This myth was first publicly propagated in a work entitled "Tales of the Century; or, Sketches of the Romance of History between the years 1746 and 1846," published in 1847, and purporting to be by "John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart." Some suggestive hints, it is true, had been thrown out as early as 1822, in a volume of poems by one of these brothers; but that book was published as by "John Hay Allen," and no definite assumption of royal lineage would appear to have been made until the Edinburgh publication of 1847. According to the legend detailed in the three sections into which the work was divided, in 1831 an ancient medical man, of extreme Jacobite views, finding himself dying, confided to a young Highland gentleman, who was visiting him in London, the long-hoarded secret that the Gaels "have yet a king." The young Scotchman is naturally inquisitive as to the meaning of this mysterious communication, and has his curiosity gratified by a recital of the following romantic story by Dr. Beaton. According to that deceased gentleman, he chanced to be making a tour in Italy, in 1773, and as he was walking along the road from Parma to Florence, he was startled by the passing of a carriage with scarlet outriders. On glancing into the conveyance he was still more startled by beholding the not-to-be-forgotten countenance of his beloved "Prince Charlie," seated by a lady's side. On the evening of the same day, whilst meditating on what he had seen, he was accosted by a man of military appearance, and asked whether he was Dr. Beaton, the Scotch physician. On replying in the affirmative, he was informed that his immediate attendance was required in a case of urgency, and all his questions as to the nature of the patient's malady were disposed of in a very unceremonious manner. His reluctance to be blindfolded before entering a carriage that was in waiting was overcome by the intimation that it was on behalf of him whom both recognised as their royal chief, that is to say, Prince Charles.