Crichton, the Admirable

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Crichton, the Admirable name for the Scottish adventurer James Crichton (1560–c.85), an accomplished swordsman, poet, and scholar. He served in the French army and made a considerable impression on French and Italian universities with his skills as a polyglot orator. The epithet is recorded from 1652.

The Admirable Crichton was used as the title of a play by James Barrie (1914), in which the manservant Crichton, cast away with his employers on a desert island, becomes the natural leader of the party through his innate authority and skills.

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