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The Lady of the Lake, poem(s) by Sir Walter Scott |
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Addendum and Foot notes |
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Addendum and Foot notes Since our first edition appeared we have had the privilege of examining a copy of Scott's 2d ed. (1810), belonging to Mr. E. S. Gould, of Yonkers, N. Y. This 2d ed. is in smaller type than the 1st, and in octavo form, the 1st being in quarto. A minute collation of the text with that of the 1st ed. and our own shows that Scott carefully revised the poem for this 2d ed., and that the changes he afterwards made in it were few and unimportant. For instance, the text includes the verbal changes which we have adopted in i. 198, 290, 432, ii. 103, 201, 203, 534, iii. 30, 173, 190, 508, v. 106, 253, 728, 811, iv. 6, 112, 527, 556, 567, etc. In vi. 291 fol. it reads (including the omissions and insertions) as in our text. In i. 336, 340, the pointing is the same as in the 1st ed.; and in i. 360, the reading is "dear." In ii. 865, 866, it varies from the pointing of the 1st ed.; but we are inclined to regard this as a misprint, not a correction. In ii. 76 this 2d ed. has "lingerewave" for "lingerer wave," and in ii. 217 it repeats the preposterous misprint of "his glee" from the 1st ed. If Scott could overlook such palpable errors as these, he might easily fail to detect the misplacing of a comma. We have our doubts as to i. 336, 340, where the 1st and 2d eds. agree; but there a misprint may have been left uncorrected, as in ii. 217. Jan. 25, 1884.
[FN#1] One of Scott's (on vi. 47) has suffered badly in Lockhart's edition. In a quotation from Lord Berners's Froissart (which I omit) a whole page seems to have dropped out, and the last sentence, as it now stands, is made up of pans of the one preceding and the one following the lost matter. It reads thus (I mark the gap): "There all the companyons made them [ . . . ] breke no poynt of that ye have ordayned and commanded.,' This is palpable nonsense, but it has been repeated without correction in every reprint of Lockhart's edition for the last fifty years. [FN#2] Lockhart says: "The lady with whom Sir Walter Scott held this conversation was, no doubt, his aunt, Miss Christian Rutherford; there was no other female relation DEAD when this Introduction was written, whom I can suppose him to have consulted on literary questions. Lady Capulet, on seeing the corpse of Tybalt, exclaims,-- 'Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother's child!'" [FN#3] Lockhart quotes Byron, Don Juan, xi. 55: "In twice five years the 'greatest living poet,'
[FN#5] The Spenserian stanza, first used by Spenser in his Faerie Queene, consists of eight lines of ten syllables, followed by a line of twelve syllables, the accents throughout being on the even syllables (the so-called iambic measure). There are three sets of rhymes: one for the first and third lines; another for the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh; and a third for the sixth, eighth, and ninth. [FN#6] Vide Certayne Matters concerning the Realme of Scotland, etc., as they were Anno Domini 1597. London, 1603. [FN#7] See on ii. 319 above. [FN#8] Hallowe'en. [FN#9] To the raven that sat on the forked tree he gave his gifts. [FN#10] "This story is still current in the moors of Staffordshire, and adapted by the peasantry to their own meridian. I have repeatedly heard it told, exactly as here, by rustics who could not read. My last authority was a nailer near Cheadle" (R. Jamieson). [FN#11] See Scottish Historical and Romantic Ballads, Glasgow, 1808, vol. ii. p. 117. [FN#12] A champion of popular romance; see Ellis's Romances, vol. iii. [FN#13] "That at the eastern extremity of Loch Katrine, so often mentioned in the text." [FN#14] "Beallach an duine." [FN#15] "The reader will find this story told at greater length, and with the addition in particular of the King being recognized, like the Fitz-James of the Lady of the Lake, by being the only person covered, in the First Series of Tales of a Grandfather, vol. iii, p. 37. The heir of Braehead discharged his duty at the banquet given to King George IV. in the Parliament House at Edinburgh, in 1822" (Lockhart). [The end] |
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