be clearer than that to Scott the feudal principle was something far beyond a name; that he had at least as much pride in his devotion to his chief, as he had in founding a house which he believed would increase the influence—­both territorial and personal—­of the clan of Scotts.  The unaffected reverence which he felt for the Duke, though mingled with warm personal affection, showed that Scott’s feudal feeling had something real 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