Urquhart, SIR THOMAS, of Cromarty (1611-60), miscellaneous writer, eldest son of Sir Thomas Urquhart, head of an old family possessed of extensive estates in that county, was born about 1611. He was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, travelled in France, Spain, and Italy, and there (according to his own account) acquired a perfect knowledge of foreign languages and great skill in fencing. On his return he bitterly opposed the covenanting party, took up arms against them in the north, but was worsted and forced to pass to England by sea. Becoming attached to the court, he was knighted at Whitehall, 7th April 1641. The same year he published his Epigrams Divine and Moral, dedicated to the Marquis of Hamilton. This contains only three of the ten books he wrote. He brags of having 'contrived, blocked, and digested those eleven hundredth epigrams in a thirteen weeks tyme.' Its speed proves, he thinks, his 'great maturetie and promptness of wit.' But the pieces written in Latin and English, though quaint, have no real merit. On his father's death in 1642 Urquhart found the estate he inherited much encumbered, whereupon, 'I, as I had done many times before, betook myself to my hazards abroad.' Returning after some years, he fixed his residence at Cromarty. Here, though much troubled by his creditors, he produced his Trissotetras; or a most exquisite Table for resolving all manner of Triangles, &c. (1645), a curious but useless mathematical treatise.
In 1649 his library, 'compiled (like a compleat nosegay) of flowers, which on my travels I had gathered out of the gardens of above sixteen several kingdoms,' was seized and sold. He took up arms in the royal cause, was declared a rebel by parliament, was present at the battle of Worcester, where he lost most of his MSS., 'seven large portmantles full of precious commodity.' One treatise hastily seized 'by a file of musquettiers to afford smok to their pipes of tobacco,' was rescued by a friendly officer. Urquhart was removed to London, where through Cromwell's influence he was allowed considerable liberty. There in 1652 he published The Pedigree and The Jewel (the full titles are too long to quote). The first was an exact account of the Urquhart family, in which they are traced back to Adam. Among his ancestors were 'the sister of Spartus that built Lacedemon, Pharaoh's daughter, and Panthea, daughter of Dencalion and Pirra.' The second is chiefly a panegyric on the Scots nation. Its account of the soldiers and scholars of the period is still of value. In 1653 he issued his Introduction to the Universal Language, which 'for variety of diction in each part of speech surmounteth all the languages of the world.' The 'longtings of the generous reader' were to be satisfied by fuller treatises which never appeared. The same year we have his version of the first two books of Rabelais. The translation of the third was not issued till after his death. This is said to have occurred in 1660 abroad (whither he had escaped), in a fit of laughter on hearing of the restoration of Charles II.
Urquhart's works are a strange mixture. The learning is enormous, yet the scholarship is inaccurate. He is very industrious, yet very slovenly. Crazy with conceit, he yet evinces a true appreciation of all that is noble. Though a clumsy writer, he has many phrases of quaint felicity, many passages of great power. His rendering of Rabelais is an English classic. The extravagance, the grotesqueness, the wild humour, the wisdom of the great Frenchman had a peculiar attraction for the Scottish cavalier. It must be added that he amplifies and lingers over the grosser passages with a gusto there is no mistaking. His extraordinary acquaintance with strange English words is not less remarkable than his command over his author's language.
See his Works in Maitland Club Publications (1834). Editions of his Rabelais are numerous; that edited by Whibley for the 'Tudor Translations' is in 3 vols. (1900). There is a Life of Urquhart by the Rev. J. Willcock (1899).