1775 Raspe and the Adept in Scoffs "Antiquary " 135 



plished daughter, used to say that she had often heard her 

 father relate the story, but never with the slightest trace 

 of bitterness. On the contrary, both he and Lady Sinclair 

 always said that the little loss they made on the occasion 

 was amply compensated by the amusement which the 

 mineralogist had given them while a guest in their house/' 1 

 These Caithness doings were of course well known all over 

 Scotland, and as Robert Chambers has pointed out, " they 

 correspond with those of Dousterswivel in the Antiquary. 

 There is every reason to believe that Raspe gave Scott the 

 idea of that character, albeit the baronet of Ulbster did 

 not prove to be so extremely imposed upon as Sir Arthur 

 Wardour, or was in any other respect a prototype of that 

 ideal personage." 2 But the author of the Waverley Novels 

 could have known nothing of the real standing of Raspe, 

 who was a singularly gifted and widely cultivated man, 

 albeit not quite honest, while the Adept in the Antiquary 

 was a vulgar and ignorant cheat. 



Of Raspe's subsequent career little has been recovered. 

 He appears to have continued to practise his calling of 

 mining expert, and to have gone to try his luck in Ireland. 

 It was there at Muckross that he was carried off by scarlet 

 fever in the year 1794. I have been at some pains to collect 

 such information concerning him as can now be gathered. 

 He was unquestionably a singularly accomplished man, 

 with an undoubted love of science, an insight which led 

 him to anticipate some of the geological discoveries of later 

 times, and withal a keen sense of humour, but unhappily 

 without the moral ballast that would have enabled him 

 to make the full use of his many gifts. I make no apology 

 for narrating at length this episode in the Annals of the Club 

 regarding a man whom the Royal Society thought worthy 

 of receiving its Fellowship and the Royal Society Club 

 welcomed to its table. 



1 Robert Chambers in his Book of Days, vol. ii. pp. 85, 86. 



2 Scott in his Preface to the Antiquary says with regard to Douster- 

 swivel and his doings, " the reader may be assured that this part of the 

 narrative is founded on a fact of actual occurrence." 



