Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VII
Reading edition
In turning over a volume of MS. papers, I have found a copy of verses, which, from the hand, Scott had evidently written down within the last ten years of his life. They are headed "To Time—by a Lady;" but certain initials on the back satisfy me that the authoress was no other than the object of his first passion.[127] I think I must be pardoned for transcribing the lines which had dwelt so long on his memory—leaving it to the reader's fancy to picture the mood of mind in which the fingers of a gray-haired man may have traced such a relic of his youthful dreams:—