Greatly mortified at this information, Edward sought out his friendly
host, and anxiously expostulated with him upon the injustice he had done
him in anticipating his meeting with Mr. Falconer, a circumstance which,
considering his youth and the profession of arms which he had just
adopted, was capable of being represented much to his prejudice. The
Baron justified himself at greater length than I choose to repeat. He
urged that the quarrel was common to them, and that Balmawhapple could
not, by the code of honour, evite giving satisfaction to both, which he
had done in his case by an honourable meeting, and in that of Edward by
such a palinode as rendered the use of the sword unnecessary, and which,
being made and accepted, must necessarily sopite the whole affair.
With this excuse, or explanation, Waverley was silenced, if not
satisfied; but he could not help testifying some displeasure against the
Blessed Bear, which had given rise to the quarrel, nor refrain from
hinting that the sanctified epithet was hardly appropriate. The Baron
observed, he could not deny that 'the Bear, though allowed by heralds as
a most honourable ordinary, had, nevertheless, somewhat fierce, churlish,
and morose in his disposition (as might be read in Archibald Simson,
pastor of Dalkeith's 'Hieroglyphica Animalium') and had thus been the
type of many quarrels and dissensions which had occurred in the house of
Bradwardine; of which,' he continued, 'I might commemorate mine own
unfortunate dissension with my third cousin by the mother's side, Sir Hew
Halbert, who was so unthinking as to deride my family name, as if it had
been QUASI BEAR-WARDEN; a most uncivil jest, since it not only insinuated
that the founder of our house occupied such a mean situation as to be a
custodier of wild beasts, a charge which, ye must have observed, is only
entrusted to the very basest plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer
that our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in war,
but bestowed by way of paranomasia, or pun, upon our family
appellation,--a sort of bearing which the French call armoires parlantes,
the Latins arma cantantia, and your English authorities canting heraldry,
[Footnote: See Note 37] being indeed a species of emblazoning more
befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such like mendicants, whose
gibberish is formed upon playing upon the word, than the noble,
honourable, and useful science of heraldry, which assigns armorial
bearings as the reward of noble and generous actions, and not to tickle
the ear with vain quodlibets, such as are found in jestbooks.
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