The
lameness of his leg and hand, besides that they added considerably to
the grotesque appearance of this original, procured him in future a
personal immunity from the more dangerous consequences of his own
humour; and he gradually grew old in the service of the Court, in
safety of life and limb, though without either making friends or
attaining preferment. Sometimes, indeed, the king was amused with his
caustic sallies, but he had never art enough to improve the favourable
opportunity; and his enemies (who were, for that matter, the whole
Court) always found means to throw him out of favour again. The
celebrated Archie Armstrong offered Sir Mungo, in his generosity, a
skirt of his own fool's coat, proposing thereby to communicate to him
the privileges and immunities of a professed jester--"For," said the
man of motley, "Sir Mungo, as he goes on just now, gets no more for a
good jest than just the king's pardon for having made it."
Even in London, the golden shower which fell around him did not
moisten the blighted fortunes of Sir Mungo Malagrowther. He grew old,
deaf, and peevish--lost even the spirit which had formerly animated
his strictures--and was barely endured by James, who, though himself
nearly as far stricken in years, retained, to an unusual and even an
absurd degree, the desire to be surrounded by young people.
Sir Mungo, thus fallen into the yellow leaf of years and fortune,
showed his emaciated form and faded embroidery at Court as seldom as
his duty permitted; and spent his time in indulging his food for
satire in the public walks, and in the aisles of Saint Paul's, which
were then the general resort of newsmongers and characters of all
descriptions, associating himself chiefly with such of his countrymen
as he accounted of inferior birth and rank to himself.
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