The style of our author is seen at its worst in the peroration to The Jewel, in which he apologizes for the comparative simplicity, if not baldness, by which, in the opinion of some, it might be thought to be characterised. "I could truly," he says, "have enlarged this discourse with a choicer variety of phrase, and made it overflow the field of the reader's understanding, with an inundation of greater eloquence; and that one way, tropologetically, by metonymical, ironical, metaphorical, and synecdochical instruments of elocution, in all their several kinds, artificially affected, according to the nature of the subject, with emphatical expressions in things of great concernment, with catachrestical in matters of meaner moment; attended on each side respectively with an epiplectick and exegetick modification; with hyperbolical, either epitatically or hypocoristically, as the purpose required to be elated or extenuated, with qualifying metaphors, and accompanied by apostrophes; and lastly, with allegories of all sorts, whether apologal, affabulatory, parabolary, ænigmatick, or paræmial. And on the other part, schematologetically adorning the proposed theam with the most especial and chief flowers of the garden of rhetorick, and omitting no figure either of diction or sentence, that might contribute to the ear's enchantment, or perswasion of the hearer. I could have introduced, in case of obscurity, synonymal, exargastick, and palilogetick elucidations; for sweetness of phrase, antimetathetick commutations of epithets; for the vehement excitation of a matter, exclamation in the front, and epiphonemas in the reer. I could have used, for the promptlier stirring up of passion, apostrophal and prosopopœiel diversions; and, for the appeasing and settling of them, some epanorthotick revocations, and aposiopetick restraines. I could have inserted dialogismes, displaying their interrogatory part with communicatively pysmatick and sustentative flourishes; or proleptically, with the refutative schemes of anticipation and subjection, and that part which concerns the responsory, with the figures of permission and concession. Speeches extending a matter beyond what it is, auxetically, digressively, transitiously, by ratiocination, ætiology, circumlocution, and other wayes, I could have made use of; as likewise with words diminishing the worth of a thing, tapinotically, periphrastically, by rejection, translation, and other meanes, I could have served myself."[220]

He goes on for a long time in this strain, and is at pains to explain that, if the work had been written in this more elaborate manner, it would not necessarily have been found tedious even by young ladies. "I could have presented it to the imagination," he says, "in so spruce a garb, that spirits blest with leisure, and free from the urgency of serious employments, would happily have bestowed as liberally some few houres thereon as on the perusal of a new-coined romance, or strange history of love adventures. For although the figures and tropes above rehearsed seem in their actu signato, (as they signifie meer notional circumstances, affections, adjuncts, and dependencies on words), to be a little pedantical, and to the smooth touch of a delicate ear somewhat harsh and scabrous, yet in their exerced act, (as they suppone for things reduplicatively as things in the first apprehension of the minde, by them signified), I could, even in far abstruser purposes, have so fitly adjusted them with apt and proper termes, and with such perspicuity couched them, as would have been suitable to the capacities of courtiers and young ladies,[221] whose tender hearing, for the most part, being more taken with the insinuating harmony of a well-concerted period, in its isocoletick and parisonal members, then [than] with the never-so-pithy a fancy of a learned subject, destitute of the illustriousness of so pathetick ornaments, will sooner convey perswasion to the interior faculties from the ravishing assault of a well-disciplined diction, in a parade of curiously-mustered words in their several ranks and files then [than] by the vigour and fierceness of never so many powerful squadrons of a promiscuously-digested elocution into bare logical arguments; for the sweetness of their disposition is more easily gained by undermining passion then [than] storming reason, and by the musick and symmetry of a descourse in its external appurtenances, then [than] by all the puissance imaginary of the ditty or purpose disclosed by it."[222]

The last of Sir Thomas Urquhart's original works was his "Logopandecteision, or an Introduction to the Universal Language," a portion of which, as already mentioned, had been embedded in the conglomerate mass of The Jewel. The idea of a universal language was not originated by Urquhart, for it is said that something of the kind had been planned a generation earlier by the celebrated William Bedell (1570-1642), the Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh, who is better known for promoting the translation of the Bible into the Irish tongue. We are told by Burnet, who wrote his life, that he had in his diocese a clergyman named Johnston, a man of ability, but, unfortunately, of "mercurial wit." In order to give him adequate employment, and to keep him, we suppose, out of mischief, Bedell planned out a scheme for a universal character, which should be understood by all nations as readily as the Arabic numerals or the figures in geometry, and started Johnston upon the task of completing it. He made, we are told, considerable progress with the scheme, but his labours were interrupted, and the results of them destroyed, by the frightful rebellion of 1641.

The Logopandecteision[223] is divided into six books, which bear names of the remarkable kind which seem to come so readily to Urquhart's tongue, and are so hard to be compassed by the tongues of others. The "Epistle Dedicatorie" is an elaborate piece of writing, and is animated by considerable bitterness of spirit. It is addressed to Nobody—the person who has assisted him in his labours, pitied him in his sorrows, and relieved him in his penury. It is only the first book—entitled "Neaudethaumata, or Wonders of the New Speech"—which makes a pretence of dealing with the professed subject of the volume, and of laying the great scheme before the reader. Much to the gratification of the judicious student of the work, Urquhart rambles off in the remaining books into autobiographical details, from which we have already gleaned heavily in the earlier chapters of this volume, and the only connexion between them and the Universal Language is that they show the difficulties which prevented the author from carrying out his plan. The sources from which these difficulties arose are vaguely indicated in the titles of the books: thus, the second is called "Chrestasebeia, or Impious Dealing of Creditors"; the third, "Cleronomaporia, or the Intricacy of a Distressed Successor or Apparent Heir"; the fourth, "Chryseomystes, or the Covetous Preacher"; and the fifth, "Neleodicastes, or the Pitiless Judge." While the sixth book is entitled "Philoponauxesis, or Furtherance of Industry," and tells of the marvellous benefits which would accrue to all branches of trade, manufacture, and industry in Scotland, if the writer's demands were granted, and he were at liberty to carry out the multitudinous schemes with which his mind was filled. The volume concludes with requests or "proquiritations" from thirty-two distinct petitioners, who modestly conceal themselves from public notice under the shelter of the initial letters of their names, that the State would, for the various weighty reasons which they allege, grant the desire of Sir Thomas to be set free, and to be established in possession of the estates and honours which his family had enjoyed from time immemorial. This section of the work suggests failure in ingenuity on the part of the author, for few persons above the condition of idiocy could surely be found capable of believing that the reasons and initials alike were anything else than the concoction of Sir Thomas himself.

Very slight indeed can be the notice which we are able to give of the proposed Universal Language, the description of which, as set forth in the early part of the Logopandecteision, is more like an incoherent dream than anything else. There is no evidence that Sir Thomas Urquhart ever really made a grammar or vocabulary of the new language. Indeed, he writes about it in such a manner as to lead one to think that he had made no way in the real working out of the scheme, but merely dreamed of what he was going to do. In the new tongue which was to supersede all others there were to be twelve parts of speech, all words would have at least ten synonyms, nouns and pronouns would have eleven cases and four numbers—singular, dual, plural, and redual—and verbs would have four voices, seven moods, and eleven tenses. "In this tongue," says the author, "there are eleven genders,[224] wherein," he truthfully adds, "it exceedeth all other languages." "Every word in this language," we are told, "signifieth as well backward as forward, and however you invert the letters, still shall you fall upon significant words, whereby a wonderful facility is obtained in making of anagrams.... Of all languages, this is the most compendious in complement, and consequently fittest for courtiers and ladies.... As its interjections are more numerous, so are they more emphatical in their respective expression of passions, then [than] that part of speech is in any other language whatsoever."[225] And finally Sir Thomas vouches for its conciseness in a hyperbole which it would be difficult to excel. "This language," he says, "affordeth so concise words for numbering, that the number for setting down, whereof would require in vulgar arithmetic more figures in a row then [than] there might be grains of sand containable from the center of the earth to the highest heavens, is in it expressed by two letters."[226] A considerable revenue might be secured if the rule found at the end of some of Grimm's Household Tales were applied to this statement, and strictly enforced: "Whosoever does not believe this must pay a thaler." In a very innocent manner our author excuses himself for the extravagant praise he has poured out upon his own invention. "Why it is," he exclaims, "I should extoll the worth thereof, without the jeopardy of vaine glory, the reason is clear and evident, being necessitated ... to merchandise it for the redintegrating of an ancient family, it needeth not be thought strange, that in some measure I descend to the fashion of the shop-keepers, who, to scrue up the buyer to the higher price, will tell them no better can be had for mony, 'tis the choicest ware in England, and if any can match it, he shall have it for nought.... [And so] I went on in my laudatives, to procure the greater longing, that an ardent desire might stir up an emacity [227]

Hugh Miller, animated by the patriotic zeal which prompts one North Briton to stand by another, and with the desire to make out the best case possible for one who was not only a fellow-countryman, but also a fellow-townsman, speaks in high terms of Urquhart's inventive powers as displayed in the Logopandecteision. "The new chemical vocabulary," he says, "with all its philosophical ingenuity, is constructed on principles exactly similar to those which he divulged more than a hundred years prior to its invention, in the preface to his Universal Language."[228] This is a statement which it is rather difficult to understand. The only indication of the nature of the new tongue which we can glean from Sir Thomas's description of it, is that every letter of every word in it would have a meaning, so that when anyone who knew the principles of the language heard a word for the first time, he would understand it.[229] Now, of course, it is true that anyone who knows the principle of the nomenclature of salts, to which, we suppose, Hugh Miller refers, can tell a good deal about a salt from the name of it, say, nitrate of potassium, KNO3, but it would be impossible to invent a systematic nomenclature of which this would not be true.

The same author is also very much impressed by the fact that the new language was to contain the dual, and regards this, on Lord Monboddo's authority, as a proof of philosophical acumen on the part of the inventor. He does not take any notice of the "redual," which the language was also to contain, and which might have been taken as an indication of double-distilled wisdom. Lord Monboddo (1714-1799) says of the Greek language that if there "were nothing else to convince him of its being a work of philosophers and grammarians, its dual number would of itself be sufficient; for as certainly as the principles of body are the point, the line, and the surface, the principles of number are the monad and the duad, though philosophers only are aware of the fact." The idea that this venerated instrument for the expression or concealment of thought was the concoction of a committee of primitive sages, and that they deliberately invented the dual, and added it as another spike to the chevaux-de-frise through which our young people, of both sexes, have to struggle[230] on their way to the Temple of Learning, is truly revolting. One would not like to think that the ancient Greeks were quite so malicious as to do a thing like that. It is more probably the case that, like other Aryans, they received the dual as part of the inheritance of the past, handed down to them, and retained it; while in some of the cognate languages[231] it was gradually rubbed off, very much in the same way as Lord Monboddo's men lost their tails, when they gave up their arboreal habits, and betook themselves to sedentary occupations.

[199] Its title-page is as follows:—ΕΚΣΚΥΒΑΛΑƱΡΟΝ: Or, The Discovery of A MOST EXQUISITE JEWEL, more precious then [than] Diamonds inchased in Gold, the like whereof was never seen in any age; found in the kennel of Worcester-streets, the day after the Fight, and six before the Autumnal Equinox, anno 1651. Serving in this place, To Frontal a Vindication of the honour of Scotland, from that Infamy, whereinto the Rigid Presbyterian party of that Nation, out of their Covetousness and ambition, most dissembledly hath involved it. Distichon ad Librum sequitur, quo tres ter adæquant Musarum numerum, casus et articuli.

voc. nom. 1 abl. 2 abl. dat.
O thou'rt a Book in truth with love to many,
3 abl. 4 abl. acc. gen.
Done by and for the free'st spoke Scot of any.