line 26.  Desultory song may naturally command a very wide class of those intelligent readers, for whom the Earl of Iddesleigh, in ‘lectures and Essays,’ puts forward a courageous plea in his informing and genial address on the uses of Desultory Reading.

line 28.  The reading of the first edition is ‘loftier,’ which conveys an estimate of his own achievements more characteristic of Scott than the bare assertion of his ability to ’build the lofty rhyme’ which is implied in the line as it stands.  Perhaps the expression just quoted from ‘Lycidas’ may have led to the reading of all subsequent editions.

line 46.  The Duke of Brunswick commanded the Prussian forces at Jena, 14 Oct., 1806, and was mortally wounded.  He was 72.  For ‘hearse,’ cp. above, Introd. to I. 199.

line 54.  The reigning house of Prussia comes from the Electors of Brandenburg.  In 1415 Frederick vi. of Hohenzollern and Nuremberg became Frederick the First, Elector of Brandenburg.  The Duchy of Prussia fell under the sway of the Elector John Sigismund (1608-19), and from that time to the present there has been a very remarkable development of government and power.  See Carlyle’s ’Frederick the Great,’ and Mr. Baring-Gould’s ‘Germany’ in the series ’Stories of the Nations.’

lines 57-60.  The Duke of Brunswick was defeated at Valmy in 1792, and so failed to crush the dragon of the French Revolution in its birth, as in all likelihood he would have done had he been victorious on the occasion.

line 64.  Prussia, without an ally, took the field instead of acting on the defensive.

line 67. seem’d = beseemed, befitted; as in Spenser’s May eclogue, ‘Nought seemeth sike strife,’ i.e. such strife is not befitting or seemly.

line 69.  Various German princes lost their dominions after Napoleon conquered Prussia.

line 78.  By defeating Varus, A. D. 9, Arminius saved Germany from Roman conquest.  See the first two books of the Annals of Tacitus, at the close of which this tribute is paid to the hero:  ’liberator haud dubie Germaniae et qui non primordia populi Romani, sicut alii reges ducesque, sed florentissimum imperium lacessierit, proeliis ambiguus, bello non victus.’

lines 46-80.  This undoubtedly vigorous and well-sustained tribute is not without its special purpose.  The Princess Caroline was daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, and Scott was one of those who believed in her, in spite of that ‘careless levity’ which he did not fail to note in her demeanour when presented at her Court at Blackheath in 1806.  This passage on the Duke of Brunswick had been read by the Princess before the appearance of ‘Marmion.’  Lockhart (Life of Scott, ii. 117) says:  ’He seems to have communicated fragments of the poem very freely during the whole of its progress.  As early as the 22nd February, 1807, I find Mrs. Hayman acknowledging, in the name of the Princess of Wales, the receipt of a copy of the Introduction to Canto iii, in which occurs the tribute to her Royal Highness’s heroic father, mortally wounded the year before at Jena—­ a tribute so grateful to her feelings that she herself shortly after sent the poet an elegant silver vase as a memorial of her thankfulness.’