In telling the story of Sir Thomas Urquhart's life, some of his most striking peculiarities have been displayed and illustrated, so that no one who has read the foregoing pages is altogether dependent upon what may now be said for forming an estimate of his character. His vanity is perhaps the most striking trait in it; but only a very hard-hearted moralist would call it a vice in his case, for it is as artless as it is boundless, and is combined with so much kindness of heart and generosity of feeling, that we are more entertained by it than indignant at it. No one who looks into his works can doubt the intensity of his patriotism. Indeed, his passionate longing after personal fame is in all cases combined with the wish to confer additional glory upon the land of his birth. His devotion to the Royalist cause[139] is of the purest and most heroic type, and the general tone of his character, as revealed to us in his books, is elevated and noble. At the same time there is an element of the grotesque in it, so that in his disinterested and chivalrous disposition he reminds us of Don Quixote,[140] while in his frequent allusions to struggles with pecuniary difficulties, as well as in his use of magniloquent language, he distinctly recalls Wilkins Micawber. A lively fancy, a strain of genuine erudition beneath his pedantry, and some sparks of insanity, are other elements in his fantastical character. Only a mind like his own could trace the maze of its windings and turnings, and fathom the depths of its eccentricity. In his thoughts "truth is constantly becoming interfused with fiction, possibility with certainty, and the hyperbolical extravagance of his style only keeps even pace with the prolific shootings of his imagination."[141] It is perhaps expected that one should, in a measure, apologize for the eccentricities of Urquhart's character and literary style, by explaining that he was a humourist. But, unfortunately, humour is a quality in which Urquhart was lacking, unless we understand by the word mere fantastical quaintness of thought and speech. In one passage of his works he speaks with contempt of "shallow-brained humourists,"[142] and we should wrong his ghost by putting him among those whom he abhorred. Not a single trace of that subtle, graceful play of fancy and of feeling which enters into our conception of humour is to be found in his works.[143] His readers may smile as they turn over his pages, but he is always in deadly earnest. The quality of wit he occasionally manifests in the form of keen sarcasm, when he gives full vent to his feelings of scorn and contempt; as when, for example, he describes those who went out to fight, "but did not hazard their precious persons, lest they should seem to trust to the arm of flesh."[144]