Glendoich, and since it is a singular piece of curiosity, I shall give the reader a particular account of it, with some reflections upon the different languages that are here set down by our author." Whether by the term "communicated?" the biographer means to intimate that he saw the production he criticises, is somewhat doubtful ; but at all events, our opinion of M'Kenzie's veracity is such, that we do not believe he would deliberately state that he had either been informed of or shown any particular work by Sir John Murray, and thereafter give a full and minute account of it, without some sort of foundation on which to erect his edifice of narrative. M'Kemie proceeds to assure us that this is a large print, engraved at Rome in the year 1616, and dedicated to Pope Paul V. That upon the top is the blessed virgin, with a circle of stars about her head, wrapt in a glorious vestment, upon which is her name in Hebrew, sending forth rays of eulogiums in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, while over her head appear the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Angels and the apostles are at her side, and the moon and stars beneath her feet. Then follow seven columns in which these encomiums are translated into the numerous dialects with which the mighty linguist was familiar. A great northern philologist, recently deceased, has been held up to the wonder of the human race, as having been acquainted with thirty-two languages; but in a period when few were acquainted with more tongues than that of their native place, along with the Greek and Latin, and when the materials for more extensive acquisitions Mere with difficulty accessible, the craving appetite of Hepburn could not be satiated with fewer than seventy-two. We have among these—The Cussian, the Virgilian, the Hetruscan, the Saracen, the Assyrian, the Armenian, the Syro-Armenian, the Gothic, and also the Getic; the Scythian, and the Mœso-Gothic. Then he leaves such modern labourers as Champolion and Dr Young deeply in the shade, from his knowledge of the Coptic, the Hieroglyphic, the Egyptian, the Mercurial Egyptian, the Isiac-Egyptiac, and the Babylonish. He then turns towards the Chaldaic, the Palestinian, the Turkish, the Rabbinical, the German Rabbinical, the Galilean, the Spanish-Rabbinical, the Afro-Rabbinical, and what seems the most appropriate tongue of all, the u Mystical."[1] Gradually the biographer rises with the dignity of his subject, and begins to leave the firm earth. He proceeds to tell us how Hepburn wrote in the " Noachic," the " Adamean," the "Solomonic," the "Mosaic," the "Hulo-Rabbinic," the "Seraphic," the "Angelical," and the "Supercelestial."[2] "Now," continues M'Kenzie, with much complacency at the successful exhibition he has made of his countryman's powers, but certainly with much modesty, considering their extent, "these are all the languages (and they are the most of the whole habitable world,) in which our author has given us a specimen of his knowledge, and which evidently demonstrates that he was not only the greatest linguist of his own age, but of any age that has been since the creation of the world, and may be reckoned amongst those prodigies of mankind, that seem to go beyond the ordinary limits of nature."
Hepburn dabbled in the doctrines of the Cabala, but whether in vindication or attack, the oracular observations of his biographers hardly enable us to ascertain. He died at Venice in October, 1620, a circumstance in which Dempster has the best reason to be accurate, as it is the very year in which he pens his account. M'Kenzie finds that "others" (without condescending to mention who they are,) "say that he died at Venice, anno 1621, and that his picture is still to be seen there, and at'the Vatican at Rome." Dr Lettice, in the refined
- ↑ Perhaps the Cabalistic arrangement of the alphabet.
- ↑ Perhaps M'Kenzie may in naming this alphabet have had some confused idea in his mind, of an arrangement of the celestial bodies, by alternate contortion, into something resembling the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, followed by some of the worshippers of the secret sciences. The arrangement was called the celestial alphabet. Vide Cafferel.
