Salt-foot controversy

LETTER OF CANDIDUS, 5
whether he had seen the article in your Magazine,
he replied in the affirmative, and laughed very
good-naturedly at the account, observing, that it
was quite fair from the pen of a Somerville, and as
a production of the period. In regard to the pre-
tensions to superior descent assumed by Lord Som-
erville on the ground merely of his own state-
ment, and as an apt counterpart of the above deli-
neation, he reminded me of the well-known dialogue
which took place between the lion and the man in
the fable, when each contended for the superiority,
and which I need not here repeat. It was on this
occasion that the former pointed out to the king of
the forest, as a conclusive argument in his own
favour, a painting, in which was represented a lion
in contest with a man, crouching under the stroke,
and yielding to the strength of his antagonist.
The learned Baronet, moreover, obligingly com-
municated to me, from a MS. history of his family,
which has been long preserved in it, some amusing
anecdotes of the ancient feud that had subsisted be-
tween his ancestors and the Somervilles, of the inve-
teracy of which so many instances are detailed in Mr
Scott's publication. And although such anecdotes
must appear rather uninteresting in the present
day, yet, I trust, you will admit the following few
particulars into your useful work. In expressing
this hope, I assure you, sir, that I act on no instruc-
tions from the gentleman in question ; but I think
it will not only appear as a proof of that impar-
tiality, for which every public writer aspires to be