FOOTNOTES: 

[333] Sir Thomas Brisbane, who had formerly commanded a brigade in the Peninsula.  In 1832 he succeeded Sir Walter Scott as President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.  Sir Thomas had married in 1819 a daughter of Sir Henry Hay Makdougall of Makerstoun, Bart.  Sir Thomas died at Brisbane House, Ayrshire, in January 1860, in the eighty-seventh year of his age.

[334] For an account of this family see The Swintons of that Ilk and their Cadets, 4to, 1883, a privately printed volume by A.C.  Swinton of Kimmerghame.  In a letter to his friend Swinton in 1814, Scott says that he had been reading the family pedigree “to my exceeding refreshment.”

[335] One of the Abbotsford labourers.

[336] 2 Henry IV.  Act IV.  Sc. 2.

[337] Mr. E.W.  Auriol Drummond Hay, heir-presumptive at one time of Lord Kinnoul, was then residing in Edinburgh, owing to his official duties in the Lyon Office; he took a great interest in archaeological matters, and was for two years Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries before his departure as Consul General to the Barbary States.  He died at Tangier on the 1st March 1845.

[338] Milton’s Comus, v. 208.—­J.G.L.

[339] Lady Scott had not been quite four months dead, and the entry of the preceding day shows how extremely ill-timed was this communication from a gentleman with whom Sir Walter had never had any intimacy.  This was not the only proposition of the kind that reached him during his widowhood.—­J.G.L.

[340] A coil of rope.

[341] See Life, vol. x. 95, and The Haigs of Bemersyde, 8vo, Edin. 1881, edited by J. Russell.

[342] Mr. Thomas Shortreed, a young gentleman of elegant taste and attainments, devotedly attached to Sir Walter, and much beloved in return, had recently died.—­J.G.L.

[343] See Act III.  Sc. 1.

[344] The Rev. Dr. Thomas Somerville, minister of Jedburgh, author of the History of Great Britain during the reign of Queen Anne, and other works, died 14th May 1830, in the ninetieth year of his age, and sixty-fourth of his ministry.—­J.G.L.  Autobiographical Memorials of his Life and Times, 1741-1814, 8vo, Edinburgh, were published in 1861.

[345] Much Ado about Nothing, Act III.  Sc. 5.

[346] Afterwards Judge in the Court of Session from 1843, author of Gleams of Thought reflected from Milton, etc.  It was of this witty and humorous judge Mr. Lockhart wrote the sportive lines:—­

  “Here lies that peerless paper peer Lord Peter,
   Who broke the laws of God and man and metre.”

Lord Robertson died in 1855.

[347] Act III.  Sc. 3.

[348] One of Scott’s old High School mates.—­Life, vol. i. p. 163.

[349] Burns’s Epistle to J. Smith.

OCTOBER