Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/96

 dedication to Massa of his edition of Cicero's ‘Lælius’ (1581). Crichton's challenge to the learned men of Padua is printed by Aldus in his dedication to Crichton of Cicero's ‘Paradoxa,’ and is dated June 1581. Four hexameters by Crichton are prefixed to ‘I Quattro primi Canti del Lancellotto del Sig. Erasmo di Valvasone,’ Venice, 1580; they follow the preface of the editor, Cesare Pavesio (Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vii. 106). Dempster mentions the following additional works, but there is no proof that they were ever extant, and their titles are obviously constructed from the accounts given by Crichton's early biographers of his oratorical achievements. They are: ‘Laudes Patavinæ;’ ‘Ignorantiæ laudatio,’ an extemporaneous speech; ‘Epistolæ ad diversos;’ ‘Præfationes solemnes in omnes scientias, sacras et profanas;’ ‘Judicium de Philosophis;’ ‘Errores Aristotelis;’ ‘Refutatio Mathematicorum;’ ‘Arma an literæ præstent Controversia oratoria.’ Tanner repeats this list. Crichton's Latin verses are not very pointed or elegant. Sir Thomas Urquhart's fantastic account of Crichton (1652) gave him his popularity and conferred on him his title of Admirable.

The best authenticated portrait of Crichton belongs to Alexander Morison of Bognie, Banffshire. It is the work of an Italian, and is said to have been sent from Italy by Crichton himself to Sir James Crichton of Frendaught, whom he regarded as the head of the Crichton family. An engraving appears in the ‘Proceedings of the Scottish Antiquaries,’ vol. ii., and in the second edition of Tytler's ‘Life.’ Another portrait belongs to William Graham of Airth House, Stirlingshire, and this seems to be the original of which copies belong to the Marquis of Bute at Dumfries House, J. A. Mackay, esq., of Edinburgh, Sir A. W. Crichton of St. Petersburg, James Veitch of Eliock, and Lord Blantyre of Lennoxlove. Mr. Veitch's painting was engraved in Pennant's ‘Tour in Scotland,’ and the one belonging to Sir A. W. Crichton in the first edition of Tytler's ‘Life.’ The original of the engraving in Imperialis's ‘Museum Historicum’ (1640) is not known. The portraits belonging to the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, and to Mr. George Dundas of Edinburgh, are of less than doubtful authenticity. All the portraits show Crichton as a handsome youth, but a red mark disfigured his right cheek.

The estates of Eliock and Cluny, which Crichton, had he lived, would have inherited from his father, passed to his younger brother Robert, usually called. But these lands he resigned to the crown in 1591. Robert's first notable exploit was to attack, about 1591, with a band of marauders, the castle of Ardoch, where his half-sister Marion, the daughter of his father by his third wife, was living under the guardianship of Henry Stirling. Crichton carried off the girl, who was not heard of again, and cruelly assaulted and robbed her protectors. The privy council in 1593 denounced him as a traitor for this action, but he was not captured. He next took up the cause of his mother's kinsman, the Earl of Moray, who was murdered in 1595, and killed in the chapel of Egismalay the laird of Moncoffer, who was reputed to sympathise with the earl's murderer. He was ordered to stand his trial for the crime, but the matter was hushed up, and in 1602 he appeared at James's court at St. Andrews. There he murderously assaulted a courtier named Chalmers in the royal presence. He was summoned to Falkland to answer this offence, and on his declining to appear his property was forfeited to the crown. He disappears after 1604. He married twice: first, Susanna Grierson; secondly, on 12 Jan. 1595, Margaret, daughter of John Stewart, sixth lord Invermeath. He had sons whose names are not known. His half-sister Margaret, daughter of his father's second wife, married Sir Robert Dalzell, first earl of Carnwath, to whom Robert sold the estate of Eliock in 1596.

[Much fable has doubtless been intermingled with many accounts of Crichton's remarkable career, though some part of the facts appears to be well authenticated. Two copies of the gazette or handbill, printed at Venice in 1580 at the press of the brothers Domenico and Gio Battista Guerra, describing Crichton's marvellous knowledge, are in the British Museum and one is in a showcase. The bill, first discovered by Mr. Hibbert in 1818 pasted inside the cover of a copy of Castiglione's ‘Cortegiano’ (ed. 1545), which had belonged to the Rev. S. W. Singer (see Edinburgh Mag. July 1818), Aldus Manutius's two tracts referred to above, with his description of Crichton's achievements when dedicating his Cicero's Paradoxa to him in 1581, and his eulogy upon him when dedicating Cicero's Lælius to Massa in 1581, are the earliest notices extant. The authenticity of Aldus's testimony has been questioned by Dr. Black in his Life of Tasso, and by Dr. Kippis in the Biographia Britannica on the ground that Aldus was addicted to exaggerated eulogy of his friends, most of whom he represents to be marvellous geniuses. Aldus's account of Niegossewski, a young Pole, coincides so suspiciously with his account of Crichton that his testimony requires to be corroborated by independent evidence. In the Epitaphiorum Dialogi Septem Auctore Bartholomæo Burchelato, Tarvisino Physico, Venice, 1583, an extraordinary account is given (p. 52) of Crichton's mnemonic power (see Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. viii. 85–6). Felix