Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight Part 10

[196] In the article on Crichton in the _Biographia Britannica_, Dr Kippis subjects our author to grave censure (see p. 158). With respect to Urquhart's present work he says: "Of his total disregard to truth there is incontestible evidence in another work of his, ent.i.tled _The True Pedigree_, etc. In this work it is almost incredible what a number of falsities he has invented, both with respect to names and facts.

Perhaps a more flagrant instance of imposture and fiction was never exhibited; and the absurdity of the whole pedigree is beyond the power of words to express. It can only be felt by those who have perused the Tract itself." It is to be feared that Dr Kippis was mentally akin to the Irish bishop who remarked of _Gulliver's Travels_ when it appeared, that "all was not gospel that was in that book."

Some one has said that the names of Urquhart's ancestors, at any rate on the male side, are very likely those of the giants and heathen in the _Amadis of Gaul_; and certainly Famongomadan, Cartadaque, Madanfabul, Arcalaus, and Basagante remind one of chiefs and heroes of the Cromartie line. In the female line the resemblance is much closer; for Asymbleta, Eromena, and Gonima distinctly recall the Darioleta, Brisena, and Madasima of the romance.

[197] Fountainhall, _Decisions_, ii. 265 and 315; Morrison, _Dictionary of Decisions_, xxvii. 11304.

[198] In some ways the elder Sir Thomas reminds us of the pedantic and undignified monarch, James VI., from whom he received knighthood. Both were the first Protestants of their respective houses, both were attached to prelacy rather than to Presbyterianism, and both were wasteful and slovenly in money matters. If the above conjecture be well founded, they had a further point of resemblance to each other, in their interest in fabulous genealogies. And it may be said of them both that they prepared a series of misfortunes for their chivalrous, high-spirited sons.

CHAPTER VI

??S??????????: or, THE JEWEL, and LOGOPANDECTEISION: or, THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

Sir Thomas Urquhart's previous excursions into literature had been of a somewhat tentative kind, and calculated to whet the desire of a judicious reader for him to enter upon more serious undertakings. He had appeared in the world of letters in several different aspects,--as a man of science, and as the representative and poet, as historian of a family which, for long descent and glorious achievements, could not be rivalled, if his statements concerning it were to be credited,--but no one could forecast, from what he had already published, the nature of his next literary exploit.

The volume which followed the Pedigree of the Urquharts has the strange name above printed,[199] but most of those who have occasion to mention it more than once find it more convenient to call it "The Jewel."[200]

Its contents are of such a character that one who had read it carefully would find it difficult to state off-hand or in a single sentence what they were. A Scottish Divinity professor of somewhat erratic habits began, on one occasion, a lecture in which he was to deal with several miscellaneous items, with the words, "Gentlemen, my subject to-day will be hotch-potch." This is an exact description of _The Jewel_, and those to whom nature has given the mental apparatus needed for appreciating Sir Thomas Urquhart will rejoice and not repine at the fact that the feeding laid before them is of a confused character. Accordingly no logical sequence will be allowed to mar the symmetry of this chapter in which _The Jewel_ is described.

The main contents of the work are lists of the ancestors, male and female, of the Urquhart family from the beginning down to the year 1652, taken from the Pedigree; a narrative of the sad fate that overtook the author's ma.n.u.scripts after the battle of Worcester; some pages of one of them which contained a scheme for a Universal Language; a denunciation of the "unjust usurpation of the Presbyterian Clergy, and the judaical practices of some merchants" by which discredit had been cast upon the Scottish name; an account of Scotsmen famous for martial exploits or for learning during the previous half-century; a statement of personal wrongs inflicted upon the author by ministers of his own parishes; arguments in favour of the union of Scotland and England; and apologies for the simple and unadorned strain in which the work is written. All through the volume Sir Thomas is spoken of in the third person, and the signature of "Christia.n.u.s Presbyteromastix" is attached to the preface, or "the Epistle Liminary," as it is called, but there is scarcely any attempt made to keep up the pretence of anonymity. The object of the writer is to try to obtain for the prisoner of war restoration to complete liberty and the enjoyment of his property, and he seeks to correct the evil impression, which the conduct of certain persons in Scotland had produced upon the English people, by narrating the martial and literary achievements of more worthy representatives of his nation.

The rapidity with which the work had been produced is described by the writer in the following terms. "Laying aside all other businesses," he says, "and cooping my self up daily for some hours together, betwixt the case and the printing press, I usually afforded the setter copy at the rate of above a whole printed sheet in the day; which, although by reason of the smallness of a Pica letter, and close couching thereof, it did amount to three full sheets of my writing; the aforesaid setter, nevertheless (so nimble a workman he was), would in the s.p.a.ce of twenty-four hours make dispatch of the whole, and be ready for another sheet. He and I striving thus who should compose fastest, he with his hand, and I with my brain; and his uncasing of the letters, and placing them in the composing instrument, standing for my conception; and his plenishing of the gally, and imposing of the form, encountering with the supposed equi-value of my writing, we would almost every foot or so jump together in this joynt expedition, and so neerly overtake other in our intended course, that I was oftentimes, (to keep him doing), glad to tear off parcels of ten or twelve lines apeece, and give him them, till more were ready;[201] unto which he would so suddenly put an order, that almost still, before the ink of the written letters was dry, their representatives were, (out of their respective boxes), ranked in the composing-stick; by means of which great haste, I writing but upon the loose sheets of cording-quires, which, as I minced and tore them, looking like pieces of waste paper, troublesome to get rallyed, after such dispersive scattredness, I had not the leisure to read what I had written, till it came to a proof, and sometimes to a full revise. So that by vertue of this unanimous contest, and joint emulation betwixt the theoretick and practical part, which of us should overhye other in celerity, we in the s.p.a.ce of fourteen working daies compleated this whole book, (such as it is), from the first notion of the brain to the last motion of the press; and that without any other help on my side, either of quick or dead, (for books I had none, nor possibly would I have made use of any, although I could have commanded them), then [than]

what, (by the favour of G.o.d), my own judgment and fancy did suggest unto me."[202]

The account which our author gives of the plunder of his ma.n.u.scripts after the battle of Worcester, and of the strange series of accidents by which some of the doc.u.ments which make up _The Jewel_ were preserved, is so odd and amusing that it would be a pity to deprive our readers of it, though it is related by Sir Thomas at great length. "No sooner," he says, "had the total rout of the regal party at Worcester given way to the taking of that city, and surrendring up of all the prisoners to the custody of the marshal-general and his deputies, but the liberty, customary at such occasions to be connived at in favours of a victorious army, imboldened some of the new-levied forces of the adjacent counties to confirm their conquest by the spoil of the captives. For the better atchievement of which designe, not reckoning those great many others that in all the other corners of the town were ferreting every room for plunder, a string or two of exquisite snaps and clean shavers [snappers-up and plunderers?] (if ever there were any), rushing into Master Spilsbury's house, (who is a very honest man, and hath an exceeding good woman to his wife), broke into an upper chamber, where finding, (besides scarlet cloaks, buff suits, arms of all sorts, and other such rich chaffer, at such an exigent escheatable to the prevalent soldier[203]), seven large portmantles ful of precious commodity; in three whereof, after a most exact search for gold, silver, apparel, linen, or any whatever adornments of the body, or pocket implements, as was seized upon in the other four, not hitting on any things but ma.n.u.scripts in folio, to the quant.i.ty of six score and eight quires and a half, divided into six hundred fourty and two quinternions and upwards, the quinternion consisting of five sheets, and the quire of five and twenty; besides some writings of suits in law, and bonds, in both worth above three thousand pounds English, they in a trice carried all whatever els was in the room away save those papers, which they then threw down on the floor as unfit for their use; yet immediately thereafter, when upon carts the aforesaid baggage was put to be transported to the country, and that by the example of many hundreds of both horse and foot, whom they had loaded with spoil, they were a.s.saulted with the temptation of a new booty, they apprehending how useful the paper might be unto them, went back for it, and bore it straight away; which done, to every one of those their camarads whom they met with in the streets, they gave as much thereof, for packeting up of raisins, figs, dates, almonds, caraway, and other such like dry confections and other ware, as was requisite; who, doing the same themselves, did together with others kindle pipes of tobacco with a great part thereof, and threw out all the remainder upon the streets....

"Of those dispersedly-rejected bundles of paper, some were gathered up by grocers, druggists, chandlers, pie-makers, or such as stood in need of any cartapaciatory utensil, and put in present service, to the utter undoing of all the writing thereof, both in its matter and order. One quinternion, nevertheless, two days after the fight on the Friday morning, together with two other loose sheets more, by vertue of a drizelling rain, which had made it stick fast to the ground, where there was a heap of seven and twenty dead men lying upon one another, was by the command of one Master Braughton taken up by a servant of his; who, after he had (in the best manner he could) cleansed it from the mire and mud of the kennel, did forthwith present it to the perusal of his master; in whose hands it no sooner came, but instantly perceiving by the periodical couching of the discourse, marginal figures, and breaks here and there, according to the variety of the subject, that the whole purpose was destinated for the press, and by the author put into a garb befitting either the stationer or printer's acceptance; yet because it seemed imperfect, and to have relation to subsequent tractates, he made all the enquiry he could for trial whether there were any more such quinternions or no; by means whereof he got full information that above three thousand sheets of the like paper, written after that fashion, and with the same hand, were utterly lost and imbezzeled, after the manner aforesaid; and was so fully a.s.sured of the misfortune, that to gather up spilt water, comprehend the windes within his fist, and recover those papers again, he thought would be a work of one and the same labour and facility."[204]

The anonymous personage who gives the above account says that he heard of Mr Braughton's discovery of these remarkable doc.u.ments, and also of "the great moan made for the loss of Sir Thomas Urquhart's ma.n.u.scripts,"

and, putting the two facts together, resolved to ask Sir Thomas if the papers found at Worcester belonged to him. He examined them, and identified them as part of the preface to a grammar and lexicon of a Universal Language, of which he was the inventor. The loss of a work of such a size and of such great importance did not greatly depress him. He stated that if he got but encouragement and time, freedom and the enjoyment of his ancestral estates, he doubted not but that he could supply the missing sheets--the originals of which had come to such base uses and disastrous fate at Worcester. The papers, therefore, found by Mr Braughton are published in order that the readers may see the reasonableness of giving Sir Thomas what he asked, in view of the astounding benefits which he would in return confer upon them. This is put with great clearness and brevity in a couplet prefixed to the above narrative:

"He should obtain all his desires, Who offers more than he requires."

The fragment of the treatise concerning the Universal Language, which was picked up out of the gutter of Worcester streets, wiped clean, and presented to the public in _The Jewel_, was republished with additions in Sir Thomas Urquhart's next work, so that we may here pa.s.s it over without further notice and allude to some of the other matters treated of.

In order to vindicate the honour of his country, Sir Thomas Urquhart tells at considerable length of the fame won by various compatriots of his in war in every part of Europe, during the earlier half of the seventeenth century, and he draws the attention of his readers to the fact that, at no battle in the period named, were all the Scots that fought overthrown and totally routed. The explanation of this statement is that there were always Scots on both sides, so that, if some were defeated and taken prisoners, others of that nation were victorious and givers of quarter. This part of the work is of great historical value, and, as Burton remarks, is not liable to the reproach of Urquhart's usual wandering profuseness of language--its leading defect, on the other hand, being its too great resemblance at times to a muster-roll.

The choicest and most remarkable pa.s.sage in Sir Thomas Urquhart's original works is, undoubtedly, the description he gives in _The Jewel_ of his fellow-countryman "the Admirable Crichton," who belonged to the latter part of the sixteenth century. In an appendix[205] our readers may find a long extract from it, in which that hero's feats are related.

But for fear of making the appendices out of all proportion to the size of this volume, the whole sketch might have been given. To most people the name of "the Admirable Crichton" is now a mere proverbial phrase to describe a universal genius, and whether the person who bore it is a historical or a mythical character, is a matter of some uncertainty. If any who are possessed of only this amount of information on the subject seek for more by reading our author's description of Crichton, the probability is that they will decide that he is quite mythical. The extraordinary flightiness, turgidity, and bombast which mark the narrative, in spite of its many conspicuous merits, make it seem a mere piece of burlesque, rather than a genuine history;[206] and yet there is ample evidence of an unimpeachable kind of the truthfulness of the main statements which it contains. Sir Thomas Urquhart's narrative was for a long time one of the princ.i.p.al sources of information concerning the brilliant young Scotchman, and the result was that a general disbelief in the whole history became prevalent.[207] As Burton says, "It was from the hands of Sir Thomas Urquhart that the world accepted of an idol which, after a period of worship, it cast down, but so hastily, as it was discovered, that it had again to be set up, but rather in surly justice than the old devout admiration."[208] Tytler, in his _Life of the Admirable Crichton_, gives full proof from contemporary writers that the accomplishments and feats ascribed to that personage are authentic.

James Crichton was born in 1560, of a n.o.ble family, at Eliock, in Perthshire. At the age of ten he became a student at St. Andrews, then the most famous university in Scotland. Before he was fifteen years of age he graduated as Master of Arts, and stood third in order of merit among the students of his year. After leaving the university he spent three years in the pursuit of learning, devoting himself to one after another of the various branches of the science and philosophy of his time, until he had gone through nearly the whole of them; and, by force of natural ability, aided, no doubt, by intense application, he acquired the use of ten different languages.

Some time probably in the year 1578 he began his foreign travels, with the desire not only to enlarge his experience of the world, but also to display the extent of his learning in those public disputations which were still in fashion at the continental universities. In form and countenance he is said to have been a perfect model of manly beauty; whilst in all the accomplishments of his time he was as well versed as in the branches of learning. He was a skilful swordsman, a bold rider, a graceful dancer, a sweet singer, and a cultivated musician. Soon after his arrival in Paris he set up, in accordance with a custom of the time, in various parts of the city, challenges to literary and philosophic disputation, and announced that he would present himself on a certain day at the College of Navarre, to answer any questions that might be put to him "in any science, liberal art, discipline, or faculty, whether practical or theoretic," and this in any one of twelve specified languages--Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, English, Dutch, Flemish, or Selavonian. Our readers may find in the appendix a full narrative in Sir Thomas Urquhart's inimitable style of this extraordinary episode. Though Crichton seemed to make no preparation for the learned encounter, to which he had challenged the most scholarly men in France, he acquitted himself in such a manner as to astonish all beholders, and to receive the congratulations of the president and professors of the University of Paris. From this display of his intellectual powers and acquirements, as well as from the brilliant figure he cut at the b.a.l.l.s and tournaments, which were such favourite employments of the Court of France at that time, he acquired the t.i.tle by which he is now universally known--that of "the Admirable Crichton."[209]

It is worth while to compare the pa.s.sage in Rabelais which describes the similar feats of the giant Pantagruel with the account Sir Thomas Urquhart gives of Crichton's intellectual tournaments.[210] To us there seems something very ridiculous in the practice of posting up placards on the walls, challenging all-comers to disputation, but in the sixteenth century it would not necessarily appear in this light.

Rabelais, indeed, laughed at it; but then he laughed at many things which the people of his time did not think absurd. John Hill Burton is of the opinion that Sir Thomas Urquhart, in describing the way in which Crichton conducted himself on the field which had witnessed Pantagruel's feats, had the ridicule of Rabelais in view, and that, in spite of his laudations, we cannot help having the impression that his tongue is all the time in his cheek. We think that this is unfair to Sir Thomas. There is no reason why those who looked on in admiration at a real tournament should not also enjoy seeing a burlesque one. So that it is quite possible that our author smiled while he translated the French satire, and that he glowed with honest pride and admiration as he recounted his fellow-countryman's exploits before the University of Paris.

After serving for a couple of years in the French army, Crichton journeyed into Italy, and in the month of August, 1580, arrived in Venice. He made the acquaintance of the famous printer, Aldus Manutius, who introduced him to the princ.i.p.al men of learning and note in that city. Here he maintained the reputation he had acquired in Paris, and lives of him were written and published. From Venice he proceeded to Padua, and from thence to the Court of Mantua, where the adventure occurred with which Sir Thomas Urquhart begins the narrative of his celebrated fellow-countryman's exploits, namely, the defeat and death of the travelling bravo, whose challenge he had accepted. Sir Thomas is the only authority for this incident in Crichton's history. As there is no reason to believe that he invented it, we are at liberty to suppose that he found it in some one of the lives of Crichton which he met with in his Italian travels, but which has not come down to us, or that he heard of it from some of those who witnessed it. For, as Urquhart was born only twenty-three years after Crichton's death, he must, in the course of his continental travels, have met some who were his contemporaries.[211]

In consequence of this achievement, and also of the brilliant reputation acquired by Crichton, he was appointed by the Duke of Mantua, companion and tutor to his son, Vincenzio de Gonzaga, a young man of some literary culture, but of furious temper and dissolute morals. Very soon after, Crichton met his death in a tragical manner. He was walking home one evening in the streets of Mantua, from a visit to his mistress, and was playing a guitar, when suddenly he was attacked by a riotous party of men in masks, whom, however, he speedily put to flight. He seized the leader of the party, overpowered him, and tore off his mask, and found to his horror that it was his own pupil, the son of the Duke of Mantua.

He instantly dropped upon one knee, and, in a spirit of romantic devotion, took his sword by the blade, and presented its hilt to the prince. Vincenzio, heated with wine, irritated at his discomfiture, and also, it is said by some, inspired by jealousy, took the sword and plunged it into Crichton's heart. The brilliant young Scotsman was but twenty-two years of age when he thus met his fate.

The narrative which Sir Thomas Urquhart gives of the death of his hero is marked by the same richness of description as is to be found in the account of his exploits as a scholar, a swordsman, and an actor. In language of astonishing luxuriance and frequent happiness of phrase, he enlarges upon the incidents of the last evening of Crichton's life, and depicts the tender intercourse of the lovers before the sudden and bloodly close of their courtship. With a minuteness which, as Tytler remarks, reminds one of the mult.i.tude of particulars by the enumeration of which Mrs Quickly sought to bring to Falstaff's remembrance his promise to marry her,[212] Sir Thomas Urquhart depicts the lovers in the "alcora.n.a.l paradise" in which they were embowered on that evening.

"Nothing," he says, "tending to the pleasure of all the senses was wanting; the weather being a little chil and coldish, they on a blue velvet couch sate by one another towards a char-coale fire burning in a silver brasero, whilst in the next room adjacent thereto a pretty little round table of cedar wood was a covering for the supping of them two together; the cates prepared for them, and a week before that time bespoke, were of the choisest dainties and most delicious junkets that all the territories of Italy were able to afford, and that deservedly, for all the Romane Empire could not produce a completer paire to taste them."[213]

A tragical note rings through the description of the lamentation of the hapless girl over her murdered lover. "She, rending her garments and tearing her haire, like one of the Graces possest with a Fury, spoke thus: 'O villains! what have you done? you vipers of men, that have thus basely slaine the valiant Crichtoun, the sword of his own s.e.xe and the buckler of ours, the glory of this age, and restorer of the lost honour of the Court of Mantua: O Crichtoun, Crichtoun!'"[214]

The sequel of the story is in the same vein of florid eloquence. "The whole court," says Sir Thomas, "wore mourning for him full three quarters of a yeer together. His funeral was very stately, and on his hea.r.s.e were stuck more epitaphs, elegies, threnodies, and epicediums, then [than], if digested into one book, would have outbulk't all Homer's works; some of them being couched in such exquisite and fine Latin, that you would have thought great Virgil, and Baptista Mantua.n.u.s, for the love of their mother-city, had quit the Elysian fields to grace his obsequies; and other of them, besides what was done in other languages, composed in so neat Italian, and so purely fancied, as if Ariosto, Dante, Petrark, and Bembo had been purposely resuscitated, to stretch even to the utmost their poetick vein to the honour of this brave man; whose picture till this hour is to be seen in the bed-chambers or galleries of the most of the great men of that nation, representing him on horseback, with a lance in one hand and a book in the other; and most of the young ladies likewise, _that were anything handsome_,[215] in a memorial of his worth, had his effigies in a little oval tablet of gold hanging 'twixt their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and held, for many yeers together, that metamazion, or intermammilary ornament, an as necessary outward pendicle for the better setting forth of their accoutrements, as either fan, watch, or stomacher. My lord Duke, upon the young lady that was Crichtoun's mistres and future wife, although she had good rents and revenues of her own by inheritance, was pleased to conferr a pension of five hundred ducats a yeer. The Prince also bestowed as much on her during all the days of his life, which was but short, for he did not long enjoy himself after the cross fate of so miserable an accident. The sweet lady, like a turtle bewailing the loss of her mate, spent all the rest of her time in a continual solitariness."[216]

After giving a long list of his fellow-countrymen who had won fame in foreign lands by their valour, learning, or skill, in order to put to silence those who maligned his nation, Sir Thomas Urquhart takes up a less pleasing topic--that of contemporary politics. In the plainest and most forcible manner he repudiates the whole policy of the dominant party in Scotland, and declares that a true Royalist or Malignant like himself had much more in common with an Independent, than either of them had with a Presbyterian; and he enlarges upon the turbulent disloyalty with which so many of the last-named party had, in his opinion, conducted themselves towards their sovereigns since Queen Mary's time, evidently in forgetfulness for the moment that his newly-found friends, the Independents, had executed Charles I. and abolished monarchy.

His account of the mode in which the Presbyterian or "Consistorian"

party were in the habit of treating their kings is very amusing. "Of a king," he says, "they onely make use for their own ends, and so they will of any other supreme magistracie that is not of their own erection.

Their kings are but as the kings of Lacedemon, whom the Ephors presumed to fine for any small offence; or as the puppy [puppet] kings, which, after children have trimmed with bits of taffata, and ends of silver lace, and set them upon wainscoat cupboards besides marmalade and sugar-cakes, are often times disposed of, even by those that did pretend so much respect unto them, for a two-peny custard, a pound of figs, or mess of cream. Verily, I think they make use of kings in their Consistorian State, as we do of card kings in playing at the hundred; any one whereof, if there be appearance of a better game without him, and that the exchange of him for another incoming card is like to conduce more for drawing of the stake, is by good gamesters without any ceremony discarded: or as the French on the Epiphany-day use their _Roy de la Febre_, or king of the bean; whom, after they have honoured with drinking of his health, and shouting _Le Roy boit, le Roy boit_, they make pay for all the reckoning; not leaving him sometimes one peny, rather then [than] that the exorbitancie of their debosh should not be satisfied to the full. They may be likewise said to use their king as the players at nine-pins do the middle kyle, which they call the king; at whose fall alone they aim, the sooner to obtain the gaining of their prize; or as about Christmas we do the King of Misrule, whom we invest with that t.i.tle to no other end but to countenance the baccha.n.a.lian riots and preposterous disorders of the family where he is installed.

The truth of all this appears by their demeanour to Charles the Second, whom they crowned their king at Sterlin, and who, though he be for comeliness of person, valour, affability, mercy, piety, closeness of counsel, veracity, foresight, knowledge, and other vertues both moral and intellectual, in nothing inferior to any of his hundred and ten predecessors, had nevertheless no more rule in effect over the Presbyterian Senate of Scotland, then [than] any of the six foresaid mock-kings had above those by whom they were dignified with the splendour of royal pomp."[217]

The pa.s.sage in _The Jewel_ which tells of the faults of the clergy, as ill.u.s.trated by the conduct of the ministers of the parishes of which Sir Thomas was patron, has already been given in these pages, and therefore need not be repeated here; but room must be found for the paragraph in which he denounces those who by their covetousness had cast a slur upon the Scottish name. The art of writing such English perished with him, its inventor; and one cannot be too thankful for such a pa.s.sage as the following. "Another thing there is," he says, "that fixeth a grievous scandal upon that nation in matter of philargyrie, or love of money, and it is this: There hath been in London, and repairing to it, for these many years together, a knot of Scotish bankers, collybists, or coine-coursers, of traffickers in merchandise to and againe, and of men of other professions, who by hook and crook, _fas et nefas_, slight and might, (all being as fish their net could catch), having feathered their nests to some purpose, look so idolatrously upon their Dagon of wealth, and so closely, (like the earth's dull center), hug all unto themselves, that for no respect of vertue, honour, kinred, patriotism, or whatever else, (be it never so recommendable), will they depart from so much as one single peny, whose emission doth not, without any hazard of loss, in a very short time superlucrate beyond all conscience an additionall increase to the heap of that stock which they so much adore; which churlish and tenacious humor hath made many that were not acquainted with any else of that country, to imagine all their compatriots infected with the same leprosie of a wretched peevishness, whereof those _quomodocunquizing_ cl.u.s.terfists and rapacious varlets have given of late such cannibal-like proofs, by their inhumanity and obdurate carriage towards some, (whose shoe-strings they are not worthy to unty), that were it not that a more able pen then [than] mine will a.s.suredly not faile to jerk them on all sides, in case, by their better demeanour for the future, they endeavour not to wipe off the blot wherewith their native country, by their sordid avarice and miserable baseness, hath been so foully stained, I would at this very instant blaze them out in their names and surnames, notwithstanding the vizard of Presbyterian zeal wherewith they maske themselves, that like so many wolves, foxes, or Athenian Timons, they might in all times coming be debarred the benefit of any honest conversation."[218]

After suggesting a number of ways in which the tone of society in Scotland might be raised and sweetened--one of which is the establishment of "a free schoole and standing library in every parish"[219]--Sir Thomas proceeds to argue in a very sensible and convincing manner for complete union between Scotland and England. The subject is introduced by lengthy quotations from speeches by Bacon, delivered by him in Parliament as far back as the year 1608, in which the advantages of such an arrangement are set forth.

The style of our author is seen at its worst in the peroration to _The Jewel_, in which he apologizes for the comparative simplicity, if not baldness, by which, in the opinion of some, it might be thought to be characterised. "I could truly," he says, "have enlarged this discourse with a choicer variety of phrase, and made it overflow the field of the reader's understanding, with an inundation of greater eloquence; and that one way, tropologetically, by metonymical, ironical, metaphorical, and synecdochical instruments of elocution, in all their several kinds, artificially affected, according to the nature of the subject, with emphatical expressions in things of great concernment, with catachrestical in matters of meaner moment; attended on each side respectively with an epiplectick and exegetick modification; with hyperbolical, either epitatically or hypocoristically, as the purpose required to be elated or extenuated, with qualifying metaphors, and accompanied by apostrophes; and lastly, with allegories of all sorts, whether apologal, affabulatory, parabolary, aenigmatick, or paraemial. And on the other part, schematologetically adorning the proposed theam with the most especial and chief flowers of the garden of rhetorick, and omitting no figure either of diction or sentence, that might contribute to the ear's enchantment, or perswasion of the hearer. I could have introduced, in case of obscurity, synonymal, exargastick, and palilogetick elucidations; for sweetness of phrase, antimetathetick commutations of epithets; for the vehement excitation of a matter, exclamation in the front, and epiphonemas in the reer. I could have used, for the promptlier stirring up of pa.s.sion, apostrophal and prosopopiel diversions; and, for the appeasing and settling of them, some epanorthotick revocations, and aposiopetick restraines. I could have inserted dialogismes, displaying their interrogatory part with communicatively pysmatick and sustentative flourishes; or proleptically, with the refutative schemes of antic.i.p.ation and subjection, and that part which concerns the responsory, with the figures of permission and concession. Speeches extending a matter beyond what it is, auxetically, digressively, transitiously, by ratiocination, aetiology, circ.u.mlocution, and other wayes, I could have made use of; as likewise with words diminishing the worth of a thing, tapinotically, periphrastically, by rejection, translation, and other meanes, I could have served myself."[220]

He goes on for a long time in this strain, and is at pains to explain that, if the work had been written in this more elaborate manner, it would not necessarily have been found tedious even by young ladies. "I could have presented it to the imagination," he says, "in so spruce a garb, that spirits blest with leisure, and free from the urgency of serious employments, would happily have bestowed as liberally some few houres thereon as on the perusal of a new-coined romance, or strange history of love adventures. For although the figures and tropes above rehea.r.s.ed seem in their _actu signato_, (as they signifie meer notional circ.u.mstances, affections, adjuncts, and dependencies on words), to be a little pedantical, and to the smooth touch of a delicate ear somewhat harsh and scabrous, yet in their exerced act, (as they suppone for things reduplicatively as things in the first apprehension of the minde, by them signified), I could, even in far abstruser purposes, have so fitly adjusted them with apt and proper termes, and with such perspicuity couched them, as would have been suitable to the capacities of courtiers and young ladies,[221] whose tender hearing, for the most part, being more taken with the insinuating harmony of a well-concerted period, in its isocoletick and parisonal members, then [than] with the never-so-pithy a fancy of a learned subject, dest.i.tute of the ill.u.s.triousness of so pathetick ornaments, will sooner convey perswasion to the interior faculties from the ravishing a.s.sault of a well-disciplined diction, in a parade of curiously-mustered words in their several ranks and files then [than] by the vigour and fierceness of never so many powerful squadrons of a promiscuously-digested elocution into bare logical arguments; for the sweetness of their disposition is more easily gained by undermining pa.s.sion then [than]

storming reason, and by the musick and symmetry of a descourse in its external appurtenances, then [than] by all the puissance imaginary of the ditty or purpose disclosed by it."[222]

The last of Sir Thomas Urquhart's original works was his "LOGOPANDECTEISION, or an INTRODUCTION TO THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE," a portion of which, as already mentioned, had been embedded in the conglomerate ma.s.s of _The Jewel_. The idea of a universal language was not originated by Urquhart, for it is said that something of the kind had been planned a generation earlier by the celebrated William Bedell (1570-1642), the Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh, who is better known for promoting the translation of the Bible into the Irish tongue. We are told by Burnet, who wrote his life, that he had in his diocese a clergyman named Johnston, a man of ability, but, unfortunately, of "mercurial wit." In order to give him adequate employment, and to keep him, we suppose, out of mischief, Bedell planned out a scheme for a universal character, which should be understood by all nations as readily as the Arabic numerals or the figures in geometry, and started Johnston upon the task of completing it. He made, we are told, considerable progress with the scheme, but his labours were interrupted, and the results of them destroyed, by the frightful rebellion of 1641.

The _Logopandecteision_[223] is divided into six books, which bear names of the remarkable kind which seem to come so readily to Urquhart's tongue, and are so hard to be compa.s.sed by the tongues of others. The "Epistle Dedicatorie" is an elaborate piece of writing, and is animated by considerable bitterness of spirit. It is addressed to n.o.body--the person who has a.s.sisted him in his labours, pitied him in his sorrows, and relieved him in his penury. It is only the first book--ent.i.tled "Neaudethaumata, or Wonders of the New Speech"--which makes a pretence of dealing with the professed subject of the volume, and of laying the great scheme before the reader. Much to the gratification of the judicious student of the work, Urquhart rambles off in the remaining books into autobiographical details, from which we have already gleaned heavily in the earlier chapters of this volume, and the only connexion between them and the Universal Language is that they show the difficulties which prevented the author from carrying out his plan. The sources from which these difficulties arose are vaguely indicated in the t.i.tles of the books: thus, the second is called "Chrestasebeia, or Impious Dealing of Creditors"; the third, "Cleronomaporia, or the Intricacy of a Distressed Successor or Apparent Heir"; the fourth, "Chryseomystes, or the Covetous Preacher"; and the fifth, "Neleodicastes, or the Pitiless Judge." While the sixth book is ent.i.tled "Philoponauxesis, or Furtherance of Industry," and tells of the marvellous benefits which would accrue to all branches of trade, manufacture, and industry in Scotland, if the writer's demands were granted, and he were at liberty to carry out the mult.i.tudinous schemes with which his mind was filled. The volume concludes with requests or "proquiritations" from thirty-two distinct pet.i.tioners, who modestly conceal themselves from public notice under the shelter of the initial letters of their names, that the State would, for the various weighty reasons which they allege, grant the desire of Sir Thomas to be set free, and to be established in possession of the estates and honours which his family had enjoyed from time immemorial. This section of the work suggests failure in ingenuity on the part of the author, for few persons above the condition of idiocy could surely be found capable of believing that the reasons and initials alike were anything else than the concoction of Sir Thomas himself.

Very slight indeed can be the notice which we are able to give of the proposed Universal Language, the description of which, as set forth in the early part of the _Logopandecteision_, is more like an incoherent dream than anything else. There is no evidence that Sir Thomas Urquhart ever really made a grammar or vocabulary of the new language. Indeed, he writes about it in such a manner as to lead one to think that he had made no way in the real working out of the scheme, but merely dreamed of what he was going to do. In the new tongue which was to supersede all others there were to be twelve parts of speech, all words would have at least ten synonyms, nouns and p.r.o.nouns would have eleven cases and four numbers--singular, dual, plural, and redual--and verbs would have four voices, seven moods, and eleven tenses. "In this tongue," says the author, "there are eleven genders,[224] wherein," he truthfully adds, "it exceedeth all other languages." "Every word in this language," we are told, "signifieth as well backward as forward, and however you invert the letters, still shall you fall upon significant words, whereby a wonderful facility is obtained in making of anagrams.... Of all languages, this is the most compendious in complement, and consequently fittest for courtiers and ladies.... As its interjections are more numerous, so are they more emphatical in their respective expression of pa.s.sions, then [than] that part of speech is in any other language whatsoever."[225] And finally Sir Thomas vouches for its conciseness in a hyperbole which it would be difficult to excel. "This language," he says, "affordeth so concise words for numbering, that the number for setting down, whereof would require in vulgar arithmetic more figures in a row then [than] there might be grains of sand containable from the center of the earth to the highest heavens, is in it expressed by two letters."[226] A considerable revenue might be secured if the rule found at the end of some of Grimm's _Household Tales_ were applied to this statement, and strictly enforced: "Whosoever does not believe this must pay a thaler." In a very innocent manner our author excuses himself for the extravagant praise he has poured out upon his own invention. "Why it is," he exclaims, "I should extoll the worth thereof, without the jeopardy of vaine glory, the reason is clear and evident, being necessitated ... to merchandise it for the redintegrating of an ancient family, it needeth not be thought strange, that in some measure I descend to the fashion of the shop-keepers, who, to scrue up the buyer to the higher price, will tell them no better can be had for mony, 'tis the choicest ware in England, and if any can match it, he shall have it for nought.... [And so] I went on in my laudatives, to procure the greater longing, that an ardent desire might stir up an emacity [a propensity to buy], to the furtherance of my proposed end." One is obliged sadly to a.s.sent to his further statement about such conduct--"whereof ... there wanteth not store of presidents [precedents]."[227]

Hugh Miller, animated by the patriotic zeal which prompts one North Briton to stand by another, and with the desire to make out the best case possible for one who was not only a fellow-countryman, but also a fellow-townsman, speaks in high terms of Urquhart's inventive powers as displayed in the _Logopandecteision_. "The new chemical vocabulary," he says, "with all its philosophical ingenuity, is constructed on principles exactly similar to those which he divulged more than a hundred years prior to its invention, in the preface to his Universal Language."[228] This is a statement which it is rather difficult to understand. The only indication of the nature of the new tongue which we can glean from Sir Thomas's description of it, is that every letter of every word in it would have a meaning, so that when anyone who knew the principles of the language heard a word for the first time, he would understand it.[229] Now, of course, it is true that anyone who knows the principle of the nomenclature of salts, to which, we suppose, Hugh Miller refers, can tell a good deal about a salt from the name of it, say, nitrate of pota.s.sium, KNO_{3}, but it would be impossible to invent a systematic nomenclature of which this would not be true.

The same author is also very much impressed by the fact that the new language was to contain the dual, and regards this, on Lord Monboddo's authority, as a proof of philosophical ac.u.men on the part of the inventor. He does not take any notice of the "redual," which the language was also to contain, and which might have been taken as an indication of double-distilled wisdom. Lord Monboddo (1714-1799) says of the Greek language that if there "were nothing else to convince him of its being a work of philosophers and grammarians, its dual number would of itself be sufficient; for as certainly as the principles of body are the point, the line, and the surface, the principles of number are the monad and the duad, though philosophers only are aware of the fact." The idea that this venerated instrument for the expression or concealment of thought was the concoction of a committee of primitive sages, and that they deliberately invented the dual, and added it as another spike to the _chevaux-de-frise_ through which our young people, of both s.e.xes, have to struggle[230] on their way to the Temple of Learning, is truly revolting. One would not like to think that the ancient Greeks were quite so malicious as to do a thing like that. It is more probably the case that, like other Aryans, they received the dual as part of the inheritance of the past, handed down to them, and retained it; while in some of the cognate languages[231] it was gradually rubbed off, very much in the same way as Lord Monboddo's men lost their tails, when they gave up their arboreal habits, and betook themselves to sedentary occupations.

FOOTNOTES:

[199] Its t.i.tle-page is as follows:--??S??????????: Or, The Discovery of A MOST EXQUISITE JEWEL, more precious then [than] DIAMONDS inchased in Gold, the like whereof was never seen in any age; found in the kennel of _Worcester_-streets, the day after the Fight, and six before the Autumnal Equinox, _anno_ 1651. Serving in this place, To Frontal a VINDICATION of the honour of SCOTLAND, from that Infamy, whereinto the Rigid _Presbyterian party_ of that Nation, out of their Covetousness and ambition, most dissembledly hath involved it. _Distichon ad Librum sequitur, quo tres ter adaequant Musarum numerum, casus et articuli._

_voc._ _nom._ 1 _abl._ 2 _abl._ _dat._ O thou'rt a Book in truth with love to many,

3 _abl._ 4 _abl. acc._ _gen._ Done by and for the free'st spoke Scot of any.

_Efficiens et finis sunt sibi invicem causae._ LONDON, Printed by Ja: Cottrel; and are to be sold by _Rich. Buddeley_, at the Middle-Temple-Gate. 1652.

[200] ??S?????????? is supposed to be the Greek for "_Gold out of the dirt_." Dr Irving, the author of a very carefully-written memoir of Sir Thomas Urquhart, in his _Lives of Scottish Writers_, vol. ii., is a little puzzled by this extraordinary name. The latter part of it was, he thought, perhaps connected with a?????--"to-morrow"--in allusion to the fact that this "exquisite Jewel" was taken out of the kennel _the morrow_ after the battle of Worcester. But the word is evidently a????--the Lat. _aurum_, "gold." In the "Postilla" to the Pedigree of the Urquharts, our author says that "the shire of Cromartie ... hath the names of its towns, villages, hamlets, dwellings, promontories, hillocks, temples, dens, groves, fountains, rivers, pools, lakes, stone heaps, akers, and so forth, of pure and perfect Greek." We need not be surprised that Sir Thomas's Greek has more affinity with the vernacular form of the language current in the Cromartie of his time than with the Attic of the age of Pericles,