Text divisions and running heads (MS III)—Ruskinʼs division of his poem into “books”, along with his imitation of running heads that change from one book to the next (at least until he abandons running heads altogether), does not correspond to the edition of Scottʼs novel that was in the Ruskin library—the 1820 first edition in three volumes, with the London firm of Longman allotted the lead position on the title page as managing publisher, and the Edinburgh firm of Constable demoted to second place (see Dearden, The Library of John Ruskin, 309 [nos. 2420–21]; and on the rivalry of the two firms for control over The Monastery, see Fielding, “Essay on the Text”, 355–64). The Longman first edition divided the text into three volumes, each divided by chapters, with the chapter numbering starting anew with each volume. The running heads—though set in small capitals, similarly to Ruskinʼs imitation in MS III—are formed solely from the title of the novel and do not change with volumes and chapters. Finally, the page number is set on the same baseline as the running head, alternating right to left with recto and verso, and not centered beneath the running head as Ruskin devises.

If Ruskin imitated any publication in particular, he apparently modeled his layout on a poem divided into books, and formatted with marginal line numbering. If so, the model was not from Scottʼs poems, which are divided into cantos, not books; and Ruskinʼs layout does not resemble that used by the Constable firm and the printer, James Ballantyne, which produced the editions of Scottʼs poems owned by the Ruskins prior to 1830 (see Dearden, The Library of John Ruskin, 306–11 [nos. 2409, 2411, 2416, 2418, 2432]).

Vertical mark (MS III)—The purpose of this mark is unknown. It may be a deletion.

Inverted semicolon (MS III)—In this fair copy of “The Monastery”, Ruskin consistently forms a semicolon with the comma above the point.

Erroneous line number (MS III)—Ruskin omitted ten lines by writing 50 where he should have written 40.

“martin took his task as guide” (MS IA)—This twelve‐line group, starting with “martin took his task as guide”, appears on the verso of the manuscript, “come on good horse and let us see” (facsimile available of recto only). The line group is placed at the beginning of the ERM transcription because it was evidently composed prior to the lines on the recto, and because these lines precede and flow into the lines on the recto, without any intervening text, according to the corresponding fair copy of this passage in MS III. For a detailed description and reconstruction of the sequence of composition of the text contained in this manuscript, see the “The Monastery”: Apparatus—Stage Two of Composition: Surviving Draft. On the verso, apart from three lines positioned at the top of the page (lines 60–62 as fair‐copied), which were evidently composed at the end of the process, the line group on this side of the manuscript consists, in order of appearance, of lines 20–21, 14–19, and 22–25 as numbered in the MS III fair copy.

The displacement of lines 21–22 from the order in which they are found in fair copy cannot be adequately explained owing to damage to the edges of this draft manuscript, which caused gaps in the text. In the manuscriptʼs original state, Ruskin may have indicated that lines 20–21 were to be inserted in the place that they occupy in fair copy, or he may have decided on this change during the process of fair copying. The former hypothesis might explain the presence of the horizontal rule, which divides these two lines from the remainder of the text. On the recto, Ruskin used such a rule along with a metamark to indicate that a verse line adjacent to the rule was to be inserted in another place in the text. Metamarks may have been lost with the damage to the verso text, which would have confirmed that Ruskin likewise intended a transposition here, as well.

“their” (MS IA, MS III)—Misspelling for there, which is spelled correctly in MS IA draft, “come on good horse and let us see”.

“let.” (MS III)—Having divided outlet with a line break for the sake of the rhyme, Ruskin adds punctuation, perhaps in part to compensate for the confusion he introduces with the possibility of reading let as a word, rather than as the second syllable of outlet. At this stage in Ruskinʼs developing penmanship for fair‐copying, he rarely used punctuation as an ongoing rhetorical and grammatical feature, reserving punctuation marks as a separate overlay on the already fair‐copied text. See “The Monastery” Apparatus: Stage One of Composition, circa 1828.

“exeeding” (MS IA, MS III)—Misspelling for exceeding. Ruskin had trouble with the word. In a rare instance in the early manuscripts of his visibly working out spelling, Ruskin sounded out the syllables on the margin of the MS IA sheet containing “come on good horse and let us see”, writing first eceede, then exx, and finally and still incorrectly exeeding.

“but it was great avenels fate / . . . / to have a spirit in their line” (MS IA, MS III)—This passage underwent considerable revision in the MS IA draft, “come on good horse and let us see”. In ERM, the passage is interpreted in documentary XML markup as two substitutions, one simple and a second complex—the latter subdivided into three actions. This note comments on possible interpretations of the sequence of those actions.

In the first substitution, contained in the line “but it was great avenels fate”, Ruskin replaced a deleted word with “great”, which he wrote in the right margin. The deleted word is nearly illegible but appears to be “gay”.

The second, more complex substitution involves several rejected and substituted lines. The sequence of this process of revision is open to at least three variable interpretations, though the documentary evidence of the component deletions and additions is clear, and can be subdivided into distinct actions, which lead clearly to the outcome in the MS III fair‐copy passage of the “The Monastery”.

Following “but it was great avenels fate”, Ruskin composed two lines, “to see things that nobody saw / except themselves, and would say pshaw”. To obtain this account of the haunting of the House of Avenel, Ruskin temporarily departed from the Halloween episode in Scottʼs chapter 3 that he was mainly summarizing, in order to draw from a gossipy exchange between Elspet Glendinning and Tibb Tacket in chapter 4, in which Tibb boasts about spirits like the White Maiden of Avenel that are peculiarly attached to “‘great ancient families’” like the Avenels. From this exchange, Ruskin borrowed dialogue that can be recognized, somewhat altered, in the couplet about “avenels fate”: for example, Tibb observes that Mary Avenel, having been born on Halloween, is able to “‘see mair than ither folk’”; and the gruff “pshaw” is characteristic of Elspet, although in Ruskinʼs couplet the expression is suspended without a clear agent—ambiguously applicable either to the Avenel family or to outsiders (see Scott, The Monastery, ed. Fielding, 55–56 [vol. 1, chap. 4]; and see also 40 [vol. 1, chap. 2]).

The documentary evidence for next step in the process is open to multiple interpretations of the sequence of composition. Ruskin may have composed the next couplet, “so it was in this odd time / for a spirit haunted avenels line”, with or without having made the deletion shown by strikethrough of the preceding couplet, “to see things that nobody saw / except themselves, and would say pshaw”. The two couplets read coherently in sequence if no lines are deleted—“but it was great avenels fate / to see things that nobody saw / except themselves, and would say pshaw / so it was in this odd time / for a spirit haunted avenels line”. In fact, the flow is improved by Ruskinʼs insertion of “and” above the beginning of the line, “so it was in this odd time” (the conjunction appears also in the fair copy). But the second couplet also flows coherently, if awkwardly, from “but it was great avenels fate” with the intervening couplet omitted. Finally, a third possibility can be drawn from the deletion of the line, “for a spirit haunted avenels line”, in the manuscript: it is possible that Ruskin never intended that line to form a couplet with the preceding line “and so it was in this odd time”; rather, the latter can be interpreted as a subtitution above the line, replacing “for a spirit haunted avenels line”. (While the interlinear spacing in the manuscript does not appear crowded, the line “so it was in this odd time” does appear compacted relative to the cursive hand in the other lines.)

In the simplest reconstruction of the process, Ruskin can be imagined as composing the two couplets following “but it was great avenels fate” without making any deletions. Then he deleted the first, second, and fourth lines of the two couplets, leaving just “and so it was this odd time”. As part of this change, he inserted an asterisk to serve as a metamark following “but it was great avenels fate”. The metamark directs the reader to a line near the bottom of the page, “to have a spirit in their line”, which is marked by corresponding asterisk, and set off by a horizontal rule. The metamark signals that this line is to be inserted following “but it was great avenels fate”, thus substituting for the three deleted lines, and forming a completed couplet with the remaining line, “to have a spirit in their line”. The resulting revised passage reads, as in the fair copy, “but it was great avenels fate / to have a spirit in their line / and so it was this odd time”. This outcome involving the insertion of the substitute line, as directed by the metamark, unquestionably formed the final action of the change, regardless of the process of deletion and substitution that Ruskin followed with respect to the preceding pair of couplets.

“at ao” (MS IA, MS III)—Perhaps a misspelling of so, or perhaps Scots dialect ae for one is intended, as in Elspet Glendinningʼs remark, “I was mair beholden to ae Southron, and that was Stawarth Bolton” (Scott, The Monastery, ed. Fielding, 53 [vol. 1, chap. 4], 490).

“serjeant” (MS IA)—Interlinearly and above this line, “serjeant” is written in pencil print. The hand appears to be Ruskinʼs. Presumably, he was copying the word from Scottʼs text in order to confirm its spelling, as he was attempting to write the word in longhand.