and substantial in it, which did not vanish
even when it came into close contact with strong personal feelings.
This reverence is curiously marked in his letters. He speaks of "the
distinction of rank" being ignored by both sides, as of something
quite exceptional, but it was never really ignored by him, for though
he continued to write to the Duke as an intimate friend, it was with a
mingling of awe, very different indeed from that which he ever adopted
to Ellis or Erskine. It is necessary to remember this, not only in
estimating the strength of the feeling which made him so anxious to
become himself the founder of a house within a house,--of a new branch
of the clan of Scotts,--but in estimating the loyalty which Scott
always displayed to one of the least respectable of English
sovereigns, George IV.,--a matter of which I must now say a few words,
not only because it led to Scott's receiving the baronetcy, but
because it forms to my mind the most grotesque of all the threads in
the lot of this strong and proud man.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 387.]

[Footnote 41: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 382.]

[Footnote 42: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 288.]

[Footnote 43: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 287-8.]

[Footnote 44: Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, xxi. 22-3.]

CHAPTER XIII.

SCOTT AND GEORGE IV.

The first relations of Scott with the Court were, oddly enough, formed
with the Princess, not with the Prince of Wales. In 1806 Scott dined
with the Princess of Wales at Blackheath, and spoke of his invitation
as a great honour. He wrote a tribute to her father, the Duke of
Brunswick, in the introduction to one of the cantos of _Marmion_, and
received from the Princess a silver vase in acknowledgment of this
passage in the poem. Scott's relations with the Prince Regent seem to
have begun in an offer to Scott of the Laureateship in the summer of
1813, an offer which Scott would have found it very difficult to
accept, so strongly did his pride revolt at the idea of having to
commemorate in verse, as an official duty, all conspicuous incidents
affecting the throne. But he was at the time of the offer in the thick
of his first difficulties on account of Messrs. John Ballantyne and
Co., and it was only the Duke of Buccleuch's guarantee of 4000_l._--a
guarantee subsequently cancelled by Scott's paying the sum for which
it was a security--that enabled him at this time to de