth century, as compared with the days of Queen Elizabeth.-Knight's Half Hours with the Best Authors.

Page 677.-BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.-The battle of Blenheim or Hochstadt was fought August 13, 1704, between the English and Austrians, under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the French and Bavarians, under Marshal Tallard, Marson, and the Elector of Bavaria. The latter army, being badly handled and huddled together in the village of Blenheim, was suddenly attacked by Marlborough and completely defeated, losing 30,000 in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Marlborough's loss was but 11,000. This victory completely shattered the French prestige which Louis XIV. had struggled so hard to obtain.

Page 688.-LINES WRITTEN BY ONE IN THE TOWER.-Chidiock Tychborn shared in Babington's conspiracy, and was executed with him in 1586. (For a fuller account see Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature.)

Page 704.-HONEST POVERTY.-A great critic (Aikin) on songs says that love and wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following is on neither subject, and consequently is no song, but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted into rhyme. In a Letter from Burns to G. Thomson.

be a long, incoherent story, of which I could understand but little, from the barbarous pronunciation of the Canadians. It begins-

Dans mon chemin j'ai rencontré
Deux cavaliers très-bien montés;
and the refrain to every verse was-

A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais jouer,
A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais danser.

I ventured to harmonize this air, and have published it. Without that charm which association gives to every little memorial of scenes or feelings that are past, the melody may perhaps be thought common and trifling; but I remember when we have entered, at sunset, upon one of those beautiful lakes into which the St. Lawrence so grandly and unexpectedly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest compositions of the first masters have never given me; and now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip of our oars in the St. Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the rapids, and all those new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting voyage.-Moore's Poems, note.

Page 724.-ALEXANDER'S FEAST.—St. Cecilia is
said to have been a Roman lady born about A. D.
295, bred in the Christian faith, and married to a
Pagan nobleman, Valerianus. She told her hus-
band that she was visited nightly by an angel,
whom he was allowed to see after his own conver-
sion. The celestial youth had brought from par-
adise two wreaths, which he gave to them. One
was of the lilies of heaven, the other of its roses.
They both suffered martyrdom at the beginning
of the third century, in the reign of Septimius
Severus. The angel by whom Cecilia was visited
is referred to in the closing lines of Dryden's
"Ode," coupled with a tradition that he had been
drawn down to her from heaven by her melodies.
In the earliest traditions of Cecilia there is no
mention of her skill in music. This part of her
story seems to have been developed by a little
play of fancy over her relations with the angel,
and the great Italian painters-Raffaelle, Dome-
nichino, and others-fixed her position as the pa-
tron saint of music by representing her always
with symbols of harmony, a harp or organ-pipes.
Then came the suggestion adopted in Dryden's
"Ode," that the organ was invented by St. Ce-
cilia. The practice of holding musical festivals on
St. Cecilia's Day, the 22d of November, began to
prevail in England at the close of the seventeenth
century. The earliest piece composed for such a
meeting was produced in 1683, and was by Henry
Purcell. From that date to about 1740 there was
an annual Cecilian festival in London, and the
fashion spread into the provinces. Poets-Dry-
den and Pope among them-were applied to for
odes which were to celebrate the power of music,
and to be set to music for performance as a spe-
cial feature of the anniversary.-Morley's Shorter
Poems.

Page 735.-A CANADIAN BOAT-SONG.-I wrote
these words to an air which our boatmen sung to
us frequently. The wind was so unfavorable that
they were obliged to row all the way, and we were
five days in descending the river from Kingston
to Montreal, exposed to an intense sun during the
day, and at night forced to take shelter from the
dews in any miserable hut upon the banks that
would receive us. But the magnificent scenery
of the St. Lawrence repays all such difficulties.

Our voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in tune together. The original words of the air to which I adapted these stanzas appeared to

Page 789.-A VISION UPON THIS CONCEIT OF THE FAERIE QUEENE.-This sonnet is the first among the commendatory poems prefixed to the earliest edition of The Faerie Queene. As original in conception as it is grand in execution, it is about the finest compliment which was ever paid by poet to poet, such as it became Raleigh to indite and Spenser to receive. Yet it labors under a serious defect. The great poets of the past lose no whit of their glory because later poets are found worthy to share it. Petrarch in his lesser, and Homer in his greater sphere, are just as illustrious since Spenser appeared as before.-Richard Chenevix Trench.

Page 756.-THE DESERTED VILLAGE.-Lissoy, near Ballymahon, where the poet's brother, a clergyman, had his living, claims the honor of being the spot from which the localities of "The Deserted Village" were derived. The church which tops the neighboring hill, the mill, and the brook, are still pointed out; and a hawthorn has suffered the penalty of poetical celebrity, being cut to pieces by those admirers of the bard who desired to have classical toothpick - cases and tobacco-stoppers. Much of this supposed locality may be fanciful, but it is a pleasing tribute to the poet in the land of his fathers.-Sir Walter Scott.

Page 787.-INDIAN REVELRY.-This remarkable poem appeared originally, it is believed, in the St. Helena Magazine, and was afterward copied in the London Spectator and other journals. It relates to the early service of English