r. Oldbuck? There is Drust
Macmorachin, Trynel Maclachlin (first of that ancient clan, as it may
be judged), and Gormach Macdonald, Alpin Macmetegus, Drust Mactallargam"
(here he was interrupted by a fit of coughing)--"ugh, ugh, ugh--Golarge
Macchan--ugh, ugh--Macchanan--ugh--Macchananail, Kenneth--ugh--ugh--
Macferedith, Eachan Macfungus--and twenty more, decidedly Celtic names,
which I could repeat, if this damned cough would let me."

"Take a glass of wine, Sir Arthur, and drink down that bead-roll of
unbaptized jargon, that would choke the devil--why, that last fellow has
the only intelligible name you have repeated--they are all of the tribe
of Macfungus--mushroom monarchs every one of them; sprung up from the
fumes of conceit, folly, and falsehood, fermenting in the brains of some
mad Highland seannachie."

"I am surprised to hear you, Mr. Oldbuck: you know, or ought to know,
that the list of these potentates was copied by Henry Maule of Melguin,
from the Chronicles of Loch Leven and St. Andrews, and put forth by him
in his short but satisfactory history of the Picts, printed by Robert
Freebairn of Edinburgh, and sold by him at his shop in the Parliament
Close, in the year of God seventeen hundred and five, or six, I am not
precisely certain which--but I have a copy at home that stands next to my
twelvemo copy of the Scots Acts, and ranges on the shelf with them very
well. What say you to that, Mr. Oldbuck?"

"Say?--why, I laugh at Harry Maule and his history," answered Oldbuck,
"and thereby comply with his request, of giving it entertainment
according to its merits."

"Do not laugh at a better man than yourself," said Sir Arthur, somewhat
scornfully.

"I do not conceive I do, Sir Arthur, in laughing either at him or his
history."

"Henry Maule of Melgum was a gentleman, Mr. Oldbuck."

"I presume he had no advantage of me in that particular," replied the
Antiquary, somewhat tartly.

"Permit me, Mr. Oldbuck--he was a gentleman of high family, and ancient
descent, and therefore"--

"The descendant of a Westphalian printer should speak of him with
deference? Such may be your opinion, Sir Arthur--it is not mine. I
conceive that my descent from that painful and industrious typographer,
Wolfbrand Oldenbuck, who, in the month of December 1493, under the
patronage, as the colophon tells us, of Sebaldus Scheyter and Sebastian
Kammermaister, accomplished the printing of the great Chronicle of
Nuremberg--I concei