"I saw at Madrid," he says, "a bald-pated fellow who beleeved he was Julius Cæsar, and therefore went constantly on the streets with a laurel crown on his head; and another at Toledo, who would not adventure to goe abroad unlesse it were in a coach, chariot, or sedane, for fear the heavens should fall down upon him. I likewise saw one in Saragosa, who, imagining himself to be the lawfull King of Aragon, went no where without a scepter in his hand; and another in the kingdome of Granada, who beleeved he was the valiant Cid that conquered the Mores. At Messina, in Sicilie, I also saw a man that conceived himself to be the great Alexander of Macedone, and that in a ten years space he should be master of all the territories which he subdued; but the best is, that the better to resemble him he always held his neck awry, which naturally was streight and upright enough; and another at Venice, who imagined he was Soveraign of the whole Adriatick Sea, and sole owner of all the ships that came from the Levante. Of men that fancied themselves to be women, beasts, trees, stones, pitchers, glasse, angels, and of women whose strained imaginations have falne upon the like extravagancies, even in the midst of fire and the extremest pains fortune could inflict upon them, there is such variety of examples, amongst which I have seen some at Rome, Naples, Florence, Genua, Paris, and other eminent cities, that to multiply any moe [more] words therein, were to load your ears with old wives' tales, and the trivial tattle of idly imployed and shallow braind humorists."[41]
He also tells, though not in the same connexion, of his having been witness of the honour and admiration lavished upon one of his fellow-countrymen, Dr Seaton, by the élite of Parisian society. "I have seen him," he says, "circled about at the Louvre with a ring of French lords and gentlemen, who hearkned to his discourse with so great attention, that none of them, so long as he was pleased to speak, would offer to interrupt him, to the end that the pearles falling from his mouth might be the more orderly congested in the several treasures of their judgements."[42]
Part of his time abroad was devoted to the fascinating occupation of book-hunting, and he had great pleasure in the spoils he had won. When they were set in order on shelves in the library of the castle of Cromartie, he looked on them with the joy which only book-collectors know. "They were," he says, "like to a compleat nosegay of flowers, which, in my travels, I had gathered out of the gardens of above sixteen several kingdoms."[43]
[1] System of Heraldry, ii, 274.
[2] Wyntown's narrative is as follows (quoted in Sir William Fraser's Earls of Cromartie):—
"A nycht he thowcht in hys dreming,
Dat syttand he wes besyd þe Kyng
At a Sete in hwnting; swà
Intil his Leisch had Grewhundys twà.
He thowcht, quhile he wes swà syttand,
He sawe thre wemen by gangand;
And þai wemen þan thowcht he
Thre werd Systrys mást lyk to be.
De fyrst he hard say gangand by,
'Lo yhondyr þe Thayne of Crwmbawchty.'
De toyir woman sayd agayne,
'Of Morave yhondyre I se þe Thayne.'
De thryd þan sayd, 'I se þe Kyng.'
All þis he herd in hys dreming."
Wyntown's Cronykil, i. 225.
Wyntown's date is about A.D. 1395. Macbeth was killed at Lumphanan by Macduff, 5th December A.D. 1056.
[3] A charter of lands in Cromartie granted by William de Monte Alto, between 1252 and 1272, is still in existence. The granter of the charter, having been owner of Cromartie, was claimed by Sir Thomas Urquhart as one of his Urquhart ancestors, but with no better authority than the earlier ancestors who figure in our author's Pedigree. See Earls of Cromartie, by Sir William Fraser.
[4] It would seem from this that Urquhart was originally a place-name, probably Gaelic. There were two parishes of Urquhart in the old province of Moray—one with a priory near Elgin, and the other with a castle in what is now Inverness-shire.
[5] "Tutor" here simply means "legal guardian"—for boys until fourteen years of age, and for girls until twelve. After these ages and before that of twenty-one such wards are in the charge of "Curators." Owing to our author's having the same Christian name as his father, the mistake is often made of asserting that John Urquhart was his tutor.