Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

EK2KYBAAATP0N. 231
the Scripture whose voice was said to be like the voice of a multitude, they heard in
him alone the promiscuous speech of fifteen several actors ; by the various ravishments
of the excellencies whereof, in the frolickness of a jocund straine beyond expectation,
the logofascinated spirits of the beholding hearers and auricularie spectators, were so
on a sudden seazed upon in their risible faculties of the soul, and all their vital motions
so universally affected in this extremitie of agitation, that, to avoid the inevitable
charmes of his intoxicating ejaculations, and the accumulative influences of so power-
full a transportation, one of my lady Dutchess' chief maids of honour, by the vehe-
mencie of the shock of those incomprehensible raptures, burst forth into a laughter to
the rupture of a veine in her body ; and another young lady, by the irresistible vio-
lence of the pleasure unawares infused, where the tender receptibilitie of her too tickled
fancie was least able to hold out, so unprovidedly was surprised, that, with no less im-
petuositie of ridibundal passion then, as hath been told, occasioned a fracture in the
other young ladie's modestie, she, not being able longer to support the well beloved
burthen of so excessive delight, and intransing joys of such mercurial exhilations
through the ineffable extasie of an overmastered apprehension, fell back in a swown,
without the appearance of any other life into her then what, by the most refined wits
of theological speculators, is conceived to be exerced by the purest parts of the sepa-
rated entelechises of blessed saints in their sublimest conversations with the celestial
hierarchies ; this accident procured the incoming of an apothecary with restoratives,
as the other did that of a surgeon with consolidative medicaments. The Admirable
Crichtoun now perceiving that it was drawing somewhat late, and that our occidental
rays of Phoebus were upon their turning oriental to the other hemisphere of the terres-
trial globe ; being withall jealous that the uninterrupted operation of the exuberant
diversitie of his jovialissime entertainment, by a continuate winding up of the humours
there present to a higher, yet higher, and still higher pitch, above the supremest
Lydian note of the harmonie of voluptuousness, should, in such a case, through the too
intensive stretching of the already super-elated strings of their imagination, with a
transcendencie over-reaching Ela, and beyond the well concerted gam of rational equa-
nimitie, involve the remainder of that illustrious companie into the sweet labyrinth
and mellifluent aufractuosities of a lacinious delectation, productive of the same inconve-
niences which befel the two afore-named ladies ; whose delicacie of constitution, though
sooner overcome, did not argue, but that the same extranean causes from him proceed-
ing of their pathetick alteration, might by a longer insisting in an efficacious agencie,
and unremitted working of all the consecutively imprinted degrees that the capacity of
the patient is able to containe, prevaile at last, and have the same predominancie over
the dispositions of the strongest complexioned males of that splendid society, did, in
his own ordinary wearing apparel, with the countenance of a Prince, and garb befitting
the person of a so well bred gentleman and cavalier, icdl' efoxvi', full of majestie, and
repleat with all excogitable civilitie, to the amazement of all that beheld his heroick