“‘O Geordie!’ exclaimed the king, ’these are auld-warld frailties, of whilk we dare not pronounce even ourselves absolutely free.  But the warld grows worse from day to day, Geordie.  The juveniles of this age may weel say with the poet,—­

         “AEtas parentum pejor avis tulit
          Nos nequiores—­”

This Dalgarno does not drink so much; aye or swear so much, as his father, but he wenches, Geordie, and he breaks his word and oath baith.  As to what ye say of the leddy and the ministers, we are all fallible creatures, Geordie, priests and kings as weel as others; and wha kens but what that may account for the difference between this Dalgarno and his father?  The earl is the vera soul of honour, and cares nae mair for warld’s gear than a noble hound for the quest of a foulmart; but as for his son, he was like to brazen us all out—­ourselves, Steenie, Baby Charles, and our Council, till he heard of the tocher, and then by my kingly crown he lap like a cock at a grossart!  These are discrepancies betwixt parent and son not to be accounted for naturally, according to Baptista Porta, Michael Scott de secretis, and others.  Ah, Jingling Geordie, if your clouting the caldron, and jingling on pots, pans, and veshels of all manner of metal, hadna jingled a’ your grammar out of your head, I could have touched on that matter to you at mair length.’ ...  Heriot inquired whether Lord Dalgarno had consented to do the Lady Hermione justice.  ’Troth, man, I have small doubt that he will,’ quoth the king, ’I gave him the schedule of her worldly substance, which you delivered to us in the council, and we allowed him half an hour to chew the cud upon that.  It is rare reading for bringing him to reason.  I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him, and if he can resist doing what they desire him, why I wish he would teach me the gate of it.  O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence.’  ‘I am afraid,’ said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, ’I might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving sin.’  ’Deil hae our saul, neighbour,’ said the king, reddening, ’but ye are not blate!  I gie ye licence to speak freely, and by our saul, ye do not let the privilege become lost, non utendo—­it will suffer no negative prescription in your hands.  Is it fit, think ye, that Baby Charles should let his thoughts be publicly seen?  No, no, princes’ thoughts are arcana imperii:  qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare.  Every liege subject is bound to speak the whole truth to the king, but there is nae reciprocity of obligation—­and for Steenie having been whiles a dike-louper at a time, is it for you, who are his goldsmith, and to whom, I doubt, he awes an uncomatable sum, to cast that up to him?”

Assuredly there is no undue favouring of Stuarts in such a picture as that.