I suppose we ought to explain
this little bit of fetish-worship in Scott much as we should the
quaint practical adhesion to duelling which he gave as an old man, who
had had all his life much more to do with the pen than the sword--that
is, as an evidence of the tendency of an improved type to recur to
that of the old wild stock on which it had been grafted. But certainly
no feudal devotion of his ancestors to their chief was ever less
justified by moral qualities than Scott's loyal devotion to the
fountain of honour as embodied in "our fat friend." The whole relation
to George was a grotesque thread in Scott's life; and I cannot quite
forgive him for the utterly conventional severity with which he threw
over his first patron, the Queen, for sins which were certainly not
grosser, if they were not much less gross, than those of his second
patron, the husband who had set her the example which she faithfully,
though at a distance, followed.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 45: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 229-30.]
[Footnote 46: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi.
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