CRICHTON, JAMES (156o?-1582), commonly called the "Admirable Crichton," was the son of Robert Crichton, lord ad vocate of Scotland in the reign of Mary and James VI., and of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Stewart of Beath, through whom he claimed royal descent. He was born probably at Eliock in Dum friesshire in 156o, and when ten years old was sent to St. Salva tor's college, St. Andrews, where he took his B.A. in 1574 and his M.A. in 1575. In 1577 Crichton was undoubtedly in Paris, but his career on the Continent is difficult to follow. That he dis played considerable classical knowledge, was a good linguist, a ready and versatile writer of verse, and above all that he pos sessed an astounding memory seems certain, not only from the evidence of men of his own time but from the fact that even Joseph . Scaliger (Prima Scaligerana, p. 58, 1669) speaks of his attainments with the highest praise. It is known that for two years Crichton served in the French army and that in 1579 he arrived in Genoa. The latter event is proved by a Latin address (of no particular merit) to the doge and senate entitled Oratio J. Critonii Scoti pro Moderatorum Genuensis Reipubl. electione coram Senatu habita ... (Genoa, 1579). The next year Crich ton was in Venice, and won the friendship of Aldus Manutius by his Latin ode In appulsu ad urbem Venetam de Proprio statu J. Critonii Scoti Carmen ad Aldum Manuccium . . . (Venice, 158o). The best contemporary evidence for Crichton's stay in Venice is a handbill printed by the Guerra press in 158o (and now in the British Museum), giving a short biography and an extrava gant eulogy of his powers. This work is undoubtedly by Manutius, as it was reprinted with his name in 1581 as Relatione della quality di . . . Crettone, and again in 2582 (reprinted Venice, 1831) .
In Venice Crichton met and vanquished all disputants except Giacomo Mazzoni, was followed from place to place by crowds of admirers, and won the affection of the humanists Lorenzo Massa and Giovanni Donati. In March 1581 he went to Padua, where he held two great disputations. In the first he extemporized in succession a Latin poem, a daring onslaught on Aristotelian ignorance, and an oration in praise of ignorance. In the second, which took place in the church of St. John and St. Paul, and lasted three days, he undertook to refute innumerable errors in Aristotelians, mathematicians and schoolmers, to conduct his dis pute either logically or by the secret doctrine of numbers, etc. According to Aldus, who attended the debate and published an account of it in his dedication to Crichton prefixed to Cicero's "Paradoxa" 0580, the young Scotsman was completely success ful. In June Crichton was once more in Venice, and while there wrote two Latin odes to his friends Lorenzo Massa and Giovanni Donati, but after this date the details of his life are obscure. Urquhart states that he went to Mantua, became the tutor of the young prince of Mantua, Vincenzo di Gonzaga, and was killed by the latter in a street quarrel in 1582. Aldus in his edition of Cicero's De universitate (1583), dedicated to Crichton, laments July 3 as the fatal day; and this account is apparently confirmed by the Mantuan State papers recently unearthed by Douglas Crichton (Proc. Soc. of Antiquaries of Scotland, 19o9). Sir Sid ney Lee (Diet. Nat. Biog.) argued against this date, on the ground that in 1584 and 1585 Crichton was alive and in Milan, as certain works of his published in that year testified, and regarded it as probable that he died in Mantua c. 1585-86. But these later works seem to have been by another man of the same name. The epithet "admirable" (admirabilis) for Crichton first occurs in John John ston's Heroes Scoti (1603) .