"When this sudden rapture was over, and all husht into its former
tranquility, the noble gallantry and generosity, beyond expression, of
the inimitable Crichtoun, did transport them all againe into a new
exstasie of ravishment, when they saw him like an angel in the shape of
a man, or as another Mars, with the conquered enemie's sword in one
hand, and the fifteen hundred pistols he had gained in the other,
present the sword to the Duke as his due, and the gold to his high
treasurer, to be disponed equally to the three widows of the three
unfortunate gentlemen lately slaine, reserving only to himself the
inward satisfaction he conceived, for having so opportunely discharged
his duty to the House of Mantua.
"The reader perhaps will think this wonderful; and so would I too, were
it not that I know, (as Sir Philip Sydney sayes), that a wonder is no
wonder in a wonderful subject, and consequently not in him, who for his
learning, judgement, valour, eloquence, beauty, and good-fellowship was
the perfectest result of the joynt labour of the perfect number of those
six deities, Pallas, Apollo, Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Bacchus, that
hath been seen since the dayes of Alcibiades; for he was reported to
have been inriched with a memory so prodigious, that any sermon, speech,
harangue, or other manner of discourse of an hour's continuance, he was
able to recite without hesitation, after the same manner of gesture and
pronuntiation in all points, wherewith it was delivered at first; and of
so stupendious a judgment and conception, that almost naturally he
understood quiddities of philosophy; and as for the abstrusest and most
researched mysteries of other disciplines, arts, and faculties, the
intentional species of them were as readily obvious to the interiour
view and perspicacity of his mind, as those of the common visible
colours to the external sight of him that will open his eyes to look
upon them; of which accomplishment and Encyclopedia of knowledge, he
gave on a time so marvelous a testimony at Paris, that the words of
_Admirabilis Scotus_, the Wonderful Scot, in all the several tongues and
idiomes of Europ, were, (for a great while together), by the most of the
echos resounded to the peircing of the very clouds. To so great a hight
and vast extent of praise did the never too much to be extolled
reputation of the seraphick wit of that eximious man attaine, for his
commanding to be affixed programs on all the gates of the schooles,
halls, and colledges of that famous university, as also on all the chief
pillars and posts standing before the houses of the most renowned men
for literature, resident within the precinct of the walls and suburbs of
that most populous and magnificent city, inviting them all, (or any
whoever else versed in any kinde of scholastick faculty), to repaire at
nine of the clock in the morning of such a day, moneth, and yeer, as by
computation came to be just six weeks after the date of the affixes, to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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