The fair critic, whose estimate of the young Englishman has been referred to, gives her opinion also of his Scottish rival; but, strangely enough, she observes in him qualities of a kind opposite to those displayed by Sir Thomas Urquhart. She was struck by his neighbourly charity, "for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay him back again when he was able."[39] Can it be that the words put into her mouth are merely the ribald wit of an envious Southron, or are we to understand that the spirit which triumphed over so many inferiors was yet wise enough to discern when it stood in the presence of a mightier than itself?
How a young man on his travels should occupy his time, had been laid down in a little volume which had been published just before Urquhart set out to see the world abroad. In this he might read a list of the things which should engage his attention, drawn up in sonorous language by no less a personage than a late Lord Chancellor of England--a man who was ready to give advice to all his fellow-creatures in all conceivable circumstances. "The things," says Lord Bacon, "to be seen and observed are: the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns, and so the havens and harbours; antiquities and ruins; libraries, colleges, disputations and lectures, where any are; shipping and navies; house and gardens of state and pleasure near great cities; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, burses, warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes, cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where they go.... As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not be put in mind of them; yet they are not to be neglected."[40]
To what extent Urquhart followed a plan of this kind it is impossible to say; for, though his writings are so discursive that we might expect to find in them allusions to anything remarkable he had seen or heard, he has very little to say about his foreign experiences. Dr Johnson spoke with contempt of an English peer, who had extended his travels as far as Egypt, but who had brought back only one small contribution to the general stock of human information--the fact that he had seen "a large serpent in one of the pyramids of Egypt." Urquhart was not quite so poverty-stricken as this; for he seems to have observed examples of mental infirmity, illustrations of which he might doubtless have found nearer home.