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 BEARWARDEN; 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 PARONOMASIA, 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; 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 jest-books.
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