"With amber beard, and flaxen hair, And reverend apostolic air, Free of anxiety and care, Come hither, Christmas-day, and dine; We'll mix sobriety with wine, And easy mirth with thoughts divine. We Christians think it holiday, On it no sin to feast or play; Others, in spite, may fast and pray. No superstition in the use Our ancestors made of a goose; Why may not we, as well as they, Be innocently blithe that day, On goose or pie, on wine or ale, And scorn enthusiastic zeal?-- Pray come, and welcome, or plague rott Your friend and landlord, Walter Scott. "Mr. Walter Scott, Lessuden" 'The venerable old gentleman, to whom the lines are addressed was the younger brother of William Scott of Raeburn. Being the cadet of a cadet of the Harden family, he had very little to lose; yet he contrived to lose the small property he had, by engaging in the civil wars and intrigues of the house of Stuart. His veneration for the exiled family was so great, that he swore he would not shave his beard till they were restored: a mark of attachment, which, I suppose, had been common during Cromwell's usurpation; for, in Cowley's "Cutter of Coleman Street," one drunken cavalier upbraids another, that, when he was not able to afford to pay a barber, he affected to "wear a beard for the King." I sincerely hope this was not absolutely the original reason of my ancestor's beard; which, as appears from a portrait in the possession of Sir Henry Hay Macdougal, Bart., and another painted for the famous Dr. Pitcairn, was a beard of a most dignified and venerable appearance.'-- SCOTT. line 111. 'See Introduction to the 'Minstrelsy,' vol. iv. p. 59.'-- LOCKHART. lines 117-20. The Tweed winds and loiters around Mertoun and its grounds as if fascinated by their attractiveness. With line. 120 cp. 'clipped in with the sea,' I Henry IV, iii. I. 45. line 126. Cp. 2 Henry IV, iii. 2. 228: 'We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow!' line 132. Scott quotes from Congreve's 'Old Bachelor,'--'Hannibal was a pretty fellow, sir--a very pretty fellow in his day,' which is part of a speech by Noll Bluffe, one of the characters. line 139. With 'Limbo lost,' cp. the 'Limbo large and broad' of 'Paradise Lost,' iii. 495. Limbo is the borders of hell, and also hell itself. line 143. 'John Leyden, M. D., who had been of great service to Sir Walter Scott in the preparation of the 'Border Minstrelsy,' sailed for India in April, 1803, and died at Java in August, 1811, before completing his 36th year. "Scenes sung by him who sings no more! His brief and bright career is o'er, And mute his tuneful strains; Quench'd is his lamp of varied lore, That loved the light of song to pour; A distant and a deadly shore Has LEYDEN'S cold remains." Lord of the Isles, Canto IV.