[13] I am reminded by the editor of the Courier, in a very kind critique on the present volume, of a passage in the history of my little work which had escaped my memory. "It had come," he states, "to the knowledge of Sir Walter Scott, who endeavoured to procure a copy after the limited impression was exhausted."
[14] The following are the opening stanzas of the piece—quite as obnoxious to criticism, I fear, as those selected by Walsh:—
"Have ye not seen, on winter's eve,
When snow-rack dimm'd the welkin's face.
Borne wave-like, by the fitful breeze.
The snow-wreath shifting place?
Silent and slow as drifting wreath.
Ere day, the clans from Preston Hill
Moved downward to the vale beneath:—
Dark was the scene and still!