[37] Printed for the first time.
[38] Printed for the first time.
[39] At the battle of Vittoria, the 71st, or Glasgow Regiment, bore a distinguished part. On this song, celebrating their achievements, being produced at the Glasgow theatre, it was received with rapturous applause; it was nightly called for during the season.
[40] This admirable composition was an especial favourite of Dr Thomas Chalmers, who was in the habit of quoting it to his students in the course of his theological prelections.
[41] The first stanza of this song is the composition of Robert Tannahill.
[42] In his Life of Scott, Lockhart states that "Peter's Letters" "were not wholly the work of one hand."
[43] This song, with several others of ephemeral interest, was composed by Lockhart, to be sung at the mess of the Mid-Lothian Yeomanry, of which he was a member. Of the songs produced for these festive occasions, a collection for private circulation was printed in 1825, at the Ballantyne press, with the title, "Songs of the Edinburgh Troop," pp. 28. In this collection, the "Broadswords" song bears date July 1821; it was published with music in 1822, in the third volume of Thomson's Collection.
[44] This humorous elegy was first published in Blackwood's Magazine for September 1819. Captain Paton was a well-known character in Glasgow. The son of Dr David Paton, a physician in that city, he obtained a commission in a regiment raised in Scotland for the Dutch service. He afterwards resided with his two maiden sisters, and an old servant Nelly, in a tenement opposite the Old Exchange at the Cross, which had been left him by his father. The following graphic account of the Captain, we transcribe from Dr Strang's interesting work, "Glasgow and its Clubs," recently published:—"Every sunshine day, and sometimes even amid shower and storm, about the close of the past and the commencement of the present century, was the worthy Captain in the Dutch service seen parading the plainstanes, opposite his own residence in the Trongate, donned in a suit of snuff-coloured brown or 'genty drab,' his long spare limbs encased in blue striped stockings, with shoes and buckles, and sporting ruffles of the finest cambric at his wrists, while adown his back hung a long queue, and on his head was perched a small three-cocked hat, which, with a politesse tout à fait Francais, he invariably took off when saluting a friend. Captain Paton, while a denizen of the camp, had studied well the noble art of fence, and was looked upon as a most accomplished swordsman, which might easily be discovered from his happy but threatening manner of holding his cane, when sallying from his own domicile towards the coffee-room, which he usually entered about two o'clock, to study the news of the day in the pages of the Courier. The gallant Captain frequently indulged, like Othello, in speaking—
'Of moving incidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach.'
And of his own brave doings on the tented field, 'at Minden and at Dettingen,' particularly when seated round a bowl of his favourite cold punch, made with limes from his own estate in Trinidad, and with water newly drawn from the Westport well." It remains to be added, that this "prince of worthy fellows" died in July 1807, at the age of sixty-eight.