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QUERY
“Folly is the cloke of knavery.”
I had always thought of this Proverb of Hell as originating in The Marriage. However, Walter Scott in Waverley, in speaking of Davie Gellately, says: “Davie had no mind to explain, and had wit enough to make his folly cloak his knavery. . .” (Andrew Hook, ed., Penguin, 1972 [116]). This seems too close for coincidence, and so there must either be a common source or an intermediary source, unless we assume that Sir Walter had been conversing with Blake’s Devils. Does anybody know?