George Buchanan

On the 21st July 1683, Lord William Russell was beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields, because Charles II., F.D., who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one, thought it would help to keep alive the Stuart doctrine of the Divine right of kings.

On the same day, the political writings of George Buchanan and one John Milton were, by decree of the learned and loyal University of Oxford, publicly burned in front of their Schools by the common hangman, because they were regarded as the most formidable and dangerous defences of the principles on account of which it had been considered judicious to kill Lord William Russell, and perhaps also in token that if Buchanan and Milton had not been dead they might have been burned too, along with their books. It is comforting to reflect that this same decree was subsequently burned with the same publicity-and by the same common hangman, one would hope.

At the time, however, the Oxford transaction, in view of the sycophancy, obscurantism, and other degrading characteristics of the then University, was the highest compliment that could have been paid to Buchanan and Milton, and especially to Buchanan. For Buchanan was substantially a century before Milton, who, like the rest of the Roundheads, was inspired by Buchanan's principles and greatly assisted by his arguments. Dryden, indeed, declared that Milton stole his Defence of the People of England from Buchanan's De Jure Regni apud Scotos; but that was only 'Glorious John's' inglorious way of making himself controversially disagreeable. Milton put his own genius and experience into Buchanan's idea, and produced an essentially original work. But what although he had not? Milton was fighting a great battle, and was entitled, or rather bound, to use the best weapons, wherever he could get them. The anti-plagiarising spirit is often a mere form of vanity. If the Royal Artillery declined to plagiarise from Armstrong and Krupp, and insisted on making all their ammunition themselves, I should tremble for the defence of the country. Not the less, however, does Buchanan amply merit the title of 'Father of Liberalism,' since the principles which he successfully floated in unpropitious times undoubtedly produced the two great English, the American, and the first French Revolutions, with all their continuations and consequences.

Let it be noted that the distinction which Buchanan achieved in this matter was not merely that of the political philosopher and thinker. The publication of the De Jure, at the time and under the circumstances in which it appeared, was a blow of the utmost consequence, delivered in the great politico-theological struggle with which he was contemporary. It was like one of Knox's famous sermons, which were not mere religious meditations, but political events of the most immense influence, present and future. The Reformation, particularly in Scotland, was, in its inception and establishment, a political, quite as much as a religious revolution, of which Buchanan was not simply an interested but recluse critic and dilettante spectator. He thought profoundly about what he saw going on, but he also threw his thoughts into the fight that was raging round him, with bombshell results, and the effects of what he thought and did upon the fortunes of the great struggle for popular liberty against usurping ascendency-a struggle not even yet concluded-prove him to have possessed qualities of far-sightedness and statesmanship of the highest order.

In a totally different walk of life he achieved almost equal distinction. He was a great scholar-poet and general writer; and when, in this connection, I use the words 'almost equal,' I am thinking of the question whether the director of human affairs or the artist in words and ideas of beauty or human interest is the greater. Of course, comparison of things or people generically distinct is scarcely possible. You can hardly compare a snuff-box and a policeman. But it seems less difficult to ask whether C?sar or Shakespeare, Alfred the Great or Alfred Tennyson, was the greater man. However that may be, there can be no doubt that Buchanan rose to very great eminence as an intellectual artist, both in prose and verse. He enjoyed an unsurpassed European reputation among the Renaissance magnates of his day. Henri Estienne, for instance,-Buchanan's Stephanus, our Stephens-said that he was poetarum nostri s?culi facile princeps, meaning thereby 'easily the first poet of our time,' which is sufficiently strong. Of course it may be said that Estienne or Stephens was only a printer. But there are printers and printers, and Stephanus belonged to the second class. Anybody who knows anything about the literary history of the time will understand that such praise from Estienne implied a very great deal.

Then there were the Scaligers, Julius C?sar père, and Joseph fils, a greater man than his father, in the opinion of the best judges-himself included, probably. They were not men easy to please, the Scaligers. Even Erasmus was not good enough for Julius C?sar, who used language truly awful about the glory of the priesthood and the shame. As for Joseph, there was but one man alive in his own line for whom he had a vestige of respect, and that was Casaubon; and he told him so, intimating that he might think a good deal of the compliment, as he, Joseph, was the only man in Europe who was capable of forming an opinion about him-a perfectly true if not absolutely humble observation. But however difficult to please in most cases, the Scaligers had a sincere and unbounded admiration of Buchanan-an admiration abundantly shown while he lived, and when he was gone, expressed, especially by the younger Scaliger, with a tenderness and beauty which stamp the tribute with authority and value. His epitaphium on Buchanan concluded thus:-

'Namque ad supremum perducta Poetica culmen

In te stat, nec quo progrediatur habet.

Imperii fuerat Romani Scotia limes;

Romani eloquii Scotia finis erit.'

Anybody with a fair understanding of Latin and a full understanding of epigram, who reads the last couplet here, will know that Scaliger was perfectly qualified to pronounce a judgment in the matter. For the benefit of the man in the street, it may be stated that what Scaliger was driving at was that Buchanan had brought poetry to a pitch of perfection beyond which it could not go; and that as Scotland had in the past been the last line of expansion for the Roman Empire, so in the future it would, in the person of Buchanan, be found to have given the highest note of Roman eloquence. Of course it may be said that this was only the customary and privileged lie of the epitaph; but that it was really Scaliger's deliberate opinion appears from a well-known quotation from his table-talk, that 'in Latin poetry Buchanan stands alone in Europe, and leaves everybody else behind.' Coming to more modern times, it will probably be admitted that Wordsworth knew good poetry when he saw it, and he says of one of Buchanan's poems-by no means his best-that it was equal in sentiment, if not in elegance, to anything in Horace.

This he said before a pedantic relative pointed out a false quantity. What he would have felt had he known this before he read the poem, Schoolmaster only knows. What the latter potentate would have done we may partly surmise from what Porson actually did when some one got him to commence reading Buchanan's poetry and he stumbled up against a false quantity, or what he regarded as such. He at once got up and pitched the volume across the room in disgust, probably with an accompaniment of expressions not loud but deep. Regarding which behaviour, two remarks seem natural. The first is that possibly Buchanan was right and Porson wrong. At Eton, as is well known, Porson was a poor quantitarian, and fell behind in consequence. He may have made up his leeway afterwards, but not likely, and certainly his line of scholarship was not in the direction of Latin Prosody.

But suppose Buchanan were wrong, what then? Is Shakespeare to be flung into the corner because many of his lines will not scan? An indignant critic of the Agamemnon has discovered, what I believe is the fact, that in that play ?schylus has violated Dawes's canon. Yet everybody that can reads the Agamemnon. Dr. Johnson points out that Milton uses the hideous solecism vapulandum. Only think of it! And yet we read Paradise Lost. Perhaps Porson did too, knowing nothing of vapulandum! Johnson was no such stickler, for he read and enjoyed Milton, vapulandum notwithstanding. He had also the highest opinion of Buchanan, both as a Latinist and as 'a great poetical genius,' and his authority on such matters, being both poet and critic himself, is much greater than Porson's, great though the latter was in his own department of research. Hallam is inclined to qualify the almost universal admiration of Buchanan's poetry, but one begins to doubt Hallam's judgment in this matter when he finds him preferring Buchanan's De Sph?ra to the rest of his poetry. The Sphere may contain exquisite isolated passages 'equal to Virgil,' as the enthusiastic Guy Patin maintained, but it is not properly a poem at all. It is really a versified and very lame defence of the exploded Ptolemaic Astronomy, totally destitute of the human interest which inspires so much else that Buchanan wrote. On his own field of history Hallam is more of an authority, and here his admiration of Buchanan is unstinted and unequivocal. He extols the 'perspicuity and power' of the History of Scottish Affairs, recognises the 'purity' of its diction, and affirms that few writings of the Latinists are 'more redolent of the antique air,' and is almost as emphatic in his eulogy as Dryden, when the latter says of Buchanan, 'our isle may justly boast in him a writer comparable to any of the moderns, and excelled by few of the ancients.' Froude might be cited to the same effect, but enough has been said to establish Buchanan's fame and power in the world of letters.

Of course, care must be taken to distinguish the precise character of Buchanan's scholarship. He was not a scholar in the sense that Casaubon, or Porson, or Liddell and Scott were scholars. That is to say, he was not a classical antiquarian, or philologist, or grammarian, although he knew antiquities and such philology as was going, and had refurbished or even made a grammar or two as he went along. But he used these simply as instruments to his main aim as a scholar, which was to write as good Latin as Virgil, or Livy, or Horace, or Tacitus. There is nothing absurd or impossible in such an aim. I have heard ardent Aberdonians maintain that the late Dr. Melvin of their city wrote better Latin than Cicero, and, apart from the matter, I am quite ready to believe it. That Buchanan as good as accomplished his purpose we have already seen.

And be it remembered that all this cultivation of a Latin style was not mere dilettante work on his part. He and one Sturm of Strasbourg, along with other Humanists, had formed the design of making Latin the vernacular of Europe, and actually believed that it would ultimately become such. Hence they had a twofold purpose in writing Latin. They desired to forward this reform of a universal language, and they wished to be intelligible to a Latin-speaking posterity. I state this on the authority of Dr. P. Hume Brown, the well-known author of George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer, and I should not advise any one rashly to contradict Dr. Brown on any Buchanan matter. He seems to me to have mastered the entire subject, and to have left very little for subsequent research to do, unless some lucky 'find' of new sources should occur. I have been able to glean nothing from any quarter that I have not found already known to Dr. Brown, and recorded by him, unless it be some such small fact as the presence of Joseph Scaliger in Edinburgh in 1566, along with his friend Chastaigner, but not expressly to see Buchanan; and other little things of that sort. I do not pretend to contribute any fresh Buchanan materials. My object is the humble, but not, I hope, useless one of boiling down Dr. Brown and the other scientific biographers, and attempting a brief popular presentation of what Buchanan was and did.

Another proof of the varied power of Buchanan is found in the storm he raised as a controversialist, in the still burning question as to the guilt or innocence of Mary Queen of Scots. In 1571, four years after the Scottish people had deposed their sovereign, Buchanan published a pamphlet, or what in these days would probably have taken the shape of a magazine article, with the title Detectio Mari? Regin?, i.e. The Detection or Exposure of Queen Mary, or as an editor of to-day would have been sure to head it, The Truth about the Queen. Buchanan's object in this publication is to vindicate the Scottish people and their leaders before the public opinion of Europe for having, after the murder of Darnley, brought Mary's career as sovereign to a close, as being not only a public danger, but a public scandal. That the vigour of the brochure itself, backed up by Buchanan's immense reputation, went far to make Mary an impossible factor in European politics, is beyond question. To the same extent he made himself the bête noire of Mary's friends and apologists, and very brutal and very black they certainly made him out to be. In more recent times a school of sentimental historians has arisen, who refuse to see in Mary either fault or flaw, and recognise in her a sort of spotless goddess, of irresistible charm, thrown away upon an unworthy age. Not content with pity-it would be inhuman not to feel it in any case-they show how true it is that pity is akin to love, and falling victims in some degree to the spell which ruined the unhappy and love-maddened Chastelard, they conduct a necessarily Platonic flirtation with their idol's romantic and fascinating memory, across the separating interval of three hundred years. Had Mary been ugly, or even plain, she would have had fewer champions.

In vituperation of Buchanan they are not a whit behind his contemporary assailants. Mr. Hosack, for instance, one of the most ingenious of Mary's modern defenders, calmly says, 'Buchanan was without doubt the most venal and unscrupulous of men.' His usual way of alluding to the Detectio is 'Buchanan's famous libel,' varied occasionally by 'the highly coloured narrative of Buchanan,' or 'the subsequently invented slanders of Buchanan,' or 'the slanderous narrative of Buchanan,' or 'the atrocious libel of Buchanan.' Sir John Skelton, whose treatment of the subject is distinguished by a literary grace which cannot be claimed for Mr. Hosack, is on a level with him when he reaches Buchanan. 'Buchanan's atrocious libel' is common form with the Marians, and Sir John has it. Perhaps his gentlest reference is when he speaks of 'the industrious animosity of the man who had been her pensioner,' and when he desires to be specially severe, he speaks of 'grotesque adventures invented, or at least adapted, by Buchanan, whose virulent animosities were utterly unscrupulous, and whose clumsy invective was as bitter as it was pedantic.' The present is not the place to inquire into the truth or falsehood of these statements. They are adduced merely as a tribute to Buchanan's power. 'Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you,' does not logically justify the counter statement, 'Good for you when all men shall speak ill of you'; but when a controversialist has been abused by his opponents as Buchanan has been, it is at least a proof that he has been found a formidable antagonist, either for his ability or veracity, or both, and that in the direct ratio of the violence with which they attack him.

One other aspect of Buchanan's varied power seems to call for some mention. Up to the middle of this century, a chapbook usually entitled The Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, sometimes adding The King's Jester, ran through many editions original and revised, and had a certain vogue all over Scotland among a considerable class-not the most refined, certainly-of the population. It is an ignorant, coarse, and indecent production, and can be read only by the historical student for the purpose of investigating the popular taste of its time. Its description of Buchanan as the 'Fule' instead of the tutor of King James, and its placing him at the English court of James, who did not ascend the throne of England until Buchanan had been twenty-one years dead, are sufficient commentary on its historical accuracy. At first sight one might imagine that it had been put together by an enemy of Buchanan, but its brutish zeal in holding up Buchanan as a desperately clever fellow who was continually turning the tables and raising the laugh against people who wished to take him off, and who were generally English, and often English nobles, bishops or other clergy, show that it was earnest in its admiration according to its dim and dirty lights.

Buchanan was a humorist, and saw the ludicrous side of existence with a depth and keenness and enjoyment very different from the barbarian faculty which produced the 'merry bourds' of Knox and certain of his iconoclastic cronies. Even the prospect of having soon to leave the world could not make him utterly solemn, although the circumstances lend a grim aspect to the humour which may make it distasteful to wooden seriousness. 'Tell the people who sent you,' he said to the macer of the Court of Session, who came to summon him for something objectionable in some of his writings, 'tell them I am summoned before a higher tribunal.' When good John Davidson called on him and reminded him of the usual evangelical consolations, he repaid him with some original causticity à propos of the Romish doctrine of the Mass, which would no doubt delight that worthy man. He never had much money at any time, and less than usual at the close; and when, on counting it up with his attendant, he found that there was not enough to bury him, he directed it to be given to the poor. But 'what about the funeral?' naturally asked the servitor. 'Well,' Buchanan said, 'he was very indifferent about that,' as he meditated on the dilemma in which he saw he was placing the people of Edinburgh, who had not been over kind to the greatest scholar of the age. 'If they will not bury me,' he said, 'they can let me lie where I am, or throw my body where they like.' Of course, as he knew, they had to bury him, so he could enjoy his posthumous triumph of wit; but they had their repartee, denying him a gravestone for a generation or two.

There is a weird humour in the famous interview between himself on the one hand and the Melvilles, Andrew and James, on the other, who had crossed from St. Andrews to Edinburgh to see him shortly before he passed away. They found him teaching his young attendant his a b, ab. Andrew Melville, amused by the spectacle of the greatest scholar in Europe engaged in so disproportionate a task, made a suitable observation. 'Better this than stealing sheep,' quoth Buchanan, or 'than being idill,' he added, which latter he maintained to be as bad as the stealing of sheep. Then the conversation wandered to his History, which was by this time in the hands of the printer. The Melvilles noticed in the proofs the well-known and ugly story of Mary's having got Rizzio's body removed to the tomb of James V. They suggested that the king might take offence at this reflection on his mother's memory, and that the publication might be stopped. 'Tell me,' said the dying historian, 'if it is true.' They said they thought so. 'Then I will bide his feud, and all his kin's,' was the answer. There was, no doubt, a dash of the heroic in this, but there was a chuckle in it too, as the speaker reflected that the king who had neglected him, and whom he had flogged for persistent boyish insolence, according to the pedagogic fashion of the time, would once more have his pride humbled at his hands when he was gone.

No story was better known in Scotland than his correction of the king, and his now unrepeatable sarcasm in reply to the Countess of Mar's haughty demand how he, a mere man of learning, could dare to lift his hand upon the Lord's anointed. It tickled the popular mind, and along with other reports of Buchanan's fun-for it is not to be supposed that his table-talk with the Scaligers, or even with Knox, was wholly funereal in character-indeed we know it was not-formed a sort of Buchanan myth, to which every witling who thought he had invented a good thing, and wanted to get it listened to by fathering it on a well-known name-a device not yet extinct-would contribute further bulk, although not more ornament. In this way an idea of Buchanan as a man of mirth and facetiousness[1] would take root and spread in the public consciousness, and as the people could not get at the real Buchanan for his Latin, they formed a picture of him according to their own uncivilised conceptions. Hence the chapbooks-a hideous reflection from a cracked and distorted mirror, but still showing that there was something to reflect.

Such was Buchanan, political thinker, practical statesman, poet, scholar, historian, controversialist, humorist, and great in all these diverse directions-certainly a personality worth knowing in greater detail.

* * *

Buchanan's life, like the lives of most people who have done anything worth speaking of in their time, divides itself roughly into two sections-the period of preparation, and the period of performance. What I shall call his period of performance, or at all events chief performance, was from the time when he finally returned to Scotland, after an absence abroad, with brief interruptions, of twenty-two years, and spent the remaining twenty-one years of his life in more or less intimate occupation with the public affairs of his country.

On the 19th of August 1561, Queen Mary, then in her nineteenth year, landed at Leith, and was escorted to Holyrood by her enthusiastic subjects, by whom she was also serenaded at night in a style which, as the queen's French retinue thought, showed more heart than art. Shortly before or after this date, Buchanan, now fifty-five years old, also appeared in Scotland, for his final settlement there. It is a curious coincidence that these two persons, eminent alike in their widely divergent spheres, and destined alternately to a literary friendship that was pleasant to both, and a political antagonism that was fatal to one of them, should have appeared on the scene of their sympathies and conflicts practically at the same time. I have said that the division of Buchanan's life into a period of preparation and a period of performance is a rough division. By that I mean that what really deserves to be called performance could not be absolutely excluded from the preparation period, and that, to some extent, one stage of the performance period was often a preparation for the next; but taken with this qualification, the division is a sufficiently valid one.

It was, for instance, mainly during the preparation or foreign period that Buchanan wrote those poems which stamped him not only as a man of wit and poetic genius, but as the first Latin stylist in Europe of his day. During this period, too, he acquired from classic and other sources those broad and comprehensive ideas on the leading questions of the day which made him the thinker and Humanist as contrasted with the mere cleric or scholastic obscurantist. It was then also that, through observation on the spot, he was able to comprehend the 'true inwardness' of the struggle that was going forward between the old order of things and the new, and often give practical advice that was useful. In this period, too, he completed that thorough study of the Roman and Protestant controversy which ended in determining him to identify himself publicly with the Protestant side in the great conflict that was on foot-in itself no inconsiderable event. All this was undoubtedly performance of no mean order, but from the Scottish national point of view, and from the point of view of general history, on which the special Scottish history exerted so profound an influence, it was preparatory to the great work he did in his native land. His Latin and his various Continental activities are forgotten, but his Scottish work is still memorable. Yet it was because he was the great Humanist and unequalled Latinist, as well as the thinker and experienced observer of affairs, that he was able to command the ear of learned and diplomatic Europe, and through them to make the events that were happening in his country a factor in the world's history. His foreign performance was therefore, in reality, a preparation for his crowning performance at home. I shall not labour the point of one stage of his performance being preparatory to another.

Of course I do not mean to say that Buchanan did all this consciously and systematically; that he deliberately prepared abroad, and then came and deliberately performed at home. Few men, especially men of Buchanan's type, shape their lives on such lines of exact and exhaustive purpose. I leave out of account the unhappily large class who foolishly, and even wickedly, throw away their lives, and have hardly ever tried or desired to make a better of it. I confine myself to those who do get something out of life for themselves or society, or both. But I doubt if any, beyond a small minority even of this class, begin life with a distinct aim at reaching what they end life by becoming. There is, of course, the famous case of Whittington, who set himself in cold blood to become Lord Mayor of London. But for one Whittington there have been centuries of Lord Mayors who never dreamt of the Mansion House when they started business in the City. The glory and the turtle came upon them, virtually unsolicited; and even Whittington would probably not have addressed himself as he did to his high achievement, had it not been for the unique campanula of inspiration caught by his ear alone. Probably Napoleon early laid his plans for attaining the mastership of France, possibly of Europe; but did C?sar begin life with a determination to conquer Rome and become its dictator, or Cromwell with a sketch-plan for cutting off his king's head, cashiering his country's parliament, and making himself Lord Protector and military despot?

Millionaires are seldom so of set design. They begin, most probably, by aiming at a competent fortune, but having got that length, the acquired delight in pulling the strings of an extensive and possibly adventurous undertaking, and not mere miserly greed, has kept them at a task which they find they can perform, until the millions roll in as a justification of their ideas and processes. In politics and the professions men probably set out with a general aim at the best position and the most money they can make for themselves; but very few, I should imagine, of those who have reached the greatest eminence or prosperity possible to them said in their youth, 'I mean to be Prime Minister, or Lord Chancellor, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or President of the Royal College of Physicians, or of the Royal Academy.' Buchanan seems to have belonged to a type of character which does not include either of the classes of persons just considered. Neither cupidity nor ambition nor any of the ordinary self-aggrandising motives seems to have had much, if any, place in his character. Apostrophising Buchanan in his Funeral Elegy, Joseph Scaliger says:-

'Contemptis opibus, spretis popularibus auris,

Ventos?que fugax ambitionis, obis.'

'Despising wealth, spurning the mob's applause, and shunning vain ambition, thou passest away.'

This was literally true. Buchanan lived from hand to mouth during the greater part of his career. But there is no evidence that he ever tried to make a fortune. He might have prospered in the Church, as Dunbar was willing to do. But he had ideas of his own on that subject, and neither gold nor dignities could tempt him to sell his soul.

Begging Letter-Writer

He was often 'hard up,' but it does not appear to have depressed his spirits. Indeed, he is never sprightlier, more epigrammatically witty, or more genially humorous than when he is what some of us might call 'begging' from some wealthy friend who could appreciate his genius and accomplishments. Here, for instance, is a 'begging letter' to Queen Mary, in the days when they were still friends, and read Livy, and doubtless indulged in fencing-matches of wit together:-

'Do quod adest: opto quod abest tibi: dona darentur

Aurea, sors animo si foret ?qua meo.

Hoc leve si credis, paribus me ulciscere donis:

Et quod abest, opta tu mihi: da quod adest.'

Which may be literally, or nearly so, according 'to the best of my knowledge and belief,' as the affidavits say:-

'To you I give what I do have: for you I wish what you don't have:

Golden, indeed, would be my gifts, were Fortune equal to my will.

If you should chance to think this levity, in equal levities have your revenge:

For me wish you what I don't have: to me give you what you do have.'

Dr. Hume Brown puts it neatly into rhyme thus:-

'I give you what I have: I wish you what you lack:

And weightier were my gift, were fortune at my back.

Perchance you think I jest? A like jest then I crave:

Wish for me what I lack, and give me what you have.'

Take another in the same strain:-

'Ad Jacobum, Moravi? Comitem.

'Si magis est, ut Christus ait, donare beatum,

Quam de munifica dona referre manu:

Aspice quam faveam tibi: sis ut dando beatus,

Non renuo fieri, te tribuente, miser.'

'To James, Earl of Moray.

'If, as Christ says, it is more blessed to give than to receive gifts from a munificent hand, just see what a favour I am doing you: that you may be blessed in giving, I am ready to play miserable receiver to your happy donor.'

Or, to cite Dr. Brown again:-

'It is more blest, saith Holy Writ, to give than to receive:

How great, then, is your debt to me, who take whate'er you give!'

With equally humorous familiarity he sends in an application, 'Ad Matth?um Levini? Comitem, Scoti? Proregem' (To Matthew, Earl of Lennox, Regent of Scotland'). I quote only the concluding couplet:-

'Denique da quidvis, podagram modo deprecor unam:

Munus erit medicis aptius illa suis.'

That is-

'To be brief, give me whatever you like-only, not your gout. That will be a more appropriate fee for the doctors who are trying to cure it.'

Or to fall back on Dr. Brown's translation once more:-

'Since I am poor and you are rich, what happy chance is thine!

My modest wishes, too, you know-one nugget from your mine!

Only, whatever be your gift, let it not be your gout:

That, a meet present for your leech, I'd rather go without.'

These are merely samples of many communications, similar in object and style, which he addressed, at various periods of his life, to quarters where he thought they would not be ill-taken. As a rule, he supported himself by 'regenting' in colleges, or acting as tutor in royal or noble families. It was only when he could not make a better of it that he asked Society, through its most likely magnates, to give him something 'to go on with.' What else could he do? Carlyle's description of Thackeray as 'writing for his life' could never have applied to Buchanan. Literature was not yet a profession or 'bread-study.' It was not till next century that Milton got ￡5 for Paradise Lost; and even Shakespeare made his money less as a writer than as a showman. The idea of Buchanan or Erasmus-a much more importunate beggar than Buchanan-going into business, say the wine or the wool trade, would have been absurd. They would have ruined any house that adopted them in two or three years, to say nothing of the indecency of allowing intellectual leaders of high genius to be lost in work which could be much better done by humbler men. There was nothing else for it, in Buchanan's case, but to do as he did.

Of course, in this age of contract and commerce, we are apt to associate an idea of meanness and pitifulness with the conduct of Buchanan and Erasmus and others in this matter. Our first feeling is that nobody should give any other body anything except according to bargain. Every man should be independent, and if he asks anything outside a contract, he might as well go bankrupt at once. He must clearly be a weakling, and the weak must go to the wall. The feudal sentiment, however, amidst which Buchanan lived, was entirely different, and had a nobler side than ours, although one does not want feudalism back merely on that account. Kings and lords took everything to themselves, in the shape of power and possession, that they could lay their hands on; but it was on the understanding that they were to make a generous use of what they had appropriated. Noblesse oblige was still a maxim with vitality in it. The right men acknowledged it, and acted on it; the ruffians, as their manner is, wherever they are placed in life, ignored it. Patronage was not an act of grace: it was a duty. It was part of the honourable service to society, by which the patron's tenure of his prosperity was conditioned. More particularly must this duty have been recognised by right-minded possessors of power and wealth who had felt the influence of the Renaissance, that mighty and far-reaching effort of the human intellect to assert its freedom and its varied energies against the narrowing and obscurantist influences of scholasticism, reduced to its then existing state of enslavement, often against its better knowledge and attempts at self-emancipation, by Ecclesiastical authority, wielding the weapon of Papal and Conciliar decree, sanctioned by fire and faggot.

Then there was still the tradition of hospitality which the Old Church, with all its faults, had kept up. In these contractual days of ours, there is very little hospitality, as it was defined by the Author of Christianity. A modern dinner is generally a meeting of creditors, or a combination of clever or stupid epicureans, the better to amuse or otherwise enjoy themselves, according to their tastes in meat and drink, or even conversation. It is often a case of undisguised 'treating' on the part of the so-called host, who wants to use his so-called guests for a purpose, and whose performance might very appropriately go into a schedule to some of the Bribery and Corruption Acts. But in the days of the Old Church, a wandering or needy scholar would have been welcomed at many, if not all, of the religious houses, and treated on a very different footing from our applicants for relief at the casual wards of one of our workhouses, probably the only institution resembling Christian hospitality authorised by modern organised society.

This latter may be a better arrangement, for anything I know to the contrary. All I say is that it is different from what was recognised in Buchanan's day. It would never occur to Buchanan that he was doing anything inconsistent with self-respect in putting his position before people like Queen Mary, or Moray, or Lennox, and asking their temporary aid or a permanent office. They had taken over the wealth of the religious houses; did not their hospitalities pass with it? They had divided up the country among themselves and others; were they not honourably bound to see that a great civilising force like Buchanan was not extinguished? Besides, he understood his own value. A man is not six feet six inches high without being aware of it. He knew what he was, and what he had made himself, and what he was worth, and that he was giving as good as he was getting, or likely to get. In those days a great master of the New Learning was an object of the highest admiration, as a sort of intellectual Magician. Moreover, he was a power, in as far as he was a leader of contemporary thought and learning.

In these respects Buchanan was an invaluable acquisition to persons like Mary, or Moray, or Lennox, or Knox, who must have winked at a good deal in Buchanan, which he would not have stood in a less potent ally. In his prime, and even until his death, no one had an equal command over the universal ear of cultured Europe. To the rulers of his time he was worth what, say, fifty friendly editors of newspapers-including the Times and all the sixpenny weeklies, as far as they are worth anything would be to a politician of to-day. To Queen Mary especially, with her refined intellectual tastes and her ambition to be a figure in the world, it was no small matter to have the greatest and most brilliant scholar-poet of the day as a part of her court, whether he read Livy and exchanged wit with herself, or officiated as her poet-laureate on great occasions. As a mere ornament he was worth a considerable fraction of her best diamond necklace.

I am dwelling on this point because it will save time and trouble afterwards, and accordingly I ask further if Edie Ochiltree, in later times, and in a less feudalistic state of public sentiment, could beg round the district, without loss of respect, on the strength of his badge and uniform, testifying to past good service in his time and station, why should not an eminent public servant like Buchanan, in a totally different state of general feeling on such matters, ask society, through representatives of it who, he knew, should not and would not treat him roughly, to help him in prosecuting his shining and useful career? He had done a good work on the High Street of the World. He had sung it a song or played it a melody such as it would hear nowhere else. Was he not entitled to send round his hat among the listeners? Is it not what is done by every book-writer of to-day, who, when the last page is finished, sends out a confederate in the shape of a publisher to canvass the public-for a consideration-with the book in one hand and the hat in the other? Is it not what is done, inter alia, by every Parliamentary lawyer, who goes into the House of Commons to grind his axe, when the fitting occasion arises, and he says to his party leader, 'I have fought two general elections for you. I have spoken for you unnumbered times in the House and on the platform. I have voted for you, up hill and down dale, through thick and thin, right or wrong, and now I will trouble you for that Chancellorship, or that Chief-Justiceship, or that Attorney-Generalship, or that Puisne or County Court Judgeship that has just fallen vacant'? Except that Buchanan and his work were not shams, but realities, the cases are the same.

Buchanan's enemies say that in accepting maintenance or preferment he sold his independence to the donors, and when it is answered that he showed anything but want of independence in the case of Queen Mary and others, whom he subsequently came to oppose in the public interest, they tack about and accuse him of the basest ingratitude-in biting the hand that fed him, as they put it. It is as if in these days Sir Gorgias Midas, M.P., were to say to some editor who had noticed a speech of his unfavourably, 'Ungrateful scribbler, have I not, over and over again, dined you and wined you with the best that larder and cellar can produce, and do you now turn and rend me?' There have been editors who would have answered, 'Presumptuous moneybag, I suppose I paid fully for my dinner with my company, and I am perfectly free to criticise you as you deserve.' Buchanan stood equally free in his relations to his patrons. From the personal point of view, whether his connection were regarded as an ornament, a pleasure, or a utility, his alliance was worth his subsidy. From the public point of view it was their duty, as trustees for the public property and progress, to maintain a great civiliser like Buchanan in a position where his powers had scope, while it was Buchanan's privilege and duty to exercise his creative and critical capacities in the public interest without fear or favour. And this, as will be seen, is what Buchanan substantially did. Knox and Melville repeatedly reminded Queen Mary and King James that there was another kingdom in the realm besides theirs-the kingdom of Christ, to wit-and suggested, or rather demanded, that their Majesties should not meddle with officials of this spiritual kingdom like themselves, the said Knox and Melville. This claim they rested on a supernatural, and therefore disputable, basis. But there could be nothing disputable about the ground Buchanan stood on. He too was a potentate-of the intellect; a king of thought, learning, and poetic might, and in that dominion, when it was necessary, bore himself with a courage and independence that have not always been successfully reproduced by his successors, when confronted with the monarchies and lordships of material power and glory.

No Notoriety Hunter

This discussion arose in our endeavour to determine Buchanan's character so far as money-making was concerned. He was no money-maker. Contemptis opibus-'despising wealth'-is, as we have seen, Joseph Scaliger's account of him, meaning thereby that personally he did not care for more money than would maintain the much other than money-making career which he liked, and had set his heart on, keeping himself independent by the labour of a scholar, but not hesitating to ask payment, when he wanted it, from a society that was morally indebted to him. His indifference, however, to wealth as a life-object must not be confounded with the counsel of the ascetic preacher who urges his hearers to forget the present world in thoughts of the world to come, and wins, perhaps, a better living by an eloquent and pessimistic sermon on the text which says that 'the love of money is the root of all evil.' There is nothing to show that Buchanan did not hold, with all sensible people, that there is a sense in which the love of money is the root of all good, inasmuch as it is the men of strong cupidity who organise industry and commerce, thereby laying that foundation of material wealth without which there can be no superstructure of leisured thought, learning, or art, acting, it may be, only as the dray-horses of civilisation-some of them, of course, are a good deal more-but worthy of all the corn they consume, although were one desirous of exchanging ideas, it would not be to their sumptuous stables that he would resort.

Neither does he appear to have set his heart upon the ordinary objects of ambition, in the shape of fame or power. 'Dear is fame to the rhyming tribe.' 'That dearest wish of every poetic bosom-to be distinguished,' said Burns in his preface to the first edition of his poems, and he, if any one, was entitled to speak. But in the same preface he also says that to amuse himself amidst toil, to transcribe the feelings in his own breast, to find some counterpoise to the struggles of a world alien and uncouth to the poetic mind-'these were his motives for courting the Muses, and in these he found Poetry to be its own reward.' In other words, the poet may desire fame and distinction for what he has done, yet it need not have been the desire of fame and distinction that made him do it. Buchanan seems to have been even more self-controlled or more indifferent than this account of matters might imply. His numerous efforts had won him the highest reputation, but he had taken no pains to advertise himself. He had handed his productions here and there to friends who wished to see them, and it was only the solicitation of those friends that prevented his consigning to everlasting obscurity some of the brightest things he, or indeed any one else, ever wrote.

His most famous production as a poet, his version of the Hebrew Psalms, or rather series of poems based upon these, was certainly not written for fame. Every Humanist of eminence was expected to try his hand upon the Psalms, and when Buchanan found himself in Portugal under lock and key, at the instance of the Inquisition, among a set of monks, whom he hits off as equally good-natured and ignorant, and who had been told off to instruct him in orthodoxy, he addressed himself to a classic rendering of the Psalms with the double purpose of discharging his duty by his Humanistic Vocation, and doing something that might redeem his time and his temper from the boredom of the uncongenial society amidst which misfortune had placed him. There does not seem in all this much of that passionate desire of distinction to which Burns confesses. It is said, however, that fame was his object in commencing and carrying on his poem on the Sphere, which was undoubtedly planned on an elaborate and extensive scale. If fame was his desire, it was not a very consuming one, for he was five-and-twenty years at least over it, and left it unfinished at last, although goaded by friends to hasten its production.

What does he say on the matter himself? Writing to Tycho Brahe in 1576, six years before his death, and more than twenty after he began to work at the Sphere, he says that bad health had compelled him, spem scribendi carminis in posterum penitus abjicere,-'completely to abandon the hope of writing a poem for posterity.' Three years afterwards, writing to a literary friend in England, who, like many others, kept dunning him for his promised books, and even for 'copy,' he says, with respect to his 'astronomical' aims in poetry, he had not so much voluntarily abandoned them, as been obliged reluctantly to submit to the deprivation of them; neque enim aut nunc libet nugari, aut si maxime vellem per ?tatem licet. Accessit eo histori? scribend? labor,-'for neither am I now greatly disposed for mere trifling, nor, were I never so much disposed, will my years allow it. Then in addition to my other difficulties there is the labour of writing my History'; the plain meaning being that as his years forbade him to do both the History and the Sphere, he elected to go on with the History and give up the Sphere, as a form of nugari or 'dilettantism.'

All this does not look very like a burning eagerness for posthumous fame, at all events of the kind that moves a certain class of people to leave money for hospitals, or almshouses, or learned foundations, to perpetuate names that would otherwise never have risen out of obscurity or escaped oblivion. As a matter of fact, Buchanan knew that he was celebrated, but no one had a poorer opinion of the work that had won him reputation than he had himself, not from the modesty of merit, as the common form carelessly puts it, but from the consciousness of merit, and because he felt that it was in him to do better. He hated the idea of having more celebrity than he deserved, and wanted to produce something that would show he was not an impostor or a quack. In short, he did not want more fame, but what he thought a better and honester title to the fame he had. That, however, is not the passion for fame, but simply self-respect, and an unselfish anxiety for the good name of those friends who had staked their reputation for taste and judgment on his ability for turning out the highest class of work. This is not the love of glory, but something better, although even if it were, it would not necessarily be either weak or wrong, provided the subject of it knew what he was doing in giving a rational scope to a natural impulse, and that he could and would give humanity something worth the prize of its praise.

Buchanan himself tells us why he gave up the Sphere and took up the History. It was primarily to gratify his friends, who thought that such a work was a want of the time, more useful and more suitable to Buchanan's years than poetry; while he himself assures us, and there is no reason to doubt his declaration, that he desired to set before his royal pupil, James VI., the warnings and the encouragements derivable from the story of his predecessors on the throne, including his own ill-advised and ill-fated mother. It was no fault of Buchanan's if James despised his teacher's counsel, and, listening to flatterers, took up with the Divine Right doctrine, by impressing which on his unhappy son, both through precept and example, he virtually destined him to jump the life to come from the scaffold of Whitehall.

Buchanan's friends seem to have tried to tempt him to undertake the History by representing that no subject was aut uberius ad laudem, aut firmius ad memori? conservandam diuturnitatem,-'better fitted to win him renown or prolong his memory.' It is not on the strength of such hopes, however, that he describes himself as working. It was, by his own account, only the shame of leaving unfinished a task he had engaged himself to his friends to perform that made him persevere at a labour which, he says, in ?tate integra permolestus, nunc vero in hac meditatione mortis, inter mortalitatis metum, et desinendi pudorem, non potest non lentus esse et ingratus, quando nec cessare licet, nec progredi lubet,-'would, even in the flower of my age, have been a burden, but now, in contemplation of my end, what between the dread of death interrupting me before I am done, and the shame there would be in abandoning my undertaking, I neither find myself free to stop, nor feel any pleasure in going on.' Not much there of glory for himself, although something of an heroic devotion to the claims of friendship and the call of duty!

* * *

CHARACTERISTICS-(continued)

Did not seek power

Scaliger's ascription to Buchanan of a spirit superior to the temptations of wealth and fame seems thus fairly well justified; but what of his further claim that he was insensible to ambition? He rose to be the foremost Latin poet and man of letters, or indeed poet and man of letters of any kind in his day, and to the highest positions, political, ecclesiastical, educational, in his native land. Did he reach all this without aiming at it? Did it all come upon him unsolicited? Substantially, it would seem, that was so. The key to his plan of life, I believe, is to be found in the beginning of the short autobiography which he wrote (1580) in the third person, two years before his death, not from motives of egotism, but at the request of friends. He is stating how he came to be sent to the University of Paris when about fourteen, and then he says, ibi cum studiis literarum, maxime carminibus scribendis, operam dedisset, partim natur? impulsu, partim necessitate (quod hoc unum studiorum genus adolescenti? proponebatur), etc.,-'devoting himself there to literary studies, and chiefly to writing verses, partly from natural impulse and partly from necessity, that being the only sort of study open to youthful learners.'

That is really Buchanan in a nutshell. He followed the bent of his genius, and did not pick and choose his work, but performed, to the best of his ability, the task placed before him by Destiny. He lived up to his nature and his Fate, did with his might what his hand found to do, then took up the next undertaking that came along, and handled it in the same fashion. He waited upon 'time and the hour' rather than sought to force its hand-a very good way, if not indeed the best way, to confront life and its problems, for those who are wise enough and strong enough to do it. He made himself master of the spirit, ideas, and style of the great writers and thinkers of classic antiquity, because it was the work that lay nearest to his hand, and because he liked it-passionately-and could not rest until it was all and easily his own, and not because he thought he could make it pay, whether in money or reputation, or both. Except in the case of the unlucky and unfinished Sphere, he did not sit down to compose poetry deliberately and in cold blood, at the rate of so many scores or hundreds of lines before breakfast or dinner, as certain 'poets' are said to have done, or do. His best work of this kind was struck out of him like the fire from the flint, by the demand of the occasion, or the suggestion of friends, or an inspiration or impulse that came upon him at the moment.

It was the request of James V. (1537) that led to his becoming the most powerful satirist of his time and country, much above Lyndsay, at least on a level with Dunbar, and second only to Burns. His 'Psalms' were written (1550-51) to kill time while imprisoned in a Portuguese monastery. His Elegies, Epigrams, Tragedies, Masques, Addresses (1530-66) were thrown off in answer to the call of the moment and the circumstances. The Detectio Regin? (1569-71) was composed at the desire of the great anti-despotic and reforming party to which he belonged. The 'Admonition to the Trew Lordis' and the 'Chameleon' were political tracts for the times designed to stimulate the flagging zeal of the friends of freedom. The De Jure (1570-79) was inspired by a present and a foreseen necessity of making Liberty impregnable as against the reactionaries of Absolutism. The History was undertaken and completed (1569-82) less for a scientific than for a patriotic and politico-paideutic purpose, to set his country and its constitution in a true light before the world, and to help in moulding its future king into the constitutional ruler of a free people.

He held many appointments, and executed many commissions, not a few of them of the highest responsibility and dignity, but most of them sought him, not he them. Lord Cassilis had him for tutor-companion (1532-37). King James V. engaged him as tutor for one of his children (1538-39). The King of Portugal employed him to aid in founding and conducting his College at Coimbra, and did his best, though in vain, to retain him in his kingdom (1547-52). The famous Maréchal de Brissac chose him to mould the mind of his son, and sometimes had him at a Council of War (1555-60). Queen Mary attached him to her Court, and as we have seen, read Livy with him, and, no doubt, much else (1562). The General Assembly of the Reformed Church of Scotland chose him, though a layman, as their Moderator (1567), he having already sat four years as a member and aided them in drawing up their First Book of Discipline. He was appointed by Regent Moray Principal of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews (1566), to reorganise its curriculum and constitution. He was selected as Secretary to the Commission sent by the Scots Government to deal with the high questions at issue between Queens Elizabeth and Mary (1568-69). The Scots Parliament chose him to the extremely responsible office of Tutor to the youthful King James VI. (1570), and continued him in that position nominally until his death (1582). He sat as a member of the Scots Parliament (1570-78) in virtue of his keepership of the Privy Seal, and did secretarial work for it, which nobody else was qualified to do, while at the same time assisting the General Assembly in revising their Book of 'Policy.' This keepership he may have solicited-he subsequently resigned it-although there is no proof of that, but all the other appointments came to him, and engaged his best ability as they passed him in procession.

Sir James Melville backs Scaliger

This view of Buchanan's character and scheme of life is confirmed by the remarkable and elaborate account of him given, in his own Memoirs, by Sir James Melville of Halhill (1545-1617), a professional courtier and diplomatist who had served on the Continent in important missions and affairs, and had been a confidential servant both to Queen Mary and her son James VI. He is describing the guardians of the boy-king at Stirling (1570-78), and after having highly eulogised the Governor, he proceeds: 'The Laird of Dromwhassel, his Maiestie's maister of houshald, was ambitious and greedy, and had gretest cair how till advance himself and his friendis. The twa abbots [Cambuskenneth and Dryburgh] were wyse and modest; my Lady Mar was wyse and schairp, and held [i.e. kept] the King in great aw; and sa did Mester George Buchwhennen. Mester Peter Young[2] was gentiller, and was laith till offend the King at any tym, and used himself wairily, as a man that had mynd of his awin weill, be keeping of his Maiestie's favour. Bot Mester George was a stoik philosopher, and looked not far before the hand; a man of notable qualities for his learning and knawledge in Latin poesie, mekle maid accompt of in other contrees, plaisant in company, rehersing at all occasions moralities short and fecfull, whereof he had aboundance, and invented wher he wanted.

'He was also of gud religion for a poet, bot he was easily abused, and sa facill that he was led with any company that he hanted for the tyme, quhilk maid him factious in his auld dayes; for he spak and wret as they that wer about him for the tym infourmed him. For he was become sleperie and cairles, and followed in many thingis the vulgair oppinion, for he was naturally populaire, and extrem vengeable against any man that had offendit him, quhilk was his gretest fault. For he wret dispytfull invectives against the Erle of Monteith, for some particulaires that was between him and the Laird of Buchwhennen; and became the Erle of Morton's gret ennemy, for ane hackney of his that chancit to be tane fra his saru[v]and during the civil troubles, and was bocht be the Regent; wha had na will to part with the said horse, he was sa sur of foot and sa easy, that albeit Mester George had oft tymes requyred him again, he culd not get him, and wher he had bene the Regentis gret frend of before, he becam his deadly ennemy, and spak evil of him fra that tym fourth in all places and at all occasions. Dromwhassel also, because the Regent kepit all the casualtes[3] to himself, and wald let nathing fall till v[u]thers that wer about the King, becam also his ennemy, and sa did they all that wer about his Maiestie.'

Melville was scarcely the man to take the measure of Buchanan on the more important side of his character, but he may be trusted to have given an honest view of him according to his lights-which, in some serious respects, were darkness-as well as of the impression which Buchanan had made on better judges of remarkable men than was the worthy Sir James himself. The latter's preface is a charming piece of na?veté. He tells us that though a courtier he had dealt faithfully and not flatteringly with 'princes,' but had not found it a paying procedure, and hints that if he had it to do over again, he might sail on the opposite tack. He had advised the Laird of Carmichael to do so, who profited greatly by the advice, both for himself and his friends, but did not show much gratitude to his counsellor, as the latter complains-rather unreasonably, one would say, since, if you corrupt a man's morale, you must not be disappointed if he treats you accordingly. Perhaps Sir James recovers his honest standing by the honest simplicity with which he confesses his leanings to dishonesty, like the M. de Bussy whom he quotes as also bewailing, too late, the honesty of his courtier career, but excusing himself on the ground that he could not help it, as it was his 'nature to.'

All the more trustworthy, however, is probably the distinction Sir James draws between Peter Young and Buchanan. 'Mester Peter' was evidently no Nathanael in his critic's view, and his subsequent good fortune, as attested by history, shows that his character had been accurately enough diagnosed. There is no reason to doubt, accordingly, that Sir James is equally correct in describing Buchanan as one who 'looked not far before the hand.' That is, he was not a calculating person, and set his duties above his interests; did his work to the best of his ability, and took his reward if, as, and when it came, but was really less anxious about securing the reward than about doing the work as it ought to be done.

A Faithful Mentor

His whole connection with James makes this plain. It begins with his Genethliacon or Birthday Ode, in which, after apostrophising the infant prince as the hope of all who desired the unity and consequent tranquillity of the two kingdoms, he addresses the felices felici prole parentes ('parents to be felicitated on an offspring born to a felicitous career'), and under guise of a sketch, in verse of Virgilian elevation and beauty, of the standard of character up to which they should train their child, lays down with 'faithful' outspokenness the lines of duty on which their own lives should run, and warns them of the ruin which neglect of his counsel would bring. It is not, except in style, a courtly production. Darnley probably could not, but Mary certainly both could and would see the poet's drift, and happy would it have been for both had they avoided the faults against which the poet directed his pointed admonition.

If James turned out 'the wisest fool in Christendom,' the folly was not the fault of Buchanan, but of James's nature, and perhaps also of flatterers of the 'Mester Peter Young' order, who scattered tares among the wheat of the more worthy sower. At all events he made James a scholar, if the latter made himself a pedant; and this implied, in the circumstances and the particular case, an exercise of firm and even stern discipline-of which a famous if not quite elegant instance has been quoted above,-and which was better fitted to improve the morale of the pupil than the fortunes of the disciplinarian. As Melville puts it, Buchanan 'held the king in awe,' an awe which James felt and resented to the last, although, to do him justice, he also plumed himself on his training by an unrivalled scholar. Three works remarkable for their political teaching-his Baptistes, his De Jure Regni, and his History-Buchanan dedicated to James, in prefaces as remarkable as the works themselves. All three books were mainly, the second entirely, motived by the idea which Buchanan seems to have regarded as constituting and directing his true mission in life, namely, the unspeakable value of liberty, the constant possibility and deadly evil of tyranny, and the corresponding and always pressing duty of forestalling this possibility and resisting this evil by abundant proclamation and practice of the doctrine that legitimate political sovereignty exists only for the good and by the will of the people-a principle, of course, entirely subversive of the despotic doctrine of the Divine right of kings, so prevalent in usurpationist quarters in that day, and anticipatory of the modern and accepted democratic 'platform' of 'Government of the People, by the People, for the People.'

This is not the stage at which to describe the books themselves-it is their prefaces that make them relevant at present,-but a word to indicate their general character is necessary. The Baptistes was written (1540-41) when Buchanan was comparatively a young man, thirty-four or thirty-five, and was 'regenting' in a great secondary school or gymnasium at Bordeaux, called the Collège de Guyenne, organised and presided over by one André de Gouvéa, a famous Portuguese Humanist and educator of the day. This Baptistes was simply a dramatic reproduction of the story of John the Baptist and his tragic end, the dramatis person? being King Herod, Queen Herodias, the latter's dancing daughter, Malchus the high priest, Gamaliel, and the unlucky John himself. It was composed, Buchanan tells us in the dedicatory preface and in his autobiography (1574), in accordance with the rules of the college, and intended by him to win the students, who acted it, from the silly 'mysteries' of the monks to the imitation of classic antiquity, and the rising study of religion in its original documents. But there was something more intended. It is scarcely necessary to read 'between the lines' to find a complete condemnation of absolutist tyranny, and a picture of the misery which it brings on the tyrant himself as well as on his victims. This was not the kind of writing to please monarchs of the period. Nevertheless Buchanan dedicates it (1576) to the boy-king, as 'having a peculiar appositeness to his position,' warning him of 'the agonisings and wretchedness which await tyrants, even when they seem to be most flourishing outwardly.'

This lesson, he goes on to say, he thinks 'not only useful, but absolutely essential,' for his royal pupil to learn now, so that he may 'early begin to hate' a fault which 'he ought always to shun.' Moreover, he 'wishes to place it on record, for the information of posterity, that if the king should in the future, at the instigation of evil advisers, or by allowing the lust of power to overcome the principles of his education, act contrary to the warnings now given him, the blame must be laid, not on his teachers, but on himself, in not having listened to those who gave him good counsel.' This was not the language of flattery; and though James was only ten when he was thus addressed, the precocity of his intelligence would enable him to understand its import. He was destined, in a very few years, to be king in fact as he was now in name, and Buchanan knew that if his charge turned out other than he was trying to make him-what actually happened-his own plain speaking would not be to his advantage. Knowing this, he did his duty, and had his sovereign for his enemy when the latter got used to being his own master. The fact reveals an elevation of character in Buchanan which cannot be justly forgotten in judging of him in other connections. It is not surprising that the agents in Scotland of Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's great minister, when on the look-out for 'Biencontents,' as they were called, who might be dealt with in the way of bribery with a view to forming a strong Elizabethan party in Scotland, should have secretly reported (1579, King's age thirteen) Buchanan as 'a singular man,' while of 'Mester Peter Young' they say that he was 'specially well affected, and ready to persuade the king to be in favour of her majestye.'

Three years after dedicating the Baptistes to James in the style we have seen, he dedicated the De Jure to him (1579). This was a still bolder and more independent proceeding. Without entering, for the present, into the details of its argument, it may be enough to remember that, with its doctrine of Sovereignty as originating from the People, existing for their benefit, and not autocratic, but bounded by laws to which the People have consented, the De Jure must have appeared to Absolutist and 'Divine right people' generally, revolutionary rubbish of the most pernicious description; and accordingly, in 1584, when Buchanan had been dead two years, they had it condemned and its publication and circulation forbidden by express Statute of the Scots Parliament-the King, of course, assenting, if not inciting; while, as we have already seen, the University of Oxford, later on, paid it the compliment of having it publicly burned. Buchanan must have, in a general way, foreseen the possibility of something like this, and the risk he ran if the King should, in his riper age, turn upon him and seek to rend him. This, however, did not deter him from pressing his democratic treatise on the attention and study of his royal pupil.

He praises him, not in the fulsome and fawning language of the Dedication literature of the time, but with evident sincerity and honest, hearty admiration for the brightness of his abilities, his intellectual interests, his independence of judgment while inquiring into the truth of things and opinions. He congratulates him, too, on his present aversion to flattery, that 'nurse of Tyranny, and deadliest of plagues to genuine kingship'-tyrannidis nutricula, et legitimi regni gravissima pestis,-and rejoices that he seems 'instinctively to detest'-natur? quodam instinctu oderis-'the courtly solecisms and barbarisms'-sol?cismos et barbarismos aulicos-affected by those self-chosen 'arbiters of elegance'-eleganti? censores-who 'spice their conversation'-velut sermonis condimenta-with 'profuse employment of "Your Majesty," "Your Lordship," "Your Illustrious Highness," and any other still more sickening title they can find'-passim Majestates, Dominationes, Illustritates, et si qua alia magis sunt putida, adspergant. Was there any latent reference here to 'Mester Peter Young' and his courtier ways? Anyhow, Buchanan plainly owns that he has doubts and fears for James's future. He tells him of the dangers of evil companionship, and invites him to the study of the essay thus dedicated to him, not only as an instructor that will show him the right and wrong of the subject, but as a Mentor that may 'keep at him' in importunate and even audacious fashion, as it may seem for the moment. If he is faithful to the principles commended to him, there will be peace in the present for him and his, and lasting glory in the future. James subsequently thought he could do better, and threw off his early training; but, notwithstanding, or in consequence, he failed alike to achieve a peaceful career or to transmit a glorious memory. The citation from the chorus in the Thyestes of Seneca-who also was tutor to a royal failure, although James must, of course, be admitted to have been a brilliant success compared with Nero-in which the great but ill-starred Roman delineates the Stoic king, appended to Buchanan's dedication, no doubt expresses his own view of what James might and should have been: beginning with-

'Regem non faciunt opes

Non vestis Tyri? color,' etc.

'It is not wealth nor the purple robe that makes a king,' etc.

and ending-

'Rex est, qui metuit nihil,

Rex est, qui cupiet nihil.

Hoc regnum sibi quisque dat.'

'He is a king who has conquered Fear and Desire. Such a kingship every man may give himself, and none else.'

It is in the same spirit that he dedicates his History to the King (1582, James sixteen). He knows perfectly well how his book is likely to be taken. Writing (1577) to Sir Thomas Randolph, Queen Elizabeth's representative at the Scottish court, and Buchanan's quondam pupil at Paris, he says: 'I am occupiit in wryting of our historie, being assurit to content few, and to displease many thairthrow.' Among the many 'displeased,' he could not but foresee that possibly the young King might be found, on account of the unfavourable view which, in common with most historians, he felt himself obliged to take of the character and career of the King's own mother, Queen Mary. He must have felt too that, unless James were all the more magnanimous, he might take deep offence-as he did, death alone saving Buchanan from criminal proceedings on account of his 'seditious' writings-at his now nominal preceptor's contention that by the Constitution of Scotland the monarchy had, as an historical fact as well as by a true philosophy, been all along a derivative and limited, even very limited, one, and anything but a divinely authorised Absolutism, as maintained by courtly authorities. Buchanan, however, prefers to assume that James had enough of the king and the public man in him to sink private feeling in public duty and accept truth, however unpleasant; and accordingly he dedicates his History to him, urging him to follow the example of his good predecessors and eschew that of the bad ones, and more particularly commending to his notice and imitation the career of the saintly David I., the 'sair saunt for the crown' of one of his successors and descendants, as a ruler who, according to his lights-some of which, however, especially those that led to his profuse and corrupting liberality to the Church, Buchanan, herein endorsing John Major, his early St. Andrews 'regent' in Logic, emphatically decries-devoted himself not to pleasure, or the strengthening of his prerogative, but to what seemed to him to be the true welfare of his people. In all this, some of Buchanan's critics have thought him too stern, and that gentler methods might have won over James to better thoughts. But truth must always be stern to those who dislike or fear it. Yet those only are the real friends of these latter who give them the chance of profiting by it; and in so acting by James, come what might of himself and his personal fortunes, Buchanan will be thought by most admirers of a high morale to have stamped himself as a wholly high-minded and even heroic character.

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