Note 24 — Chapter IV · THE NOVELS, FROM WAVERLEY TO REDGAUNTLET
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From March to May 1819 he had a series of attacks of the cramp, so violent that he once took solemn leave of his children in expectation of decease, that the eccentric Earl of Buchan forced a way into his bedchamber to 'relieve his mind as to the arrangements of his funeral,' and that he entirely forgot the whole of the Bride itself. This, too, was the time of his charge to Lockhart (Familiar Letters, ii. 38), as to his successor in Tory letters and politics—
'Take thou the vanguard of the three, And bury me by the bracken-bush That grows upon yon lily lee.'