The man was also in the hands of persons full of wild plots and political impatience. They formed schemes wholly impracticable. They invited him in 1750 to London; but he was soon convinced that he had been deceived, and after a stay of five days he returned to the place from which he came. He died at Rome the 31st of January, 1788, and was royally interred in the Cathedral Church of Frescati, of which his brother was bishop.
After his death his brother, the last direct male heir of the House of Stuart, made no assertion of his right to the British throne, but had a beautiful medal struck, in which he was represented in kingly garb with the motto in Latin, “King by the grace of God, but not by the will of the people.” He finally received an annuity of 4,000 pounds a year given to him by George the Third, and on his death he bequeathed to George the Fourth all the crown jewels, which James the Second had carried along with him to the Continent in 1688. He died at Rome, June 1807, in the eighty-third year of his age. The volumes of “Waverley” and “Redgauntlet,” taken in connection with Scott’s “Tales of a Grandfather,” give the most complete history of this unfortunate struggle.
“The Antiquary” and “Saint Ronan’s Well” present a postscript of manners and customs, which seems tame from a historic standpoint, after living so many centuries in the company of heroes and princes. Scott speaking of “The Antiquary” says: “It wants the romance of ‘Waverley’ and the adventure of ‘Guy Mannering;’ yet there is some salvation about it, for if a man will paint from nature he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it.” He also says in his introduction of “The Antiquary:” “‘Waverley’ embraced the age of our fathers, ‘Guy Mannering’ that of our youth, and ‘The Antiquary’ refers to the last ten years of the eighteenth century. I have in the last two narratives especially, sought my principal personages in the class of society who are the last to feel the influence of that general polish which assimilates to each other the manners of different nations. Among some of the same class I have placed some of the scenes, in which I have endeavored to illustrate the operation of the higher and more violent passions; both because the lower orders are less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings, and because I agree with my friend Wordsworth, that they seldom fail to express them in the strongest and most powerful language. This is, I think, peculiarly the case with the peasantry of my own country, a class with whom I have been long familiar. The antique force and simplicity of their language, often tinctured with the oriental eloquence of Scripture, in the mouths of those of an elevated understanding, give pathos to their grief, and dignity to their resentment.” The pathos and eloquence in the homes of the fishermen justify Scott’s criticism, and the picture which he has drawn of the old grandmother will survive in our memory as one of the most dramatic in the Waverley series.