MacDonald, Sir James, 8th Bt
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- MacDonald, Sir James, 8th Bt
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(1742/3 - 66) of Sleat, Isle of Skye, o. s. of Sir Alexander Macdonald; suc. fa. 1746 as 8th Bt.; Ch.Ch. Oxf. 1759; unm.; d. Rome.
1765 - 6 Mont Cenis (8 Nov. 1765), Turin (by 29 Oct. - 28 Nov.), Milan, Parma, Florence (18 - 22 Dec.), Rome (25 Dec. 1765 - 10 Jan. 1766), Naples (12 Jan. - Apr.), Rome (Apr. - d. 26 Jul.)
At the age of twenty-one Macdonald was considered to have 'the learning and abilities of a professor and a statesman, with the accomplishments of a man of the world'.1 He was already known as 'the Marcellus of the North' when he set out for Italy in 1765 with Ogilvie [or Ogilby] as his tutor.2
They were in Paris in September and Macdonald called on Voltaire at Ferney in October. On 29 October Macdonald wrote to Sir William Pepys from Turin, saying that he proposed shortly to go to Rome and Naples 'in order to come back to the North of Italy in Summer'.3 In November he met Laurence Sterne and the two resolved to travel south together. They left on the 28th and travelled through Milan, Florence and Rome to Naples, where Macdonald's health compelled him to remain after Sterne left early in March 1766. From Rome on 5 January 1766 Macdonald told Pepys that he was leaving in two days for Naples. 'in order to return to Rome in three weeks where I intend to remain until the beginning of May'; he had had 'a soar Throat' in Turin, and a cough in Parma which 'still hangs about me'; he had seen St Peter's and the Pantheon, reflecting that 'all ages have been indebted to superstition for the Advancement of the Arts'; he remarked on the death of the Old Pretender: 'the pope it is said is in a doubt whether he shall venture to give [the Young Pretender] the title of King ... Poor man why will he give himself the air of thinking that England cares on whom he bestows Crown and sceptres'.
His journey to Naples was painful: he had to stop at Capua 'dans un des plus mauvais auberges du monde' and from Capua he travelled 'en litiere'.3 His next undated letter to Pepys was from Naples and complained of 'an universal Rhumatism which confined me a month to my bed, and Room, in the most violent torture. It has left me for a month past, but I am still so weak and so much reduced by the exquisite pain'; he had managed to see Herculaneum and Pompeii and had even climbed Vesuvius; 'the satisfaction of treading that ground [the Bay of Naples] with Virgil in your hand is inconceivable'. On 3 May he wrote to Pepys from Rome, where he had been three weeks (he had given his address there as with M.Barazzi, Banquier).4 Still weak, he had confined his studies to indoors; he intended staying until June, and suggested to Pepys 'that in seven months a man may easily see everything [Italy] affords worthy of curiosity'. Despite his condition, Gavin Hamilton described Macdonald in Rome in April as promising 'to be a first rate Dilettante',5 and it was perhaps at this time that Macdonald bought a marble Venus for Lord Eglinton, which was still with William Hamilton in Naples in 1768.
His last letter to Pepys was written in Rome on 5 July, three weeks before his death; 'of the six months I have been in Italy I have been confined by illness at least three. At this moment I am scarcely able to walk across my room, and am reduced to a mere skeleton by a second attack of rheumatism'; he had been laid up in Frascati where he had gone 'for the benefit of the air', and had just returned to Rome; he was determined to come home as soon as he was sufficiently strong, by Pisa or Lucca, and asked for Pepys's next letter to be directed to M. Frescobaldi, Banquier ? Florence. He died in Rome on 26 July, having named the Abb? Grant as one of his executors,6 and although a Protestant he was given a public funeral (CB). He was buried near the Pyramid of Cestius beneath a column designed by Piranesi,7 and his wall monument in the church at Sleat (Isle of Skye) was designed by James Byres (whom he had met in Naples) and made in Rome (the inscription by John Symonds).8
1. Boswell, Italy, 200n. 2. Sterne Letters, 264 - 5n4. 3. For his letters to Pepys, see Pepys, 277 - 87. 4. Paciaudi cart., cass.81 (to P.M. Paciaudi, 12 Mar. 1766). 5. Broadlands mss (to Ld.Palmerston, 12 Apr. 1766). 6. Pepys, 246. 7. Nylander, 247. R. Battaglia, Prospettiva, 73/4[1994]: 169 - 79. 8. Byres 1987, 133.