CAMERON, AGNAMED THE WALKING LIBRARY: who being renowned through all the provinces of France for his universal reading, took occasion to set forth an excellent folio volume in Latin intituled Bibliotheca Movens.
MASTER ALEXANDER ROSSE: who hath written manyer books, both in good Latine and English, prose and verse, than he hath years, and whose Poeticus proveth, that the Pagan Gods are but names for the separated faculties of our TRIUN GOD, so that Christians need no longer lie under the reproach which the Oriental nations fixe upon us, of seeing with but one eye, for Master Rosse hath so vindicated in matter of knowledge our Western World, as to make the Chineses, by force of reason, of whose authority above them they are not ashamed, glad to confess that the Europaeans, as well as themselves, look out of both their eyes and have no blinkered minds.
MELVIL: who has six hundred ducats a year, for translating into Latine or Spanish, some hundred few books of these six hundred great volumes, taken by Don Juan de Austria at the battel of Lepanto from the Great Turk, which now lie in the great library of that magnifick palace the Es-corial near Madrid.
DEMPSTER: who is chiefly recommended to posterity for his Latin index of five thousand illustrious Scots from the earliest ages to the last liver whereof dyed above fifty years since.
CHALMERS: bishop of Neems.
CHIZUM: bishop of Vezun.
TYRY: assistant to the General of the Jesuites, and second person in that vast ecclesiastical republick, which reaches beyond the territories of all Christian kings to cover the continent of the World.
KING JAMES 6th AND 1st: History cannot afford us (Solomon and Alfonso of Aragon being laid aside) any monarch who was near as learned as he, as is apparent by that book in folio intituled, “King James His Works”; despite that peevish remark by the young king’s old tutor, the republican pedagogue George Buchanan, that the king’s faculty as a scholar, equalled his notorious deficiency as a souldier, since by skelping the arse of the Lord’s annoynted the best he (Buchanan) had been able to make of poor Jamie was a pedant, as the Royal Steward lacked substance to shape anything better. PRO ME
Deeds Armoriaclass="underline" In my early years, to ripen my brains for eminent undertakings, my heart gave me courage to adventure through foreign climes, wherein it thrice befell me to enter the lists against men of three several nations, to vindicate my native country from the slanders wherewith they had aspersed it. God was pleased so to conduct my fortune that, after I had disarmed them, they in such sort acknowledged their error, and the obligation they did owe me for sparing their lives, that in lieu of three enemies that were I acquired three constant friends both to myself and my nation, which by several gallant testimonies they did later prove, in many occasions. Thus I outdid the Gasco-nad of France, Rodomontad of Spaine, Fanfaronad of Italy, and Bragadochio brags of all other countries, who could no more astonish my invincible young heart, than could the cheeping of a mouse a bear robbed of her whelps.
Then in the May month of 1639, when 120 °Covenanters of the North assembled at Turrif, I with a loyal force of but 800, did altogether repel, route and disperse them, with no advantage on our side but complete surprize and four brass cannon. Thus was quelled the first armed mustering against the monarchy since Mary Steward fled Langside field. Thus issued the first battel in this most uncivil War. Would to Jehovus the loyalists had done so well since. CONTRA ME
Deeds Armoriaclass="underline" Nothing, in that never was I in any fight defeated, though sometimes obliged to withdraw before overwhelming power, as hath befallen Scipio Africanus, Robert de Bruis and Adolphus Maleus Caesarorum. PRO ME
Deeds Minervaclass="underline" (completed and potential) whereby my name will resound to the end day of alltime, by reason of, these shining books which will work huge reformation, transformation and revolution in every branch of human tecknics, politics and thought.
1. EPIGRAMS: DIVINE AND MORAL
The Muses never yet inspired sublimer conceptions in a more refined style, than is to be found in the accurate strains of these most ingenious Epigrams. Printed in London, 1641.
2. THE TRISSOTETRAS
Wherein I set forth, with all possible brevity and perspecuity, orthogonospherical and loxogonospherical tables which permit the easy application of Neper’s logarythms to every dimension of space and any volume of bulk, and by resolving those cranklings, windings, turnings, involutions and amfractuosities belonging to the equisoleary system, I facilitate and reform the work of all artists in pleusiotechny, poliechryology, cosmography, geography, astronomy, geodesy, gnomonicks, catoptricks, dioptricks, fortification, navigation and chiaroscuro. Printed in London 1645, last week.
3. TTANTOXPONOXANON
A peculiar promptuary of time, wherein is recorded the exact lineal descent of the VRQUARTS since the beginning of motion. Unprinted.
4. ISOPLASTFONIKON
Demonstrating the cubification of the sphere through Pythagorean acousticks, whereby a well-tuned fiddle or taut kettledrum may be perswaded to yield the exact side of a squared solid equal in volume to any symmetrical rotundity whatsoever. Unprinted.
5. FOINIXPANKROMATA
or, the Rainbow-Phoenix, wherein is counter-blasted Signor Galileo’s contention that colour is meer sensation, by proving that the boundless prime matter of the universe is not the Water of Thales, Air of Anaximenes, Fire of Heraclitus, Atoms of Democritus or Quadressential Porridge of Trismegistus, but white light; that gold, green, azure, deep-sea blue, violet, purple, crimson and pink are light in decay; that self-colours through the Macrocosm creates, not just its appearance, but its tangible, fructible, frangible bodies; and that darkness is light. travelling backward too fast to be catched by the eye. Unprinted.
6. ALETHALEMBIKON
or the True Alembick, demonstrating that a quin-cunxial chamber of reflecting plates, mathematically disposed, will enable to be wrought, at no cost, identical solid duplicates of any object laid therein, by the admission to it, at a point a beam of midsummer noonday sun. Unprinted.
7. TΗΕ HEROICK DEEDSANDSAYINGS OF THE GOOD GARGANTUA AND HIS SON PANTAGRUEL
a translation from the French, which, since their lexicons hold but three quarter of the words we can use, will be one third longer than the original, as if Doctor Rabelais had writ in English, with my resour ces. Not begun yet. 8. I recall not what this is Cocks crow, sky pales, I may now sleep a little pethaps.
CONTRA ME
Deeds Minervaclass="underline" Lacking Scots printers my texts amass till convoyed South.
CONTRA SCOTIAM ARMS
What have we here? A Scotland racked, retching and rampant with intestinal dissent. How may a politic body rampantly menace others while bloodily rending itself? Regard us and know. Four armies prowl this realm prepared to fight 1. For King and Covenant, 2. For King against Covenant, 3. For Covenant against King, 4. Against both Covenant and King. This rebelion, here begun on a point of liturgy by Scottish blatterers of extemporaneous prayer, spread hence to the English who took to it on a matter of taxation and, fighting a two-sided rectilinear war, soon concluded in a clear conquest for the Cromwel parliament last year on Marston Moor. But the Northern Realm, where the Royal Steward was first betrayed, still holds the last loyalists to fight for him victoriously under that lapsed Covenanter the Marquess Montross. This fills me with a confusion of pride and regret. When will our turmoyles cease to involve us in stultifying self dissent? May we only win glory by serving the foreigner? If so our best hope is to be integered into one united Brittish Imperium, by imblending the Scottish Lords and Commons with the English as hath been done with the Welsh equivalent. But should that fail to grant us long prosperity of achievement, then our last hope is an enemy of the sort Cromwel is to the Irish, but less cunning; an enemy so crass, antagonistic and dully ignorant of Scotland’s state that we must needs all confront it together or sink into total penury and nonfunction. ARTS