cancelled by Scott’s paying the sum for which it was a security—­that enabled him at this time to decline what, after Southey had accepted it, he compared in a letter to Southey to the herring for which the poor Scotch clergyman gave thanks in a grace wherein he described it as “even this, the very least of Providence’s mercies.”  In March, 1815, Scott being then in London, the Prince Regent asked him to dinner, addressed him uniformly as Walter, and struck up a friendship with him which seems to have lasted their lives, and which certainly did much more honour to George than to Sir Walter Scott.  It is impossible not to think rather better of George IV. for thus valuing, and doing his best in every way to show his value for, Scott.  It is equally impossible not to think rather worse of Scott for thus valuing, and in every way doing his best to express his value for, this very worthless, though by no means incapable king.  The consequences were soon seen in the indignation with which Scott began to speak of the Princess of Wales’s sins.  In 1806, in the squib he wrote on Lord Melville’s acquittal, when impeached for corruption by the Liberal Government, he had written thus of the Princess Caroline:—­

“Our King, too—­our Princess,—­I dare not say more, sir,—­
May Providence watch them with mercy and might! 
While there’s one Scottish hand that can wag a claymore, sir,
They shall ne’er want a friend to stand up for their right. 
Be damn’d he that dare not—­
For my part I’ll spare not
To beauty afflicted a tribute to give;
Fill it up steadily,
Drink it off readily,
Here’s to the Princess, and long may she live.”

But whoever “stood up” for the Princess’s right, certainly Scott did not do so after his intimacy with the Prince Regent began.  He mentioned her only with severity, and in one letter at least, written to his brother, with something much coarser than severity;[45] but the king’s similar vices did not at all alienate him from what at least had all the appearance of a deep personal devotion to his sovereign.  The first baronet whom George IV. made on succeeding to the throne, after his long Regency, was Scott, who not only accepted the honour gratefully, but dwelt with extreme pride on the fact that it was offered to him by the king himself, and was in no way due to the prompting of any minister’s advice.  He wrote to Joanna Baillie on hearing of the Regent’s intention—­for the offer was made by the Regent at the end of 1818, though it was not actually conferred till after George’s accession, namely, on the 30th March, 1820,—­“The Duke of Buccleuch and Scott of Harden, who, as the heads of my clan and the sources of my gentry, are good judges of what I ought to do, have both given me their earnest opinion to accept of an honour directly derived from the source of honour, and neither begged nor bought, as is the usual fashion.  Several of my ancestors bore the title in the seventeenth century, and, were it of consequence, I have no reason to be ashamed of the decent and respectable persons who connect me with that period when they carried into the field, like Madoc,