[200] ΕΚΣΚΥΒΑΛΑΥΡΟΝ is supposed to be the Greek for "_Gold out of the dirt_." Dr Irving, the author of a very carefully-written memoir of Sir Thomas Urquhart, in his _Lives of Scottish Writers_, vol. ii., is a little puzzled by this extraordinary name. The latter part of it was, he thought, perhaps connected with αυριον--"to-morrow"--in allusion to the fact that this "exquisite Jewel" was taken out of the kennel _the morrow_ after the battle of Worcester. But the word is evidently αυρον--the Lat. _aurum_, "gold." In the "Postilla" to the Pedigree of the Urquharts, our author says that "the shire of Cromartie ... hath the names of its towns, villages, hamlets, dwellings, promontories, hillocks, temples, dens, groves, fountains, rivers, pools, lakes, stone heaps, akers, and so forth, of pure and perfect Greek." We need not be surprised that Sir Thomas's Greek has more affinity with the vernacular form of the language current in the Cromartie of his time than with the Attic of the age of Pericles, "_For Greke of Athenes was to him unknowé._" Probably in this northern dialect of the Greek tongue αὑρον was used instead of the more classical χρυσὁς. Another indication of the difference between the Cromartian and Attic forms of speech is given by Sir Thomas in the same treatise in the name Αλεξἁνδηρ, which Thucydides would have written Αλἑξανδρος. [201] Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart., an author who combines a great many of the peculiarities of the two Sir Thomas Urquharts, the father and the son, and who has recorded his experiences in an _Autobiography_, lays stress in like manner upon this quality of speed in composition. Thus he says of his little novel, _Mary de Clifford_ (published in 1792), "it was written with a fervent rapidity, which no one seems to believe;--begun in October, 1791, and the sheets sent to the press by the post, as fast as they were scribbled." The passage in which he refers to the vexations to which he had been subjected is worth quoting, on account of its similarity to our Sir Thomas's story. "I have suffered," he says, "a hundred times more disappointments, and crosses, and insults, and wrongs, and deprivations, than Chatterton, yet my spirit, though bent and sunk, was never broken. I am calm and defiant, though not hopeful, in proportion as the storm presses me;--and what trials have I not undergone? I do not mean to relate all these trials; it would involve the conduct of obscure individuals, many of whom are still living" (_Autobiography_, pp. 8, 9). [202] _Works_, p. 181. [203] _I.e._ at such an extremity liable to be forfeited to the victorious soldier. [204] _Works_, pp. 189, 190. [205] Appendix II. p. 215.