No doubt the ‘redeat’ had direct reference to the hoped-for return of the ‘king’ at Rome, for whom good wishes were offered up in the London toast――‘The Royal Exchange,’――a toast which is really a summary of Dr. King’s closing paragraphs. At this time the London papers were busy with reporting the movements of that king’s son――the young Chevalier. He had promised the municipality of Friburg to take up his residence there. The magistracy had invited him, not having the fear of the English Government before their eyes. Charles Edward broke his promise, upon which the magistrates (according to a letter from Friburg in the London papers) sharply reproached him for having caused them to offend the King of England by an invitation which came to nothing. Why he should prefer Avignon to Friburg they could not understand. The latest notice of his movements in the metropolitan journals was that he was living _incognito_ at Venice. There was manifestly some uneasy curiosity about him, and a desire on the part of the loyal citizens to be prepared for anything that might turn up in the chapter of accidents or conspiracies. The Earl of Bath only expressed the general feeling of the city, if not of the country, when he said, in a debate on the Mutiny Bill in the Lords, ‘A parcel of rascally Highlanders marched from the northernmost part of Scotland through millions of people to within 100 miles of London, without meeting with any resistance from the people; and might, for what I know, have marched to London, and overturned our government, had we had no regular troops to prevent it;――a manifest proof that a standing army is absolutely necessary.’ [Sidenote: _THE LAUREATE’S ODE._] The loyal Muse was at Court, as usual, on New Year’s day, 1750, when the royal family and a brilliant array of privileged peers and peeresses assembled to hear the annual ode of the laureate ‘set to Music.’ There was nothing in it like the ring of a hearty Jacobite song. The more Cibber piled his loyalty, the more ridiculous he became, as may be seen by the sample of a single brick out of the lumbering edifice:―― When the race of true Glory Calls Heroes to start, Then the Muse meets a story Well worthy of Art. Had her Pindar of old Known our Cæsar to sing More rapid his raptures had roll’d, But;――Never had Greece such a king. All that Whigs and Cibber’s friends could say for such tuneless and burlesque lines was that he made them so on purpose. Jacobites replied to them less fiercely than Johnson, but yet not without wit. For instance, on seeing a tobacco pipe lit with one of the laureate’s odes:―― While the soft song that warbles George’s praise From pipe to pipe the living flame conveys, Critics, who long have scorn’d, must now admire, For who can say his Ode now wants its fire! [Sidenote: _THE JACOBITE MUSE._]