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The concluding exquisite morceau is taken from a work of Sir Thomas Urquhart's, "entitled "Ekskubalauron, or the Discovery "of a most exquisite Jewel, more precious "than diamonds enchased 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, 1651." The work recounts the actions and characters of several illustrious Scotchmen; and, among the rest, those of "the admirable Crichton." The author

describes his hero as performing several feats; and personating a variety of characters before the Court of Mantua. He thus proceeds:

"Those fifteen several personages he did represent with such excellency of garb, and such exquisiteness of language, that condignely to perpend the subtlety of the invention, the method of the disposition, the neatness of the elocution, the gracefulness of the action, and wonderful variety in the so dextrous performance of all, you would have taken it for a comedy of five acts, consisting of three scenes, each composed by the best poet in the

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world, and acted by fifteen of the best players that ever lived; as was most evidently made apparent to all the spectators, in the fifth and last hour of his action, (which, according to our western account, was about six o'clock at night, and by the calculation of that country, half an hour past three and twenty at that time of the year,) for, purposing to leave off with the setting of the sun, with an endeavour nevertheless to make his conclusion the master-piece of the work, he, to that effect summoning all his spirits together, which never failed to be ready at the call of so worthy a commander, did, by their assistance, so conglomerate, shuffle, mix, and interlace, the gestures, inclinations, actions, and very tones of the speech of those fifteen several sorts of men, whose carriages he did personate, into an inestimable olla podrida of immaterial morsels of divers kinds, suitable to the very ambrosial relish of the Heliconian nymphs, that in the peripetia of his dramatical exercitation, by the enchanted transportation of the eyes and ears of its spectabundal auditory, one would have sworn that they had all looked

with multiplying glasses, and that (like that angel in the scripture, whose voice was said to be like the voice of a multitude) they heard in him alone the promiscuous speech of fifteen several actors; by the various ravishments of the excellencies whereof, in the frolickness of a jocund strain beyond expectation, the logofascinated spirits of the beholding hearers and auricularie spectators were, on a sudden, siezed upon in their risible faculties of the soul, and all their vital motions so universally affected, in this extremity of agitation, that, to avoid the inevitable charms of his intoxicating ejaculations, and the accumulative influence of so powerful a transportation, one of my lady duchess chief maids of honour, by the vehemencies of the shock of those incomprehensible raptures, burst forth into a laughter, to the rupture of a vein in her body; and another young lady, by the irresistible violence of the pleasure unawares infused, not able longer to support the wellbeloved burthen of so excessive delight, and entrancing joys of such mercurial exhilarations, through the ineffable extacy of an overmastered

apprehension, fell back in a swoon, without the appearance of any life in her, than what by the most refined wits of theological speculators is conceived to be exercised by the purest parts of the separated entelechies of blessed saints, in their sublimest conversations with the celestial hierarchies."**

THE SCOTCH BORDERERS.

The wild and adventurous manners of the inhabitants of the bordering counties of England and Scotland, and of what was anciently called the debateable ground, (from its being the constant scene of dispute between the two nations,) furnished our author with a rich store of romantic incident to adapt to the stories of his Scotch novels. It was not necessary for him to add circumstances of wonder from his own fancy: the existing state of society in this part of the British empire,

* Vindication of the Honour of Scotland, &c. 110-112. Pennant's Scotland, vol. ii. Appendix, No. 3. Hawkins's Life of Johnson, 294.

before the union of the two crowns, bore him out in every extraordinary exhibition of rapine, or hardihood, or rude and barbarous virtue, which he has so vividly represented. Almost incessantly occupied, either in aggression or defence, the lives of the petty chieftains of this region were a tissue of desperate conflicts, daring schemes, and wily stratagems; and when a short space was snatched for domestic indulgence, inordinate wassail and savage hospitality claimed this moment of repose. An anecdote or two of one of the most celebrated of these "lords of misrule" will give a faithful view of the bold spirit of adventure, prompt and decisive action, and ingenious devices for avoiding danger, which characterised this extraordinary class of men.

"In the reign of Charles the First, when the moss-trooping practices were not entirely discontinued, the tower of Gilnockie, in the parish of Cannoby, was occupied by William Armstrong, called, for distinction sake, Christie's Will, a lineal descendant of the famous John Armstrong, of Gilnockie, executed by James V. The hereditary love of

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