The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...Sala, George Augustus
General
The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...
Sala, George Augustus
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction
'Twas in the summer of 1747 that I put off my Warder's dress for good
and all, the Rebellion being by this time quite Dead and crushed out;
but before I laid down my halbert 'twas my duty to assist at the
crowning consummation of that disastrous Tragedy. One of the Prime
Traitors in the Scottish Risings had been, it is well known, the
notorious Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, of Castle Downie, in Scotland, then
come to be Eighty years old, and as atrocious an old Villain as ever
lived, but so cunning that he cheated the Gallows for three quarters of
a century, and died like a Gentleman, by the Axe, at last. He had been
mixed up in every plot for the bringing back of King James ever since
the Old Chevalier's Father gave up the Ghost at St. Germain's, yet had
somehow managed to escape scot-free from Attainder and Confiscation.
Even in the '45, when he sent the Clan Fraser to join the Young
Chevalier, he tried his best to make his poor Son, the Master of Lovat
(a very virtuous and gallant young Gentleman), the scapegoat for his
misdeeds, playing Fast and Loose between France and the Jacobites on
one side, and the Lord Justice Clerk and the King's Government on the
other. But Justice had him on the hip at last, and the old Fox was
caught. They brought him to London by Easy Stages, as he was, or
pretended to be, mighty Infirm; and while he was resting at an Inn at
St. Alban's, Mr. Hogarth the Painter (whom I have seen many a time
smoking a pipe and making Caricatures of the Company at the Tavern he
used--the Bedford Head, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden: a skilful
Draughtsman, this Mr. Hogarth, but very Uppish and Impudent in his Tone;
for I remember that he once called me Captain Compound, seeing, as the
fellow said, that I was made up of three--Captain Bobadil, Captain
Macheath, and Captain Kyd),--this Mr. H. went down to St. Alban's, and
took a picture of the old Lord, as he sat in his great chair, counting
the strength of the Scottish clans on his fingers. 'Twas afterwards
graved on copper, and had a prodigious sale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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