ades, who arrived at Cromartie or Portus Salutus in 389 B. C. Even in historic times it is quite clear that his progenitors displayed a potency of character such as would naturally separate them from the rest of the human race. We learn, for instance, that Thomas Urquhart, born in 1474, was surnamed Paterhemon "because he had of his wife Helen, daughter of my Lord Salton, five and twenty sons all men and eleven daughters all married women."
His Trissotretras or, as he calls it, "A most exquisite Table for resolving all manners of Triangles published for those that are mathematically affected," is obviously designed to relieve an abstruse science of much of its monotony by the simple method of giving to each lineal symbol a proper name.
A short quotation should be sufficient to enable the reader to appreciate his method! "The axiums of plane triangles are four Rulerst Eproso, Grediftal, and Bagredifi while Rulerst branches into Gradesso and Eraetul is under the directory of Uphechet," et cetera. The grammar and syntax of his Logopandecteision or Universal Language Contrived for the Utilitie of All Pregnant Spirits were "a pescod on it!" lost at Worcester. Enough however escaped the pie-makers of that city to give a receptive linguist a fair idea of its possibilities. The language was made up of four numbers, eleven genders, and one word for each several idea.
With pardonable complacence Sir Thomas himself points out its especial merits. "Every word," he says, "signifieth as well backward as forward and however you invert the letters, still shall you fall upon significant words whereby a wonderful facility is obtained in the making of anagrams."
Finally we come to the famous translation.
There must indeed have been a rooted congruity between the fanciful Cavalier and the old French monk for in this work all the cherished conceits of Urquhart's crested imagination found ample encouragement and scope.
In Rabelais' massive and broad-mouthed chapters he could expand and burgeon to his heart's content; there being room and space enough for his gravest drollery and his hugest planetary quip. Here at last there was nothing to prevent him heaping up his page with epithets and synonyms like so many pieces of chopped peat banked against the wood-shed in the castle yard of Cromartie. Often he
