CRICHTON. James (1560-1582), commonly called “the Admirable Crichton,” was the son of Robert Crichton, lord-advocate of Scotland in the reign of James VI., and was born at Eliock, in Dumfriesshire. He was sent when ten years old to Saint Salvator’s College, St Andrews, where he took his master’s degree at fifteen. In 1577 he was still living in Scotland; some time after that date, however, a quarrel with his father, who had become a Protestant, drove him to France. In Paris his dialectics and his sword-play are said to have gained him equal admiration; and, according to Urquhart’s very doubtful story, a contest in twelve languages resulted in an easy victory over the whole staff of the Sorbonne. His Parisian triumphs were followed by a couple of years of obscure campaigning in the French army, but in 1580 he appeared at Venice. A Latin poem addressed to Aldus Manutius laid the foundation of a lasting friendship with the great printer, who dedicated his edition of Cicero’s Paradoxa to Crichton, and, according to some, conferred on him still more substantial favours; he also became intimate with Sperone Speroni, and with Lorenzo Massa and Giovanni Donati. His first public display was the delivery of an address to the doge and senate, whom he astonished with his eloquence and oratorical grace; and he followed this up with a series of disputations on mathematical, theological, and philosophical subjects, which so extended his fame that it was reckoned the highest honour to Mazzoni, a famous dialectician, thrice to have met and vanquished him in argument. But these exertions produced an illness which held him prostrate for four months. At Padua, the scene of his next exhibition, he astonished the assembled professors by extemporizing in succession a Latin poem, a ...