In the following year, Burns still more satisfactorily illustrated the general feeling as being one of loyalty to the accomplished fact in the person of the king at St. James’s, but with no diminution of respect for the royal race that had lost the inheritance of majesty. This the Scottish bard expressed in the ‘Poetical Address’ to Mr. W. Tytler. He lamented indeed that the name of Stuart was now ‘despised and neglected,’ but, he adds:―― My fathers that name have revered on a throne; My fathers have fallen to right it. Those fathers would spurn their degenerate son, That name should he scoffingly slight it. Still, in pray’rs for King George, I must heartily join The Queen and the rest of the gentry: Be they wise, be they foolish, is nothing of mine; Their title’s avow’d by my country. But why of that epocha make such a fuss, That gave us the Hanover stem? If bringing them over was lucky for us, I’m sure ’twas as lucky for them. But loyalty truce! we’re on dangerous ground, Who knows how the fashions may alter? The doctrine to-day, that is loyalty sound, To-morrow may bring us a halter. This sort of reserve was practised by many Jacobites, in London, as well as in Scotland. There was no knowing what might happen. In 1770, the French minister, De Choiseul, was strongly disposed to help Charles Edward to be crowned at Westminster, but that prince was so helplessly drunk when he arrived at the minister’s house in Paris that he was at once sent back. But the hapless adventurer never lost all hope of finding himself in the Hall or the Abbey. In 1779, Wraxall says that Charles Edward exhibited to the world a very humiliating spectacle. Mrs. Piozzi, on the margin of her copy, wrote――‘Still more so at Florence, in 1786. Count Alfieri had taken away his consort, and he was under the dominion and care of a natural daughter who wore the Garter and was called Duchess of Albany. She checked him when he drank too much or when he talked too much. Though one evening, he called Mr. Greathead up to him, and said in good English, and in a loud though cracked voice: “I will speak to my own subjects in my own way, Sir; aye! and I will soon speak to you, Sir, in Westminster Hall!”’ [Sidenote: _THE COUNT OF ALBANY._] While the Count of Albany was thus dreamily looking towards London, and the Scottish poet was playfully hesitating in his allegiance, there was a Jacobite whose neck was once very near the noose of the halter, but who now was a man whom the Hanoverian king delighted to honour. There is no more perfect illustration of the now utter nothingness of Jacobitism than may be found in an incident which took place at St. James’s this year, namely, the knighting of a man who had fought at Culloden and forged notes in the service of Charles Edward, whom he looked upon as his king, and which king was still existing in Italy. That man was the celebrated engraver, Robert Strange.