Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

24 i EK2KTBAAAYPON.
tragedy was related, and that he had solemnly vowed he should either have his son
hanged or his head struck off, for the committing of a so ingrate, enormous, and de-
testable crime ; one of his courtiers told him, that by all appearance his son would save
his Highness' justice a labour, and give it nothing to do, for that he was like to hang
himself, or after some other manner of way to turn his own Atropos. The whole
Court wore mourning for him full three quarters of a yeer together. His funeral was
very stately, and on his hearse were stuck more epitaphs, elegies, threnodies, and epi-
cediums, then, if digested into one book, would have outbulk't all Homer's works ;
some of them being couched in such exquisite and fine Latin, that you would have
thought great Virgil, and Baptista Mantuanus, for the love of their mother-city, had
quit the Elysian fields to grace his obsequies ; and other of them, besides what was
done in other languages, composed in so neat Italian, and so purely fancied, as if Ariosto,
Dante, Petrark, and Bembo, had been purposely resuscitated, to stretch even to the
utmost their poetick vein to the honour of this brave man ; whose picture till this hour
is to be seen in the bed-chambers or galleries of the most of the great men of that na-
tion, representing him on horseback, with a lance in one hand and a book in the other ;
and most of the young ladies likewise, that were any thing handsome, in a memorial
of his worth, had his effigies in a little oval tablet of gold hanging 'twixt their breasts,
and held, for many yeers together, that metamazion, or intermammilary ornament, an
as necessary outward pendicle for the better setting forth of their accoutrements, as either
fan, watch, or stomacher. My lord Duke, upon the young lady that was Crichtoun's
mistris and future wife, although she had good rents and revenues of her own by inheri-
tance, was pleased to conferr a pension of five hundred ducats a yeer. The Prince
also bestowed as much on her during all the days of his life, which was but short, for
he did not long enjoy himself after the cross fate of so miserable an accident. The
sweet lady, like a turtle bewailing the loss of her mate, spent all the rest of her time
in a continual solitariness, and resolved, as none before Crichtoun had the possession
of her body, that no man breathing should enjoy it after his decease.
The verity of this story I have here related concerning this incomparable Crichtoun,
may be certified by above two thousand men yet living, who have known him ; and
truly of his acquaintance there had been a far greater number, but that before he was
full thirty two yeers of age, he was killed as you have heard. And here I put an end
to the Admirable Scot.
The scene of the choicest acts of this late Heros of our time having been the coun-
try of Italy, the chief State whereof is Venice, it cannot be amiss, as I have done
for Spaine, France, Holland, Denmark, Swedland, and Germany, that I make men-
tion of these four Scotish Colonels, — Colonel Dowglas, Colonel Balantine, Colonel
Lyon, and Colonel Anderson, who, within these very few yeers, have done most ex-
cellent service to the Venetian Commonwealth. Nor can I well forget that sea-
captain, Captain William Scot, whose martiall atchievements in the defence of that