Note 531 — JUNE.
Reading edition
If the reader turns to December 18, 1825, he will see that this is not the first allusion in the Journal to his "first love,"—an innocent attachment, to which we owe the tenderest pages, not only of Redgauntlet (1824), but of the Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), and of Rokeby (1813). In all these works the heroine has certain distinctive features drawn from one and the same haunting dream. The lady was "Williamina Belches, sole child and heir of a gentleman who was a cadet of the ancient family of Invermay, and who afterwards became Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn." She married Sir William Forbes in 1797 and died in 1810.—Life, vol. i. p. 333; Shairp's Memoirs of Principal Forbes, pp. 4, 5, 8vo, London, 1873, where her portrait, engraved from a miniature, is given.