line 81.  The Red-Cross hero is Sir Sidney Smith, the famous admiral, who belonged to the Order of Knights Templars.  The eight-pointed Templar’s cross which he wore throughout his career is said to have belonged to Richard Coeur-de-Lion.  In early life, with consent of the Government, Smith distinguished himself with the Swedes in their war with Russia.  He was frequently entrusted with the duty of alarming the French coast, and once was captured and imprisoned, in the Temple at Paris, for two years.  His escape was effected by a daring stratagem on the part of the French Royalist party.  He and his sailors helped the Turks to retain St. Jean d’Acre against Napoleon, till then the ‘Invincible,’ who retired baffled after a vain siege of sixty days (May, 1799).  Had Acre been won, said Napoleon afterwards, ’I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies—­I would have changed the face of the world.’  See Scott’s ‘Life of Napoleon,’ chap. xiii.

line 91.  For metal’d see above, Introd. to I. 308.

line 92.  For warped = ‘frozen,’ cp.  As You Like It, ii. 7. 187, where, addressing the bitter sky, the singer says:—­

     ’Though thou the waters warp,
      Thy sting is not so sharp,
          As friends remember’d not.’

line 94.  The reference is to Sir Ralph Abercromby, who commanded the expedition to Egypt, 1800-1, and fell at the battle of Alexandria.  Sir Sidney Smith was wounded in the same battle, and had to go home.

lines 100-10.  Scott pays compliment to his friend Joanna Baillie (1764-1851), with chivalrous courtesy asserting that she is the first worthy successor of Shakespeare.  ‘Count Basil’ and ’De Montfort’ are the two most remarkable of her ’Plays of the Passions,’ of which she published three volumes.  ‘De Montfort’ was played in London, Kemble enacting the hero.  Several of Miss Baillie’s Scottish songs are among standard national lyrics.

line 100.  Cp. opening of ‘Lady of the Lake.’

lines 115-28.  Lockhart notes the resemblance between this passage and Pope’s ‘Essay on Man,’ ii. 133-148.

line 134.  Cp.  Goldsmith’s ‘Traveller,’ 293:—­

     ’The slow canal, the yellow-blossom’d vale,
      The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.’

Batavia is the capital of the Dutch East Indies, with canals, architecture, &c., after the home model.

line 137. hind, from Early Eng. hyne, servant (A.  S. hina) is quite distinct from hind, a female stag.  Gavin Douglas, translating Tyrii coloni of Aen.  I. 12, makes them ‘hynis of Tyre.’  Shakespeare (Merry Wives, iii. 5. 94) uses the word as servant, ’A couple of Ford’s knaves, his Hinds, were called forth.’  The modern usage implies a farm-bailiff or simply a farm-servant.

line 149.  Lochaber is a large district in the south of Invernesshire, having Ben Nevis and other Grampian heights within its compass.  It is a classic name in Scottish literature owing to Allan Ramsay’s plaintive lyric, ‘Lochaber no more.’