Download Volume 12 here

382 Gaelic Society of Inueniess.
papers, specifying the LoikIoii Evening Post and Westminster
Journal, and pi'omises to pay him in " Bewlie sahnon and good
ckret" wlien he couies to visit him.
There are also allusions to his wife and her wickedness iu
some of the letters, but students of the history of the Highlands
at that period would not find anything which has not already been
published, and, indeed, Lovat's account of the family dispute is to
be found in greater detail in some of his letters printed in the
second volume of that splendid work, "Tlie Lairds of Grant," by
Dr William Fraser, Edinburgh.
This paper may be properly brought to a conclusion with a
letter from young Simon, Master of Lovat, to his fatlier, dated
Edinburgh, May 22, 1740, when he was 13 years of age. His
appreciation of the Gaelic language must commend his memory to
the members of this Association :
My Dear Papa,—I received the honour and pleasure of
your Lordship's letter by the last post, and I am exceedmg glad
to hear that your Lordship is in perfect good health. I am very
glad that Mr Donald* is in a fair way to get the better of all his
enemies, and tliat he is almost done with those tyrannick bigot
clergy of Ross. I believe the Brig, will be very happy in having
him for a Governour, who, I fancy, has much need of one. I
am veiy glad that your Lordship is pleased with my write this
post. I do assure your Lordship I will take as much care of it
as possible. But whoever has informed your Lordship that I
neglect the Earse, has greatly misinformed your Lordship, for
there is none in tliis house, exce})t Mr Blair, but speak Earse,
and there is not a day but we speak it at dinner, super, and
brakefast, and I know your I.iOrdship would rather me lose Latin
and Gi-eek than lose it, and that is the great reason, though I had
no other to retain it; but I don't believe, though I was to go
through the world now that I would lose it, and, as to my having
tlic Edinlnirgh Ton, that is wliat I cannot help ; for when I
was at Glasgow, I had the Glasgow Ton, and now the Edinburgh
*This was Mr Donald Fraser, Tutor or "Governour" to Lovat's sons
Simon and Alexander. The latter is nferr. d to in this letter as "the Brig"
—Brii^adicr— the nmie usually applied to him ))y his father. Mr Donald
became niiiiifeter of Killeai nan in 1744, and of Fcrintosii in 1757. At his
death he left a large niiml>cr of h-tters from Lord Lovat to himself, Lord
Loudon, and others, and these have now been, placed by his great grandson,
the Rev. Hector Fraser, Halkirk, in the hands of Mr William Mackay,
RoHeitor, Inverness, witli a view to their publication in the ne.xt vulume of
onr Transactions.
—