was prouder, he replied, to have his head affixed to the prison-walls,
than to have his picture placed in the king's bed-chamber: 'and, far
from being troubled that my limbs are to be sent to your principal
cities, I wish I had flesh enough to be dispersed through Christendom,
to attest my dying attachment to my king.' It was the calm employment of
his mind, that night, to reduce this extravagant sentiment to verse.
He appeared next day, on the scaffold, in a rich habit, with the same
serene and undaunted countenance, and addressed the people, to vindicate
his dying unabsolved by the church, rather than to justify an invasion
of the kingdom, during a treaty with the estates. The insults of his
enemies were not yet exhausted. The history of his exploits was attached
to his neck by the public executioner: but he smiled at their inventive
malice; declared, that he wore it with more pride than he had done the
garter; and, when his devotions were finished, demanding if any more
indignities remained to be practised, submitted calmly to an unmerited
fate."--_Laing's History of Scotland,_ Vol. I. p. 404.

Such was the death of James Graham, the great marquis of Montrose, over
whom some lowly bard has poured forth the following elegiac verses. To
say, that they are far unworthy of the subject, is no great reproach;
for a nobler poet might have failed in the attempt. Indifferent as the
ballad is, we may regret its being still more degraded by many apparent
corruptions. There seems an attempt to trace Montrose's career, from his
first raising the royal standard, to his second expedition and death;
but it is interrupted and imperfect. From the concluding stanza, I
presume the song was composed upon the arrival of Charles in Scotland,
which so speedily followed the execution of Montrose, that the king
entered the city while the head of his most faithful and most successful
adherent was still blackening in the sun.