by my kingly crown he lap
like a cock at a grossart! These are discrepancies betwixt
parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, according
to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott _de secretis_, and others.
Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the caldron, and
jingling on pots, pans, and veshels of all manner of metal,
hadna jingled a' your grammar out of your head, I could have
touched on that matter to you at mair length.' ... Heriot
inquired whether Lord Dalgarno had consented to do the Lady
Hermione justice. 'Troth, man, I have small doubt that he
will,' quoth the king, 'I gave him the schedule of her
worldly substance, which you delivered to us in the council,
and we allowed him half an hour to chew the cud upon that.
It is rare reading for bringing him to reason. I left Baby
Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him, and if he
can resist doing what _they_ desire him, why I wish he would
teach _me_ the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it
was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of
dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing _on_ the turpitude of
incontinence.' 'I am afraid,' said George Heriot, more
hastily than prudently, 'I might have thought of the old
proverb of Satan reproving sin.' 'Deil hae our saul,
neighbour,' said the king, reddening, 'but ye are not blate!
I gie ye licence to speak freely, and by our saul, ye do not
let the privilege become lost, _non utendo_--it will suffer
no negative prescription in your hands. Is it fit, think ye,
that Baby Charles should let his thoughts be publicly seen?
No, no, princes' thoughts are _arcana imperii: qui nescit
dissimulare, nescit regnare_. Every liege subject is bound
to speak the whole truth to the king, but there is nae
reciprocity of obligation--and for Steenie having been
whiles a dike-louper at a time, is it for you, who are his
goldsmith, and to whom, I doubt, he awes an uncomatable sum,
to cast that up to him?"

Assuredly there is no undue favouring of Stuarts in such a picture as
that.

Scott's humour is, I think, of very different qualities in relation to
different subjects. Certainly he was at times capable of considerable
heaviness of hand,--of the Scotch "wut" which has been so irreverently
treated by English critics. His rather elaborate jocular
introductions, under