APPENDIX OF NOTES. 537 



classicalities. It, also, is undated, with the title, " The History and 

 Martial Achievements of the Eobertsons of Strowan as it is selected 

 from the works of the best historians that have written of the origin 

 and valiant achievements of this honourable family and their 

 descendants and the Poems on various subjects and occasions by 

 the Honourable Alexander Eobertson of Strowan, Esq." 



Many of the letters of the poet-chief of the Clandonachie relate to 

 the secrets of the insurrection of 1745. Even when they bear on 

 matters evidently of danger and difficulty, they have the easy reck- 

 lessness of a wayward genius. Take as a specimen the following, 

 addressed to the titular Duke of Atholl, better known as Tulli- 

 bardine: "My Lord Duke, I need not prompt a man to be 

 honest who makes nice conscience of wronging the king. Few 

 people scruple in that part. I have been cursedly used by your 

 Grace's relations, though I am sure they were not properly related to 

 your Grace. My ever honoured duke you take me. If you don't, 

 I refer you to Neil MacGlashan for half a pair of spectacles for 

 he can tell what he sees as well or better than, my lord, your ever 

 faithfull humble servant, Air. Eobertson of Strewan. Oct. 18, 

 1745. God direct you and your good-natured frailty." This brief 

 document sprawls over three large pages, because it is written in 

 characters varying from one to three inches long. In another letter 

 he says, " It seems a difficult point for me to put both orders in 

 execution, unless, as the man said, I can be in two places at once 

 like a bird." So this Irish idea of unity in time and place is older 

 than the age of Sir Boyle Eoche, who has generally the merit of its 

 invention. Many letters by the poet-chief are in a collection of 

 manuscripts in the Advocates' Library called " The Struan Papers." 

 Others are in " Jacobite correspondence of the Atholl Family dur- 

 ing the EebeUion, 1745-1746," printed for the Abbotsford Club. 



III. (p. 15.) 



Gilbert Stuart had a literary fame in his own day, but he is 

 more known in the present for that ferocity of personal rancour and 

 wild dissipation which gives him a conspicuous place in Isaac 

 Disraeli's ' Calamities of Authors.' He obtained his reputation 

 solely by a trick of style. He was accomplished in the balancing 

 system of the period, learning both from Johnson and Gibbon, 



