’Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breethe
      Enspired hath in every Holte and heethe
      The tendre croppes.’

See Dr. Morris’s Glossary to Chaucer’s Prologue, &c. (Clarendon Press).

line 68.  Cp.  Wordsworth’s two Matthew poems, ’The Two April Mornings’ and ‘The Fountain’; also Matthew Arnold’s ’Thyrsis’—­

     ’Too rare, too rare grow now my visits here! 
      But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;
        And with the country-folk acquaintance made
      By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick,
        Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay’d.’

line 82.  Janet in the ballad of ‘The Young Tamlane’ in the Border Minstrelsy.  The dissertation Scott prefixed to this ballad is most interesting and valuable.

line 84.  See above, note on Rev. J. Marriott.

line 85.  Scott was sheriff-substitute of Selkirkshire.  As the law requires residence within the limits of the sheriffdom, Scott dwelt at Ashestiel at least four months of every year.  Prof.  Veitch, in his descriptive poem ‘The Tweed,’ writes warmly on Ashestiel, as Scott’s residence in his happiest time:—­

     ’Sweet Ashestiel! that peers ’mid woody braes,
      And lists the ripple of Glenkinnon’s rill—­
      Fair girdled by Tweed’s ampler gleaming wave—­
      His well loved home of early happy days,
      Ere noon of Fame, and ere dark Ruin’s eve,
      When life lay unrevealed, with hopeful thrill
      Of all that might be in the reach of powers
      Whose very flow was a continued joy—­
      Strong-rushing as the dawn, and fresh and fair
      In outcome as that morning of the world,
      Which gilded all his kindled fancy’s dream!’

line 88.  Harriet, Countess of Dalkeith, afterwards Duchess of Buccleuch.  A suggestion of hers led to the composition of the ’Lay of the Last Minstrel.’  See Prof.  Minto’s Introduction to Clarendon Press edition of the poem, p. 8.

lines 90-93.  ’These lines were not in the original Ms.’—­Lockhart.

line 106.  ’The late Alexander Pringle, Esq., of Whytbank—­whose beautiful seat of the Yair stands on the Tweed, about two miles below Ashestiel.’—­Lockhart.

line 108.  ’The sons of Mr. Pringle of Whytbank.’—­Lockhart.

line 113.  Cp.  VI. 611, below.

line 115.  ’There is, on a high mountainous ridge above the farm of Ashestiel, a fosse called Wallace’s Trench.’—­Scott.

line 124.  Cp.  Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,’ especially lines 6l-2:—­

’These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind.’

lines 126-33.  Cp.  Wordsworth variously, particularly in the Matthew poems, the Ode on Intimations of Immortality, and Tintern Abbey, especially in its last twenty-five lines:—­

’Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk,’ &c.