Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/295

Rh In the first place, as to Sir Thomas Urquhart, to whom we are indebted for several of the facts altogether, and who wrote between sixty and seventy years after Crichton's decease, Dr Kippis has objected, generally, that his testimony as to facts is totally unworthy of regard: "his productions are so inexpressibly absurd and extravagant, that the only rational judgment which can be pronounced concerning him is, that he was little, if at all, better than a madman that " his design in this, a design which appears from his other writings, was to exalt his own family and his own nation at any rate." So far, therefore, as Sir Thomas Urquhart's authority is concerned, the wonderful exhibitions of Crichton at Paris, his triumphs at Rome, his combat with the gladiator, his writing an Italian comedy, his sustaining fifteen characters in the representation of that comedy, the extraordinary story of the amour which is described as the cause of his death, the nine months mourning for him at Mantua, and the poems hung round his hearse to the quantity of Homer's works, must be regarded as in the highest degree doubtful, or rather as absolutely false." It is likewise to be observed, that earlier biographers had no know ledge of the facts enlarged upon by Urquhart. Mr Tytler says not one word of any consequence in defence of this author ; at the same time, he takes every advantage of his information, carefully suppressing, which is not a very easy task, whatever is ridiculous or overwrought in the original.

Sir Thomas paved the way for Mackenzie, a writer of a very different character, but who has materially, only in a more sober manner, related the same story. Mackenzie, in regard to the prodigious exertions of Crichton both corporeal and mental at Paris, imagined he had found a full confirmation of them in a passage from the "Disquisitiones" of Stephen Pasquier. In this he was under a mistake. The "Disquisitiones" are only an abridgment, in Latin, of Pasquier's "Des Recherches de la France;" in which work there is indeed mention made of a wonderful youth, such as is related in Mackenzie's quotation, and from which the passage is formed; but Pasquier, who does not tell his name, expressly says, that he appeared in the year 1445. The writer by whom this fact was discovered and pointed out, makes remark, that " Pasquier was born in Paris in 1528; passed his life in that city, and was an eminent lawyer and pleader in 1571 ; so that it is impossible the feats of Crichton, had they been really performed at Paris, could have been unknown to him, and most improbable, that, knowing them, he would have omitted to mention them ; for, in the same book, vi., ch. 39, in which the wonderful youth is mentioned, he is at pains to produce examples of great proficiency, displayed by men in a much humbler rank of life than that of philosophers and public disputants." Dr Kippis observes, that Thuanus was likewise a contemporary, and he, who, in his own life, is very particular in what relates to learned men, makes no mention of Crichton. The "Des Recherches" of Pasquier were printed at Paris in 1596, and their author lived till the year 1615. Thuanus' Memoirs of Himself were published in 1604; and that author lived between the years 1553 and 1617.

Mr Tytler finds much more fault with Mackenzie than we think at all necessary, or to the purpose. "Never, perhaps," says he, "was any biographical article written in more complete defiance of all accurate research." He has said Crichton was born in 1551, instead of placing that event ten years earlier, (an error which it is far from unlikely was a typographical one); he places Robert Crichton of Cluny at the head of the queen's troops at the battle of Langside, instead of the earl of Argyle; he affirms erroneously, that Trajan Boccalini "tells us he [Crichton] came to Rome, Boccalini being then at Rome himself;" he might have known that Crichton was killed in July, " had he weighed the account of Imperialist' and known that the assertion of Urquhart, that his