Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/291

Rh so great a conquest of reputation, he might by such means be very suddenly enriched, he projected a course of exchanging the blunt to the sharp, and the foils into tucks; and in this resolution, providing a purse full of gold, worth near upon four hundred pounds, English money, travelled alongst the most especial and considerable parts of Spain, France, the Low Countries, Germany, Pole, Hungary, Greece, Italy, and other places, wherever there was greatest probability of encountering with the eagerest and most atrocious duellists; and immediately after his arrival to any city or town that gave apparent likelihood of some one or other champion that would enter the lists and cope with him, he boldly challenged them, with sound of trumpet, in the chief market place, to adventure an equal sum of money against that of his, to be disputed at the sword's point, who should have both." Sir Thomas goes on to relate the success of this bravo of Italy, whose person and character he has sketched with so masterly a pencil. "At last returning homewards to his own country, loaded with wealth, or rather the spoil of the reputation of 'these foreigners, whom the Italians call Tramontane, he, by the way, after his accustomed manner of aboarding other places, repaired to the city of Mantua." Having received the protection of the duke, and published his challenge, it was not long before he found opponents willing to engage him on his own terms. "For it happened at the same time, that three of the most notable cutters in the world, (and so highly cried up for valour, that all the bravoes of the land were content to give way to their domineering, how insolent soever they should prove, because of their former-constantly-obtained victories in the field,) were all three together at the court of Mantua; who hearing of such harvest of five hundred pistoles, to be reaped (as they expected) very soon, and with ease, had almost contested among themselves for the priority of the first encounter, but that one of my lord duke's courtiers moved them to cast lots who should be first, second, and third, in case none of the former two should prove victorious." Next ensue the successive calamitous combats of these brave men: for he "whose fortune it was to be the first of the three in the field, had the disaster to be the first of the three that was foyled; for at last with a thrust in the throat he was killed dead upon the ground." The second "was laid flat dead upon the place, by means of a thrust he received in the heart;" and the last, "his luck being the same with those that preceded him, by a thrust in the belly, he, within four and twenty hours after, gave up the ghost,"

Sir Thomas manages with the ability, and indeed pretty much in the style, of a standard romancer, the scene which was to wind up the interest of his story to its height. And first he pauses in his narration, to take notice, how these lamentable spectacles caused shame and grief to the "duke and citie of Mantua;" and how "the conquering duellist, proud of a victorie so highly tending to both his honour and profit, for the space of a whole fortnight, or two weeks together, marched daily along the streets of Mantua (without any opposition or controulment) like another Romulus or Marcellus in triumph." The way thus artfully prepared, the true knight, for whom, as in books of romance, this adventure had been reserved, is introduced—

"—Which the never-too-much-to-be-admired Crichton perceiving—to wipe off the imputation of cowardice lying upon the court of Mantua, to which he had but even then arrived, (although formerly he had been a domestic thereof,) he could neither eat nor drink till he had first sent a challenge to the conqueror, appelling him to repair with his best sword in his hand, by nine of the clock in the morning of the next day, in presence of the whole court, in the same place where he had killed the other three, to fight with him upon this quarrell; that in the court of Mantua, there were as valiant men as he; and, for his better en-