Writer, born in Cromarty, Highland, N Scotland, UK. He studied at King's College, Aberdeen, and took up arms against the Covenanting party in the N, but was defeated and forced to flee to England. Becoming attached to the court, he was knighted in 1641. He was present at the Battle at Worcester (1651), where he was taken prisoner and put in the Tower. Through Cromwell's influence, he was allowed considerable liberty, and in 1652 he published his Pantochronochanon, an exact account of the Urquhart family, in which they are traced back to Adam. In 1653 he issued his Introduction to the Universal Language and the first two books of The Works of Mr Francis Rabelais, a brilliant translation and an English classic.
Sir Thomas Urquhart (or Urchard, 1611 - c.1660) was a Scottish writer and translator, most famous for his translation of Rabelais.
Life
Urquhart was born to an old landholding family in Cromarty in northern Scotland.
Urquhart's father died in 1642, leaving behind a large estate encumbered by larger debts. As the eldest son, Urquhart was from that time on harassed by creditors.
In 1648, Urquhart participated in the Royalist uprising at Inverness. The Royalist forces were decisively defeated and Urquhart was taken prisoner. Soon after he published Logopandectesion, his plan for a universal language, and his most celebrated work, his translation of Rabelais.
Urquhart returned to the Continent some time after 1653, perhaps as a condition of his release by Cromwell. There is a legend that Urquhart died in a fit of laughter on receiving news of the Restoration of Charles II. Collections of epigrams were fashionable in the mid seventeenth century, but Urquhart's contribution to the genre has not been highly regarded. Urquhart's nomenclature resembles the names medieval schoolmen gave the various forms of syllogism, in which the construction of the name gives information about the thing being named. (Urquhart would make use of the same idea in his universal language.) The resulting effect is, however, bizarre, and the work is impenetrable without the investment of considerable time to learn Urquhart's system. Although Urquhart was a formidable mathematician and Trissotetras mathematically sound, his approach has never been adopted and his book is a dead end in the history of mathematics. Subtitled "A peculiar promptuary of time," this work is a genealogy of the Urquhart family. In it, Urquhart manages to name each of his ancestors in an unbroken hereditary line from Adam and Eve all the way up to himself through 153 generations. It contains a detailed exposition of Urquhart's universal language, but most of the book is, as the title page says, "a vindication of the honor of Scotland." It includes Urquhart's fictionalized life of the Scottish hero James Crichton (1560-82, "The Admirable Crichton"), Urquhart's most celebrated work outside of his Rabelais. This book contains another prospectus for Urquhart's universal language. Although Urquhart does not give a vocabulary, he explains that his system would be based on a scheme in which the construction of words would reflect their meanings. Logopandecteision also contains a polemic against Urquhart's creditors. This is the work for which Urquhart is best known. Urquhart's learning, pedantry and word-mad exuberance proved to be ideal for Rabelais's work. The third book was edited and completed by Peter Anthony Motteux and published after Urquhart's death.
Style
Urquhart's prose style is unique. He coined words constantly, although none of Urquhart's coinages have fared as well as those of his contemporary Browne.
Trivia
Urquhart appears as the protagonist of Alasdair Gray's short story "Sir Thomas's Logopandocy" (included in Unlikely Stories, Mostly), the title taken from Urquhart's Logopandecteision and some of the material pastiching The Jewel (Ekskybalauron). Urquhart appears in the illustrations throughout Unlikely Stories.
In Robertson Davies's Rebel Angels, Urquhart is often referenced by the flamboyant and devious Urquhart McVarish, a professor of Renaissance history, who claims that Urquhart is his ancestor.
Urquhart and his universal language figure prominently in Andrew Drummond's A Hand-book of Volapük.
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