About the Earl’s first years in the company of the great Frederick little is known or likely to be known. Deus nobis hæc otia fecit, he may have murmured to himself while he refused the Prince’s insistent prayers for his service, and put his Royal Highness off in a truly Royal way, with his miniature in a snuff-box of mother-of-pearl. The old humourist may have reflected that men had given lands and gear for the cause, and now, like the representative of Lochgarry, have nothing material to show for their loyalty, save an inexpensive snuff-box of agate and gold. No, the Earl would not travel from Venice in 1749 to meet the Prince.

His name occurs in brief notes of Voltaire, then residing with Frederick, and quarrelling with his Royal host. Voltaire kept borrowing books from the Scottish exile, books chiefly on historical subjects. If we may believe Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, then at Berlin, the celebrated Livonian mistress of Keith caused quarrels between him and his brother, and even obliged them to live separately.[24] The Earl gave much good advice to Henry Goring, the Prince’s envoy at that time, and if he was indeed on bad terms with his brother (these bad terms cannot have lasted long), he may have been all the better pleased to go as Frederick’s ambassador to Versailles in August 1751. Thither he took his pretty Turkish captive, and all his household of Pagans, Mussulmans, Buddhists, and so forth. I have elsewhere described the Earl’s relations with Prince Charles, then lurking in or near Paris; his furtive meetings with Goring at lace shops and in gardens, his familiarity with Young Glengarry, who easily outwitted the Earl, and his unprejudiced tolerance of a perfectly Fenian plot—the Elibank Plot—for kidnapping George II., Prince Fecky, and the rest of the Royal Family. The Earl merely looked on. He gave no advice. His ancient memories could not enlighten him as to how the Guards were now posted. ‘What opinion, Mr. Pickle,’ he said to Glengarry, ‘can I entertain of people that proposed I should abandon my Embassy and embark headlong with them?’ The Earl had found a haven at last in Frederick’s favour. He was willing to help the cause diplomatically, to send Jemmy Dawkins to Berlin, to sound Frederick, and suggest that, in a quarrel with England, the Jacobites might be useful. He was ready enough to dine with the exiles on St. Andrew’s Day, but not to go further. When Charles broke with the faithful Goring in the spring of 1754, the Earl broke with him, rebuked him severely, and never forgave him. He had never loved Charles; he now regarded him as impossible, even treacherous, and ceased to be a Jacobite.

The nature of his charges against the Prince will appear later. Meanwhile, as the Prince had behaved ill to Goring, who fell under his new mania of suspicion, as he declined to cashier his mistress, Miss Walkinshaw, in deference to English and Scottish requests, as he was a battered, broken wanderer, sans feu ni lieu, the Earl abandoned him to his fate, and even, it seems, officially ‘warned the party against being concerned with him.’ After forty years of faithful though perfectly fruitless service, the Earl apparently made up his mind to be reconciled, if possible, to the English Government. Though his appointment as ambassador had been a direct insult to Frederick’s uncle, George II., the great diplomatic revolution which brought Prussia and England into alliance was favourable to the Earl’s prospects of pardon.

He probably accepted the Embassy not without hopes of being able to do something for the Cause. James certainly took this view of the appointment. But the end had come. The retreat of Charles in Flanders had been detected at last by the English. The English dread of Miss Walkinshaw, and the quarrel over that poor lady, made themselves heard of in the end of 1753. By January 17, 1754, we find Frederick writing to the Earl that he ‘will secretly be delighted to see him again.’ Frederick bade Marshal Keith send an itinerary of the route which the Earl ‘will do well to follow’ on his return to Prussia. On the same day Keith wrote to his brother the following letter, which shows that their affection, if really it had been impaired, was now revived:—[25]

Frederick did not wish his friend to run any risk of being kidnapped in Hanoverian territory, by the minions of the Elector. The Earl could not be allowed to return at once, for the clouds over Anglo-Prussian relations were clearing, while England was at odds with France, both about the secret fortifying of Dunkirk, contrary to treaty, about the East Indies, and about North America. So Frederick philosophised, in letters to the Earl, concerning the disagreeable yoke he had still to bear, and about the inevitable hardships of mortal life in general. He also asked the Earl to find him a truly excellent French cook. On March 31, Frederick offered the Earl the choice of any place of residence he liked, and expressed a wish that he could retire from politics. He foresaw the crucial struggle of his life, the Seven Years’ War. ‘But every machine is made for its special end: the clock to mark time, the spit to roast meat, the mill to grind. Let us grind then, since such is my fate, but believe that while I turn and turn by no will of my own, nobody is more interested in your philosophical repose than your friend to all time and in all situations where you may find yourself.’

Frederick is never so amiable as in his correspondence with the old Jacobite exile.

At this period, Frederick gave the Earl information of Austrian war preparations, for the service of the French Ministry. Saxony and Vienna excited his suspicions. He did not yet know that he was to be opposed also to France. He was occupied with dramatists and actors, ‘more amusing than all the clergy in Europe, with the Pope and the Cardinals at their head.’ He has to diplomatise between Signor Crica and Signora Paganini, but hopes to succeed before King George has had time to corrupt his new Parliament. Happier letters were these to receive than the heart-broken appeals which rained in from Prince Charles, letters which the Earl had hoped to escape by retiring from his Embassy. Here his negotiations ‘had embroiled him with the cooks of Paris,’ but he had acquired the friendship of d’Alembert, whom he introduced to Frederick. The King thought d’Alembert ‘an honest man,’ and agreed with the Earl’s preference for heart above wit. ‘They who play with monkeys will get bitten,’ which refers to Frederick’s quarrel with Voltaire. The Earl warned the wit that some big Prussian officer would probably box his ears if he persisted in satirising his late host. ‘Rare it is,’ says Frederick, ‘to find, as in you, the combination of wit, character, and knowledge, and it is natural that I should value you all the more highly.’

In May 1754, the Earl, while still pressing to be relieved from duty, was eager to undertake any negotiations as to an entente between Prussia and Spain, a country which he loved. There was an opportunity—General Wall, of an Irish Jacobite house, being now minister in the Peninsula.

The Earl left Paris in the end of June (carrying with him to Berlin poor Henry Goring, who was near death), and accepted the Government of Neufchâtel. While (February 8, 1756) Frederick’s throne was ‘threatened by Voltaire, an earthquake, a comet, and Madame Denis,’ the Earl was trying to soothe Protestant fanaticism, then raging in his little realm.

‘They will tell you, my dear Lord,’ writes Frederick, ‘that I am rather less Jacobite than of old. Don’t detest me on that account.’ It is known, from a letter of Arthur Villettes, at Berne (May 28, 1756), to the English Government, that the Earl was making no secret of his desire to be pardoned.[26] The Earl spoke of the Prince, now, with ‘the utmost horror and detestation,’ declaring that since 1744 ‘his life had been one continued scene of falsehood, ingratitude and villainy, and his father’s was little better.’

Such, alas! are the possibilities of prejudice. The Earl accused Charles of telling the Scots, previous to his expedition in 1745, that the Earl approved of it. There is no evidence in Murray of Broughton that Charles ever hinted at anything of the kind. Charles’s life, from 1744 till he returned to France, is minutely known. He had not been false and villainous. He had been deceived on many hands, by Balhaldie (as the Earl strenuously asserted), by France, by Macleod, Traquair, Nithsdale, Kenmure, by Murray of Broughton, and he inevitably acquired a habit of suspicion. Lonely exile, bitter solitude, then corrupted and depraved him; but the Earl’s remarks are much too sweeping to be accurate, where we can test them. In the case of James we can test them by his copious correspondence. His letters are not, indeed, those of a hero, but of a kind and loving father, who continually impresses on Charles the absolute necessity of the strictest justice and honour, especially in matters of money, ‘for in these matters both justice and honour is concerned’ (‘Memorials,’ p. 372, Aug. 14, 1744). As to politics, James was absolutely opposed to any desperate adventure, any hazarding, on a slender chance, of the lives and fortunes of his subjects. His temper, schooled by long adversity, made him even applaud the reserve of his English adherents, and excuse, wherever it could be excused, the conduct of France, and attempt, by a mild tolerance, to soothe the fatal jealousies of his agents. No Prince has been more ruthlessly and ignorantly calumniated than he whose ‘ails’ and sorrows had converted him into a philosopher no longer eager for a crown too weighty for him, into a devout Christian devoid of intolerance, and disinclined to preach.

The Earl was justified in forsaking a Cause which Charles had made morally impossible. But he believed, in spite of Charles’s contradiction, that he had threatened to betray his adherents. This prejudice is the single blot on a character which, once animated against a man, never forgave.

The correspondence of Frederick with his Governor of Neufchâtel is scanty: he had other business in hand—the struggle for existence. On July 8, 1757, he writes from Leitmentz, thanking the Earl for a present of peas and chocolate. On October 19, 1758, he sends the bitter news of the glorious death of Marshal Keith, and on November 23 offers his condolences, and speaks of his unfortunate campaign.

Probus vixit, fortis obiit, was the Earl’s brief epitaph on his brother. His one close tie to life was broken. That younger brother, who had fished and shot with him, had fought at his side at Sheriffmuir, had shared the dangers of Glenshiel and the outlaw life, who had voyaged with him in so many desperate wanderings, to save whom he had crossed Europe—the brother who had secured for him his ‘philosophic repose’—was gone, leaving how many dear memories of boyhood in Scotland, of common perils, and common labours for a fallen Cause!

And there followed—oh philosophy!—a squabble with Keith’s mistress about the frugal inheritance of one who scorned to enrich himself! ‘My brother had just held Bohemia to ransom, and he leaves me sixty ducats,’ wrote the Earl to Madame Geoffrin. In December 1758, Frederick determined to send the Earl to Spain, where ‘nobody is so capable as you of making himself beloved.’ He wanted peace, but peace with honour. The Earl was merely to watch over Frederick’s interests, and to sound Spain as to her mediation. The King feared a separate Anglo-French peace, with Prussia left out.

By January 6, 1759, Frederick was trying to secure the Earl’s pardon in England, and wrote to Knyphausen and Michell in London. The death of Lord Kintore, the Earl’s cousin, devolved an estate upon him. This Marischal wished to obtain, but he had not changed sides in hope of gaining these lands. Andrew Mitchell wrote to Lord Holderness, on January 8, 1759, from Breslau, saying that Frederick had remarked, ‘I know Lord Marischal to be so thorough an honest man that I am willing to be surety for his future conduct.’ He enclosed a letter to be discreetly submitted to George II., submitting Frederick’s desire for the Earl’s pardon. By February 5, news reached Prussia that George had graciously consented.

There must have been a delay caused by formalities, for the Earl did not send his letter of thanks from Madrid to Sir Andrew Mitchell ‘gratefully acknowledging the goodness of the King’ till August 24, 1759.

So there was ‘the end of an auld sang.’ Charles was hanging about the French coast, for the expedition under Conflans was preparing to carry him, as he hoped, to England: James, in Rome, was receiving his sanguine letters. It was 1744 over again; but the Earl was now of the other party, and James must have felt the loss severely. The bell which was regularly rung at home for the Earl’s birthday, cracked when the news came to Aberdeenshire. ‘I’ll never say “cheep” for you again, Earl Marischal!’—so some local Jacobite translated the broken voice of the old bell. But the Earl manifestly did not win his pardon by discovering and betraying the secret of the family compact between France and Spain, as historians have conjectured. Dates render this, happily, impossible.[27]

The Earl took a humorous view of Jacobite French adventures. ‘The conquest of Ireland by M. Thurot has miscarried,’ he writes to Mitchell (April 2, 1760).[28] Thurot had but two small ships.

The Earl now desired to visit England on his private affairs, and Frederick granted permission. He went in peace, where he had gone in war, but Scotland no longer pleased him. True, his Bill was carried through Parliament, admitting him to the Kintore estates, and, from the Edinburgh newspapers, he heard of a new honour—he was elected Provost of Kintore!

‘I had for me all the blew bonnets to a man, and a Lady whose good heart I respect still more than her birth, tho it be the very highest, she made press me (sic) to ask a pension, assuring me it would cost but one word. I excused myself as having no pretention to merit it. She bid me not name her, in leaving you to guess I do not injure her. She said the same also to Baron Kniphausen.’

Years later, from Neufchâtel, he wrote to Andrew Mitchell, ‘The Provost of Kintore presents his compliments,’ adding some congratulations on Mitchell’s pension.

Not even the Provostship of Kintore reconciled the Earl, a changed man, to a changed Scotland. Conceivably he was not welcomed by the Jacobite remnant around the cracked bell. Bigotry, hypocrisy, and intolerable sabbatarianism were what the Earl disliked in his own country. He was also resolute against marrying, declined faire l’étalon, as Frederick delicately put it. Early in 1761, he made up his mind to return to Neufchâtel, and to compose the quarrels of Protestants and heretics. At Neufchâtel the Earl made an acquaintance rather disagreeable to most English tastes, the moral and sensible Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The philosopher’s account of the Earl is in his ‘Confessions.’ According to him, Marischal, beginning life as a Jacobite, ‘se dégoûta bientôt,’ which is not historically accurate. ‘La grande âme de ce digne homme toute républicaine’ could not endure ‘l’esprit injuste et tyrannique’ of King James! The wicked people of Neufchâtel, whom the Earl ‘tried to make happy,’ ‘kicked against his benevolent cares.’ A preacher ‘was expelled for not wanting many persons to be eternally damned.’

Rousseau went to Neufchâtel to escape the persecution which never ceased to attack this virtuous man. Frederick allowed him to hide his virtues in this hermitage, and made some rather slender offers of provision (twelve louis, says Rousseau), which exasperated the sage. On seeing the Earl his first idea was to weep (Jean-Jacques perhaps followed Richardson in his tearfulness), so extremely emaciated was the worthy peer. Conquering his ‘great inclinations to cry,’ with an effort, Rousseau admired the Earl’s ‘open, animated, and noble physiognomy.’ Without ceremony, and acting as a Child of Nature, Jean-Jacques went and sat down beside the Earl on his sofa. In his noble eye Rousseau detected ‘something fine, piercing, yet in a way caressing.’ He became quite fond of the Earl. Wordsworth has justly remarked that you seldom see a grown-up male weeping freely on the public highway. But, had you been on the road between Rousseau’s house and the Earl’s you might have seen the author of the ‘Nouvelle Héloïse’ blubbering as he walked, shedding larmes d’attendrissement, as he contemplated the ‘paternal kindnesses, amiable virtues, and mild philosophy of the respectable old man.’

I know not whether I express a common British sentiment, but the tears of Jean-Jacques over our Scottish stoic awaken in me a considerable impatience. The Earl was incapable, for his part, of lamentations. Jean-Jacques was too ‘independent’ to be the Earl’s guest. Later, he conceived in that bosom tingling with sensibility that the Earl had been ‘set against him’ by Hume—‘Ils vous ont trompé, ces barbares; mais ils ne vous ont pas changé.’ It was true, the Earl could break Prince Charles’s heart, but he always made allowances for Jean-Jacques. Rousseau, not knowing that the Earl’s heart was true to him, writes: ‘Il se laisse abuser, quelquefois, et n’en revient jamais.... Il a l’humeur singulière, quelque chose de bizarre et étrange dans son tour d’esprit. Ses cadeaux sont de fantaisie, et non de convenance. Il donne ou envoie à l’instant ce qui lui passe par tête, de grand prix, ou de nulle valeur indifféremment.’ Nevertheless the Earl was the cause of Rousseau’s ‘last happy memories.’

The Earl left Neufchâtel; he arranged for Rousseau’s refuge in England. David Hume, who was dear to the Earl, arranged the reception of Rousseau in England, and every one has heard of Rousseau’s insane behaviour, and of the quarrel with Hume. Rousseau wanted to write the History of the Keiths, and asked the Earl for documents. Jean-Jacques was hardly the man to write Scottish family history, and the documents were never entrusted to him.

Here follows the letter on the topic of Rousseau, which the Earl wrote to Hume:—

Rousseau never went so far north, never took Keith Hall for a hermitage, nor scandalised the Kirk Session. After his quarrel with Hume, the Earl did not write freely to him, saying that he wrote little to anyone. He thought, he tells another correspondent, of ‘turning bankrupt in letters.’ ‘My heart is not the dupe of these pretences,’ sighs Rousseau. He took money from the Earl, he took money at many hands. He sent a long deplorable lamentation to Marischal: the Earl has been deceived, a phantom has been exhibited to him as his fond J.-J. R. Probably there was no answer, but the Earl bequeathed to him his watch as a souvenir. ‘Jean Jacques est trop honête home pour ce monde, qui tâche a tourner en ridicule sa delicatesse,’ so the Earl had written from London to Hume in Paris.

He appears, when in England, to have met Hume at Mitcham, and he was devoted to the stout, smiling sceptic, whom he called ‘Defensor Fidei.’

In 1764 the Earl left Neufchâtel for Potsdam, where Frederick built him a house. This he describes in a letter to Hume. The following note (1765) clearly refers to Hume’s report of Helvetius’s absurd anecdote, that Prince Charles showed the white feather on starting for Scotland, and had to be carried on board, tied hands and feet, by Sheridan, George Kelly, and others of the Seven Men of Moidart. Hume repeated this incredible nonsense in a letter to Sir John Pringle, who clearly distrusted the evidence.[31] This appears to be the ‘certain history’ which the Earl asks Hume to get from Helvetius, who had been ‘assured of the fact.’ By whom?

To disseminate this fourth-hand scandal of his former master—scandal which, if true, he himself was in a better position to have heard than Helvetius—was perhaps the least worthy act of the Earl.

The David Floyd of whom he writes occurs often in the Stuart Correspondence. He was of the old St. Germains set, being the son of that Captain Floyd, so much disliked by Lord Ailesbury, who came and went from England to James II., after 1688.

In another letter the Earl advises Hume to consult Floyd on events ‘of which you took a confused note from me at Mitcham.’ Among these facts may be the story, given by Hume on the Earl’s authority, of Charles’s presence at the coronation of George III. No other evidence of this adventure exists.

Here follows the letter:—

This, then, must refer to Helvetius’s lie about the Prince’s cowardice.

The following letters to Hume illustrate the rather blasphemous bonhomie of the Earl, who, because of Hume’s genius and fatness, was wont to speak of him as ‘verbum caro factum.’ He writes of his new hermitage at Potsdam, of his garden, his favourite books (just what we might expect them to be—Montaigne, Swift, Ariosto), of Voltaire, d’Argens, and d’Alembert. He incidentally shows, à propos of a fabled discovery, that Mr. Darwin’s theory would not have astonished him much:—

Other letters to Hume occur in 1765, and are preserved in the Library of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. ‘I am going down hill very fast, but easily, as one that descends the Mont Cenis ramassé, without pain or trouble.’ He mentions the frost and snow at Berlin as severe to un pobre viejo Cristiano Español. He sends turnip seed, a bucolic gift, to Helvetius, and to Madame de Vassé, the lady who concealed Prince Charles in the Convent of St. Joseph.[32]

He mentions that he sups every night with the King, and wishes Hume to share these festivals.

The Earl was infinitely happier with Frederick and the gay freethinkers at Potsdam than in Scotland, where so many friendly heads had fallen, where every sight recalled unhappy things; where the lairds drank too much, and the ministers preached too long, and wits were scarce, and people wanted him to marry and beget heirs (here he had Frederick’s sympathy), and still the cracked old bell kept up its peevish lament, Disloyal, Loyal, Loyal, Disloyal!

Such was the Earl’s correspondence with Hume; they are the letters of a kind, good, humorous old pagan. To d’Alembert also he wrote freely. ‘I have read with much pleasure four volumes of your works, and was really pleased with myself when I found that I could understand them. I want to use my rights as an old fellow, and tell anecdotes.’ Then he gives a Scotch story, which would be more amusing in Scots than in his French. Of Frederick, he says that (unlike Carlyle) he is ‘gey easy to live wi’,’ l’homme du monde le plus aisé à vivre. He announces ‘David Hume is elevated to the sublime dignity of a Saint, by public acclamation: the street where he dwells is entitled La rue de St. David. Vox populi, vox Dei. Amen.’ Again,—the old sinner!—

‘I have received an inestimable treasure, plenary indulgences in articulo mortis, with power to bestow some of them on twelve elect souls. One I send to good David Hume; as I wish you all good things in both worlds, I offer you a place among my chosen.’

The philosopher took a simple pleasure in drolleries which no longer tempt us—we have now been so long emancipated.

The Earl said that in Spain he would have felt obliged to denounce Frederick to the Inquisition. Frederick has given the old exile medicines to make him love him, as Prince Hal did to Falstaff. ‘If he had not bewitched me, would I stay here, where I only see a spectre of the sun, when I might live and die in the happy climate of Valencia?’

So he slipped down the hill in a happy, kind old age. In summer he rose at five, read for an hour, wrote his letters, and burned most of those which he received. Then he had his head shaved, and washed in cold water, dressed, took a drive, or pottered in his garden. Heaven made gardens, surely, for the pottering peace of virtuous eld. At twelve he dined, chiefly on vegetables, taking but one glass of sherry. He had always four or five guests, and, after dinner, left them ‘to make the coffee’—that is, to enjoy a siesta. He never remembered to have remained awake a moment when once his head touched the pillow. Then he took coffee, played piquet, pottered again in the garden, supped on chocolate, and so to bed early. He read much, and thanked a slight loss of memory for the pleasure of being able to read all his favourite authors over again. Rabelais, Montaigne, and Molière were his favourites in French, in English, Shakspeare and the old dramatists. Terence and Plautus he studied in Latin, the Greek writers ‘in cribs.’ Tragedy he could not abide; mirth he loved, and d’Alembert’s informant had come on him laughing aloud when alone. He was full of anecdote, and, having known everybody of note for some seventy years, his talk was delightful. For music, he preferred the pibroch in a strange land, as did Charles, alone and old in Italy. One touch of nature!

He was kindness itself, and loved giving; from Rousseau he met, we are told, the usual amount of gratitude after the quarrel with Hume. But, judging from what Rousseau himself says, on this occasion he was not ungrateful. If he heard, in conversation, a tale of misery, he made no remark, but sought out and succoured the person in distress. To every one who visited him he insisted on making some little present. He maintained a poor woman in comfort; nay, ‘down to spiders and frogs, he was the friend of all created things.’ Being a piquet player of the first force, he would only stake halfpence, and, when his winnings accumulated, laid them out in a feast of fat things for Snell, his big dog. Like Lionardo da Vinci, he could not bear to see a caged bird.

In his last years he was drawn about in a garden chair, his legs failing him. His mortal agony was long and patiently borne: never before had he been ill. ‘Can your physic take fifty years off my life?’ he asked the doctor. He died merely of long life, on May 25, 1778. In 1770 he had described himself to his kinsman, Sir Robert Murray Keith, as ‘nearly eighty.’ In 1778, then, he cannot have been ninety-two, as Mr. Carlyle supposed—probably he was about eighty-five. Years of trouble and sorrow these years would have been to another, but ‘a merry heart goes all the way.’ Physically, and mentally, and morally, the Earl had ever been an example of soundness. In his latest illness he was never peevish. Once ‘he wished he were among the Eskimo, for they knock old men on the head.’

The Earl was not a great man. In conspiracy, in war, in government, in diplomacy, he was a rather oddly ineffectual man. He had, in short, a genius for goodness, and an independence of spirit, a perfect disinterestedness, an inability to blind himself to disagreeable facts, and to the merits of the opposite side—a balance, in fact, of temperament and of humour—which are inconsistent with political success. We may wish that his taste in jokes had been less that of the philosophes. We may wish that, if the Cause was indeed hopeless, he had deserted it without reproaching his old master. He might have abstained from disseminating the tattle of Helvetius. There is very little else which mortal judgment can find to reprehend in brave, honest, generous, humorous, kind George Keith, who was, without Christian faith, the pattern of all the Christian virtues. He was of two worlds—the old Royalist world, and the Age of Revolution—yet undisturbed in heart he lived and died,