... There is another thing I have to whisper in your faithful ear. Our
fat friend being desirous to honour Literature in my unworthy person,
has intimated to me, by his organ the Doctor, that, with consent ample
and unanimous of all the potential voices of all his ministers,
each more happy than another of course on so joyful an occasion, he
proposes to dub me Baronet. It would be easy saying a parcel of fine
things about my contempt of rank, and so forth; but although I would
not have gone a step out of my way to have asked, or bought, or
begged, or borrowed a distinction, which to me personally will rather
be inconvenient than otherwise, yet, coming as it does directly from
the source of feudal honours, and as an honour, I am really gratified
with it;--especially as it is intimated, that it is his Royal
Highness's pleasure to heat the oven for me expressly, without waiting
till he has some new _batch_ of Baronets ready in dough. In plain
English, I am to be gazetted _per se_. My poor friend Carpenter's
bequest to my family has taken away a certain degree of
_impecuniosity_, a necessity of saving cheese-parings and candle-ends,
which always looks inconsistent with any little pretension to rank.
But as things now stand, Advance banners in the name of God and St.
Andrew. Remember, I anticipate the jest, 'I like not such grinning
honours, as Sir Walter hath.' After all, if one must speak for
themselves, I have my quarters and emblazonments, free of all stain
but Border theft and High Treason, which I hope are gentleman-like
crimes; and I hope Sir Walter Scott will not sound worse than Sir
Humphry Davy, though my merits are as much under his, in point of
utility, as can well be imagined. But a name is something, and mine
is the better of the two. Set down this flourish to the account
of national and provincial pride, for you must know we have more
Messieurs de Sotenville in our Border counties than anywhere else in
the Lowlands--I cannot say for the Highlands.