Said to his crew."
This alteration strikes one as anything but an improvement, and it has suggested a doubt, which I beg to apply to the numerous and well-informed body of your readers to solve. Are these lines the production of Walter Scott, as they are generally supposed to be; or are they really the fragment of an old ditty? The alteration at the commencement does not seem one that would have found favour in the eyes of an author, but rather the effect of a prompting of memory. I believe, indeed, the lines are inserted in the volume called The Poetry of the Author of the Waverley Novels (which I saw some years ago, but cannot refer to at this moment), but that is not decisive.
There is a case in point, which is worth quoting on its own account. In Peveril of the Peak, in the celebrated scene of the interview between Buckingham and Fenella, where Fenella leaps from the window, and Buckingham hesitates to follow, there is this passage:
"From a neighbouring thicket of shrubs, amongst which his visitor had disappeared, he heard her chant a verse of a comic song, then much in fashion, concerning a despairing lover who had recourse to a precipice.
"'But when he came near,
Beholding how steep
The sides did appear,
And the bottom how deep;
Though his suit was rejected
He sadly reflected,