Chapter 32

_Benedict_. This looks not like a nuptial.
_Much Ado About Nothing._

Master George Heriot had no sooner returned to the king's apartment,
than James inquired of Maxwell if the Earl of Huntinglen was in
attendance, and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, desired that
he should be admitted. The old Scottish Lord having made his reverence
in the usual manner, the king extended his hand to be kissed, and then
began to address him in a tone of great sympathy.

"We told your lordship in our secret epistle of this morning, written
with our ain hand, in testimony we have neither pretermitted nor
forgotten your faithful service, that we had that to communicate to
you that would require both patience and fortitude to endure, and
therefore exhorted you to peruse some of the most pithy passages of
Seneca, and of Boethius _de Consolatione_, that the back may be, as we
say, fitted for the burden--This we commend to you from our ain
experience.

'Non ignara mail, miseris succurrere disco,'

sayeth Dido, and I might say in my own person, _non ignarus_; but to
change the gender would affect the prosody, whereof our southern
subjects are tenacious. So, my Lord of Huntinglen, I trust you have
acted by our advice, and studied patience before ye need it--_venienti
occurrite morbo_--mix the medicament when the disease is coming on."

"May it please your Majesty," answered Lord Huntinglen, "I am more of
an old soldier than a scholar--and if my own rough nature will not
bear me out in any calamity, I hope I shall have grace to try a text
of Scripture to boot."

"Ay, man, are you there with your bears?" said the king; "The Bible,
man," (touching his cap,) "is indeed _principium et fons_--but it is
pity your lordship cannot peruse it in the original. For although we
did ourselves promote that work of translation,--since ye may read, at
the beginning of every Bible, that when some palpable clouds of
darkness were thought like to have overshadowed the land, after the
setting of that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth; yet our
appearance, like that of the sun in his strength, instantly dispelled
these surmised mists,--I say, that although, as therein mentioned, we
countenanced the preaching of the gospel, and especially the
translation of the Scriptures out of the original sacred tongues; yet
nevertheless, we ourselves confess to have found a comfort in
consulting them in the original Hebrew, whilk we do not perceive even
in the Latin version of the Septuagint, much less in the English
traduction."

"Please your Majesty," said Lord Huntinglen, "if your Majesty delays
communicating the bad news with which your