Introduction

In 1898, English scholar and critic Charles Whibley claimed James Fraser's north Highland contemporary, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty (1611–60), to have been the ‘greatest translator of all time’. It is a minority viewpoint, but his publications in this area comprise a vital element in Urquhart's output, work that was then, and remains, highly regarded. Whibley's statement gives further fuel to the argument that to assume Highland scholarship in the era before Culloden to be ‘peripheral’ is based on too simplistic an approach, one which can marginalise places such as Scandinavia and central and eastern Europe, as well as the ‘British Isles’ beyond England. Such a perspective is certainly of partial relevance at most when applied to the Scottish Highlands prior to the ages of Enlightenment, ‘Improvement’ and Clearance. A more appropriate approach would represent the combination of the Highlands being treated, at times, by authorities in Edinburgh and London as ‘uncivil’, liable to ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’, and yet highlight, paradoxically, its significant level of distinctiveness, in terms of how it engaged with and became entangled in worlds beyond. This has rarely been considered in terms of the scholarly life that is the focus of this book, where, despite the absence of a university, some agency in the face of external pressures is apparent. Kennedy has described the governance of the region in the period as ‘semi-colonial’, and more ‘collaborative’ than ‘imperialist’, although, in understanding Highland scholars of the period, Immanuel Wallerstein's concept of the ‘semiperipheral’ may offer a more specific framework indicating more internal intellectual dynamism.

Urquhart, an individual well known to Fraser and whose home was less than 20 miles away from his, converted into English, to acclaim, works of the French Renaissance writer Rabelais, and claimed to have scoped a ‘universal language’ that could, he asserted, provide exact translations ‘of any vernaculary tongue, such as Italian, French, Spanish, Slavonian, Dutch, Irish, English, or whatever it be’. Exaggerations aside, in his translations and other literary work, Urquhart was evidently aware of the oral, as well as the written, power of the region's languages, asserting that ‘Some languages have copiousness of discourse, which are barren in composition; such is the Latine. Others are compendious in expression, which hardly have any flection [inflection] at all; of this kinde are the Dutch, the English, and Irish.’