"living skeleton," and we shall now find him associated by the
caricaturists with no less a person than the king himself. When his
majesty, in 1822, paid his visit to Scotland, and by way of compliment
to the country and her traditions assumed the "garb of old Gael,"
Alderman Sir William Curtis, who followed his sovereign at a respectful
distance, out of compliment to the country, her traditions, "his most
gracious majesty," and himself, put his own corpulent form into fancy
costume, and likewise donned the Highland garb. The absurdly ludicrous
result is told us by Lockhart. "The king at his first levee diverted
many, and delighted Scott by appearing in the full Highland garb--the
same brilliant _Stewart tartans_, so-called, in which certainly no
Stewart, except Prince Charles, had ever before presented himself in
the saloons of Holyrood. His majesty's Celtic toilette had been
carefully watched and assisted by the gallant Laird of Garth, who was
not a little proud of the result of his dexterous manipulations of the
rough plaid, and pronounced the king 'a vara pretty man.' And he did
look a most stately and imposing person in that beautiful dress; but his
satisfaction therein was cruelly disturbed when he discovered, towering
and blazing among and above the genuine Glengarries and Macleods and
MacGregors, a figure even more portly than his own, equipped from a
sudden impulse of loyal ardour in an equally complete set of the
self-same conspicuous Stewart tartans:--

'He caught Sir William Curtis in a kilt--
While throng'd the chiefs of every Highland clan
To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman.'[80]

In truth this portentous apparition cast an air of ridicule and
caricature over the whole of Sir Walter's celtified pageantry. A sharp
little bailie from Aberdeen, who had previously made acquaintance with
the worthy Guildhall baronet, and tasted the turtle soup of his
voluptuous yacht, tortured him as he sailed down the long gallery of
Holyrood, by suggesting that after all his costume was not quite
perfect. Sir William, who had been rigged out, as the auctioneer's
advertisements say, 'regardless of expense,' exclaimed that he must be
mistaken, begged he would explain his criticism, and, as he spoke, threw
a glance of admiration on his _skene dhu_ (black knife), which, like a
true 'warrior and hunter of deer,' he wore stuck into one of his
garters. 'Oo ay! Oo ay!' quoth the Aberdonian; 'the knife's a' right,
mon-