I can find no place in Guienne, bearing any nominal resemblance. Henry’s geography, of France especially, could not be expected to be very accurate. He had most probably heard of _Chinon_, a village in Touraine, near Saumur, which was indeed held by the English, and which might be viewed as on the way from Paris to Guienne. Here Henry II. of England died; and here, also, that singular writer Rabelais was born.
EXPLANATION OF THE VIGNETTE IN THE TITLE-PAGE OF THIS VOLUME.
As the cruel and unmerited fate, which terminated the bright career of Wallace, appeared to that ingenious gentleman who furnished me with this design, to be the object on which the mind especially rests in contemplating the history of his life, he has given to the block the principal place here. To this melancholy symbol, the crown of laurel, which, as we learn from the English chroniclers, was contemptuously put on the head of the hero during his trial at Westminster, is with great propriety transferred. Before it appears the fatal axe; also, the target of Wallace, together with the sword of his faithful friend Longueville, exactly copied from that preserved under this name in the house of Kinfauns. The headless body appears from behind. In the back-ground, rays of light are seen to dart forth, giving ground of hope that the dark clouds, which envelope this dismal scene, should be dispelled; and intimating, according to the sense of the inscription, that this cruel act of the tyrannical Edward, by which he hoped to extinguish the spirit of liberty in our native land, should only excite it anew,--the fall of Wallace being immediately succeeded by the intrepid appearance of Bruce, as asserting his claim to independent royalty.
By some of my learned friends, who are acquainted with the manuscripts of the preceding poems, I may be censured, perhaps, because I have rendered the contraction [symbol] by _ss_, instead of making it to denote _is_. I have not done so unadvisedly; and I could not have acted otherwise without sacrificing my own conviction. I preferred this mode for several reasons.
Another well known contraction, totally different in form, is used throughout these manuscripts, where there can be no doubt that _is_ is meant. Had I adopted a different plan, I would have been laid under the necessity of rendering the contraction in a variety of modes. I must frequently have viewed it as signifying _se_. But here, in many places, I met with an obstacle that seemed insurmountable;--a different contraction being employed for denoting a word of this form, sometimes in the same verse, as in _The Bruce_, B. VIII. 353.