At other times huge balls of fire are tossed, That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost; Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions

ON THE SETTING SUN

'These lines, as well as the foregoing, were found wrapped in a paper with the inscription, by Dr. Adam, -"Walter Scott, July, 1783." - Lockhart, Chapter iii.

491

THOSE evening clouds, that setting ray,
And beauteous tints, serve to display
Their great Creator's praise;

Then let the short-lived thing called man,
Whose life's comprised within a span,

To Him his homage raise.

We often praise the evening clouds, And tints so gay and bold,

But seldom think upon our God,

Who tinged these clouds with gold.

II. MOTTOES FROM THE NOVELS

'The scraps of poetry, which have been in most cases tacked to the beginning of chap. ters in these novels, are sometimes quoted either from reading or from memory, but, in the general case, are pure invention. I found it too troublesome to turn to the collection of the British Poets to discover apposite mottoes, and in the situation of the theatrical machinist, who, when the white paper which represented his shower of snow was exhausted, continued the shower by snowing brown, I drew on my memory as long as I could, and when that failed, eked it out with invention. I believe that in some cases, where actual names are affixed to the supposed quotations, it would be to little purpose to seek them in the works of the authors referred to. In some cases I have been entertained when Dr. Watts and other graver authors have been ransacked in vain for stanzas for which the novelist alone was responsible.' - Introduction to Chronicles of the Canongate.

It may be worth noting that it was in correcting the proof-sheets of The Antiquary that Scott first took to equipping his characters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he happened to ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to hunt for a particu

lar passage in Beaumont and Fletcher. John did as he was bid, but did not succeed in discovering the lines. Hang it, Johnnie! " cried Scott, "I believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one." He did so accordingly; and from that hour, whenever memory failed to suggest an appropriate epigraph, he had recourse to the inexhaustible mines of "old play" or "old ballad," to which we owe some of the most exquisite verse that ever flowed from his pen.'-Lockhart's Life of Scott, Chapter xxvii.

DIRE was his thought who first in poison steeped
The weapon formed for slaughter-direr his,
And worthier of damnation, who instilled
The mortal venom in the social cup,
To fill the veins with death instead of life.
Anonymous.

LOOK round thee, young Astolpho: Here's the
place
Which men - - for being poor are sent to
starve in-
Rude remedy, I trow, for sore disease.
Within these walls, stifled by damp and stench,
Doth Hope's fair torch expire; and at the snuff,
Ere yet 't is quite extinct, rude, wild, and way-

ward,

The desperate revelries of wild despair, Kindling their hell-born cressets, light to deeds That the poor captives would have died ere practised,

Till bondage sunk his soul to his condition.
The Prison, Act I. Scene 3.

FAR as the eye could reach no tree was seen,
Earth, clad in russet, scorned the lively green;
No birds, except as birds of passage, flew;
No bee was heard to hum, no dove to coo;
No streams, as amber smooth, as amber clear,
Were seen to glide, or heard to warble here.
Prophecy of Famine.

'WOE to the vanquished!' was stern Brenno's

word,

When sunk proud Rome beneath the Gallic sword

'Woe to the vanquished!' when his massive blade

Bore down the scale against her ransom weighed,

And on the field of foughten battle still,
Who knows no limit save the victor's will.
The Gaulliad.

WHEN autumn nights were long and drear,
And forest walks were dark and dim,

How sweetly on the pilgrim's ear
Was wont to steal the hermit's hymn!

Devotion borrows Music's tone,

And Music took Devotion's wing,
And, like the bird that hails the sun,
They soar to heaven, and soaring sing.
The Hermit of Saint Clement's Well.

THE hottest horse will oft be cool,
The dullest will show fire;
The friar will often play the fool,
The fool will play the friar.

Old Song. THIS wandering race, severed from other men, Boast yet their intercourse with human arts; The seas, the woods, the deserts, which they haunt,

Find them acquainted with their secret trea

O AY! the Monks, the Monks, they did the mis chief!

Theirs all the grossness, all the superstition
Of a most gross and superstitious age. -
May HE be praised that sent the healthful
tempest,

And scattered all these pestilential vapors;
But that we owed them all to yonder Harlot
Throned on the seven hills with her cup of gold,
I will as soon believe, with kind Sir Roger,
That old Moll White took wing with cat and
broomstick,

And raised the last night's thunder.

Old Play.

IN yon lone vale his early youth was bred.
Not solitary then- the bugle-horn

Of fell Alecto often waked its windings,
From where the brook joins the majestic river