"Far in the bosom of the deep,
O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep;
A ruddy gem of changeful light,
Bound on the dusky brow of night,
The seaman bids my lustre hail,
And scorns to strike his timorous sail."
[61]: This is, without doubt, an allusion to some happy day's excursion when his first love was of the party.
[62]: Erskine—Sheriff of Shetland and Orkney.
[63]: Here occurs a rude scratch of drawing.
[64]: Lord Dundas was created Earl of Zetland in 1838, and died in February, 1839.
[65]: Campbell—Pleasures of Hope.
[66]: Robert Hamilton, Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and afterwards one of the Clerks of Session, was a particular favorite of Scott—first, among many other good reasons, because he had been a soldier in his youth, had fought gallantly and been wounded severely in the American war, and was a very Uncle Toby in military enthusiasm; secondly, because he was a brother antiquary of the genuine Monkbarns breed; thirdly (last, not least), because he was, in spite of the example of the head of his name and race, a steady Tory. Mr. Hamilton sent for Scott when upon his deathbed in 1831, and desired him to choose and carry off as a parting memorial any article he liked in his collection of arms. Sir Walter (by that time sorely shattered in his own health) selected the sword with which his good friend had been begirt at Bunker's Hill.
[67]: During the winter of 1837-38, this worthy clergyman's wife, his daughter, and a servant, perished within sight of the manse, from a flaw in the ice on the loch—which they were crossing as the nearest way home.—(1839.)
[68]: In his reviewal of Pitcairn's Trials (1831), Scott says: "In erecting this Earl's Castle of Scalloway, and other expensive edifices, the King's tenants were forced to work in quarries, transport stone, dig, delve, climb, and build, and submit to all possible sorts of servile and painful labor, without either meat, drink, hire, or recompense of any kind. 'My father,' said Earl Patrick, 'built his house at Sumburgh on the sand, and it has given way already; this of mine on the rock shall abide and endure.' He did not or would not understand that the oppression, rapacity, and cruelty, by means of which the house arose, were what the clergyman really pointed to in his recommendation of a motto. Accordingly, the huge tower remains wild and desolate—its chambers filled with sand, and its rifted walls and dismantled battlements giving unrestrained access to the roaring sea blast."—For more of Earl Patrick, see Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xxi. pp. 230, 233; vol. xxiii. pp. 327, 329.
[69]: Mr. W. S. Rose informs me, that when he was at school at Winchester, the morris-dancers there used to exhibit a sword-dance resembling that described at Camacho's wedding in Don Quixote; and Mr. Morritt adds, that similar dances are even yet performed in the villages about Rokeby every Christmas.