"Of those dispersedly-rejected bundles of paper, some were gathered up by grocers, druggists, chandlers, pie-makers, or such as stood in need of any cartapaciatory utensil, and put in present service, to the utter undoing of all the writing thereof, both in its matter and order. One quinternion, nevertheless, two days after the fight on the Friday morning, together with two other loose sheets more, by vertue of a drizelling rain, which had made it stick fast to the ground, where there was a heap of seven and twenty dead men lying upon one another, was by the command of one Master Braughton taken up by a servant of his; who, after he had (in the best manner he could) cleansed it from the mire and mud of the kennel, did forthwith present it to the perusal of his master; in whose hands it no sooner came, but instantly perceiving by the periodical couching of the discourse, marginal figures, and breaks here and there, according to the variety of the subject, that the whole purpose was destinated for the press, and by the author put into a garb befitting either the stationer or printer's acceptance; yet because it seemed imperfect, and to have relation to subsequent tractates, he made all the enquiry he could for trial whether there were any more such quinternions or no; by means whereof he got full information that above three thousand sheets of the like paper, written after that fashion, and with the same hand, were utterly lost and imbezzeled, after the manner aforesaid; and was so fully assured of the misfortune, that to gather up spilt water, comprehend the windes within his fist, and recover those papers again, he thought would be a work of one and the same labour and facility."[204]
The anonymous personage who gives the above account says that he heard of Mr Braughton's discovery of these remarkable documents, and also of "the great moan made for the loss of Sir Thomas Urquhart's manuscripts," and, putting the two facts together, resolved to ask Sir Thomas if the papers found at Worcester belonged to him. He examined them, and identified them as part of the preface to a grammar and lexicon of a Universal Language, of which he was the inventor. The loss of a work of such a size and of such great importance did not greatly depress him. He stated that if he got but encouragement and time, freedom and the enjoyment of his ancestral estates, he doubted not but that he could supply the missing sheets--the originals of which had come to such base uses and disastrous fate at Worcester. The papers, therefore, found by Mr Braughton are published in order that the readers may see the reasonableness of giving Sir Thomas what he asked, in view of the astounding benefits which he would in return confer upon them. This is put with great clearness and brevity in a couplet prefixed to the above narrative: