proof on the point. Mr. Jerningham, secretary to the Antiquarian Society, endeavoured to entrap the truth from Lady Anne in a manner which induced her to put him off unsatisfied, and the authorship was not made public until after her decease. (See Lockhart's Life of Scott, 1844, page 585, and note.) "It remains to be added, that although Auld Robin Gray' was originally written to the old tune of The Bridegroom greits when the sun gaes down,' it is now, with the exception of the first verse, which retains the old air, universally sung to a beautiful modern tune, composed by the Rev. William Leeves, rector of Wrington, who died in 1828, aged eighty."Book of Scottish Song. (Blackie and Son.

NOTE Q. PAGE 143.

1843.)

The Laboratory. A study of the present lyric will throw some light upon the principles of this wonderful Poet's versification. Take this verse, for example, and emphasise the words given in italics :

"He is with her; and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church to pray God in for them!-I am here." Emerson has frequently rhythms of a similar character, such as "Tax not," (two syllables to be dwelt on to the length of three):

And,

"Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook."

"One harvest from thy field

Homeward brought the oxen strong."

It is always delightful to recollect that both our Essayist (to be better known "after some time"), and our Biographer of Frederick (both ours, though one of them lives beyond sea) are admirable poets, with in each case certain peculiarities and limitations, very note-worthy, but not here to be expounded.

NOTE R. PAGE 169.

La Belle Dame sans Mercy. "Among the pieces printed at the end of Chaucer's works, and attributed to him, is a translation, under this title, of a poem of the celebrated Alain Chartier, secretary to Charles the Sixth and Seventh. It was the title which suggested to a friend the verses at

the end of our present number."-Leigh Hunt's Indicator, for May 10th, 1820. The verses were there signed "Caviare." In Mr. Milnes's " Life, &c. of Keats," II. 268, is a version beginning, "O what can ail thee, Knight-at-arms," transposing the fifth and sixth stanzas, and with a few other variations. It is dated 1819, and seems to be evidently an earlier form of the poem than that which is here given from the Indicator.

NOTE S. PAGE 178.

Fairy Song. Bishop Percy printed this in his "Reliques," under name The Fairy Queen, stating that it was "given, with some corrections by another copy, from a book entitled 'The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence, &c.'" London, 1658. 8vo. The verse which he gives as the sixth we have omitted; it runs :

"The brains of nightingales,
With unctuous fat of snails,
Between two cockles stew'd,
Is meat that's easily chew'd;

Tailes of wormes and marrow of mice
Do make a dish that's wondrous nice."

NOTE T. PAGE 184.

The Lady's Grave is from certain " Poems, by Mrs. Boddington," (Longman, 1839,) which, though without substance enough to endure, have a delicate and tender strain of originality running through them, and drew the remark from a friend of ours, that "she must have been a delightful woman to know." A correspondent of" Willis's Current Notes," in May, 1852, has furnished the following information: " Mary Boddington was the daughter of Patrick Comerford, a Cork merchant, and niece of Sir William Glendowe Newcomen. She was born at Cork in 1776, and, having married, in 1803, Mr. Boddington, a West Indian merchant, left her native city. After the peace of 1815, Mrs. Boddington travelled much on the continent." She also published "The Gossip's Week," a collection of tales, "Sketches in the Pyrenees," and Slight Reminiscences of the Rhine."

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NOTE U. PAGE 186.

The Rev. William Barnes, a Church of England clergyman, residing at Dorchester, is author of several volumes

of Poems, which, from being written in the dialect of his native Dorsetshire, have attracted less general notice than they deserve. A series of more genuine and delightful sketches, or photographs of rural character and scenery, cannot be found in English literature. The rustic dialect, come down, in our author's opinion, by independent descent from the Saxon dialect which our forefathers brought from the south of Denmark, is easy to master, and enhances the freshness and originality of these poems, which, soon or late, will infallibly be better known. Mr. Barnes has also published some works on Anglo-Saxon literature. John Russell Smith is his publisher.

NOTE V. PAGE 205.

[Evening.] These verses are from the "Poems; chiefly Lyrical," by Alfred Tennyson, published in 1830, wherein they are entitled " Elegiacs."

NOTE W. PAGE 218.

The wife of Usher's Well, hearing her three sons are lost at sea, passionately prays that the storm may never cease till they come back to her in flesh and blood. One night, at Martinmas, her three sons come home; the mother feasts all her house, then makes a wide bed for her three sons, and sits down by the bedside. But at cockcrow, when she has dropt asleep, these three, who are no living men, but spirits, strangely repossessed of their old bodies for a season, depart for ever from that house.

This Ballad was first published in Scott's "Border Minstrelsy:" two verses, "Lie still," &c., and " O, it's they've ta'en up," &c., are from Mr. Robert Chambers's version, recovered from recitation: one, "Our mother has nae mair," is now added, to complete the sense; and to the same end, the reading, "fish be in the flood" is put instead of "fishes in the flood"-Scott's, which he notes as obscure, and probably corrupted by reciters. Mr. Aytoun has "freshes in the flood;" Mr. Lockhart suggested "fashes," i. e. troubles.

"Carline-wife" implies, here at least, a rustic woman, keeping a farm.

ber.

"Martinmas," the feast of St. Martin, 11th of NovemOne may remark that this, being the customary time to kill winter beef and pork, was a season of rustic feasting and jollity. "Birk" is birch. "Syke," a marshy

bottom. "Sheugh," a small trench.

"Channerin","

fretting (Scott). A large mantle used to be, and still is, in old-fashioned localities, perhaps the most important and indispensable article of every peasant woman's wardrobe. It served many uses, and lasted many years, a familiar and homely-sacred object to the children of a family.

NOTE X. PAGE 238.

Waly, waly was first published in Allan Ramsay's "Tea Table Miscellany," in 1724, and marked " Z,” as an Old Song.

NOTE Y. PAGE 244.

Edward, Edward.

This darkly terrible tragic ballad was first printed in "Percy's Reliques," ""transmitted to the editor by Sir David Dalrymple, Bart., late Lord Hailes."

NOTE Z. PAGE 259.

This Lyke-Wake [i.e. Dead-Watch] Dirge is of the North of England, and is said to have been sung, in Yorkshire, over corpses, down to about 1624, (see Brand's

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Pop. Antiq." 1841, II. 155.) Scott, publishing it in his Border Minstrelsy, noted: "The late Mr. Ritson found an illustration of this dirge in a MS. of the Cotton Library, containing an account of Cleveland, in Yorkshire, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. . . . . ' When any dieth, certaine women sing a song to the dead bodie, recyting the jorney that the partye deceased must goe; and they are of beliefe (such is their fondnesse) that, once in their lives, it is good to give a pair of new shoes to a poor man, forasmuch as, after this life, they are to pass barefoote through a great launde, full of thornes and furzen, except by the meryte of the almes aforesaid they have redeemed the forfeyte; for at the edge of the launde, an oulde man shall meet them with the same shoes that were given by the partye when he was lyving; and, after he hath shodde them, dismisseth them to go through thick and thin, without scratch or scalle.'-Julius, F. VI. 459."

"The Bridge of Dread, lying in our road when we pass from this world, is described," says Sir Walter," in the legend of Sir Owain, No XL. in the MS. collection of Romances, W. XLI., Advocates' Library, Edinburgh." The Orientals have a similar fancy, of a narrow bridge over an abyss.

In the Border Minstrelsy, the second line is given, "Fire and sleet and candlelight," with the note that sleet seems to be corrupted from selt, i. e. salt, which it was customary to lay in a platter on the breast of the corpse. In Brand we have fleet, i. e. water (Anglo-Saxon), but the whole version there seems inferior. The sixth verse of the dirge is lost.

NOTE Z Z. PAGE 265.

The

Lines to an Indian Air. This exquisite song is here so given as to assist eye and mind in following the interwoven rhymes. Let us remark that hardly any great poet, certainly no modern one, has been so inaccurately printed as Shelley. Helps to the very necessary revision are in existence, and ought quickly to be used. reading "pine," in the second verse, instead of “fail,” must, for the present, rest on its own merits. We believe that the "fail," in the third verse, caused the same word to be slipt into the second, under the notion of making the iteration more exact; but such merely verbal and mechanical iteration is not in place here, and destroys the rhymic structure of the lyric in a very un-Shelleyan manner. The other slight variations from the usual version have come to the editor, through an eminent living poet, from a copy found in the pocket of Shelley's corpse. We have inquired after the Indian Air, but, if there was one (and a friend of Shelley's thought there was), it seems untraceable.