[139] Our Sir Thomas's memory should be cherished by defenders of the name and fame of Mary Queen of Scots, for he goes so far as to say that "ignorance, together with hypocrisie, usury, oppression, and iniquity, took root in these parts [Scotland], when uprightness, plain-dealing, and charity, with Astrœa, took their flight with Queen Mary of Scotland into England." Probably few of her admirers would be so daring as to assert this, though many of them doubtless would be glad to hear the assertion made. [140] We take the liberty of extracting those few sentences from the letter of a friend, who has taken great interest in the execution of this work;--"Sir Thomas would have been an original character in almost any surroundings--a kind of literary Quixote, with what may be called a 'parenthetical' genius, branching off at every comma into the fresh images furnished by a teeming imagination. He was more than a translator of Rabelais--he seems to have been a kind of Rabelais himself." [141] Sir Theodore Martin, _Rabelais_, p. xix. [142] See p. 28. [143] A different opinion is expressed in the preface to W. Harrison Ainsworth's capital novel of _Crichton_. "Sir Thomas," he says, "is a joyous spirit--a right Pantagruelist; and if he occasionally 'Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba,' he has an exuberance of wit and playfulness of fancy that amply redeem his tendency to fanfaronade." Our readers have abundance of material before them for coming to a decision upon this question. [144] See p. 85. [145] _Works_, p. 226. [146] Sir Theodore Martin, _Rabelais_, p. xx. [147] In Granger's _Biographical Dictionary_ (1779), this portrait is described erroneously, as Sir Thomas Urquhart is said in it to be dressed in armour. Probably the description was given from memory. In the second volume of Bohn's edition of _Rabelais_, the frontispiece is a half-length portrait of the translator, evidently reproduced from the above. The effect, however, is highly disagreeable, and the likeness must have produced an unfavourable opinion of our author in the minds of most of those who have looked upon it.