How is this to be accounted for?--I can see why the mouths of the minor poets must have remained shut; but, to find an apology for the master one, is no such easy matter; and perhaps the safe way for all parties would be to place his salvation in consternation by day, and cups by night. Still, it is remarkable that, though this was the only royal visit with which Scotland had, during the reigns of six monarchs, been honoured, there is no where existing a single decent page, either in verse or in prose, in commemoration of it; and, if the long preparation which was made for it, the bustle which it occasioned, and the crowds which it drew together, be considered, one would feel disposed thence to conclude, that the Athenians, instead of being that literary people which they are represented, are a set of ignorant barbarians. This however is, as themselves say, not the fact, and therefore there must be a cause for their supineness. That cause, however, being beyond the depth of my philosophy, must be left to their own. While the Athens was making all preparations to receive the king, and the king all speed to visit the Athens, the elements, those outlaws from even royal authority, created a little anxiety on both sides. The weather, which had been propitious at the outset, became (notwithstanding that the mayor of Scarbro’, in his zeal to present a loyal address at the end of a long stick, had been chucked into the sea, like another Jonah, and not swallowed up by a whale) not a little unpleasant, as the royal squadron approached that singular rock, once the abode of state prisoners, and now of Solon geese, denominated the Bass, and resembling more than any thing else a great pigeon-pie riding at anchor. The chosen had arranged that this same rock, emblematical of the ancient manners as a prison-house, and haply of the modern men as a gooserie, should be the first Scottish soil trodden by the royal foot. Some said, that this was intended to show that, though the said chosen were unable to contend with their political opponents in argument, they had the power on their side, and could send them to prison; but that is a point without the scope of my speculation, and it is of no consequence, as the Father of the sea would not permit the Father of the British people to land.