giving each dog a cuff beside the ears as he went by.
This clapper-clawing was always taken in good part; it
appeared to be, in fact, a mere act of sovereignty on
the part of grimalkin to remind the others of their
vassalage; which they acknowledged by the most perfect
acquiescence. A general harmony prevailed between
sovereign and subjects, and they would all sleep
together in the sunshine."]]

I never thought it lawful to keep a journal of what passes in private
society, so that no one need expect from the sequel of this narrative
any detailed record of Scott's familiar talk. What fragments of it
have happened to adhere to a tolerably retentive memory, and may be
put into black and white without wounding any feelings which my
friend, were he alive, would have wished to spare, I shall introduce
as the occasion suggests or serves. But I disclaim on the threshold
anything more than this; and I also wish to enter a protest once for
all against the general fidelity of several literary gentlemen who
have kindly forwarded to me private lucubrations {p.243} of theirs,
designed to _Boswellize_ Scott, and which they may probably publish
hereafter. To report conversations fairly, it is a necessary
prerequisite that we should be completely familiar with all the
interlocutors, and understand thoroughly all their minutest relations,
and points of common knowledge and common feeling with each other. He
who does not, must be perpetually in danger of misinterpreting
sportive allusion into serious statement; and the man who was only
recalling, by some jocular phrase or half-phrase, to an old companion,
some trivial reminiscence of their boyhood or youth, may be
represented as expressing, upon some person or incident casually
tabled, an opinion which he had never framed, or if he had, would
never have given words to in any mixed assemblage--not even among what
the world calls _friends_ at his own board. In proportion as a man is
witty and humorous, there will always be about him and his a widening
maze and wilderness of cues and catchwords, which the uninitiated
will, if they are bold enough to try interpretation, construe, ever
and anon, egregiously amiss--not seldom into arrant falsity. For this
one reason, to say nothing of many others, I consider no man justified
in journalizing what he sees and hears in a domestic circle wher