[197] Fountainhall, _Decisions_, ii. 265 and 315; Morrison, _Dictionary of Decisions_, xxvii. 11304.
[198] In some ways the elder Sir Thomas reminds us of the pedantic and undignified monarch, James VI., from whom he received knighthood. Both were the first Protestants of their respective houses, both were attached to prelacy rather than to Presbyterianism, and both were wasteful and slovenly in money matters. If the above conjecture be well founded, they had a further point of resemblance to each other, in their interest in fabulous genealogies. And it may be said of them both that they prepared a series of misfortunes for their chivalrous, high-spirited sons.
ΕΚΣΚΥΒΑΛΑΥΡΟΝ: or, THE JEWEL, and LOGOPANDECTEISION: or, THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.
Sir Thomas Urquhart's previous excursions into literature had been of a somewhat tentative kind, and calculated to whet the desire of a judicious reader for him to enter upon more serious undertakings. He had appeared in the world of letters in several different aspects,--as a man of science, and as the representative and poet, as historian of a family which, for long descent and glorious achievements, could not be rivalled, if his statements concerning it were to be credited,--but no one could forecast, from what he had already published, the nature of his next literary exploit.
The volume which followed the Pedigree of the Urquharts has the strange name above printed,[199] but most of those who have occasion to mention it more than once find it more convenient to call it "The Jewel."[200] Its contents are of such a character that one who had read it carefully would find it difficult to state off-hand or in a single sentence what they were. A Scottish Divinity professor of somewhat erratic habits began, on one occasion, a lecture in which he was to deal with several miscellaneous items, with the words, "Gentlemen, my subject to-day will be hotch-potch." This is an exact description of _The Jewel_, and those to whom nature has given the mental apparatus needed for appreciating Sir Thomas Urquhart will rejoice and not repine at the fact that the feeding laid before them is of a confused character. Accordingly no logical sequence will be allowed to mar the symmetry of this chapter in which _The Jewel_ is described.