As had been the
fashion during his visit to Ireland, there was a good deal of
spirit-drinking when the King came to testify his gratitude for the
loyal welcome given to him by his Scottish subjects. His Majesty
poured out with his own hand some cherry brandy into a glass, which he
tendered to Sir Walter Scott, and Sir Walter not merely drank off the
liquid thus commended to him, but asked permission to keep the glass as
a perpetual relic of the royal giver and of the august occasion.
Thackeray tells the story of the incident in his lecture on George the
Fourth, and we cannot do better than describe it in his own words:
"When George the Fourth came to Edinburgh," says Thackeray, "a better
man than he went on board the royal yacht to welcome the King to his
kingdom of Scotland, seized a goblet from which his Majesty had just
drunk, vowed it should remain forever as an heirloom in his family,
clapped the precious glass in his pocket, and sat down on it and broke
it when he got home." One can easily imagine how the sudden fate of
the precious relic must have amused {30} and delighted the satirical
genius of Thackeray, who could not quite forgive even Sir Walter Scott
for having lent himself to the fulsome adulation which it was thought
proper to offer to George the Fourth on the occasion of his visit to
his kingdom of Scotland.

Thackeray, indeed, seems to have been a little too hard upon George,
and to have regarded him merely as a worthless profligate and buffoon,
who never really felt any of the generous emotions which the sovereign
found it convenient to summon up at the appropriate seasons. Our own
study of the character leads us to the opinion already expressed, that
George did actually believe for the time in the full sincerity of the
feelings he thought proper to call into action on the occasion of an
important ceremonial, and that the feelings were no less genuine at the
moment than those which came on him when the performance was over, and
he had an opportunity of showing the new state of his mind in the
reaction of weariness caused by the whole tiresome proceedings. George
went through the usual rounds of visits in Scotland, and put on an
appearance of absolute enjoyment during the public entertainments and
popular acclamations which he had brought upon himself. He displayed
himself frequently in a suit of Stuart tartan when he did not array
himself in his costume as a field-marshal. We read that during the