Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

LOGOPANDECTEISION. 401
remedies against them, they are so well versed in the terms of art concerning them,
that the word Apothecary may signifie somewhat to eat for any thing they know ;
Surgeons and Physicians coming along like the burgers of some towns to their land-
meers but once in the five years.
45. Thus hath the usurer in less then fourscore and ten years space that he hath Qua est
domineered in the land, made some of us no less savage and barbarous then the wildest *„„,.'",.
beast that is ; and if he roam at such random but for twenty years more, the Satyr and centia, cum
the Centaure will in their lower parts have more humanity then many of us shall in our lu^habeant
brains. modum;
46. For he resteth not in the destruction of the merchant and artificer, but likewise rapiunt
layeth his heavy hand upon the scholar, who, by reason of not allowing him compe- q uana ° csu -
. . ,, ii-ii nunt ; vero
tencie of maintenance at the schools, doth not, one amongst fourty bred amidst them, prada: cum
even when they have past their whole course of learning, know how to spell the En- sen . semlt
J tr »' r satietatem
glish tongue aright. [desistunt];
47. By means of which gross imperfection, I now and then have sustained my self ^jug™^" 1 *"
no small prejudice in the expence of time ; for although I compose no treatises, whe- avaritia
ther in prose or verse, without some considerable deliberation, yet for the most part,
for couching them in a hand not very legible, for truly I am no good scribe, and not
being able to finde, neither in my own family, nor within a great many miles about
me, one skilful enough in vernacular orthography, I have oftentimes been at a great
deal of more paines in enditing of them to the writers, and amending their erratas, then
at first I was in the framing and writing of them both.
48. Nor is there any hope in haste of amending this fault ; for the most of the
parents of that country, ever since the dayes of our grandfathers, have by the trium-
phancie of usury, had the inclinations of their mindes so mechanically protruded upon
the contempt of letters, that their children have with their very mother's milk, im-
bued an aversness from learning, and all the utendas conducible thereto, fearing they
should hinder the advancement of their private fortunes, according to the trivial say-
ing, Vbi multum de intellectu, ibi parum defortuna ; whereof, to speak nothing of the
manifold great discouragements which, in the progress of literature, I have from my
infancy had through the whole tract of my time till this very present minute, the late
course taken for sequestrating whatever belonged to me, gave no small experiment.
49. For I have found at home, even in those that love me better then they did any
body else, and in the eyes of the world most entirely, a very heavy and deplorable
omission in taking a course, like Martha who was onely busied about external things,
for the preservation of corn, cattel, plate, with other goods and utensils, whilst they
were altogether negleetive of securing what they themselves knew I preferred to all
these moveables, as appeared even when they so slighted my library, that not a book
thereof escaped the touch of Dundasse's fingers ; although there were not three there-
in which were not of mine own purchase, and all of them together, in the order where-
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