line 468.  Fairly, well, elegantly, as in Chaucer’s Prol. 94:—­

     ‘Well cowde he sitte on hors, and faire ryde’;

and in ‘Faerie Queene,’ I. i. 8:—­

     ‘Full jolly knight he seemed, and faire did sitt.’

Stanza xvi. line 498.  This line is a comprehensive description of a perfectly satisfactory charger or hunter.

line 499.  Sholto is one of the Douglas family names.  One of the Earl’s sons, being sheriff, could not go with his brothers to the war.

line 500.  ’His eldest son, the Master of Angus.’—­Scott.

Stanza xvii. line 532.  In Bacon’s ingenious essay, ’Of Simulation and Dissimulation,’ he states these as the three disadvantages of the qualities:—­’The first, that Simulation and Dissimulation commonly carry with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any business, doth spoil the feathers of round flying up to the mark.  The second, that it puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many, that would otherwise co-operate with him, and makes a man almost alone to his own ends.  The third, and greatest, is that it depriveth a man of one of the most principal instruments for action; which is trust and belief.’

Stanza xviii. line 540.  ’This was a Cistertian house of religion, now almost entirely demolished.  Lennel House is now the residence of my venerable friend, Patrick Brydone, Esquire, so well known in the literary world. {4} It is situated near Coldstream, almost opposite Cornhill, and consequently very near to Flodden Field.’—­Scott.

line 568. traversed, moved in opposition, as in fencing.  Cp.  Merry Wives, ii. 3. 23:  ’To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee traverse,’ &c.

Stanza xix line 573, ’On the evening previous to the memorable battle of Flodden, Surrey’s headquarters were at Barmoor Wood, and King James held an inaccessible position on the ridge of Flodden-hill, one of the last and lowest eminences detached from the ridge of Cheviot.  The Till, a deep and slow river, winded between the armies.  On the morning of the 9th September, 1513, Surrey marched in a north-westerly direction, and crossed the Till, with his van and artillery, at Twisel Bridge, nigh where that river joins the Tweed, his rear-guard column passing about a mile higher, by a ford.  This movement had the double effect of placing his army between King James and his supplies from Scotland, and of striking the Scottish monarch with surprise, as he seems to have relied on the depth of the river in his front.  But as the passage, both over the bridge and through the ford, was difficult and slow, it seems possible that the English might have been attacked to great advantage while straggling with these natural obstacles.  I know not if we are to impute James’s forbearance to want of military skill, or to the romantic declaration which Pitscottie puts in his mouth, “that he was determined to have his enemies before him on a plain field,” and therefore would suffer no interruption to be given, even by artillery, to their passing the river.