and restorer of the lost honour of the court of Mantua-O, Crichtoun, Crichtoun! At which last words, the prince hearing them uttered by the lady in the world he loved best, and of the man in the world he most affected, was suddenly seized upon by such extremity of sorrow for the unhappiness of that lamentable mischance, that not being able to sustain the rays of that beauty, whose piercing accent made him conscious of his guilt, he fell flat upon his face, like to a dead man : but knowing omne simile not to be idem, he quickly arose; and, to make his body be what it appeared, fixed the hilt of the sword wherewith he had killed Crichtoun, fast betwixt two stones, at the foot of a marble statue standing in the court, (after the fashion of those staves with iron pikes at both ends, commonly called Swedish feathers, when stuck into the ground to fence musqueteers from the charge of horse,) then having recoiled a little from it, was fetching a race to run his breast (which for that purpose he had made open) upon the point thereof, (as did Cato Uticensis after his lost hopes of the recovery of the commonwealth of Rome,) and assuredly (according to that his intent) had made a speedy end of himself, but that his three gentlemen (one by stopping him in his course, another by laying hold on him by the middle, and the third by taking away the sword) hindered the desperate project of that autochtony. The prince being carried away in that mad, frantic, and distracted humour (befitting a Bedlam better than a serralio) into his own palace, where all manner of edgetools were kept from him all that sad night, for fear of executing his former design of self-murder; as soon as to his father, my lord duke on the next morning by seven o'clock, (which, by the usual computation in that country, came at that season of the year to be near upon fourteen hours, or fourteen o'clock,) the story of the former night's tragedy was related, and that he had solemnly vowed he should either have his son hanged, or his head struck off, for the committing of a so ingrate, enormous, and detestable crime; one of his courtiers told him, that (by all appearance) his son would save his highness' justice a labour, and give it nothing to do; for that he was like to hang himself, or after some other manner of way to turn his own atropos. The whole court wore mourning for him full three quarters of a year together his funeral was very stately, and on his hearse were stuck more epitaphs, elegies, threnodies, and epicediums, than, if digested into one book, would have outbulked all Homer's works; some of them being couched in such exquisite and fine Latin, that you would have thought great Virgil and Baptista Mantuanus, 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, Petrarch, and Bembo, had been purposely resuscitated, to stretch even to the utmost their poetic 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 any thing handsome, in a memorial of his worth, had his effigies in a little oval tablet of

gold, hanging 'twixt their breasts, and held (for many years together) that metamazion, or intermammilary ornament, as a 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 mistress and future wife, (although she had good rents and revenues of her own by inheritance,) was pleased to confer a pension of five hundred ducats a-year: 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; and resolved, as none before Crichtoun had the possession of her body, that no man breathing should enjoy it after his decease."

This will be sufficient to give the reader a full insight into the beauties of the writings of Sir Thomas Urquhart. After sounding the praises of all the celebrated Scotchmen known to fame, and also of all the illustrious obscure who had come to his own knowledge, he arrives at no less a personage than himself; and of this gentleman's praises he is no wise more sparing than in the lavish encomiums of the others. The subject of self is of too copious amature to be capable of being discussed in the compass of an extract. We can only quote a few lines of the commencement, and refer all future biographers of our knight for a confession of faith, a statement of grievances, a list of accomplishments, a catalogue of improvements, and a dictionary of hard words, to the concluding fifty pages of the Escubalauron. He speaks of himself in the third person.

"I dare swear, with a safe conscience, that he never coveted the goods of any, nor is desirous of any more-in matter of worldly means, than the peaceable possession of what is properly his own; he never put his hand to any kind of oath, nor thinks fit to tie his conscience to the implicit injunctions of any ecclesiastical tyranny. He never violated trust, always kept his parole, and accounted no crime more detestable than the breach of faith. He never received money from king nor parliament, state nor court; but in all employments, whether preparatory to, or executional in war, was still his own paymaster, and had orders from himself. He was neither in Duke Hamilton's engagement, nor at the field of Dunbar; nor was he ever forced, in all the several fights he hath been in, to give ground to the enemy, before the day of Worcester battle. To be masked with the veil of hypocrisy, he reputes abominable, and gross dissimulation to contrast the ingenuity of a freeborn spirit. All flattering, smoothing, and flinching for by-ends, he utterly disliketh, and thinks no better of adulatory assentations, than of a gnathonic sycophantizing, or parasitical cogging; he loves to be open hearted, and of an explicit discourse, chusing rather, by such means, to speak what is true to the advantage of the good, than to conceal wickedness under a counterfeit garb of devotion.

By vir

tue of which liberty, though reasonably assumed by him, and never exceeding the limits of prudential prescription, he, in a little book lately published, of the genealogy of his house, had (after the manner of his predecessors, who, for distinction sake, were usually intituled by appellative designations) his proper name affected with the agnominal addition of the word parresiastes, which signifieth one that speaks honestly with freedom; not but that, above all things, he approveth of secrecy in the managing of affairs of moment, and holdeth the life of all great businesses to consist in the closeness of counsel, whilst they are in agitation; but as a woman should not sit with her face masked, in the company of her friends at dinner, nor a man keep himself always skulking behind a buckler, where there is no appearance of a foe; so should the affectedness of a servile silence utterly be exploded, when veracity of elocution is the more commendable quality. This bound he never yet transgressed; and still purposeth to be faithful to his trust. I am not now to dispute the mutual relation of protection and obedience; and how far, to the power God hath placed above us (in imitation of Christ) we are bound to succumb. Those that are thoroughly acquainted with him know his inclinations, both that he will undertake nothing contrary to his conscience, that he will regulate his conscience by the canons of a well grounded faith, and true dictamen of reason, and that to the utmost of his power he will perform whatever he promiseth. As for those that know him not, and yet would in the censure of him as liberally criticise it, as if they were his cardiognosts, and fully versed in his intentions; if they be not men in whom he is concerned, as having authority above him, he will never vex his brain, nor toil his pen, to couch a fancy, or bestow one drop of ink upon them for their satisfaction. It doth suffice him, that the main ground of all his proceedings is honesty; that he endeavoureth the prosecuting of just ends by upright means: and seeing the events of things are not in the power of man, he voluntarily recommendeth unto Providence the over-ruling of the rest: he hath no prejudicate principles, nor will he be wedded to self opinions."

We will only add a few more lines for the benefit of any lady or gentleman, who having neglected their literature in early life may feel desirous of practising their organs of pronunciation on words sufficiently trying.

"I could truly (having before my eyes some known treatises of the author, whose muse I honour, and the strain of whose pen to imitate, is my greatest ambition) 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 synecdochal 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 epiplectic and exegetic modification, with hyperbolical, either

epitatically, or hypocoristically, as the purpose required to be elated or extenuated, they qualifying metaphors, and accompanied with apostrophes; and, lastly, with allegories of all sorts, whether apologal, affabulatory, parabolary, ænigmatic, or paræmial. And, on the other part, schematologetically adorning the proposed theme with the most especial and chief flowers of the garden of rhetoric, and omitting no figure either of diction or sentence that might contribute to the ear's enchantment or persuasion of the hearer. I could have introduced, in case of obscurity, synonimal, exargastic, and palilogetic elucidations; for sweetness of phrase, antimetathetic commutations of epithets; for the vehement excitation of matter, exclamations in the front, and epiphonemas in the rear. I could have used, for the promptlier stirring up of passion, apostrophal and prosopopæial diversions, and for the appeasing and settling of them, some epanorthotic revocations, and aposiopetic restraints. I could have inserted dialogisms, displaying their interrogatory part with communicativelypysmatic and sustentative flourishes; or proleptically, with the refutative schemes of anticipation and subjection: and that part which concerns the responsory, with the figures of permission and concession."

Before we conclude, it should be observed, that the pedigree of the family of Urquharts is appended to this book, in which every step is preserved from Adam, on the male side, to Sir Thomas himself; a list of all the mothers of the primitive fathers of the family, from Eve to the Lady Christian, the mother of our author. Here merely a list of the names of his one hundred and fifty-three fathers is presented to the astonished reader; but in the genealogy; entitled Пavτoxpovóxavov, a work whose title has been already quoted, a regular history of every remarkable individual is given, and the principal events in the history of the world arranged and regulated by the dates of the adventures of the ante and post-diluvian Urquharts.

ART. II.-Coryate's Crudities, reprinted from the Edition of 1611; to which are now added his Letters from India, &c. and Extracts relating to him from various Authors, being a more particular Account of his Travels, (mostly on Foot,) in different parts of the Globe, than any hitherto published. Together with his Orations, Character, Death, &c. With Copper Plates. In Three Volumes, 8vo. London, 1776.

While the name of the renowned "Odcombian Leggestretcher," the facetious Tom Coryate, is known to many, an

acquaintance with his works is, we believe, confined to a very few; and indeed we question whether he does not, in a great degree, owe his widely spread reputation to "the encomiastic and panegyric verses of some of the worthiest spirits of this kingdom," which are prefixed to his Crudities. The traveller himself was one of those harmless and worthy men, whose peculiarities of character afford a butt, against which, their witty and mischievous friends delight to direct the arrows of their jocularity and ridicule. The distinguishing characteristic of Coryate's mind seems to have been a passion for travelling, and an irrepressible desire to render his name famous by his peregrinations. "Of all the pleasures in the world," says he " travel is (in my opinion) the sweetest and most delightful;" and Terry, in his voyage in India, tells us, that he was "so covetous, so ambitious of praise, that he would hear and endure more of it than he could in any measure deserve, being like a ship that hath too much sail and too little ballast," which may account for his prefixing to his travels those ludicrous panegyrics to which we have above alluded.

Fame then was the spur which drove this "single-soled, single souled, and single-shirted observer," to visit distant realms, and to leave his lucubrations a singular and entertaining legacy to posterity. When he left England in the year 1608, he appears to have been little qualified to enter upon his travels, being entirely unacquainted with the modern languages, though his aptitude as a linguist was so great, that he speedily rendered himself master of the various languages which he had occasion to use in the course of his perambulations. During his stay in the East, he acquired the Turkish, the Persian, and the Hindostanee; and, in the latter tongue, made so wonderful a proficiency, that he undertook to out-talk a laundress belonging to the ambassador's household, who used to scold and rail from sun-rise till sun-set, and silenced her so completely by eight o'clock in the morning, that she had not a word more to say. In the other essential requisites of a traveller, he was by no means deficient, possessing a boundless curiosity, and an eye, which, in the language of Solomon, could never be satisfied with seeing, and being at the same time sufficiently cautious, both of being deceived himself, and of deceiving his readers, though he has not altogether escaped the charge of credulity. His observations on his Tour through Europe, are chiefly confined to the history and antiquities of the various places which he visited, on which account some of his cotemporaries gave him the name of a Tomb-stone Traveller, an accusation from which he endeavours to exculpate himself in his preface. In his description of the cities and remarkable edifices which he saw, he is full and minute, and the greatest deficiency observ