NOTICE.

SOME alterations in the text of the Introduction to Marmion, and of the Poem itself, as well as various additions to the author's Notes, will be observed in this edition. We have followed Sir Walter Scott's interleaved copy, as finally revised by him in the summer of 1831.

The preservation of the original MS. of the Poem has enriched this volume with numerous various readings, which will be found curious and interesting.

A fac-simile of the MS. is given at p. 175.

INTRODUCTION TO MARMION.

SCOTT himself has told the world about the circumstances which hurried him in the composition of Marmion (begun in 1806). His brother, Thomas, was in pecuniary difficulties, which, till he withdrew to Canada, caused Sir Walter much anxiety and expense. But his love for his brother was undiminished, and he did not contradict the rumour that Tom was the author of Old Mortality. Sir Walter, indeed, encouraged Tom to try his hand at fiction, and, much later, was of great service to his family. In the review of the Waverley Novels in the Quarterly (in part, at least, by Scott himself) he made a humourous reference to Claverhouse's capture of the brother of an eminent Covenanter, a circumstance answering to the fixing of the guilt of Old Mortality on Tom.

"November's sky was chill and drear,
November's leaf was red and sere,"

in 1806, when Scott began his poem at Ashestiel. The little country house partly consists of remains

1 A whole volume of Scott's letters to his brother exists in MS.

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