We are indebted for this interesting communication to our correspondent A. E. B., whose admirable Illustrations of Chaucer in our columns have given so much pleasure to the admirers of the old poet. Our correspondent has sent it to us in the hope that it may be made available in helping forward the good work of restoring Chaucer's tomb. We trust it will. The Committee who have undertaken that task could, doubtless, raise the hundred pounds required, by asking those who have already come forward to help them, to change their Crown subscriptions into Pounds. With a right feeling for what is due to the poet, they prefer, however, accomplishing the end they have in view by small contributions from the admiring many, rather than by larger contributions from the few. As we doubt not we number among the readers of "Notes and Queries" many admirers of
"Old Dan Chaucer, in whose gentle spright,
The pure well-head of poetry did dwell,"
to them we appeal, that the monument which was erected by the affectionate respect of Nicholas Brigham, nearly three centuries ago, may not in our time be permitted to crumble into dust; reminding them, in Chaucer's own beautiful language,
"That they are gentle who do gentle dedes."
NOTES.
ON "THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL."
I resume the subject commenced in the comments on "a Passage in Marmion," printed in No. 72., March 15, 1851; and I here propose to consider the groundwork and mechanism of the most original, though not quite the first production of Scott's muse, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. In the Introduction prefixed to this poem, nearly thirty years after its publication, Sir Walter Scott informs the world that the young Countess of Dalkeith, much interested and delighted with the wild Border tradition of the goblin called "Gilpin Horner" (which is given at length in the notes appended to the poem), enjoined on him the task of composing a ballad on the subject: