Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/296

10 death happened at the carnival, could not be correct, “yet this accommodating author adopts both stories, without perceiving that there is any inconsistency between them;" he adds expressions of his own to the account of Aldus, and mistakes the testimony of Astolfi; and “concludes his career of misquotation, by placing amongst the catalogue of Crichton's works a comedy in the Italian language, which should not have been there, if, as he asserts, he copied that list from Dempster.

There is a much more important point to settle before coming to these minutiæ; and however much the existence of such inconsistencies and inaccuracies may make against these, their correction by no means advances the favourite hypothesis of this author. What matters it spying out little faults on the surface of a great error? Mackenzie had three large folio volumes to write, and could not weigh every little matter with the minute accuracy Mr Tytler would expect of him; as, whether the death of Crichton occurred in July or February, by drawing inferences about the time of the carnival. Nor are his slight variations from ancient authorities, at all more, than what were perfectly warrantable in the process of incorporating them into a continuous narrative. It was not from such blunders, as Mr Tytler would endeavour to persuade us, “that Baillet, Kippis, and Black regarded with doubt, and even treated with ridicule," the fame of Crichton; but it was, in the first place, from the monstrous and unheard of nature of that reputation, and, on inquiry, its untenable and chimerical foundation.

After Mackenzie, followed Pennant, as a biographer of the Admirable Crichton; and in his account, all the errors of which Mr Tytler complains are perpetuated; it being an exact reprint from that author; “with this difference, says he," that he rendered detection more difficult; because the Latin passages, which might possibly have excited curiosity, and provoked a comparison with the text and the original, were left out entirely, and a translation substituted in their place." And here we may remark the curious and inadvertent manner in which error will often take place. Sir John Hawkins acknowledges, that Sir Thomas Urquhart has produced no authorities in support of his surprising narrations; but this defect, Sir John thinks, is supplied, in the life of Crichton, which is given in Pennant's tour. Now, Pennant copied immediately from a pamphlet printed at Aberdeen, which, with a few verbal alterations, was identically the life written by Mackenzie; so that his account was but, in a genealogical sense, the great grand relation of the good knight himself. We may notice in this place, for the advantage of the polite reader, that Dr Johnson fell into the same error with his biographer; and credited, if not the whole, at least the greater part, of this marvellous life; and, as we are informed, dictated from memory to Hawkesworth, that delightful sketch of the Admirable Crichton which forms the 81st number of the Adventurer.

Having thus cleared the path to the ancient authorities, we come, for the first time, to consider who and what the Admirable Crichton really was. The account which we have already given of his birth, parentage, and success the university, we hold to be authentic; and to that part, therefore, of the biography we have no occasion to refer. Of the matters spoken of by Urquhart upon his own authority, we have said enough, and they come not within the sphere of such investigation.

And, firstly, we shall take up Aldus Manutius, whose dedication of the “Paradoxa Ciceronis" to Crichton, is to be considered as the foundation upon which all the biographies of that individual are built. Of Manutius, Dr Kippis has remarked, that he is to be regarded as the only living authority on the subject; he was contemporary with Crichton; he was connected with him in friend-