Who lies where he was fain to lie,
Like Scott, within the sound of Tweed._

A.L.






INTRODUCTION


The extreme rarity of _The Death-Wake_ is a reason for its
republication, which may or may not be approved of by collectors. Of
the original edition the Author says that more than seventy copies
were sold in the first week of publication, but thereafter the
publisher failed in business. Mr. Stoddart recovered the sheets of his
poem, and his cook gradually, and perhaps not injudiciously, expended
them for domestic purposes.

Apart from its rarity, _The Death-Wake_ has an interest of its own for
curious amateurs of poetry. The year of its composition (1830) was the
great year of _Romanticisme_ in France, the year of _Hernani_, and of
Gautier's _gilet rouge_. In France it was a literary age given to
mediæval extravagance, to the dagger and the bowl, the cloak and
sword, the mad monk and the were-wolf; the age of Pétrus Borel and
MacKeat, as well as of Dumas and Hugo. Now the official poetry of our
country was untouched by and ignorant of the virtues and excesses of
1830. Wordsworth's bolt was practically shot; Sir Walter was ending