Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/292

6 couragement to the desired undertaking, he assured him, that to the foresaid five hundred pistoles, he would adjoin a thousand more ; wishing him to do the like, that the victor, upon the point of his sword, might carry away the richer booty. The challenge, with all its conditions, is no sooner accepted of, the time and place mutually condescended upon, kept accordingly, and the fifteen hundred pistoles, hinc inde, deposited, and the two rapiers of equal weight, length, and goodness, each taking one, in presence of the duke, duchess, with all the noblemen, ladies, magnificoes, and all the choicest of both men, women, and maids of that city, as soon as the signal for the duel was given, by the shot of a great piece of ordinance, of three score and four pound ball, the two combatants, with a lion-like animosity, made their approach to one another."

The combat, as it resembles much in management and fashion those with which the reader of old romances must be well acquainted, so does it likewise come up to them in minuteness, we can hardly say tediousness, for of that the author is incapable. Crichton long kept upon the defensive with his adversary .and showed such excellent dexterity, " that he seemed but to play while the other was in earnest." After long fencing, falsifying, and parrying, warding from tierce to quart, priming, and seconding ; and after every variety of posture had been gone through, "the never-before-conquered Italian finding himself a little faint, enters into a consideration that he may be overmatched;" and sad thoughts seize upon all his spirits. We may indulge the reader with the conclusion of this eventful conflict in the words of its original chronicler; and in these it may possibly be invested with a propriety and interest, which we would but vainly labour to bestow upon it.

"Matchless Crichton, seeing it now high time to put a gallant catastrophe to that so-long-dubious combat, animated with a divinely inspired fervencie, to fulfill the expectation of the ladies, and crown the duke's illustrious hopes, changeth his garb, falls to act another part, and, from defender turns assailant: never did art so grace nature, nor nature second the precepts of art with so much liveliness, and such observance of time, as when, after he had struck fire out of the steel of his enemie's sword, and gained the feeble thereof, with the fort of his own, by angles of the strongest position, he did, by geometrical flourishes of straight and oblique lines, so practically execute the speculative part, that, as if there had been remoras and secret charms in the variety of his motion, the fierceness of his foe was in a trice transqualified into the numness of a pageant Then was it that, to vindicate the reputation of the duke's family, and expiate the blood of the three vanquished gentlemen, he alonged a stoccade de pied ferme; then recoyling, he advanced another thrust, and lodged it home ; after which, retiring again, his right foot did beat the cadence of the blow that pierced the belly of this Italian; whose heart and throat being hit with the two former stroaks, these three franch bouts given in upon the back of the other: besides that, if lines were imagined drawn from the hand that livered them, to the places which were marked by them, they would represent a perfect isosceles triangle with a perpendicular from the top angle, cutting the basis in the middle; they likewise give us to understand, that by them he was to be made a sacrifice of atonement for the slaughter of the three aforesaid gentlemen, who were wounded in the very same parts of their bodies by other three such venses as these; each whereof being mortal, and his vital spirits exhaling as his blood gushed out, all he spoke was this, That seeing he could not live, his comfort in dying was, that he could not die by the hand of a braver man: after the uttering of which words he expiring, with the shril clareens of trumpets, bouncing thunder of artillery, bethwacked beating of drums, universal clapping of hands, and loud acclamations of joy for so great a victory." Crichton generously bestowed the