Thy fist made all the table ring—
“By ——, sir, but that is the thing!”’
[6] Marmion—Introduction to Canto II.
[7] He rarely made corrections on his published works, but there is one alteration worth noting in the opening of this Introduction. In the first edition he says: ‘From the remote period when the Roman deity Terminus retired behind the ramparts of Severus,’ &c. This seemed a little inflated, and also inappropriate, for it represents Terminus as if capable of motion, though the Romans represented the god as wanting legs and arms, to shew that he was immovable; and Scott reduced the illustration to sober historical limits: ‘From the remote period when the Roman province was contracted by the ramparts of Severus,’ &c.
[8] Marmion: Introd. to Canto II. When the poem was published, its author wrote to his friend at Blackhouse: ‘This accompanies a copy of Marmion, which I will see put up with my own eyes. Constable is greatly too busy to be uniformly accurate.’
[9] Letter to Hon. Mrs Stewart Mackenzie.
[10] Seaforth Papers at Brahan Castle, Ross-shire.
[11] The Burghers were a religious sect, now merged in the United Presbyterian body.
[12] Letter to Hon. Mrs Stewart Mackenzie.
[13] Lockhart also was in favour of a cairn: ‘As to monuments, if I could choose—passing Abbotsford—I should say, put a plain sitting statue of Sir W. S. on Princes Street, Edinburgh, at the south end of Castle Street, backed by the rock; and put a cairn on the Eildon Hill, that every lad might carry his stone to. As for temples and pillars, they have been vulgarised in Edinburgh. A friend said to me: ‘Good God, what a grand thing it will be to have Sir Walter put on a level with the late Lord Melville! Let us have another pillar at the west end of George Street, by all means.’ This man is a sensible one, and was dead serious. On a level with Lord Melville, whose name will appear only in the fag-end of a note to the future history of this country, and really will be kept in memory chiefly by the pillar! Dugald Stewart and Playfair, admirable dominies both, have their temples; so I fancy will now Sir John Leslie. The Calton Hill had better be left to the schoolmasters; in a hundred years they will have covered it; but, if they please, they may keep a place in the midst for Sir John Sinclair.’—Letter to Hon. Mrs Stewart Mackenzie.