104 The Admirable Crichton. 



Perhaps it might be desirable to ask you, while listening to 

 the oration, to dissociate from your minds the Genoa, the Italian 

 city of to-day. In Crichton's time, and indeed, for seven hundred 

 years commencing with the eleventh century, Genoa held a high 

 position as the capital of a prosperous and enterprising com- 

 mercial republic, and the ambition of its rulers was carried to 

 the extent of founding colonies on the Levant and on the shores 

 of the Black Sea. Even at the present time, Genoa, as the 

 metropolis of a province of the same name, is a city of consider- 

 able importance. 



Crichton was barely nineteen years of age when he appeared 

 before the Senate of Genoa, and yet the oration affords evidence 

 of a maturity of judgment and a degree of knowledge which would 

 surely bespeak the experienced man of the world, the student of 

 prosaic every-day affairs, and the classical scholar — a rare com- 

 bination in one and the same person. It is demonstratively clear, 

 too, that he understood the Italian character, with its love of 

 poetic flattery, given and taken. In this respect the oration 

 brings to us the atmosphere of the age, breathing, as it does, 

 sweet-scented, highly-flavoured adulation for the mere common- 

 places of life. In expressing unbounded admiration of the rulers 

 of Genoa in exaggerated terms of praise, Crichton was only fol- 

 lowing the correct example of the age and properly observing 

 the amenities of the occasion. All the same, one can almost 

 imagine the orator's tongue making a violent endeavour to force 

 its way through his cheek when his panegyrical utterances reached 

 Olympian heights of superlative blandiloquence. 



The title-page of the little pamphlet containing the dedica- 

 tion and oration bears the following: — 



Oratio Jacobi 



Critonii Scoti Pro 



Moderatorum Reipub. electio — 



ne Coram Senatu habita 



Calen. Julij. 



Genvae cum licentia Superiorum 



MDLXXVIiri. 



Oration of James Crichton, of Scotland (literally Scofns, a Scot), 

 delivered at the election of the Rulers of the Republic of 

 Genoa before the Senate on the Calends of July. 



Genoa — By permission of the Authorities. 



MDLXXVIIII. 



