4 It is three years since my father, on deathbed in the chamber adjoyning, led my five brothers to swear, under pain of his everlasting curse and execration, to assist, concur with and serve me to the utmost of their power, industry and means, and to spare neither charge nor travel to release me from the undeserved bondage of the domineering Creditor, and extricate our crazed estate from the impestrements in which it hath been involved by his too good, too credulous, too hopeful nature; three years also since I voyaged beyond Byzantium, letting rents embank at home for the leniencing and clementizing of the Creditor.
5 It is one week since, homing it through London, I saw off the press my Trissotetras, wherein I lay the ground of an intirely new Science.
6 This day, having entered upon the family mansion, I discover that by false inept bailiffs and chamberlains, deputies and doers, my rents and receipts have been so embezzled, malingened, pauchled and mischarged that little or no moneys have accrued to me, while the creditors have sold their claims on the estate to usurers yet more fanged, pangastrical and Presbyterian than themselves. It is a well founded prevision of Jehovus that I am, since Neper of Marchiston, the foremost Apostle in Brittain of that Holy Minerva who inspired Moses, Aristotle, Julius Caesar and the mighty Rabelais, for were I not the wisest, therefor luckiest man I know, I would be the most miserably depressed and straightened. So I here cast an accompt of the great goods of my condition, balancing the bads against them to see which predominate.
spirit, or if they did, in what likeness they received him? To this both made reply that of all the nights they had ever enjoyed, it was that night respectively wherein the spirit was most intirely communicative in feats of dalliance, and that he acted in the guise of the boy and chambermaid whom I had appointed to await on them as they went to bed. This confirmed me in my former opinion, which certainly increased when I heard a short time after, that the imagination of two had become a regular fornication of four; by which (though I caused to punish them all) the fantasists were totally cured, who afterwards becoming yoke mates in wedlock to the two servants of our house, were in all times coming sound enough in fancie, and never more disquieted by diabolical apprehensions.
CONTRA SCOTIAM
Scotland would produce, for philosophy, astronomy, natural magick, poesie and other such like faculties, as able men as ever were:
Duns Scotus *
Sacroboscus *
Reginaldus Scotus *
and other compatriots of these three great Scots, whose name I do not insert in the roll of the rest, because they flourished before 1600. Only one Scot; of able intellectual parts, that I ever knew, had his sound mind unmobilated by money, and that through the corruptions of courtiership: Sir William Alexander, afterward Earl of Sterlin, who made an insertion to Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, and composed several tragedies. He was born a poet, and aimed to be a king; therefor would he have his royal title from King James, who was born a king and aimed to be a poet; so Jamie Steward bestows on him the sovereignty of that tract of polar ice and rock recently named Nova Scotia. Had they stopped there, it had been well; but like King Arthur, he must have his knights, though not limited to so small a number. Whosoever wished to be a gentleman and gave King Sterlin one hundred and fifty Sterling pounds, could at once flaunt the orange riban to testify he was Knight Baronet. The King nevertheless, not to stain his royal dignity by awarding honour to meer wealth, also gave them land for their money at six pence an acre, which could not be thought very dear, considering how pretilly in the respective legal parchments of disposition they were described as fruitful corne land, watered with pleasant rivers running alongst most excellent and spacious meadows; and if they lacked an abundance of oaken groves in the midst of very fertil plains, it was the scrivener or writer’s fault; for his majestie ordered that, on the receipt of three thousand Scots marks, there should be no deficiency in quantity or quality, in measure or goodness of land, with here and there most delicious gardens and orchards and whatever else would be content their fancies, as if they were purchasing ground in the Elysian Fieldes, or Mahumet’s Paradise. And if the clerk writing the charter, on receipt of some small coin to himself, slipped in a thousand more acres than was agreed at first, he cared not. At last, when some two or three hundred Knights had among them purchased several million Neo-Caledonian acres, confirmed to them and their for ever under the great seal (the affixing thereof cost each of them but thirty pence more) finding that the company was not like to become more numerous, he bethought of a course more profitable for himself, and, without the advice of his Knights (who represented both his houses of parliament, clergy and all) like an absolute King indeed disponed heritably to the French both the dominion and property of the whole continent of that kingdom of Nova Scotia for a matter of five or six thousand pounds English.
And this is a true example of that charm, fascination, inchantment and infernal assistance of men’s imaginations by the gold of the Spanish conquerors, which makes many believe they may become magnates and grandees with no more labour than is needed to purchase a royal patent, fit a ship, navigate a passage, and plunder an astonished people by the power of artilleriendal assault. The followers of such adventurers may indeed reap good harvest abroad, but only by digging and planting, (in fear of the natives they have dispossessed) what could be cultivated at home with better advantage to themselves and their country. It is the greater readiness of Scottishmen to adventure abroad, rather than develop what we have, that is our nation’s ruin. By which I am reminded, that I have a certain harbour or bay, in goodness equal to the best in the world, adjacent to a place, which is the head town of the Shire; the shire and town being of one and the same name with the harbour or bay; whose promontaries on each side, vulgarly called Souters, from the Greek word σωτηρες, that is to say, Salvatores or Savers, from the safety that ships have when once they are entred within them, having had that name imposed on them by Nicobulus the Druyd, who came along with my predecessor Alypos in the dayes of Eborak, that founded York some 698 years before Ferguse the First; at which time that whole country, never before discovered by the Greeks, was named Olbion by the said Alypos.
This harbour, in all the Latine maps of Scotland, is called Portus Salutis; by reason that ten thousand ships together may within it ride in the greatest tempest that is as in a calm by vertue of which conveniency some exceeding rich men, of five or six several nations, masters of ships, and merchant adventurers, promised to bring their best vessels and stocks for trading along with them, and dwell in that my little town with me, who should have been a sharer with them in their hazard, and by subordinating factors to accompany them in their negotiations, admitted likewise for a partner in their profit and advantages.
By which means, the foresaid town of Cromarty, for so it is called, in a very short space, would have easily become the richest of any within threescore miles thereof; in the prosecuting of which designe, I needed not to question the hearty concurrence of Aberdeen, which, for honesty, good fashions and learning, surpasseth as far all other cities and towns in Scotland, as London doth for greatness, wealth, and magnificence, the smallest hamlet or village in England.