head, genealogically speaking, of a family at that period, that the most honourable title by which an uncle belonging to a junior branch could be named, was by his office of tutor to the young heir, incident to his relationship. The individual to whom the Laird of Craigston thus acted as tutor, was no ordinary man-Sir Thomas Urquhart, the author of several strange works with long Greek names, the translator of Rabelais, and the narrator, if not the inventor, of the wonderful incidents which form the biography of the Admirable Crichton. The connexion of its inmates with this erratic genius is perhaps the most remarkable circumstance that has to be recorded about this unobtrusive mansion. If we may believe his own statement, his early progress did credit to his uncle's guardianship; for, when describing his companions as absorbed in the field-sports of the age, he says:-"I was employed in a diversion of another nature, such as optical secrets, mysteries of natural philosophie, reasons for the variety of colours, the finding out of the longitude, the squaring of a circle, and wayes to accomplish all trigonometrical operations by sines without tangents, with the same compendiousness of computation; which, in the estimation of learned men, would be accounted worth six hundred thousand partridges, and as many moorfouls."* The work by which Sir Thomas Urquhart is best known to the world is his Jewel, in which he arranges the chronology of the history of the world, by "deducing the true pedigree and literal descent of the most ancient and honourable name of the Urquharts in the house of Cromarty, since the creation of the world until the present year of God 1652." It has often been supposed that, being written by the translator of Rabelais, the Jewel is a satire on the flagrant genealogies of the seventeenth century; but there is far better reason for believing that it has been dictated by inordinate and almost insane self-conceit. The first thirty-one names in the genealogy are founded on that scriptural pedigree, the greater part of which contains the common ancestors of all the world; and it is in the year 1810 of the world's age, and 2139 before the Christian era, that the house of Urquhart branches forth in the person of "Escrinon," married to "Narfesia." "He was sovereign prince of Achaia. For his fortune in the wars, and affability in conversation, his subjects and familiars surnamed him goxάgrost-that is to say, fortunate and well beloved. After which his posterity ever since hath acknowledged him the father of all that carry the name of Urquhart. He had for his arms, three banners, three ships, and three ladies in a field or, with a picture of a young lady above the waste, holding in her right hand a brandished sword, and a branch of myrtle in the left, for crest; and, for supporters, two Javanites, after the soldier habit of Achaia, &c. Upon his wife Narfesia, who was sovereign of the Amazons, he begot Cratynter."‡ Such, if we credit the head of the house, was the origin of the family, a descendant of which still inhabits this mansion. * Introduction to Works, p. 7. + So printed in the collected edition. + Works, 156. |