Of Sir Thomas Urquhart very little is known but what is related by himself, and though as much an egotist as most men, he has related but little of a kind available to the biographer. But there are characters of so original a cast that their more prominent features may be hit off by a few strokes; and Sir Thomas’s is decidedly of this class. It is impossible to mistake the small dark profile which he has left us, small and dark though it be, for the profile of any mind except his own. He was born in 1613, the eldest son of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, and of Christian, daughter of Alexander Lord Elphinston. Of his earlier years there is not a single anecdote, nor is there anything known of either the manner or place in which he pursued his studies. Prior to the death of his father, and, as he himself expresses it, “before his brains were yet ripened for eminent undertakings,” he made the tour of Europe. In travelling through France, Spain, and Italy, he was repeatedly complimented on the fluency with which he spoke the languages of these countries, and advised by some of the people to pass himself for a native. But he was too true a patriot to relish the proposal. He had not less honour, he said, by his own poor country than could be derived from any country whatever; for, however much it might be surpassed in riches and fertility--in honesty, valour, and learning, it had no superior. And this assertion he maintained at the sword’s point, in single combat three several times, and at each time discomfited his antagonist. He boasts on another occasion, that not in all the fights in which he had ever been engaged, did he yield an inch-breadth to the enemy before the day of Worcester battle.