in later life he said to Lockhart, his son-in-law, "Oh, man, I had
many a grand gallop among these bracs when I was thinking of
'Marmion.'" The description of the battle of Flodden was shaped in
the autumn of 1807, when Scott was out practising with the Light
Horse Volunteers, which had been formed in prospect of an invasion
from France, and of which Scott was quartermaster and secretary.
Scott at those gatherings was full of companionable mirth, and in
intervals between drill he would sometimes ride his charger at full
speed up and down on the sands of Portobello within spray of the
wave, while his mind was at work on such lines as -

"They close, in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword-sway and with lance's thrust;
And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if men fought in upper earth,
And fiends in upper air." 

"Marmion" was published early in the year 1808; its first edition of
two thousand, in the form, then usual, of a quarto volume, priced at