Footnote 18: Mechlin—the Highlander gave it the familiar pronunciation of a Scotch village, Mauchline, celebrated in many of Burns's poems.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 19: See Major Gordon's Personal Memoirs (1830), vol. ii. pp. 325-338.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 20: The skull of Shaw is now in the Museum at Abbotsford.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 21: Scott acknowledges, in a note to St. Ronan's Well (chap. xv.), that he took from Platoff this portrait of Mr. Touchwood: "His face, which at the distance of a yard or two seemed hale and smooth, appeared, when closely examined, to be seamed with a million of wrinkles, crossing each other in every direction possible, but as fine as if drawn by the point of a very small needle." Thus did every little peculiarity remain treasured in his memory, to be used in due time for giving the air of minute reality to some imaginary personage.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 22: See Poetical Works (Edin. Ed.), vol. xi. p. 295 [Cambridge Ed. p. 420].[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 23: John Scott, Esq., of Gala, died at Edinburgh, 19th April, 1840.—(1842.)[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 24: I think it very probable that Scott had his own first interview with the Duke of Wellington in his mind when he described the introduction of Roland Græme to the Regent Murray, in the novel of The Abbot, chap. xviii.:—"Such was the personage before whom Roland Græme now presented himself with a feeling of breathless awe, very different from the usual boldness and vivacity of his temper. In fact, he was, from education and nature, ... much more easily controlled by the moral superiority arising from the elevated talents and renown of those with whom he conversed, than by pretensions founded only on rank or external show. He might have braved with indifference the presence of an Earl merely distinguished by his belt and coronet; but he felt overawed in that of the eminent soldier and statesman, the wielder of a nation's power, and the leader of her armies."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 25: This was published in the Edinburgh Annual Register in 1815.—See Poetical Works (Ed. 1834), vol. xi. p. 297 [Cambridge Ed. p. 421].[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 26: See Poetical Works (Ed. 1834), vol. xi. p. 312 [Cambridge Ed. p. 424].[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 27: Irving's Abbotsford and Newstead, 1835, p. 40.[Back to Main Text]