they had aspersed it; wherein it pleased God so to conduct my fortune, that, after I had disarmed them, they in such sort acknowledged their error, and the obligation they did owe me for sparing their lives, which justly by the law of arms I might have taken, that, in lieu of three enemies that formerly they were, I acquired three constant friends, both to my selfe and my compatriots, whereof by severall gallant testimonies they gave evident proofe, to the improvement of my country's credit in many occasions."[38]

The fair critic, whose estimate of the young Englishman has been referred to, gives her opinion also of his Scottish rival; but, strangely enough, she observes in him qualities of a kind opposite to those displayed by Sir Thomas Urquhart. She was struck by his neighbourly charity, "for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay him back again when he was able."[39] Can it be that the words put into her mouth are merely the ribald wit of an envious Southron, or are we to understand that the spirit which triumphed over so many inferiors was yet wise enough to discern when it stood in the presence of a mightier than itself?

How a young man on his travels should occupy his time, had been laid down in a little volume which had been published just before Urquhart set out to see the world abroad. In this he might read a list of the things which should engage his attention, drawn up in sonorous language by no less a personage than a late Lord Chancellor of England—a man who was ready to give advice to all his fellow-creatures in all conceivable circumstances. "The things," says Lord Bacon, "to be seen and observed are: the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns, and so the havens and harbours; antiquities and ruins; libraries, colleges, disputations and lectures, where any are; shipping and navies; house and gardens of state and pleasure near great cities; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, burses, warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes, cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where they go.... As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not be put in mind of them; yet they are not to be neglected."[40]

To what extent Urquhart followed a plan of this kind it is impossible to say; for, though his writings are so discursive that we might expect to find in them allusions to anything remarkable he had seen or heard, he has very little to say about his foreign experiences. Dr Johnson spoke with contempt of an English peer, who had extended his travels as far as Egypt, but who had brought back only one small contribution to the general stock of human information—the fact that he had seen "a large serpent in one of the pyramids of Egypt." Urquhart was not quite so poverty-stricken as this; for he seems to have observed examples of mental infirmity, illustrations of which he might doubtless have found nearer home.

"I saw at Madrid," he says, "a bald-pated fellow who beleeved he was Julius Cæsar, and therefore went constantly on the streets with a laurel crown on his head; and another at Toledo, who would not adventure to goe abroad unlesse it were in a coach, chariot, or sedane, for fear the heavens should fall down upon him. I likewise saw one in Saragosa, who, imagining himself to be the lawfull King of Aragon, went no where without a scepter in his hand; and another in the kingdome of Granada, who beleeved he was the valiant Cid that conquered the Mores. At Messina, in Sicilie, I also saw a man that conceived himself to be the great Alexander of Macedone, and that in a ten years space he should be master of all the territories which he subdued; but the best is, that the better to resemble him he always held his neck awry, which naturally was streight and upright enough; and another at Venice, who imagined he was Soveraign of the whole Adriatick Sea, and sole owner of all the ships that came from the Levante. Of men that fancied themselves to be women, beasts, trees, stones, pitchers, glasse, angels, and of women whose strained imaginations have falne upon the like extravagancies, even in the midst of fire and the extremest pains fortune could inflict upon them, there is such variety of examples, amongst which I have seen some at Rome, Naples, Florence, Genua, Paris, and other eminent cities, that to multiply any moe [more] words therein, were to load your ears with old wives' tales, and the trivial tattle of idly imployed and shallow braind humorists."[41]

He also tells, though not in the same connexion, of his having been witness of the honour and admiration lavished upon one of his fellow-countrymen, Dr Seaton, by the élite of Parisian society. "I have seen him," he says, "circled about at the Louvre with a ring of French lords and gentlemen, who hearkned to his discourse with so great attention, that none of them, so long as he was pleased to speak, would offer to interrupt him, to the end that the pearles falling from his mouth might be the more orderly congested in the several treasures of their judgements."[42]

Part of his time abroad was devoted to the fascinating occupation of book-hunting, and he had great pleasure in the spoils he had won. When they were set in order on shelves in the library of the castle of Cromartie, he looked on them with the joy which only book-collectors know. "They were," he says, "like to a compleat nosegay of flowers, which, in my travels, I had gathered out of the gardens of above sixteen several kingdoms."[43]