And now the blue and distant shore I hail, And, as the prow light touches on the strand, I strike my red-cross flag, and bind my skiff to land. END OF VISION OF DON RODERICK. NOTES. INTRODUCTION. NOTE A. 'And Cattraeth's glens with voice of triumph rung, And mystic Merlin harp'd, and gray-hair'd Llywarch sung.'-P. 261. THIS locality may startle those readers who do not recollect that much of the ancient poetry preserved in Wales refers less to the history of the principality to which that name is now limited, than to events which happened in the North-west of England, and South-west of Scotland, where the Britons for a long time made a stand against the Saxons. The battle of Cattraeth, lamented by the celebrated Aneurin, is supposed by the learned Dr Leyden to have been fought on the skirts of Ettrick forest. It is known to the English reader by the paraphrase of Gray, beginning, 'Had I but the torrent's might, With headlong rage and wild affright,' &c. But it is not so generally known that the champions mourned in this beautiful dirge were the British inhabitants of Edinburgh, who were cut off by the Saxons of Deiria, or Northumberland, about the latter part of the sixth century.-TURNER'S History of the Anglo-Saxons, edition 1799, vol. i. p. 222.— Llywarch, the celebrated bard and monarch, was prince of Argood, in Cumberland; and his youthful exploits were performed upon the Border, although in his age he was driven into Powys by the successes of the Anglo-Saxons. As for Merlin Wyllt, or the Savage, his name of Caledonian, and his retreat into the Caledonian wood, appropriates him to Scotland. Fordun dedicates the thirty-first chapter of the third book of his Scoto-Chronicon, to a narration of the death of this celebrated bard and prophet near Drumelziar, a village upon Tweed, which is supposed to have derived its name (quasi Tumulus Merlini) from the event. The particular spot in which he is buried is still shown, and appears, from the following quotation, to have partaken of his prophetic qualities: There is one thing remarkable here, which is, that the burn, called Pausayl, runs by the east side of this churchyard into the Tweed; at the side of which burn, a little below the churchyard, the famous prophet Merlin is said to be buried. The particular place of his grave, at the root of a thorn-tree, was shown me many years ago, by the old and reverend minister of the place, Mr Richard Brown; and here was the old prophecy fulfilled, delivered in Scots rhyme, to this purpose : "When Tweed and Pausayl meet at Merlin's grave, Scotland and England shall one Monarch have." For the same day that our King James the Sixth was crowned King of England, the river Tweed, by an extraordinary flood, so far overflowed its banks, that it met and joined with the Pausayl at the said grave, which was never before observed to fall out.'-PENNYCUIK'S Description of Tweeddale. Edin. 1715. 4. p. 26. NOTE B. 'Where the lingering fays renew their ring, By milk-maid seen beneath the hawthorn hoar, Or round the marge of Minchmore's haunted spring.'—P. 262. A belief in the existence and nocturnal revels of the fairies still lingers among the vulgar in Selkirkshire. A copious fountain upon the ridge of Minchmore, called the Cheesewell, is supposed to be sacred to these fanciful spirits, and it was customary to propitiate them by throwing in something upon passing it. A pin was the usual oblation, and the ceremony is still sometimes practised, though rather in jest than earnest. NOTE C. 'Verse spontaneous.'-P. 263. The flexibility of the Italian and Spanish languages, and perhaps the liveliness of their genius, renders these countries distinguished for the talent of improvisation, which is found even among the lowest of the people. It is mentioned by Baretti and other travellers. NOTE D. 'The deeds of Græme.'-P. 263. Over a name sacred for ages to heroic verse, a poet may be allowed to exercise some power. I have used the freedom, here and elsewhere, to alter the orthography of the name of my gallant countrymen, in order to apprise the Southern reader of its legitimate sound ;-Grahame being, on the other side of the Tweed, usually pronounced as a dissyllable. THE VISION. NOTE A. 'For fair Florinda's plunder'd charms to pay.'—P. 265. Almost all the Spanish historians, as well as the voice of tradition, ascribe the invasion of the Moors to the forcible violation committed by Roderick upon Florinda, called by the Moors Caba, or Cava. She was the daughter of Count Julian, one of the Gothic monarch's principal lieutenants, who, when the crime was perpetrated, was engaged in the defence of Ceuta against the Moors. In his indignation at the ingratitude of his sovereign, and the dishonour of his daughter, Count Julian forgot the duties of a Christian and a patriot, and, forming an alliance with Musa, then the caliph's lieutenant in Africa, he countenanced the invasion of Spain by a body of Saracens and Africans, commanded by the celebrated Tarik; the issue of which was the defeat and death of Roderick, and the occupation of almost the whole peninsula by the Moors. Voltaire, in his General History, expresses his doubts of this popular story, and Gibbon gives him some countenance. But the universal tradition is quite sufficient for the purposes of poetry. The Spaniards, in detestation of Florinda's memory, are said, by Cervantes, never to bestow that name upon any human female, reserving it for their dogs. Nor is the tradition less inveterate among the Moors, since the same author mentions a promontory on the coast of Barbary, called 'The Cape of the Caba Rumia, which, in our tongue, is the Cape of the Wicked Christian Woman; and it is a tradition among the Moors, that Caba, the daughter of Count Julian, who was the cause of the loss of Spain, lies buried there, and they think it ominous to be forced into that bay; for they never go in otherwise than by necessity.' NOTE B. 'And guide me, Priest, to that mysterious room, Where, if aught true in old tradition be, His nation's future fate a Spanish King shall see.'—P. 267. The transition of an incident from history to tradition, and from tradition to fable and romance, becoming more marvellous at each step from its original simplicity, is not ill exemplified in the account of the Fated Chamber' of Don Roderick, as given by his namesake, the historian of Toledo, contrasted with subsequent and more romantic accounts of the same subterranean discovery. I give the Archbishop of Toledo's tale in the words of Nonius, who seems to intimate (though very modestly) that the fatale palatium, of which so much had been said, was only the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre : 'Extra muros, septentrionem versus, vestigia magni olim theatri sparsa visuntur. Auctor est Rodericus Toletanus Archiepiscopus, ante Arabum in Hispanias irruptionem, hic fatale palatium fuisse ; quod invicti vectes, æterna ferri robora claudebant, ne reseratum Hispaniæ excidium adferret; quod in fatis non vulgus solum, sed et prudentissimi quique credebant. Sed Roderici, ultimi Gothorum Regis, animum infelix curiositas subiit, sciendi quid sub tot vetitis claustris observaretur; ingentes ibi superiorum regum opes et arcanos thesauros servari ratus. Seras et pessulos perfringi curat, invitis omnibus, nihil præter arculam repertum, et in ea linteum, quo explicato novæ et insolentes hominum facies habitusque apparuere, cum inscriptione Latina Hispaniæ excidium ab illa gente imminere; Vultus habitusque Maurorum erant. Quamobrem ex Africa tantam cladem instare regi cæterisque persuasum; nec falso, ut Hispaniæ annales etiamnum queruntur.'-Hispania Ludovic Nonij, cap. lix. But about the term of the expulsion of the Moors from Grenada, we find, in |