Note 794 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

Charles Stuart was so stupidly ignorant, that at the age of twenty-five he could hardly write, and was altogether unable to spell. Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. iii. pp. 165, 166, and appendix, p. ix. After the death of his father, in 1766, this abject creature, who called himself king of England, went to Rome, and took to drinking. Ibid. vol. iii. pp. 351–353. In 1779, Swinburne saw him at Florence, where he used to appear every night at the opera, perfectly drunk. Swinburne's Courts of Europe, vol. i. pp. 253–255; and in 1787, only the year before he died, he continued the same degrading practice. See a letter from Sir J. E. Smith, written from Naples in March 1787, in Smith's Correspond. vol. i. p. 208. Another letter, written as early as 1761 (Grenville Papers, vol. i. p. 366), describes ‘the young Pretender always drunk.’