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BY 


Presented  to  the 


UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO 

by 
Hon.   Peter  Wright 


GEORGE 
BUCHANAN 


FAMOUS  SCOTS  SERIES 

Tke following  Volxmti  art  now  ready: — 

THOMAS  CARLYLE.    By  HECTOR  C.  MACPHEBSON. 

ALLAN  RAMSAY.    By  OLIPHANT  SMEATON. 

HUGH  MILLER.    By  W.  KEITH  LEASK. 

JOHN  KNOX.     By  A.  TAYLOR  INNES. 

ROBERT  BURNS.    By  GABRIEL  SETOUN. 

THE  BALLADISTS.    By  JOHN  GEDDIE. 

RICHARD  CAMERON.    By  Professor  HERKLESS. 

SIR  JAMES  Y.  SIMPSON.    By  EVE  BLANTYRE  SIMPSON. 

THOMAS  CHALMERS.    By  Professor  W.  GARDEN  BLAIKIE. 

JAMES  BOSWELL.    By  W.  KEITH  LEASK. 

TOBIAS  SMOLLETT.    By  OLIPHANT  SMEATON. 

FLETCHER  OF  SALTOUN.    By  G.  W.  T.  OMOND. 

THE  BLACKWOOD  GROUP.     By  Sir  GEORGE  DOUGLAS. 

NORMAN  MACLEOD.    By  JOHN  WELLWOOD. 

SIR  WALTER  SCOTT.     By  Professor  SAINTSBURY. 

KIRKCALDY  OF  GRANGE.    By  Louis  A.  BARBE. 

ROBERT  FERGUSSON.    By  A.  B.  GROSART. 

JAMES  THOMSON.    By  WILLIAM  BAYNE. 

MUNGO  PARK.    ByT.  BANKS  MACLACHLAN. 

DAVID  HUME.     By  Professor  CALDERWOOD. 

WILLIAM  DUNBAR.    By  OLIPHANT  SMEATON. 

SIR  WILLIAM  WALLACE.     By  Professor  MURISON. 

ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON.      By  MARGARET  MOVES 

BLACK. 

THOMAS  REID.     By  Professor  CAMPBELL  FRASER. 
POLLOK  AND  AYTOUN.    By  ROSALINE  MASSON. 
ADAM  SMITH.    By  HECTOR  C.  MACPHERSON. 
ANDREW  MELVILLE.    By  WILLIAM  MORISON. 
JAMES  FREDERICK  FERRIER.    By  E.  S.  HALDANE. 
KING  ROBERT  THE  BRUCE.     By  A.  F.  MURISON. 
JAMES  HOGG.     By  Sir  GEORGE  DOUGLAS. 
THOMAS  CAMPBELL.    By  J.  CUTHBERT  HADDEN. 
GEORGE  BUCHANAN.    By  ROBERT  WALLACE. 

Completed  by  J.  CAMPBELL  SMITH. 


GEORGE 
BUCHANAN 

BY»  ROBERT 
WALLACE 

COMPLETED  BY  :  3 
CAMPBELL- SMITH 

FAMOUS 

SCOTS: 

SERIES 


PUBLISHED  BY  W 
OLIPHANT  ANDERSON 
VFERRIER'EDINBVRGH 
AND  LONDON  ^  <S» 


The  designs  and  ornaments  of  this 
volume  are  by  Mr.  Joseph  Brown, 
and  the  printing  from  the  press  of 
Messrs.  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Edinburgh. 


PRE  FACE 

THE  concluding  chapter  of  the  book  I  intended  to  serve 
the  purpose  of  prologue  and  epilogue,  but  on  reflection 
I  find  that  readers  both  in  and  out  of  Scotland  may 
desire  to  be  told  a  little  more  about  Robert  Wallace, 
M.A.,  D.D.,  and  M.P.,  a  collocation  of  titles  of  honour, 
so  far  as  I  know,  unexampled.  He  was  a  minister  of 
the  Church  of  Scotland  from  the  summer  of  1857  to 
the  autumn  of  1876 ;  was  in  succession  the  minister  of 
Newton-on-Ayr,  of  Trinity  College  Church,  Edinburgh, 
and  of  Old  Greyfriars',  Edinburgh,  in  which  last  he 
succeeded  Dr.  Robert  Lee,  as  also  in  the  leadership  of 
the  Liberal  Party  of  the  Church  of  Scotland.  The 
degree  of  D.D.  was  conferred  upon  him  by  the  Uni- 
versity of  Glasgow,  pretty  much,  it  was  believed,  through 
the  influence  of  Dr.  Caird,  the  most  eloquent  preacher 
and  one  of  the  most  profound  theologians  of  our  day. 
After  Dr.  Wallace  became  editor  of  the  Scotsman  he 
resigned  his  chair  of  Church  History,  his  church,  and 
even  his  licence  to  preach,  and  he  left  in  abeyance  the 
title  of  D.D.,  and  became  in  his  time,  as  a  barrister-at- 
law,  plain  Mr.  Robert  Wallace.  But  the  degree  of  a 
university  is,  I  believe,  indelible,  and  he  will  always  be 
Dr.  Wallace  to  me.  His  degree  of  M.A.,  like  mine,  was 
conferred  by  the  University  of  St.  Andrews  in  April 
1853  after  four  years'  study,  during  which  we  attended 
simultaneously  every  Humanity  class.  He  was  first  in 


vi  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

every  literary  class,  and  by  far  the  best  classical  scholar 
of  my  day.  Dr.  Alexander,  the  venerable  professor  of 
Greek,  who  had  taught  for  thirty  years,  pronounced 
him  the  best  student  he  had  ever  taught. 

His  splendid  classical  attainments,  the  erudition 
necessary  to  the  chair  of  Church  History,  his  extensive 
and  distinguished  practice  as  a  debating  gladiator  in 
Church  Courts,  especially  the  General  Assembly, 
perhaps  even  his  experience  in  the  solid,  stolid,  non- 
mercurial  House  of  Commons,  all  fitted  him,  as  few 
men  have  been  fit,  to  do  justice  to  the  life,  labours, 
and  supreme  European  culture  of  George  Buchanan. 

To  equal  fitness  I  do  not  pretend.  To  the  best  of 
my  ability  I  have  tried  to  complete  the  unfinished  task 
of  my  friend,  with  whom  I  at  intervals  interchanged 
ideas  since  the  beginning  of  our  college  career  in 
October  1849.  I  am  not  sure  he  would  have  agreed 
with  all  I  say  in  the  last  chapter.  For  the  views 
expressed  therein  I  alone  am  responsible. 

From  one  error  in  fact  and  a  doubtful  assumption  as  to 
Buchanan's  relation  to  Montaigne,  the  '  representative  ' 
sceptic,  I  have  been  saved  by  Dr.  P.  Hume  Brown,  the 
author  of  the  best  life  of  Buchanan,  whose  knowledge 
of  the  history  of  Buchanan  and  his  contemporaries  is 
probably  unrivalled.  He  read  the  proof-sheets,  and 
for  his  friendly,  disinterested  attention  Dr.  Wallace's 
representatives  and  I  are  greatly  obliged  to  him,  as  all 
readers  ought  to  be,  for  they  have  the  assurance  that 
the  most  enlightened  eye  on  the  subject  of  Buchanan 
examined  what  they  are  expected  to  believe. 

J.  CAMPBELL  SMITH. 
DUNDEE,  December  1899. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

PRELIMINARY  AND  GENERAL 9 

CHAPTER  II 
CHARACTERISTICS 26 

CHAPTER  III 
CHARACTERISTICS  (continued) 48 

CHAPTER  IV 
FURTHER  CHARACTERISTICS 66 

CHAPTER  V 
BUCHANAN  AND  CALVINISM 89 

CHAPTER  VI 
BIOGRAPHICAL  FACTS in 

EPILOGISTIC 138 

INDEX 147 


Vil 


GEORGE     BUCHANAN 

CHAPTER    I 

PRELIMINARY   AND   GENERAL 

ON  the  2ist  July  1683,  Lord  William  Russell  was 
beheaded  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  because  Charles  u., 
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  danger- 
ous 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 


io  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  Mil- 
ton, 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 
DC  Jure  Regni  apud  Scotos;  but  that  was  only  'Glorious 
John's'  inglorious  way  of  making  himself  contro- 
versially 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  ammuni- 
tion 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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  n 

the  principles  which  he  successfully  floated  in  unpro- 
pitious  times  undoubtedly  produced  the  two  great 
English,  the  American,  and  the  first  French  Revolu- 
tions, 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  con- 
sequence, 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  Reforma- 
tion, 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,  arxi  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. 


i  a  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  Caesar  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  intel- 
lectual artist,  both  in  prose  and  verse.  He  enjoyed  an 
unsurpassed  European  reputation  among  the  Renais- 
sance magnates  of  his  day.  Henri  Estienne,  for  instance, 
— Buchanan's  Stephanus,  our  Stephens — said  that  he 
was  poetarum  nostri  saculi  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  Caesar /^r,  and 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  13 

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  Caesar,  who 
used  language  truly  awful  about  the  glory  of  the  priest- 
hood 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,  nee  quo  progrediatur  habet. 
Imperii  fuerat  Romani  Scotia  limes  ; 
Roman!  eloquii  Scotia  finis  erit.' 

Anybody  with  a  fair  understanding  of  Latin   and 
a  full  understanding  of  epigram,  who  reads  the  last 


i4  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  15 

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  expres- 
sions not  loud  but  deep.  Regarding  which  behaviour, 
two  remarks  seem  natural.  The  first  is  that  possibly 
Buchanan  was  right  and  Person  wrong.  At  Eton,  as 
is  well  known,  Person  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  Person  did 
too,  knowing  nothing  of  vapulandum  \  Johnson  was 
no  such  stickler,  for  he  read  and  enjoyed  Milton, 
vapulandum  notwithstanding.  He  had  also  the  high- 
est opinion  of  Buchanan,  both  as  a  Latinist  and  as 
'a  great  poetical  genius,'  and  his  authority  on  such 


1 6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

matters,  being  both  poet  and  critic  himself,  is  much 
greater  than  Person'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  Sphara  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  Astro- 
nomy, 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. 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  17 

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. 

B 


1 8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  Edin- 
burgh 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  Afaria 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  19 

Regince>  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  him- 
self the  bete  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 


20  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  dis- 
tinguished 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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  21 

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 


22  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  dis- 
tasteful 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  objection- 
able in  some  of  his  writings,  'tell  them  I  am  sum- 
moned 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  d  propos  of  the  Romish  doc- 
trine of  the  Mass,  which  would  no  doubt  delight  that 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  23 

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, 


24  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  25 

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 l  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  reflec- 
tion 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. 

1  When  I  first  heard  from  one  of  my  early  schoolmasters  the 
mediaeval  chestnut,  Quid  distat  inter  sotum  et  Scotum  ? — Mensa 
tantum.  ('  What  divides  a  sot  (fool)  from  a  Scot  ? — Only  the  table ') 
— the  reply  was  credited  to  Buchanan. 


CHAPTER    II 

CHARACTERISTICS 

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  ipth  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 
20 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  27 

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  compre- 
hensive ideas  on  the  leading  questions  of  the  day 
which  made  him  the  thinker  and  Humanist  as  con- 
trasted 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 


a8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

order  of  things  and  the  new,  and  often  give  practical 
advice  that  was  useful.  In  this  period,  too,  he  com- 
pleted that  thorough  study  of  the  Roman  and  Protest- 
ant 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  incon- 
siderable event.  All  this  was  undoubtedly  perform- 
ance 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  deliber- 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  29 

ately  prepared  abroad,  and  then  came   and  deliber- 
ately 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  Whitting- 
ton 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    Caesar    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, 


30  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  for- 
tune, but  having  got  that  length,  the  acquired  delight  in 
pulling  the  strings  of  an  extensive  and  possibly  adven- 
turous 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, 
Ventosaeque  fugax  ambitionis,  obis.' 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  31 

'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  sequa  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 


32  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

best  of  my  knowledge  and  belief,'  as  the  affidavits 
say: — 

1  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,  Moraviae  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  re- 
ceive 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  : — 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  33 

'  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  Matthaeum  Levinise  Comitem,  Scotiae 
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  ilia  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 

C 


34  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  descrip- 
tion 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  allow- 
ing 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, 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  35 

and  the  weak  must  go  to  the  wall.  The  feudal  senti- 
ment, 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  narrow- 
ing and  obscurantist  influences  of  scholasticism,  re- 
duced 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. 


36  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  meet- 
ing 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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  37 

Lennox,  and  asking  their  temporary  aid  or  a  per- 
manent 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  admira- 
tion, 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  six- 
penny weeklies,  as  far  as  they  are  worth  anything — 


38  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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, 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  39 

who,  when  the  last  page  is  finished,  sends  out  a  con- 
federate 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  Chancellor- 
ship, 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  mainten- 
ance or  preferment  he  sold  his  independence  to  the 
donors,  and  when  it  is  answered  that  he  showed  any- 
thing 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 


40  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  sub- 
sidy. 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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  41 

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  independ- 
ence that  have  not  always  been  successfully  reproduced 
by  his  successors,  when  confronted  with  the  monarchies 
and  lordships  of  material  power  and  glory. 

JVb  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  per- 
sonally 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 


42  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  distin- 
guished,' 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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  43 

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  in- 
different than  this  account  of  matters  might  imply. 
His  numerous  efforts  had  won  him  the  highest  reputa- 
tion, 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  consign- 
ing 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  Human- 
istic Vocation,  and  doing  something  that  might  redeem 


44  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

his  time  and  his  temper  from  the  boredom  of  the  un- 
congenial society  amidst  which  misfortune  had  placed 
him.  There  does  not  seem  in  all  this  much  of  that 
passionate  desire  of  distinction  to  which  Burns  con- 
fesses. 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, 
spent  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  dun- 
ning 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, 
out  si  maxime  vellem  per  atatem  licet.  Accessit  eo 
historic  scribenda  labor, — '  for  neither  am  I  now  greatly 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  45 

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'1  \  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  cele- 
brated, 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 


46  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  sub- 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  47 

ject  was  aut  uberius  ad  laudem,  aut  firmius  ad  memories 
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  per- 
severe at  a  labour  which,  he  says,  in  estate  Integra 
•bermolestus,  nunc  vero  in  hac  meditatione  mortis,  inter 
mortalitatis  metum,  et  desinendi  pudorem,  non  potest  non 
lentus  esse  et  ingratus,  quando  nee  cessare  licet,  nee  pro- 
gredi  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  abandon- 
ing 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  ! 


CHAPTER   III 

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  litcrarum,  maxime  carminibus  scribendis^ 

48 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  49 

operam  dedisset,  partim  natures  impulsu,  partim  neces- 
sitate (quod  hoc  unum  studiorum  genus  adolescentia 
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,  be- 
cause 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 

D 


5o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  circum- 
stances. The  Detectio  Regince  ( 1 569-7 1)  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  DC  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  com- 
pleted (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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  51 

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  re- 
sponsibility and  dignity,  but  most  of  them  sought  him, 
not  he  them.  Lord  Cassilis  had  him  for  tutor-com- 
panion (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  conduct- 
ing his  College  at  Coimbra,  and  did  his  best,  though 
in  vain,  to  retain  him  in  his  kingdom  (1547-52).  The 
famous  Mare'chal  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 


52  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  Con- 
tinent 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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  53 

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  Young1  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 

1  He  was  Buchanan's  assistant,  and  called  the  king's  '  Pedagogue,' 
Buchanan  being  called  '  Master. ' 


54  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

wret  dispytfull  invectives  against  the  Erie  of  Monteith, 
for  some  particulaires  that  was  between  him  and  the 
Laird  of  Buchwhennen  ;  and  became  the  Erie  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  casualtes1  to  him- 
self, 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 

1  Certain  emoluments  arising  to  the  feudal  superior  (in  this  case 
the  king) ;  which,  as  they  depend  on  uncertain  events,  are  termed 
casualties. 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  55 

James  himself.  The  latter's  preface  is  a  charming 
piece  of  naivete.  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 


56  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

not  far  before  the  hand.'  That  is,  he  was  not  a  cal- 
culating 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 
feliccs  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 '  out- 
spokenness 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. 


57 

If  James  turned  out  'the  wisest  fool  in  Christen- 
dom,' 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  circum- 
stances 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  dedi- 
cated 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 


58  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  rele- 
vant 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  College  de  Guyenne,  organised  and  presided 
over  by  one  Andr£  de  Gouve"a,  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 
persona  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  pre- 
face and  in  his  autobiography  (1574),  in  accordance 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  59 

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  absolu- 
tist 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  ( 1 5  7 6) 
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  educa- 
tion, 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 


60  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  (15791 
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  inde- 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  61 

pendent  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,  revolu- 
tionary 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  in- 
quiring into  the  truth  of  things  and  opinions.  He 


62  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

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  pcstis, — and  rejoices  that  he 
seems  '  instinctively  to  detest ' — natures  quodam  instinctu 
oderis — '  the  courtly  solecisms  and  barbarisms ' — soloe- 
tismos  et  barbarismos  aulicos — affected  by  those  self- 
chosen  '  arbiters  of  elegance ' — elegantia  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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  63 

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  Tyriae  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  per- 
fectly 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 


64  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

quondam  pupil  at  Paris,  he  says :  '  I  am  occupiit  in 
wryting  of  our  historic,  being  assurit  to  content  few, 
and  to  displease  many  thairthrow.'  Among  the  many 
1  displeased,'  he  could  not  but  foresee  that  possibly  the 
young  King  might  be  found,  on  account  of  the  unfavour- 
able 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  proceed- 
ings 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 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  65 

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. 


E 


CHAPTER    IV 

FURTHER   CHARACTERISTICS 

A  Stoic  Philosopher 

WE  are  now,  perhaps,  in  a  better  position  to  face 
Melville's  further  characterisation  of  him  as  a  'Stoik 
philosopher,  of  gud  religion  for  a  poet.'  That  Sir 
James  knew  something  about  Stoicism,  although 
perhaps  not  very  deeply,  is  shown  by  his  apparent 
familiarity  with  the  Seneca,  whom  he  quotes  in  that 
remarkable  preface  of  his,  although  only  for  a  sarcastic 
comment  upon  those  foolish  political  Stoics  who,  like 
Sir  James  himself,  throw  away  their  Stoical  honesty 
upon  unappreciative  '  Princes,'  and  repent  of  their 
Stoicism  when  too  late.  That  Buchanan  had  studied 
the  Stoics  goes  without  saying.  He  was  as  familiar 
with  the  metres  of  Seneca  and  Boetius  as  with  those  of 
Horace  and  Catullus,  and  he  was  not  the  man — not  the 
pedant  or  grammarian — to  master  the  form  and  style 
merely  of  his  author  without  penetrating  to  his  inner 
thought.  How  minutely  he  had  read  Cicero  appears 

66 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  67 

from  his  famous  emendation  in  the  second  Philippic 
of  patrem  tuum,  passed  over  by  previous  commentators, 
into  matrem,  subsequently  parentem  tuam — a  case  in 
which  even  Gibbon  would  probably  have  admitted  that 
a  vowel,  to  say  nothing  of  a  diphthong,  was  vital  to  truth, 
and  which  gave  occasion  to  Dionysius  Lambinus  to 
flay  alive  a  rival  Ciceronic  editor,  Petrus  Victorius  by 
name,  for  critical  larceny,  in  having  feloniously  but 
silently  appropriated,  first,  the  laurels  of  Buchanan  who 
did  the  good  deed,  and  next,  those  of  him,  Lambinus, 
who  had  the  sagacity  to  recognise  and  adopt  Buchanan's 
great  performance.  But  Buchanan  had  doubtless  read 
Cicero's  De  Officiis  with  not  less  care,  and  had  gathered 
from  its  pages  some  idea  of  Stoicism  as  expounded  by 
Cicero's  own  early  tutor,  Pansetius,  probably  the  most 
distinguished  of  Rome's  then  professional  teachers  of 
this  great  ethical  system.  He  must  have  come  across 
such  a  passage  as  this,  where  Cicero  says :  '  What  is 
called  the  summum  bonum  by  the  Stoics,  to  live  agree- 
ably to  Nature  (conwnienter  Natures  vivere),  has,  I  con- 
ceive, this  meaning — always  to  conform  to  virtue ;  and 
as  to  all  other  things  which  may  be  according  to  Nature 
(secundum  naturam)  [i.e.  other  possible  bona  besides 
the  summum :  as  gratifications  of  appetite,  propensity, 
ambition,  etc.],  to  take  them  if  they  should  not  be 
repugnant  to  virtue,' — a  declaration  which  Butler,  with 


68  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

his  supremacy  of  conscience  as  part  of  true  Nature, 
would  have  accepted,  and  in  substance,  indeed,  has 
explicitly  endorsed.  Probably,  too,  he  had  noticed  the 
habitual  doctrine  of  Epictetus,  '  this  is  the  great  task  of 
life  also,  to  discern  things  and  divide  them,  and  say, 
"Outward  things  are  not  in  my  power;  to  will  is  in 
my  power.  Where  shall  I  seek  the  Good,  and  where 
the  Evil  ?  Within  me — in  all  that  is  my  own.  But  of 
all  that  is  alien  to  thee,  call  nothing  good  nor  evil,  nor 
profitable  nor  hurtful,  nor  any  such  term  as  these. 
What  then  ?  should  we  be  careless  of  such  things?  In 
no  wise.  For  this,  again,  is  a  vice  in  the  Will,  and  thus 
contrary  to  Nature.  But  be  at  once  careful,  because 
the  use  of  things  is  not  indifferent,  and  steadfast 
and  tranquil  because  the  things  themselves  are.  .  .  . 
And  hard  it  is,  indeed,  to  mingle  and  reconcile 
together  the  carefulness  of  one  whom  outward  things 
affect,  with  the  steadfastness  of  him  who  regards  them 
not  But  impossible  it  is  not;  and  if  it  is,  it  is  im- 
possible to  be  happy.  .  .  .  Take  example  of  dice- 
players.  The  numbers  are  indifferent,  the  dice  are 
indifferent.  How  can  I  tell  what  may  be  thrown  up  ? 
But  carefully  and  skilfully  to  make  use  of  what  is 
thrown,  that  is  where  my  proper  business  begins"' 
( Rolleston  translation). 
This  seems  to  me  to  describe  the  general  temper  and 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  69 

spirit  in  which  Buchanan  confronted  the  vicissitudes 
of  life.  I  do  not  say  that  in  a  Register  of  Religions 
like  that  provided  under  6  and  7  Will.  iv.  c.  85 
and  amending  acts,  he  would  have  entered  himself  as 
'  G.  B.,  Stoic.'  For  one  thing,  he  had  not  the  chance, 
as  only  one  denomination  was  allowed.  Nor  do  I 
think  he  ever  said  in  his  heart,  '  I  am  a  Stoic,  and 
mean  to  guide  my  life  by  the  Stoical  system  ' ;  but  all 
the  same,  I  believe  that  eonvenitnter  natures  vivere, 
interpreted  in  the  Stoical  sense,  sank  with  gradually 
increasing  depth  into  his  moral  nature  as  life  went  on, 
and  preserved  him  from  Epicurean  timidity,  levity,  and 
egotism.  Not  "that  he  succeeded  perfectly,  but  he 
kept  trying  to.  Stoicism  did  not,  any  more  than 
Christianity,  maintain  that  the  concrete  Stoic  was  free 
from  [sins,^both  of  omission  and  commission.  Not 
Socrates,  nor^  even  Diogenes — most  misunderstood  of 
men,  who  attained  the  high  degree  of  Cynic — would 
have  been  claimed  as  impeccable,  although  they  came 
very  near  it.  It  has  been  said  that  Buchanan  in  several 
ways  allowed  the  '  outward  things  that  were  not  in  his 
power '  get  the  better  of  the  '  will '  that  was,  that  he 
was,  for  instance,  fiery  and  irritable,  for  little  other 
reason,  apparently,  than  that  he  had  Celtic  blood  in 
him,  and  was  bound  to  be  so ;  that  he  was  dis- 
appointed and  soured  by  his  early  struggle  with 


70  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

poverty,  his  critics  assuming  that  this  must  have  been 
the  case,  because  in  his  circumstances  they  would  have 
been  so  themselves;  that  he  was  a  'good  hater* — as  if 
that  were  really  a  fault  at  all,  etc. 

Had  he  been  all  that  his  detractors  call  him,  that 
would  not  have  unstoicised  him,  since,  as  already 
said,  the  system  admits  that  '  no  mere  man  is  able  to 
keep  the  commandments,  but  doth  daily  break  them," 
as  the  Shorter  Catechism  puts  it  in  questionable 
grammar.  But  his  censors  have  not  sufficiently 
observed  that  if  he  displayed  faults  of  passion,  eager- 
ness, temper,  impatience,  it  was  when  he  was  young ; 
and  the  fair  inference  is  that  if  he  overcame  those 
tendencies  as  life  proceeded,  it  was  by  a  persistent 
effort  of  '  will,'  repelling  the  invading  influence  of  the 
'  outward.'  By  all  accounts  his  age  was  not  a  '  crabbed 
age.'  Though  plain,  and  even  rustic,  in  appearance — 
in  the  matter  of  dress  he  seems  to  have  carried  his 
superiority  to  the  '  outward '  to  a  really  unstoical 
extreme — when  he  opened  his  mouth  he  was  a  dif- 
ferent being,  courtly  in  manner,  refined  and  elegant 
in  expression,  humorous  and  entertaining,  as  well  as 
instructive  even  to  the  verge  of  'edifying,'  in  every  way 
a  polite  and  variously  pleasant  companion — 'with 
nothing  of  the  pedagogue  about  him  but  the  gown,' 
said  a  keen  and  competent  observer,  who  knew  him 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  71 

well.  'Plaisant  in  company,'  says  the  slightly  garru- 
lous Sir  James,  '  rehersing  at  all  occasions  moralities 
short  and  fecfull,  whereof  he  had  aboundance,  and 
invented  wher  he  wanted ' — a  combination,  in  short,  of 
wit,  wisdom,  resource,  and  pith,  anything  but  a  picture 
of  the  snappish  old  curmudgeon,  soured  and  made  ill- 
natured  by  disappointments  which  he  had  not  wisely 
overcome.  His  letters,  too,  of  which  unfortunately  we 
possess  only  a  few,  reveal  the  same  well-ordered  and 
placid  moral  interior :  full  of  the  purest  friendly 
devotion,  ready  always  to  do  a  good  turn,  especially  to 
merit  in  obscurity,  not  insensible  to  the  difficulties  and 
distresses  of  life,  but  rising  above  them,  and  achieving 
in  spite  of  them  not  only  contentment,  but  a  degree  of 
light-heartedness.  He  was  long  a  martyr  to  gout — a 
sore  affliction,  if  sufferers  from  it  may  be  trusted.  But 
he  took  it  with  a  smile.  Writing  (1577)  at  seventy-one 
to  his  old  friend  and  pupil  Randolph,  by  that  time 
Postmaster-General  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  he  tells  him 
that  he  is  hard  at  work  on  his  History,  and  adds : 
'  The  rest  of  my  occupation  is  wyth  the  gout,  quhilk 
holdis  me  besy  both  day  and  nyt.  And  quhair  ye  say 
ye  haif  not  lang  to  lyif  [live],  I  traist  [trust]  to  God  to 
go  before  you,  albeit  I  be  on  fut,  and  ye  ryd  the 
post.  .  .  .  And  thus  I  tak  my  leif  [leave]  shortly  at 
you  now,  and  my  lang  leif  quhen  God  pleasis.'  The 


72  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

fun  may  not  be  of  a  side-splitting  character,  nor  the 
seriousness  very  unctuous,  but  the  man  who  could  en- 
counter the  gout  keeping  at  him  night  and  day  in  this 
fashion,  must  have  practised  keeping  the  'outward' 
at  bay  in  a  considerable  variety  of  situations,  and  for  a 
considerable  time,  and  with  considerable  success. 

Alleged  Vindictivcness 

The  fastidious  Sir  James  seems  to  think  that 
Buchanan  rather  stepped  down  from  the  high  '  Stoik 
philosopher '  pedestal  in  being  what  he  calls  '  extrem 
vengeable  against  any  man  that  had  offendit  him.' 
But,  as  already  suggested,  Dr.  Johnson,  who  was  a 
tolerable  authority  on  the  higher  morality,  would  have 
been  rather  prejudiced  in  Buchanan's  favour  on  this 
very  account,  and  would  probably  have  wished  to 
know  Sir  James's  evidence  for  unfavourably  meant 
reflection,  and  would  certainly  have  thought  that  it 
did  not  amount  to  much.  It  may  be  pardoned  in  an 
old  ex-courtier  to  think  it  a  dreadful  thing  to  have 
written  'dispytfull  invectives  against  the  Erie  of 
Monteith.'  No  doubt,  the  fact  that  the  subject  of  the 
incriminated  ' invectives '  was  some  'particulars  that 
was  between  him  (the  "  Erie  ")  and  the  Laird  of  Buch- 
whennen,'  would  dispose  Buchanan  to  do  his  best, 
because  blood  is  thicker  than  water,  and  when 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  73 

Buchanan  was  at  his  best  on  an  invective,  it  is  likely 
enough  that  the  object  of  it  and  his  friends  might 
think  it '  dispytfull,'  if  not  worse,  although  unprejudiced 
people  might  find  it  very  good  reading.  But  every- 
thing depends  on  the  merits  of  the  'particulaires,'  and 
of  these  Sir  James  tells  us  nothing.  With  every 
respect  to  him  and  his  kidney,  an  '  Erie '  may  be  in 
the  wrong  while  a  '  Laird '  is  in  the  right,  and  if  that 
were  so  in  the  present  instance,  it  was  the  part  of  a 
'philosopher,'  and  especially  a  'Stoik'  one,  to  take  an 
'  Erie '  precisely  for  what  he  was  worth  and  no  more, 
as  Diogenes,  the  champion  Stoic,  in  the  famous 
anecdote,  whether  vero  or  ben  trovato^  tells  Alexander 
the  Great  that,  as  far  as  he  knew,  the  only  thing  he 
(the  Great)  could  do  for  him  (the  champion)  was  to 
stand  out  of  his  light. 

Sir  James's  other  instance  of  Buchanan's  'vengeable- 
ness  '  is  not  much  more  to  the  point.  Perhaps  the 
story  of  the  requisitioned  '  hackney '  that  was  '  sa  sur 
of  foot  and  sa  easy '  is  not  true,  and  merely  an  instance 
of  the  baseless  gossip  that  so  easily  gets  into  circulation 
about  distinguished  people,  and  people  that  are  not 
distinguished  as  well.  But  even  if  the  'said  horse' 
and  Melville's  history  of  it  are  facts,  most  people  will 
be  of  opinion  that  Buchanan  had  grounds  of  dis- 
pleasure. He  was  deprived  of  the  '  said  horse  ' — there 


74  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

is  no  word  of  a  price,  but  that  is  immaterial — for 
public  purposes  during  the  civil  wars.  When  the 
public  purpose  was  satisfied,  the  animal  ought  to 
have  been  returned  to  him.  In  the  meantime  Morton 
had  '  bocht '  the  beast,  apparently  from  the  requisi- 
tioner  or  his  donee,  and  Morton  was  not  the  man  to 
pay  too  much  for  him.  But  when  the  morally  rightful 
proprietor  applied  to  have  his  own  back,  and  that  time 
after  time,  he  found  the  Regent  of  Scotland  standing 
upon  his  real  or  fancied  contractual  rights.  If 
Buchanan  and  Morton  were  the  great  friends  Melville 
says  they  were,  Buchanan  was  not  treated  in  a  friendly 
manner.  It  takes  two  to  make  a  friendship,  and  by 
the  proverb  it  is  '  giff  gaff,'  not  giff  and  no  gaff,  that 
creates  the  connection.  '  Love  me,  love  my  dog,'  is 
one  thing ;  but  love  me,  and  let  me  love  your  horse 
a  la  Aforton,  is  very  much  another  thing.  Loyalty  is 
tested  by  conduct  in  small  matters,  even  more  than  in 
great  ones,  and  in  the  circumstances  stated,  it  would 
not  have  been  wonderful  if  Buchanan's  feeling  of 
personal  liking  for  Morton,  if  it  ever  existed,  under- 
went a  change.  It  is  certain  that  Buchanan  at  a 
particular  point  ceased  to  approve  of  parts  of  Morton's 
policy,  but  not  for  any  such  trumpery  reason  as  the 
one  assigned  by  tattling  Sir  James.  While  Knox  was 
alive,  there  was  a  complete  solidarity  of  public  action 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  75 

between  him  and  Morton  and  Buchanan,  to  whom 
the  cause  of  Protestantism  meant  the  cause  of  liberty. 
Their  aim  was  to  strengthen  the  position  of  Protestant- 
ism in  Scotland  by  the  English  Alliance,  and  to 
strengthen  the  position  of  Elizabeth  as  fighting  the 
general  battle  of  Protestantism  against  the  Catholic  re- 
action of  the  Continent ;  while,  even  in  spite  of  Eliza- 
beth herself,  who  had  an  interest  in  Monarchical 
Absolutism  as  well  as  in  Protestant  freedom,  they 
firmly  resisted  every  attempt  to  restore  Mary,  the 
champion  of  the  old  faith  and  its  political  tyranny. 

With  this  view  Knox,  who  was  a  statesman,  and  not 
the  mere  crazy  fanatic  and  demagogue  that  he  is 
sometimes  mistaken  for,  winked  at  the  moral  irregu- 
larities of  Morton,  and  would  even  have  joined  the 
General  Assembly  in  making  him  an  '  Elder,'  if  he  had 
not  himself,  though  quite  free  from  scruples,  felt  that 
this  would  have  been  putting  on  rather  too  much  ; 
while  Buchanan  gave  him  every  support  in  his  power, 
and  as  internal  evidence  shows,  wrote  for  him  the 
Memorial  demanded  by  Elizabeth  at  the  final  London 
Conference,  in  which  the  right  of  the  Scottish  nation 
to  depose  Mary  from  her  regal  office  is  defended  on 
the  same  principles  and  often  in  the  same  language 
as  are  employed  in  the  Detectio,  the  De  Jure,  the 
History,  and  indeed  all  through  Buchanan's  writings. 


76  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

After  Knox's  death  he  still  pursued  the  anti-Marian 
and  pro- Elizabethan  policy,  but  with  a  difference.  To 
complete  the  unity  of  Scottish  and  English  Protestant- 
ism, Morton  sought  to  reduce  the  Scottish  Church  to 
the  same  level  with  the  English — that  is,  to  make  it 
Episcopal  and  Erastian.  When  he  made  this  proposal 
he  was  fully  aware  of  the  opposition  on  which  he  had 
to  reckon ;  for  although  he  made  very  light  of  the  other 
Presbyterian  clergy,  and  indeed  told  some  of  them  who 
kept  boring  him  beyond  endurance  that  he  might  have 
some  of  them  '  hanged '  if  they  did  not  take  care,  he  knew 
that  in  Knox  he  met  a  man  who  was  not  afraid  of  him, 
or  any  one,  or  anything  else,  and  who  was  the  one  man 
in  Scotland  who  was  a  stronger  man  than  himself. 

But  when  Knox  was  gone,  he  had  the  stage  to  him- 
self, and  began  to  develop  his  views,  apparently 
seeking  to  use  Buchanan  as  a  tool  for  carrying  them 
into  execution.  James  Melville,  in  his  entertaining 
diary,  tells  us  that  when  Andrew  his  uncle  returned 
from  abroad,  Morton  sent  Buchanan  to  him  to  try 
whether  the  influence  of  an  old  master  over  an  old 
pupil  and  lifelong  friend  could  not  prevail  on  Andrew 
to  assist  him  in  more  or  less  Anglicising  the  '  Kirk.' 
The  idea  of  getting  Andrew  Melville  to  assent  to 
Episcopacy  and  Erastianism,  or  any  modification  of 
them,  was  of  course  utterly  futile  and  ludicrous.  You 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  77 

might  as  well  have  tried  to  marry  fire  and  water.  To 
Buchanan  himself  the  proposal  would  not  appear  * 
unreasonable  in  itself.  He  was  not  an  ecclesiastic,  but 
a  scholar  and  thinker  to  whom  the  struggle  between 
Presbyterian  and  Prelate  would  appear  a  sectarian 
squabble,  but  his  interview  with  his  severely  Puritanical 
pupil  undoubtedly  convinced  him  that  Morton's 
scheme  for  turning  the  Scottish  into  a  branch  of  the 
Anglican  church  would  simply  defeat  itself.  It  would 
rend  and  desolate  the  ecclesiastical  life  of  Scotland — as 
was  too  amply  proved  by  the  Scottish  history  of  the 
seventeenth  century, — and  paralyse  it  for  the  time  as 
a  power  in  resisting  the  efforts  of  the  avowed  or  tacit 
Catholic  League  to  crush  that  element  of  liberty  in 
the  Protestant  revolt,  which  to  Buchanan  was  its  most 
valuable  characteristic.  This,  and  not  '  the  said  horse,' 
was  unquestionably  the  explanation  of  Buchanan's 
growing  antagonism  to  Morton.  If  '  the  said  horse ' 
was  not  a  myth,  it  might,  taken  in  conjunction  with  the 
abortive  Melville  negotiation,  lead  Buchanan  to  think 
that  Morton  was  just  a  little  too  much  disposed  to  con- 
vert his  friends  into  useful  instruments  for  his  own 
purposes — an  impression  which  would  be  greatly 
deepened  when  he  noticed  Morton's  great  and  increas- 
ing anxiety  to  get  the  young  King,  Buchanan's  special 
charge,  into  his  power,  Buchanan's  opposition  to  which 


78  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

project,    for    which    Melville    (Sir    James)    expressly 
vouches,  contributed  ultimately  to  Morton's  downfall. 

But  that  Buchanan,  from  the  alleged  'hackney' 
period,  and  from  '  hackney '  causes,  '  spak  evil '  of 
Morton  '  in  all  places  and  at  all  occasions,'  is  not 
only  incredible  when  we  remember  the  high  character 
and  intellectual  tastes  of  the  man,  but  inconsistent 
with  the  facts  of  the  situation.  If  Buchanan  had 
desired  to  abuse  Morton  in  a  vindictive  spirit,  he  had 
the  amplest  opportunity  in  his  History.  But  what 
are  the  facts?  There  is  not  a  word  of  depreciation, 
but  many  of  praise,  more  or  less  direct.  He  does 
full  justice  to  Morton's  great  powers  and  wise  foresight, 
and  in  accordance  with  a  rule  which  he  held  ought 
to  be  applied  to  public  men,  screens  his  defects.  He 
describes  him  exactly  as  he  was,  a  fearless  and  skilful 
military  leader,  and  a  sagacious,  firm,  and  patriotic 
statesman.  He  even  goes  out  of  his  way  a  little  to 
state  facts  in  Morton's  favour,  recording  the  energy 
and  self-sacrifice  which  he  once  and  again  displayed 
in  rising  from  a  sick-bed  of  very  serious  prostration 
and  redeeming  a  dangerous  crisis  to  which  he  knew 
no  one  else  was  equal,  and  in  relating  the  last  negotia- 
tions which  Morton  conducted  with  Elizabeth  and  her 
council  pays  a  due  compliment  to  his  diplomatic  dex- 
terity and  merit.  Detractors  have  said  that  he  stopped 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  79 

in  his  History  when  on  the  threshold  of  Morton's 
Regency,  because  he  did  not  wish  to  advertise  an 
adversary.  But  it  was  really  death,  not  animosity,  that 
stayed  the  narrator's  hand.  By  a  weird  prescience, 
Buchanan  forecast  the  hour  of  his  exit  from  time  to 
a  nicety,  if  such  a  term  may  be  employed  in  such  a 
connection.  He  worked  up  to  within  a  month  of  his 
death ;  and  then,  when  asked  whether  he  meant  to  go 
on  with  his  work,  he  said  he  had  now  another  work 
to  do ;  and  when  further  asked  what  that  was,  he  said 
it  was  the  work  of  '  dying,'  to  which  he  addressed 
himself  in  the  fashion  we  have  already  seen — a  fashion 
not  unworthy  of  a  'Stoik  philosopher.' 

Not  so  Facile 

It  is  of  course  a  pity  that  we  do  not  possess  an 
account  and  criticism  of  Morton's  singularly  able  and 
interesting  rule  in  Scotland  by  so  original  a  con- 
temporary observer  as  Buchanan.  That  it  would,  in 
all  respects,  have  been  favourable,  is  not  likely,  for 
the  reasons  already  noticed.  That  it  would  have  been 
consciously  unjust  is  incredible  in  the  light  of  such 
treatment  of  Morton  by  Buchanan  as  we  have,  much 
of  which  must  have  been  written  after  Morton's  violent 
and  unjust  execution.  Indeed,  one  could  almost  wish 


8o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

to  be  sure  that  the  'hackney'  story  was  true,  as  it 
would  show  how  superior  the  '  Stoik  philosopher '  can 
rise  to  petty  and  personal  considerations  when  he  has 
to  discharge  the  high  function  of  narrator  and  judge 
of  public  events.  That  his  delineation  of  men  and 
events  would  have  been  conspicuously  able  is  as 
certain  as  any  such  matter  can  be,  notwithstanding 
good  Sir  James's  remark  that  'in  his  auld  dayes  he 
was  become  sleperie  and  cairless,  and  followed  in 
many  things  the  vulgair  oppinion,  for  he  was  naturally 
populaire,'  etc.  There  is  no  sign  of  this  alleged  fall- 
ing off  into  sleepiness  and  carelessness  in  Buchanan's 
History.  The  last  chapter  is  as  well  thought  out  and 
written  as  the  first.  You  may  think  him  wrong,  but 
you  can  have  no  doubt  about  the  distinctness  of  his 
explanation  of  the  sequence  of  events  and  the  motives 
and  aims  of  historic  characters,  while  the  style  in  no 
respect  falls  below  the  unsurpassed  standard  of  prose 
Latinity  maintained  throughout  the  entire  work.  One 
grows  a  little  suspicious  of  Sir  James's  judgment  when 
his  reasons  for  it  are  considered.  Buchanan  had 
come,  he  says,  to  'follow  in  many  things  the  vulgair 
oppinion,  for  he  was  naturally  populaire ' ;  that  is  to 
say,  he  was  democratic  in  spirit.  Of  course  he  was. 
He  felt  it  to  be  his  mission  in  life  to  oppose  Regal 
Absolutism  in  behalf  of  public  liberty,  and  never  let 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  81 

slip  an  opportunity  of  maintaining  that  all  sovereignty 
originated  from  the  people,  and  was  justifiable  only 
as  it  subserved  their  advantage.  The  courtly  Sir 
James  did  not  like  this.  He  was  a  good  deal  of  what 
Thackeray  has  immortalised  as  a  'Snob.'  He  might 
very  well  be  called  Sir  'Jeames,'  and  when  he  says 
Buchanan  had  been  'maid  factious,'  we  must  not 
forget  that  the  '  faction '  Sir  J.  had  in  his  eye  was  the 
'faction'  of  Liberty  against  Tyranny,  and  how  far 
that  can  be  justly  called  a  faction  will  be  settled  by 
different  critics  according  to  their  different  tastes. 

With  his  soreness  on  this  point,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  he  should  describe  Buchanan  as  'easily  abused, 
and  sa  facill  that  he  was  led  with  any  company  that 
he  hanted  for  the  tyme,'  and  that  '  he  spak  and  wret 
as  they  that  were  about  him  for  the  tym  informed  him.' 
That  is  to  say,  Buchanan  did  not  belong  to  Sir  J.'s  'set,' 
which  is  not  surprising.  The  Democratic  old  scholar 
and  thinker  was  not  likely  to  sympathise  with  the 
kind  of  people  whom  the  courtier  naturally  regarded 
as  the  'elite  of  society  and  the  salt  of  the  earth.  Knox 
and  Scaliger,  Moray  and  Mar,  Randolph  and  Ascham, 
Melville  and  Scrymgeour,  Beza  and  Tycho  Brahe,  were 
among  his  correspondents  or  intimates  ;  and  if  Buchanan 
thought  that  'information'  derived  from  persons  of 
that  stamp  was  pn'ma  facie  trustworthy,  it  was  no  more 

F 


82  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

than  the  rules  of  evidence  permitted  and  justified. 
It  is  barely  conceivable  that  they  sought  to  'abuse' 
him  and  succeeded,  but  specific  proof  of  this  is 
necessary  in  such  a  case,  and  is  not  forthcoming. 
That  Buchanan  was  '  sa  facill  that  he  was  led  with 
any  company  that  he  hanted  for  the  tyme '  is  rendered 
utterly  incredible  by  the  facts.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  circumstances  in  Buchanan's  career  that 
he  mixed  with  people  of  the  most  opposite  and  irrecon- 
cilable characters  and  positions,  while  preserving  his 
independence  of  both.  There  was,  for  instance,  a 
time  when  he  was  equally  at  home  with  Maitland  and 
Moray,  and  what  is  more  wonderful  still,  with  Knox 
and  Mary.  On  the  very  same  day  when  he  had  been 
reading  Livy  and  turning  verses  with  Mary  at  Holy- 
rood,  he  might  be  discussing  Calvin  and  the  political 
situation  with  Knox  in  his  High  Street  house;  and 
what  is  more,  each  of  them  knew  it.  To  my  mind 
this  does  not  point  to  'facility,'  but  to  dominancy. 
The  'Stoik  philosopher'  was  quietly  their  master, 
because  he  was  his  own.  He  was  not  moved  by  their 
inter-personal  attractions  and  repulsions,  but  passion- 
lessly  contemplated  them  as  interesting  life-' forces,' 
that  he  had  to  take  as  they  came  along,  and  in 
his  calm  judicial  presence  they  bowed  their  more 
vehement  heads.  That  is  as  probable  an  ex- 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  83 

planation    as    any  of   a   very  striking    psychological 
phenomenon. 

'  Gud  Religion ' 

'  He  was  also  of  gud  religion  for  a  poet,'  says  Sir 
James,  when  adding  the  last  item  to  the  creditor 
side  of  his  profit  and  loss  account  of  Buchanan's 
qualities.  'Gud  religion  for  a  poet'  is  good,  and 
characteristic  of  the  times  which  said  Ubi  tres  media, 
duo  athei, — 'Three  Physicists,1  two  Atheists.'  Human- 
ists, and  still  more  Humanist  poets,  were  also  suspect, 
and  for  the  same  reason.  The  rebellion  against 
Scholasticism,  the  resuscitation  of  the  old  Pagan 
spirit  in  thought  and  art  and  science,  involved  a 
staggering  blow  to  Ecclesiastical  Faith.  Men  whose 
minds  were  steeped  in  the  literature  of  ancient  Greece 
and  Rome  could  not  take  sympathetically,  I  will  not 
say,  to  Christianity,  but  to  the  dogmatic  system  of  the 
Church,  and  even  to  much  of  its  ethical  teaching. 
'  Humanity,'  in  the  sense  of  '  the  humanities,'  really 
meant  the  antithesis  of  Divinity.  The  Renaissance 
was  a  wakening  up  of  the  human  intellect,  an  assertion 
of  'private  judgment'  in  every  possible  sphere  of  its 
exercise,  and  in  innumerable  instances  the  Humanist 

1  This  covers  the  meaning  more  accurately  than  'Physicians.' 


84  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

created  a  faith  and  a  code  of  morals  for  himself, 
although  for  comfort  and  convenience  he  might  con- 
ceal his  spiritual  interior  from  the  view  of  the  ignorant 
and  the  unenlightened.  In  many  an  instance  he  held 
that  there  was  one  law  for  the  men  who  understand, 
and  another  for  the  '  vulgar '  who  cannot  understand. 
Popes  and  priests  were  often  at  heart  Humanists  of 
the  most  'advanced'  type,  pushing  the  right  of 
'  private  judgment '  to  its  furthest  limit,  discarding  the 
public  creed,  and  in  morals,  exercising,  in  favour  of 
their  appetites,  that  dispensing  power  which  'private 
judgment,'  the  Pope's  successor  in  so  many  awakened 
intellects,  carried  over  with  it,  at  all  events  extensively 
into  practice,  while  simultaneously  a  silent  outward 
conformity  with  the  established  system  was  carefully 
maintained. 

Not  that  it  did  not  sometimes  betray  itself.  It  is 
a  Roman  dignitary  who  is  credited  with  the  famous 
remark  about  the  profit  brought  in  by  'this  fable 
of  Christ ' ;  and  everybody  remembers  how  horrified 
poor  Luther  was  in  Rome  when  he  heard  the  priests 
at  Mass  saying  panis  es,  panis  manebis, — '  bread  thou 
art,  and  bread  thou  shalt  remain.'  The  open  licentious- 
ness of  many  Church  dignitaries  of  those  days  is  too 
notorious  for  special  mention.  '  Private  judgment ' 
may  be  a  primary  human  right  and  a  duty  owing  by 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  85 

reason  to  itself  of  the  highest  order ;  but  to  cast  off 
in  its  favour  an  inveterate  obedience  to  authority,  is 
a  psychological  problem  surrounded  with  the  greatest 
difficulty  and  danger,  and  unless  when  under  the 
control  of  an  adequately  strong  judgment  and  will, 
may  cause  much  wreckage  of  faith  and  conduct.  I 
do  not  think  that  Buchanan  suffered  much  in  this 
way — certainly  not  so  much  as  many  others  among 
the  leaders  and  supporters  of  the  Reformation ;  while 
any  damage  he  sustained  was  amply  compensated  by 
his  gains.  Knox  and  other  Reformers — I  speak  of 
Scotland — were  driven  by  the  violence  of  the  recoil 
involved  in  their  assault  on  the  Catholic  and  Feudal 
system  into  extreme  positions,  necessarily  harmful  to 
themselves,  and  bequeathing  legacies  of  disadvantage 
to  their  successors. 

They  needed,  through  polemical  necessities,  an 
authority  equal  to  that  of  Rome,  which  they  had 
overthrown,  and  this  drove  them  into  placing  Scripture 
in  a  position  which  the  speculative  and  historical 
criticism  of  the  last  two  centuries  has  made  highly 
uncomfortable  for  many  people  of  intelligence,  includ- 
ing Broad  Churchmen,  whom  it  has  driven  into  crypto- 
scepticism,  and  Evangelicals  and  Ritualists,  whom  it 
has  moulded  into  wilful  believers.  Their  denuncia- 
tion and  destruction  of  '  idolatry '  and  every  rite  '  not 


86  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

appointed  in  the  Word,'  with  the  necessity  they  lay 
under  of  maintaining  a  high  standard  of  Biblical 
morality  as  a  proof  that  Antinomian  licence  was  not 
the  necessary  result  of  Justification  by  Faith,  engaged 
them  in  a  war  against  Art,  Literature,  and  Natural 
Beauty  and  Pleasure,  which,  while  it  stamped  the 
national  consciousness  with  a  grave,  deep,  and  serious 
habit  of  regarding  life,  which  is  of  the  greatest  value, 
produced  also  an  immense  amount,  not  yet  exorcised, 
of  official  Pharisaism,  popular  hypocrisy,  and  practical 
pessimism,  with  all  its  miserable  consequences.  These 
were  unfortunate  results  of  the  great  rebellion  against 
authority  and  claim  of  'private  judgment,'  apparently 
suggested,  in  part  at  least,  by  self-defence;  while  the 
Nicene  and  Predestinarian  dogmas  were  put  forward 
with  an  emphasis  and  detail  which  would  not  be 
attempted  in  the  present  day,  but  were  very  seasonable 
in  times  when  immaculate  and  even  strained  orthodoxy 
was  both  weapon  and  armour  in  a  degree  that  does 
not  prevail  now. 

Knox,  it  must  be  remembered,  did  not  discourage 
the  belief  that  he  could  predict  the  future  and  had 
a  good  deal  of  the  '  second-sight '  in  him.  He  had  a 
powerful  political  instinct,  and  he  and  his  chief 
associates  knew  that  if  they  went  'too  far'  in  their 
destructions,  the  alarm  would  be  taken,  and  the  life 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  87 

and  death  struggle  in  which  they  were  engaged  would 
for  them  be  lost  for  ever ;  and  every  man  of  any  depth 
of  thought  or  feeling  is  aware  that  the  'doctrines  of 
grace,'  in  their  inner,  perhaps  mystical,  interpretation, 
and  apart  altogether  from  the  stupendous  metaphysical 
and  historical  setting  assigned  them  in  systems  of 
Christian  dogma,  have  a  consoling,  strengthening,  and 
guiding  influence  on  that  vast  body  of  serious,  simple, 
if  often  practically  powerful  natures,  to  whom  Criticism 
is  neither  a  necessity  nor  a  possibility.  Such  a 
union  of  accommodation  and  exaggeration  need  not 
be  construed  as  of  set  purpose  propositional  in  form, 
and  deliberate  in  execution.  In  the  transition  from 
authority  to  private  judgment  initiated  by  Humanism 
and  the  Renaissance  generally,  special  Reformation 
exigencies  may  be  conceived  as  leading  to  such  a 
union,  so  that  in  thought  and  action  it  was  only  semi- 
conscious and  instinctive,  and  there  was  little  time 
for  the  minutiae  of  introspective  scrutiny.  On  the 
ethical  side,  however,  there  was  no  Renaissance  loosen- 
ing among  the  mass  of  the  leading  Reformers.  The 
value  of  the  controversial  mendacities  propagated 
about  the  morals  of  Knox  may  be  judged  of  by  the 
fact  that  the  coryphaeus  of  the  revilers  maintained  that 
he  won  his  second  wife  by  magic  !  As  a  rule  they 
kept  the  ten  commandments,  and  especially  the 


88  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

seventh,  rigidly.  They  failed  a  good  deal  on  the 
new  one  of  Charity.  They  preached  the  'Gospel* 
with  technical  accuracy,  but  they  mostly  practised  the 
'  Law,'  and  if  Paul  had  returned  among  them,  he  would 
probably  have  re-edited  his  Epistle  to  the  Romans, 
with  up-to-date  applications,  as  indeed  he  might  have 
to  do  still. 


CHAPTER  V 

BUCHANAN   AND   CALVINISM 

IN  Buchanan's  case,  the  revolt  from  authority  seems 
to  have  produced  different  effects.  As  regards  dogma, 
it  appears  to  have  led  him  into  an  attitude  of  mind 
that  was  mainly  negative.  He  had  none  of  the 
'  Evangelical '  fervour  which  marked  the  utterances  of 
Knox,  Luther,  Calvin  though  to  a  less  degree,  and 
the  Reforming  preachers  of  Scotland.  He  never 
preached,  in  the  popular  sense  of  the  word,  although 
as  Principal  of  St.  Leonard's  and  'doctor  in  the 
schools'  he  could  easily  have  had  himself  'called' 
and  ordained,  if  he  had  been  animated  by  any 
zeal  for  the  function.  He  could  not  have  written 
such  letters  as  Knox  wrote,  full  of  pious  sentiment 
and  sympathy,  in  phraseology  that  was  absolutely 
unctuous,  to  Mrs.  Bowes,  and  Mrs.  Locke,  and  other 
women,  who  leant  on  him  for  a  sort  of  semi-priestly 
or  confessorial  guidance.  He  was  a  critic,  not  a  senti- 
mentalist. You  may  read  his  whole  works  through, 
prose  and  poetry  both,  without  knowing  that  he  laid 


90  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

any  stress  on  the  Calvinism  of  the  Scottish  Church, 
except  on  its  destructive  side.  Indeed,  much  of  his 
literary  work  was  done  before  he  openly  and  formally 
broke  with  Rome,  which  he  was  in  no  hurry  to  do. 
He  satirises  the  clergy,  especially  the  monks,  and 
ridicules  such  doctrines  as  those  of  Indulgences  and 
Transubstantiation,  the  latter  especially  in  the  Francis- 
canus,  where  it  is  stated  with  a  grossness  and  extra- 
vagance of  literalism  which  would  probably  be 
disowned  by  the  highest  order  of  Catholic  dogmatist. 
As  the  Franciscanus  was  published,  after  revision  and 
completion,  in  his  Protestant  days,  this  may  have  been 
an  addition  of  the  period ;  but  nowhere,  in  anything 
he  wrote  during  the  Protestant  part  of  his  career,  does 
he  emphasise,  or  almost  even  allude  to,  such  doctrines 
as  Justification  by  Faith,  the  Incarnation,  the  Atone- 
ment, Election,  and  Reprobation,  or  any  of  the  positive 
dogmatic  propositions  most  prominently  characteristic 
of  Scottish  Protestantism. 

Not  a  Ztalot 

It  is  remarkable  that  in  his  History  he  associates  the 
Reformers  less  with  Evangelium  than  withZjforto-f.  They 
are  the  vindices  libertatis — '  the  champions  of  liberty ' — 
quite  as  much  or  oftener  than  the  Evangelii  profcssores 
— 'the  professors  of  the  Evangel,' — from  which  it  might 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  91 

seem  that  for  Buchanan,  not  the  least  valuable  aspect 
of  Protestantism  lay  in  its  being  a  struggle  for  liberty 
— a  view  in  which  a  good  many  other  people  will  be 
ready  to  concur.  Queen  Mary,  in  her  later  years, 
protesting  against  Buchanan's  appointment  as  her  son's 
.  tutor,  described  him,  in  writing,  as  an  'Atheist';  but 
that  was  in  the  sense  in  which  Athanasius  described 
Arius  as  an  atheist,  and  is  said  to  have  seized  an  oppor- 
tunity of  striking  him  in  the  jaw  in  that  capacity,  to 
show  what  he  thought  of  it  and  him.  Arius,  however, 
constantly  professed  himself  a  believer  in  'God,  the 
Father  Almighty,'  under,  of  course,  'heretical'  modifi- 
cations ;  but  Athanasius  thought  that  a  wrong  God — 
that  is,  a  God  that  was  not  God,  according  to  Athan- 
asius— was  no  God,  and  spoke  and  acted  accordingly. 
Buchanan  was  certainly  no  atheist  in  his  own  sense 
and  intention,  which,  it  must  always  be  remembered, 
was  essentially  of  a  deep-sea  seriousness,  although  the 
wavelets  of  wit  might  often  dance  and  gleam  on  its 
surface.  He  manifestly  held  by  some  Almighty  Power 
called  by  him  God,  Deus,  Numen,  Providentia ;  but 
whether  this  was  the  God  of  Mary  Stuart,  or  the 
anthropomorphic  God  of  Calvin,  or  the  accommoda- 
tion to  the  popular  sense  of  reverence  ascribed  by 
many  people,  and  not  without  reason,  to  Carlyle,  might 
form  a  subject  of  discussion. 


92  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Bearing  on  this  matter,  passing  allusion  may  be  made 
to  the  Dirge  or  Epicedium,  as  he  called  it,  which 
Buchanan  wrote  on  the  death  of  Calvin  (1564),  an 
event  which  occurred  some  three  years,  more  or  less, 
after  Buchanan  had  publicly  become  a  Protestant,  when 
he  was  already  a  member  of  the  General  Assembly, 
sitting  cheek-by-jowl  with  Knox,  and  on  the  Assembly's 
judicial  committee  ;  the  year  when  Mary,  having  been 
finally  off  with  the  Spanish  Don  Carlos  marriage,  was 
drawing  towards  the  Catholic  Darnley  marriage, 
which  Knox,  correctly  scenting  on  the  way,  was 
beginning  to  anathematise  by  anticipation,  he  having 
the  year  before  fiercely  denounced  from  the  High  Kirk 
pulpit  the  Spanish  alliance  as  fatal  to  Scotland,  because 
it  was  an  'infidel'  marriage,  and  'all  Papists  are 
infidels,'  said  the  uncompromising  one,  in  the  true 
Athanasian  vein,  on  the  head  of  which  he  had  quar- 
relled with  Mary  and  Moray  also ;  while  all  the  time 
Buchanan  was,  to  Knox's  knowledge,  continuing  to  act 
as  Mary's  Court  poet,  and  possibly  meditating  on  the 
'  Pompa '  or  masque  for  her  wedding,  and  getting  on 
so  well  with  her  that  she  was  arranging  for  giving  him 
that  £500  (Scots)  pension  from  Crossraguel  Abbey, 
out  of  which  it  cost  him  such  excruciating  difficulty  to 
get  anything  at  all,  at  the  same  time  that  he  was 
helping  the  General  Assembly  to  revise  the  Book  oj 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  93 

Discipline,  translating  Spanish  despatches  for  the  Privy 
Council,  and  generally  acting  as  '  handy  man '  on  the 
highest  planes  all  round.  This  '  Dirge '  is  too  long  for 
quotation :  a  curious  attempt  to  combine  the  Pagan 
spirit  and  the  Calvinistic  theology — spiritual  elevation 
and  sarcastic  wit  in  the  best  poetic  form.  '  Those  who 
believe  that  there  are  no  Manes,  i.e.  no  hereafter,  or  if 
they  do,  live  despising  Pluto  and  the  trans-Stygian 
penalties,  may  well  deplore  their  coming  fate,  while 
they  leave  sorrow  to  surviving  friends.  But  we  have 
no  such  grief  over  our  lost  Calvin.  He  has  passed 
beyond  the  stars,  and,  filled  with  a  draught  of  Deity 
(Nutninis),  lives  in  an  eternal  and  nearer  enjoyment 
of  "God"  (Deo).  But  Death  has  not  taken  all  of 
him  from  us.  We  have  monuments  of  his  genius  and 
his  fame  wherever  the  Reformed  religion  has  spread. 
We  have  the  terror  which  he  struck,  and  which  his 
name  will  continue  to  strike,  into  your  Popes — your 
Clements  and  Pauls,  and  Juliuses  and  Piuses;  while 
we  know  that  the  Pontiff  tyrant  of  fire  and  sword  who 
appropriated  all  the  functions  of  the  nether  kingdom — 
becoming  a  Pluto  in  empire,  a  Harpy  in  his  shameful 
extortions,  a  Fury  in  his  martyr-making  fire,  a  Charon 
in  his  viaticum  (Charon  naulo\  and  a  Cerberus  in  his 
mitre  (trip lid  corona  Cerberus) — will  have  to  appropriate 
the  penalties  also  of  the  same  lower  world,  becoming  a 


94  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Tantalus  thirsty  amidst  waters,  a  Sisyphus  rolling 
back  the  ever- recurring  stone,  a  Prometheus  with 
vultures  ceaselessly  pecking  at  his  liver,  a  Danaid 
vainly  filling  her  empty  bucket,  and  an  Ixion  twisted 
into  a  circle  on  his  endless  wheel.' 

A  propos  of  Calvin's  'draught  of  Deity,'  Buchanan 
gives  in  the  course  of  the  poem  what  seems  to  be 
meant  for  an  explanation  of  the  spiritual  work  of 
'regeneration,'  which,  I  am  afraid,  would  not  have 
been  so  satisfactory  to  Mess  John  Davidson  as  some 
others  of  his  efforts  to  propitiate  that  sound  divine. 
As  the  soul  animates  the  body,  otherwise  a  mass  of 
clay — sic  animi  Deus  est  animus — so  ' "  God  "  is  the 
Soul  of  the  soul,'  and  when  the  Numinis  haustus,  the 
'draught  of  Deity,'  has  been  taken,  the  soul  which 
before  was  '  shrouded  in  darkness,  illusioned  by  empty 
appearance,  and  grasping  at  mere  shadows  of  the  "  right 
and  good,'"  sees  the  'darkness  disappear,  the  vain 
"  simulacra  "  cease,  the  unveiled  face  of  "  truth  "  reveal 
itself  in  light.'  I  may  be  wrong,  but  this  looks  to  me 
more  like  a  Pantheistic  theory  of  '  illumination '  than 
the  '  regeneration '  of  the  Calvinistic  creeds  !  Besides, 
there  is  no  word  of  '  sin,'  and  the  change  to  at  least 
an  incipient  '  holiness '  only  from  '  illusion '  to  '  truth  ' 
(verum).  If  it  be  said  that  this  must  be  assumed,  then 
a  new  contradiction  of  Calvinism  arises,  since  a  divine 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  95 

Soul  of  the  soul  cannot  will  evil,  and  '  sanctification ' 
is  thus  erroneously  made  out  to  be  an  instantaneous 
act  and  not  a  gradual  process.  Altogether,  and  as  it 
stands,  the  passage  might  have  been  written  by  one  of 
those  later  Stoics,  including  possibly  Aurelius  himself, 
who  seem  to  have  believed  in  the  indwelling  Divinity, 
and  that  the  souls  of  good  men  at  death  were  not  im- 
mediately reabsorbed  into  the  All,  but  lived  with  '  God,' 
in  some  cases  a  thousand  years,  in  others  for  ever,  or,  at 
all  events,  until  the  '  philosopher's  year '  was  over,  and 
the  new  cycle  began  to  repeat  the  history  of  the  old. 

But  there  is  one  omission  which,  among  various 
others,  seems  remarkable.  Of  the  relics  enumerated 
by  Buchanan  as  left  by  Calvin,  he  passes  over  the 
most  important  of  all — Calvin's  own  body.  He  makes 
no  reference  to  the  resurrection.  Yet,  on  orthodox 
principles,  Calvin's  glory  and  beatitude  could  not  be 
complete  until  that  event.  If  Calvin  had  been  writing 
about  Buchanan,  instead  of  vice  versa,  he  would  not  have 
forgotten  the  matter,  for  he  laid  great  stress  upon  it. 
'  He  alone,'  he  says,  '  has  made  solid  progress  in  the 
Gospel,  who  has  acquired  the  habit  of  meditating  con- 
tinually on  a  blessed  resurrection.'  Buchanan's  silence 
here  and  on  other  points  that  have  been  mentioned, 
and  the  scantiness,  brevity,  for  the  most  part 
simply  Theistic  references  he  makes  to  matters  of 


»l 


96  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

faith,  are  significant.  He  clearly  was  not  zealous 
about  most  of  those  doctrines  on  which  the  Reforming 
preachers  placed  the  greatest  emphasis.  His  training 
and  wide  intellectual  illumination  must  have  stood  in 
the  way  of  his  sympathising  with  the  more  violent 
among  them,  probably  not  excepting  Knox  himself 
occasionally.  In  this  connection  one  thinks  of  an- 
other illustrious  son  of  the  Renaissance,  Erasmus, 
Buchanan's  senior  by  forty  years.  After  all  he  had 
said  and  done,  the  Protestants  demanded,  with  loud 
reproaches,  that  he  should  publicly  join  their  ranks. 
Erasmus  would  not,  perhaps  could  not.  The  alternate 
violence  and  unctuousness  of  the  Evangelicals  repelled 
him  as  much  as  the  ignorance,  and  worse,  of  the  monks 
disgusted  him.  With  certain  reforms  in  morals,  con- 
stitution, and  discipline,  he  did  not  see  why  the  old 
Church  should  not  be  satisfactorily  worked  on  the 
lines  of  the  traditional  doctrine  and  ritual.  Probably 
he  thought  that  if  a  man  could  reconcile  himself  to  the 
Nicene  dogmas  and  their  consequences,  it  was  not 
worth  his  pains  boggling  over  Transubstantiation.  Al- 
though any  one  may  see  that  his  heart  was  in  many 
things  with  the  Reform  movement,  he  had  never  directly 
and  openly  denied  any  dogma.  Apparently  he  was 
not  prepared  in  his  own  mind  to  do  so. 

If  a  man  is  asked,  '  Do  you  deny  that  Abracadabra 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  97 

is  Mesopotamia?'  he  can  probably  say  'No'  quite 
conscientiously ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  this 
attitude  of  non-denial  is  widely  accepted  for  positive 
faith.  The  Roman  Church,  and  the  Roman  Empire 
before  it,  were  quite  willing  to  take  it  so.  If  a  man 
would  hold  his  peace,  they  would  let  him  alone.  Eras- 
mus condemned  the  outbreak  of  Luther,  whose  faith  in 
the  immense  amount  of  doctrine  he  left  untouched  he 
perhaps  regarded  as  simply  a  huge  faculty  of  taking 
things  for  granted,  ending  in  straining  at  the  gnat  and 
swallowing  the  camel.  For  myself,  as  one  of  the 
crowd,  I  am  glad  that  with  all  his  blunders  and  short- 
comings, so  easy  to  point  out  at  this  distance,  Luther 
took  his  own  way,  and  did  what  he  did.  Truth  is 
greater  than  peace.  'Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and 
the  truth  shall  make  you  free,'  is  the  method  of 
Christianity,  unless  the  Founder  of  it  is  mistaken. 
The  martyrs  had  faults  and  weaknesses — say  even  that 
they  were  mistaken, — but  they  were  men  of  nobler 
spirit,  and  did  more  for  us  and  our  liberties  than 
the  traditores,  the  'traitors'  who  handed  over  their 
Scriptures  to  the  Praetor  rather  than  face  the  lions.  Up 
to  a  certain  point,  Buchanan's  attitude  seems  to  have 
been  practically  that  of  Erasmus.  He  tells  us  him- 
self in  his  Autobiography,  that  while  a  student  at  the 
University  of  Paris  (1526-29,  pp.  20-23)  ne  'fell  into 

G 


98  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  spreading  flame  of  the  Lutheran  sect.'  Several  years 
later  (1535-38),  while  resident  in  Scotland,  he  wrote 
some  satirical  verses  on  the  Franciscan  monks,  which 
the  brethren  took  in  high  dudgeon,  very  much  to 
Buchanan's  astonishment — boys  always  are  astonished 
that  frogs  should  object  to  the  pleasant  amusement 
of  being  stoned, — and  gave  him  so  much  annoyance, 
ending  in  his  having  to  flee  the  country  for  his  life,  as 
to  make  him,  in  his  own  words,  '  more  keenly  hostile 
to  the  licentiousness  of  the  clergy,  and  less  indisposed 
to  the  Lutheran  cause  than  before.' 

Silent  Doubt. 

All  this  time,  however,  he  appears  not  to  have 
attacked  or  denied  anything  in  creed  or  ritual, 
although  there  cannot  be  a  doubt  that  he  had  his 
own  secret  doubts.  The  relentless  persecution  of 
the  monkish  enemies  he  had  made  for  himself  at  last 
brought  him  before  the  Inquisition  (1548)  at  Coimbra, 
in  Portugal,  where  he  was  acting  as  'Regent*  in  a 
college  recently  founded  by  the  King;  but  although 
the  Inquisitors  had  him  through  their  hands  several 
times,  they  discovered  nothing  against  him  that  could 
properly  be  called  heretical.  He  was  said  to  have 
eaten  flesh  in  Lent,  but  everybody  did  it  there,  when 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  99 

they  could  get  it.  He  was  said  to  have  given  it  as  his 
opinion  that  on  the  Eucharistic  controversy  Augus- 
tine's opinions  were  more  favourable  to  the  Lutherans 
than  to  the  Church ;  but  that  was  merely  literary  or 
historical  criticism,  not  heresy.  Two  young  gentle- 
men testified  that  Buchanan  was  not  at  heart  a  good 
Catholic — which  was  probably  true  enough,  but  was 
not  specific.  So  they  shut  him  up,  as  already  said,  in  a 
monastery  to  be  taught  by  monks,  who,  though  good 
fellows,  did  not  know  anything ;  and  for  want  of  some- 
thing better  to  do,  Buchanan  made  his  famous  Latin 
paraphrase  of  the  Psalms.  What  must  his  Faith  have 
been  during  those  years?  Manifestly,  like  that  of 
Erasmus,  less  a  positive  assent  than  an  abstinence  from 
denial.  Would  he  deny  Transubstantiation  or  the 
Trinity?  No,  he  was  not  ready  to  do  anything  of 
the  kind — anyhow,  not  yet. 

It  need  not  be  maintained  that  in  all  this  Buchanan, 
or  Erasmus  either,  was  merely  seeking  to  save  his  own 
skin.  He  may  have  thought  that  it  was  best  for  the 
order  and  edification  of  society  to  let  things  alone. 
Probably  too,  by  this  time,  that  spirit  of  Stoicism, 
which  I  have  shown  reason  for  believing  sank 
deeper  into  Buchanan's  nature  as  time  went  on, 
was  beginning  to  assert  itself.  And  here,  in  passing 
may  I  say  that  the  common  popular  image  of  the 


ioo  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Stoic  as  a  gloomy,  unbending,  sour,  cantankerous, 
repulsive  curmudgeon,  is  a  mistake.  There  is  nothing 
in  Stoicism  to  make  him  so,  and  as  a  matter  of 
fact  he  was  not  so.  Aurelius  was  a  finished  gentle- 
man. Seneca  had  all  the  culture  of  his  time,  and  was 
the  poet  of  the  day.  Boetius  was  a  polished  courtier. 
When  Buchanan  went  over  to  the  Reformers,  it  was 
the  smartest  epigrammatist  going  who  was  joining  the 
most  advanced  party  and  leaving  the  'stupid'  party 
behind.  To  return.  It  was  a  well-known  rule  of  the 
Stoics  not  to  quarrel  with  the  popular  beliefs,  but,  if 
possible,  to  utilise  them  for  good,  as  we  see  Buchanan 
does  with  the  Pagan  mythology  in  his  Dirge  on 
Calvin's  death.  Socrates,  their  model  wise  man, 
teaches  conformity  to  the  cult  of  the  city  where  the 
sage  resides;  and  everybody  will  recollect  the  care 
with  which,  as  his  trial  approached,  he  arranged  that 
Esculapius  should  have  the  cock  that  was  due  him. 
Probably  Esculapius  is  still  receiving  a  good  deal  of 
that  class  of  poultry.  For  a  long  time — indeed  until 
he  was  fifty-five,  the  last  five  of  which  he  spent  in 
carefully  scrutinising  and  balancing  theological  contro- 
versies, and  examining  the  whole  situation — Buchanan 
followed  the  lines  of  Erasmus,  used  the  cult  of  the 
Roman  Esculapius  to  go  on  with,  pending  eventuali- 
ties. But  when  the  termination  of  the  Guisian 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  101 

tyranny  in  Scotland  made  it  safe  for  him  to  return, 
he  had  to  make  up  his  mind  whether  he  was  to  side 
with  the  cause  of  oppression  as  advocated  by  the 
Church  in  which  he  had  been  born  and  lived  up  to 
now,  or  that  in  which,  though  unfortunately  with 
certain  drawbacks,  a  battle  was  being  fought  for 
liberty  to  express  opinions  different  from  those  taught 
by  the  Church.  Nobody  who  knew  Buchanan  could 
doubt  what  his  choice  would  be. 

The  transition  would  be  all  the  easier  that  in  his 
new  quarters  he  would  find  much  less  to  offend  his 
philosophic  reason  than  in  his  old  ones;  but  would 
there  not  be  an  occasional  bird  to  be  sacrificed  still? 
He  had  been  doing  it  all  his  Catholic  life.  Was  it 
completely  over  now?  That  is  not  likely.  But, 
however  that  may  be,  Buchanan  was  the  least  dog- 
matic and  the  most  tolerant  of  all  the  theologically 
instructed  men  who  helped  to  give  Protestantism  its 
place  in  Scotland.  He  might  have  preached  had  he 
chosen,  but  as  he  shrank  from  priest's  orders  in  the 
Catholic  Church,  so  he  shrank  in  the  Protestant  from 
a  position  in  which  he  would  be  bound  to  dogmatise. 
He  did  not  frown  upon  Mary's  private  Mass,  while 
Knox  denounced  it  as  worse  than  ten  thousand  armed 
opponents.  When  he  narrates  the  hanging  of  a  priest, 
according  to  statute,  for  saying  Mass  a  third  time,  he 


102  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

does  not  exult,  as  was  no  doubt  done  by  the  men  of 
the  'Congregation,'  and  possibly  by  Knox  himself, 
when  they  heard  of  the  happy  event.  There  is  nothing 
about  him  of  the  zeal  of  the  renegade,  who  often 
out-Herods  Herod  in  championing  his  new  faith — a 
tendency  from  which  Knox  was  by  no  means  free. 
In  his  History  he  evidently  tries  to  hold  the  balance 
fair  between  Catholic  and  Protestant,  and  is  as  just 
to  Mary  of  Guise  as  to  Moray.  His  whole  religious 
career  points  to  a  man  who  thought  profoundly  and 
inquired  anxiously  after  truth,  and  was  careful  to  give 
expression  to  his  feeling  of  reverence  for  the  mystery 
of  being  by  outward  conformity  with  a  creed  and  ritual 
to  which  he  could  more  or  less  reconcile  his  reason. 
Well  might  James  Melville  (Rev.,  not  Sir)  describe 
him  not  only  as  a  '  maist  learned  and  wyse,'  but  also  as 
a  'maist  godlie'  man,  although  he  himself  might  have 
preferred  '  spiritual '  as  a  more  comprehensive  epithet. 
It  may  be  objected  that  men  like  Buchanan  and 
Erasmus  did  not  act  honestly  in  remaining  silent  and 
conforming  members  of  a  system  which  they  secretly 
regarded  as  in  many  vital  respects  false,  and  an 
imposture  upon  the  world.  Of  course,  it  is  to  be  said 
for  Buchanan  that  he  did  ultimately  come  out  of  it ; 
but  then,  why  not  sooner?  Why  did  he  not  earlier 
follow  the  lead  of  Luther  and  Calvin  and  Knox? 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  103 

For  one  thing,  it  must  be  remembered  that  even  these 
great  heroes  of  veracity  had  probably  their  reticences. 
At  all  events,  they  have  left  to  us  the  legacy  of  an 
incompletely  performed  work.  Was  their  outspoken- 
ness equal  to  Christ's?  His  brought  Him  to  the 
cross.  It  seems  to  be  in  the  nature  of  the  Ideal  that 
to  make  an  utterly  clean  breast  of  it  should  be  perilous 
or  fatal  to  its  revealer,  and  the  hero  of  Truth  who 
dies  in  his  bed  has  probably  made  a  good  many 
compromises  with  his  conscience  to  achieve  that 
result.  It  is  all  a  matter  of  degree,  a  comparison  of 
the  well  and  the  very  well,  of  the  bad  and  the  too  bad. 
A  good  man  is  a  man  who  tries  to  be  good,  and  a  bad 
man  is  a  man  who  does  not  care  whether  he  is  bad 
or  good.  But  man  is  finite,  and  there  can  be  nothing 
absolute  in  human  life,  except  perhaps  the  absolute 
fool  who  thinks  there  may.  Everything  depends  on 
the  state  of  the  facts.  In  these  days,  for  instance, 
when  historical  and  speculative  criticism  has  put 
Scripture  and  the  supernatural  in  so  very  different  a 
position  from  that  assigned  to  them  by  the  Reformers, 
there  is  too  good  reason  to  believe,  especially  in  the 
light  of  intra-ecclesiastical  demands  for  the  revision  of 
Confessions  and  Articles,  that  many  of  the  clergy  feel 
extremely  uneasy  in  being  pledged  to  dogmas  which 
they  more  or  less  disbelieve.  As  they  could  not  speak 


io4  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

out  without  having  to  face  starvation  for  those 
dependent  on  them,  a  merciful  man  might  be  disposed 
to  say  that  while  the  situation  was  bad,  it  was  perhaps 
not  unpardonable,  and  that  the  person  implicated 
might  still  be  regarded  as  a  good  and  otherwise 
honestly  intentioned  man.  But  if  the  inner  state  of 
mind  should  be  one  of  hopeless  antagonism  to  the 
supernatural,  one  would  be  disposed  to  say  that  it 
was  '  too  bad '  to  remain,  and  that  speaking  out  and 
coming  out,  at  any  cost,  was  the  duty  of  the  position. 

Bearing  in  mind  that  Buchanan  carried  his  life  in  his 
hand,  and  that  he  had  never  undertaken  the  function 
of  religious  teacher,  only  a  very  heroic  person  could 
afford  to  say  that  he  had  not  done  all  he  dared,  and 
that  he  showed  himself  deeply  in  earnest  about  Truth, 
when  at  last  he  had  the  opportunity,  and  really  '  was 
of  gud  religion  for  a  poet,'  and  even  for  a  more  hope- 
ful character.  Buchanan,  on  the  intellectual  side  of 
him,  was  not  merely  a  poet,  but  a  wit  and  humorist — 
a  type  of  mind  not  in  itself  easy  to  harmonise  with 
being  of  'gud  religion.'  Perhaps  if  the  Puritans  had 
not  been  in  so  many  cases  hopelessly  wooden,  it 
might  have  saved  their  cause  from  having  so  many 
joints  in  its  harness  open  to  the  shafts  of  the  satirical 
sharpshooter,  but  they  would  probably  not  have  done 
so  great  and  grave  a  work  in  the  world.  Dire,  how- 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  105 

ever,  are  the  fruits  of  an  igneous  temperament  and  a 
ligneous  intellect,  and  Praise-God  Barebones  and  Co. 
have  done  an  evil  turn  to  a  good  undertaking.  The 
capacity  and  habit  of  seeing  and  enjoying  the  ludicrous 
are  a  temptation  to  their  possessor  to  forget  that  life 
has  its  serious  aspect  also,  and  in  too  many  instances 
this  seems  to  be  forgotten.  Hence  the  presumption  is 
against  the  laugher  until  he  has  become  better  known. 
I  recollect  once  hearing  a  celebrated  preacher  give  a 
highly  comical  account  of  his  own  conversion,  and 
albeit  not  given  to  the  frowning  mood,  I  could  not 
help  asking  myself  whether  this  could  be  a  serious 
man ;  and  it  was  not  until  I  read  his  life  that  I  saw  he 
knew  that  there  is  a  time  for  everything  under  the 
sun,  and  that  he  possessed  the  secret  of  assigning  its 
due  claim  to  all  views  of  life.  Buchanan,  too,  had 
mastered  this  power — for  it  requires  an  effort  of  will, 
and  there  must  always  be  an  essential  difference 
between  the  humorous  man's  view  of  religion,  and  that 
of  the  man  who  cannot  show  his  teeth  by  way  of 
smile,  though  Nestor  swear  the  jest  be  laughable. 
Buchanan  could  sparkle  when  sparkling  was  in  place, 
but  he  could  also  be  depended  on  when  grave  or  even 
grim  work  was  in  request. 


io6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 


Renaissance  Morals 

Part  of  the  price  paid  for  the  enlightenment  of  the 
Renaissance  was  that  in  too  many  instances  its  breadth 
of  ethical  as  well  as  intellectual  outlook  was  allowed 
by  its  possessor  to  sink  into  a  practical  licentiousness, 
open  or  concealed,  that  corrupted,  or  even  totally 
destroyed,  the  moral  and  spiritual  faculties.  I  can- 
not see  proof  of  any  such  results  in  Buchanan's  case. 
I  think  he  was  careful  to  secure  himself  from  danger 
on  this  side  of  his  temptations.  His  bitterest 
detractors  do  not  raise  a  whisper  against  him  here. 
But  there  is  a  section  of  his  poetry  which  may  best  be 
characterised  as  of  the  Ad  JVearam,  In  Leonoram 
(Lenam),  Ad  Gelliam,  Ad  Briandum  Vattium  pro 
Lena  Apologia  order,  which  has  occasioned  misgiving 
to  some  of  his  friends.  One  biographer,  a  very  com- 
petent authority  on  this  period  of  Scottish  history, 
says,  somewhat  severely,  that  these  pieces  ought  not 
to  have  been  written  by  the  man  who  wrote  Francis- 
canus — a  powerful  satire  on  the  vices  and  hypocrisy 
of  the  monks.  I  must  say  that,  with  every  deference 
to  a  critic  highly  worthy  of  respect,  I  am  not  able  to 
see  it.  The  Franciscanus  was  essentially  an  exposure  of 
dishonesty,  not  so  much  of  the  vices  practised  under  the 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  107 

cowl,  as  of  the  shameful  trickery  of  using  the  cowl  to 
cloak  them.  As  far  as  honesty  and  consistency  go,  there 
is  no  reason  why  an  honest  and  consistent  man  should 
not  have  written  every  word  of  these  '  Lena '  sketches. 
Even  from  an  artistic  point  of  view  they  will  stand 
inspection.  The  subject,  of  course,  is  a  revolting  one, 
and  so  is  Dame  Quickly — but  would  any  man  of  average 
robustness  of  mind  wish  Dame  Quickly  unwritten? 
Many  people  seem  to  forget  that  while  the  real  itself 
may  be  unpleasant,  the  artistic  image  of  the  real  may 
be  a  delight.  We  should  shrink  from  Caliban  in  the 
flesh,  but  Shakespeare  throws  a  charm  over  him; 
Pandemonium  is  not,  I  believe,  a  sweet  scene,  but 
Milton's  account  of  it  is  sublime;  Falstaff  was  dis- 
reputable, but  he  makes  an  admirable  stage  figure; 
a  corpse  is  an  unlovely  object,  but  Rembrandt's 
'  Dissectors '  has  a  fascination. 

Probably  it  was  for  want  of  noting  this  distinction 
that  the  late  Principal  Shairp,  who  was  a  good  judge  of 
a  certain  class  of  poetry,  lamented  that  Burns  should 
have  written  Holy  Willie's  Prayer  and  the  Jolly  Beggars  \ 
— a  remark  which  led  Louis  Stevenson,  in  a  compassion- 
ating way,  to  hint  that  Burns  was  perhaps  too  '  burly ' 
a  figure  for  the  Principal's  microscope.  There  is  a 
good  deal  of  this  '  burliness '  in  Buchanan's  Leonoras, 
which  in  point  of  graphic  power  are  second  only  to 


io8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  Jolly  Beggars,  while  their  savage  and  even  hideous 
realism,  contrasting  with  the  elegance  of  the  Latin  line, 
produce  a  piquant  effect  from  the  mere  point  of  view 
of  art.  But  I  demur  to  any  suggestion  that  these  or 
any  of  Buchanan's  so-called  'amorous'  poetry  are 
corrupting  or  intended  to  be,  or  that  they  exhibit  any 
gloating  over  the  degrading  or  the  degraded  on  the 
part  of  the  writer.  From  references  in  them  I  believe 
they  were  satires  written  for  the  warning  of  'college' 
youth,  and  resembled  certain  passages  in  the  Book  of 
Proverbs  and  elsewhere  in  the  Bible,  where  certain 
counsels,  highly  necessary  and  practical,  are  conveyed 
in  language  not  deficient  either  in  directness  or  detail. 
They  could  not  possibly  scandalise  or  tempt  any  one, 
being  written  in  Latin.  Mr.  Podsnap  and  the  '  young 
person '  would  pass  equally  scatheless,  for  they  could 
not  read  them.  Only  men  who  could  construe  and 
scan  Horace  could  understand  them,  and  these  might 
be  trusted  to  see  their  true  drift.  Then  the  Ad 
Gelliam  verses  were  merely  playful  little  satires  upon 
ladies  who  painted,  or  wore  brass  rings  and  glass  gems, 
which  might  amuse  readers,  while  producing  no  effect, 
good  or  evil,  upon  their  subjects.  As  to  the  Neara 
series,  they  are  not  love-poems  at  all,  but  epigrams. 
There  is  no  passion,  sensuous  or  otherwise,  in  them. 
What  show  of  manufactured  emotion  there  may  be  is 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  109 

simply  a  stage-scaffolding  on  which  to  plant  and  fire  off 
the  epigram.  Probably  the  best  known  of  the  series 
is  the  following : — 

'  Ilia  mihi  semper  praesenti  dura  Neaera, 

Me  quoties  absum  semper  abesse  dolet ; 
Non  desiderio  nostri,  non  moeret  amore, 
Sed  se  non  nostro  posse  dolore  frui' ; 

which  James  Hannay,  who  was  well  able  to  appreciate 
this  class  of  work,  translated  thus  : — 

'  Neaera  is  harsh  at  our  every  greeting, 

Whene'er  I  am  absent,  she  wants  me  again  ; 
'Tis  not  that  she  loves  me,  or  cares  for  our  meeting, 
She  misses  the  pleasure  of  seeing  my  pain ' ; 

adding  that  '  Menage  used  to  say  that  he  would  have 
given  his  best  benefice  to  have  written  the  lines — and 
Menage  held  some  fat  ones.'  What  anchorite  could 
discover  anything  exceptionable  here,  or  if  he  had  any 
intelligence  left,  could  fail  to  perceive  that  it  was  simply 
a  case  for  admiring  extreme  cleverness  of  thought  and 
smartness  of  phrase?  If  any  one  desires  to  see  how 
Buchanan  could  appreciate  and  address  the  highest 
type  of  womanhood,  let  him  read  such  verses  as  the 
Ad  Mildredam  or  the  Ad  Camillam  Morelliam,  and 
he  will  see  that  he  was  a  man  with  tenderness  in  him 
as  well  as  virility,  with  grace  as  well  as  severity  of 
speech ;  and  the  fact  that  in  his  maturer  years  he  was 


no  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

not  ashamed  to  publish  the  incriminated  poetry,  showed 
that  he  was  not  conscious  of  anything  to  be  ashamed 
of,  that  he  knew  the  poet's  dominion  was  conterminous 
with  the  whole  range  of  things,  and  no  part  of  it  what- 
ever exempt  from  his  critical  or  sympathetic  function, 
while  his  fiercest  or  lightest  dealing  with  the  facts  of 
life  is  in  no  way  inconsistent  with  a  profound  and  silent 
veneration  in  presence  of  the  mystery  of  existence. 


CHAPTER   VI 

BIOGRAPHICAL   FACTS 

Earlier  and  Continental 

BUCHANAN  was  born  early  in  February  1506,  at  Moss 
or  Mid-Leowen,  on  the  Blane  Water,  about  two  miles 
south-east  of  Killearn  in  Stirlingshire,  of  a  'family 
ancient  rather  than  opulent,'  as  he  tells  us  in  his  Auto- 
biography^ so  that  he  was  delivered  from  the  peasant 
or  upstart  consciousness  which,  except  in  the  priesthood, 
would,  in  those  feudal  times,  have  handicapped  him 
heavily  in  the  race  of  life.  His  real  and  Scoto-Irish 
clan  name  was  Macauslan,  but  the  Macauslan  having 
acquired  the  lands  of  Buchanan  in  the  Lennox,  took 
the  name  of  his  property,  and  became  Buchanan  of 
that  Ilk;  and  thus  it  came  to  pass  that  our  George 
ranked  as  a  'cadet  of  Buchanan,'  as  Hannay  was 
proud  and  particular  to  specify.  Ancient  lineage, 
however,  is  no  insurance  against  misfortune,  and  the 
Buchanans  of  Moss,  never  rich,  sank  into  deep  poverty. 

The  father  died  in  George's  youth,  and  the  grandfather 

111 


ii2  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

who  survived  him  was  a  waster  and  became  a  bankrupt, 
and  Agnes  Heriot,  the  mother,  was  left  to  struggle  with 
the  upbringing  of  five  sons  and  three  daughters — a  task 
however,  which  she  successfully  accomplished,  like  the 
heroine  she  was,  as  her  most  distinguished  son  grate- 
fully commemorates.  Having  never  known  wealth  or 
luxury,  perhaps  it  was  easier  for  Buchanan  to  reconcile 
himself  to  their  opposites  in  after  years.  In  the  Lennox 
they  talked  Gaelic,  and  Buchanan  picked  up  that  speech 
to  begin  with.  He  would  also  learn  some  Scotch  or 
Northern  English  from  his  mother,  who  came  from 
Haddingtonshire,  and  in  addition  she  was  careful  to 
have  him  sent  to  the  schools  in  the  neighbourhood, 
where  he  could  learn  the  elements  of  Latin. 

For  the  old  Church  had  not  entirely  neglected 
popular  education,  as  has  been  shown,  in  a  very  inter- 
esting way,  in  Grant's  Burgh  Schools  of  Scotland,  and 
as,  indeed,  appears  on  the  face  of  the  Reformers'  First 
Book  of  Discipline  itself  (1560).  Most  of  the  burghs 
maintained  schools,  both  secondary  and  elementary, 
so  that  the  barons  and  freeholders  who  were  ordered 
by  the  celebrated  Act  of  James  iv.  (1494)  to  keep  their 
heirs  at  school  until  they  had  learned  '  perfyt  Latyn ' — 
then  the  international  language  of  the  educated  and 
of  diplomacy — had  abundant  opportunity  of  doing  so 
had  they  chosen,  although  unfortunately  they  too  seldom 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  113 

chose ;  so  that  the  burgh  schools  were  largely  recruit- 
ing-grounds for  the  priesthood.  There  were  also 
elementary  Church  schools,  in  many  cases  taught  by 
women,  and  private  adventure  schools ;  and  in  these 
a  considerable  number  of  the  children  of  the  poor  were 
taught  at  least  to  read.  Accordingly,  when  it  is  said 
that  Knox  and  the  Reformers  established  the  Scottish 
Parish  School  system,  a  little  discrimination  must  be 
exercised.  They  did  not  invent  popular  education — 
they  found  it;  but  they  did  invent,  on  paper,  in  the 
First  Book  of  Discipline,  the  idea  of  bringing  education 
to  the  people's  doors,  by  securing  that  there  should  be 
a  school  wherever  there  was  a  '  kirk ' — that  is,  practically 
in  every  parish;  so  that  'the  youth-head  and  tender 
children  shall  be  nourished  and  brought  up  in  vertue, 
in  presence  of  their  friends,  by  whose  good  attendance 
many  inconveniences  may  be  avoyded  in  which  the 
youth  commonly  fall,  either  by  over  much  libertie 
which  they  have  in  strange  and  unknowne  places,  while 
they  cannot  rule  themselves ;  or  else  for  lack  of  good 
attendance,  and  of  such  necessaries  as  their  tender  age 
requires.' 

So  far  the  Book  of  Discipline,  at  once  recognising 
an  existing  educational  system,  and  suggesting,  for 
reason  given,  the  vital  improvement  of  its  national 
application  !  The  whole  scheme,  indeed,  is  admirable, 

H 


ii4  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

including  as  it  does  compulsion,  the  picking  out  and, 
in  the  case  of  the  poor,  supporting  the  class  of  youth 
suited  for  the  higher  kinds  of  service  to  society,  while 
the  others  not  so  gifted  '  must  be  set  to  some  handie 
craft,  or  to  some  other  profitable  exercise ' — that  is, 
technical  education,  or  some  other  form  of  practical 
training.  I  have  said  '  on  paper,'  but  not  by  way  of 
sneer,  and  ought  to  add  in  passing,  that  it  was  not  the 
fault  of  Knox  and  his  associates  that  it  remained  to  a 
great  extent  merely  'on  paper,'  instead  of  being  im- 
mediately and  effectually  established.  It  was  the  fault 
and  the  disgrace  of  a  different  type  of  men.  Knox,  as 
I  have  already  said,  was  a  politician,  and  made  dexterous 
use  of  the  '  Lords  of  the  Congregation '  to  secure  the 
triumph  of  Protestantism.  But  these  '  Lords  of  the  Con- 
gregation '  were  politicians  also,  and  made  an  equally 
dexterous  use  of  Knox  to  fill  their  own  pockets  with 
Church  spoil — I  except  a  few,  who  were  really  noble 
men.  They  gave  little  for  parish  churches,  and  nothing 
that  I  ever  heard  of  for  parish  schools.  The  whole 
thing  broke  poor  Knox's  heart.  It  did  not  ruffle 
Buchanan,  although  he  was  probably  the  greatest 
educational  enthusiast  in  Europe  at  the  moment.  But 
he  was  really  a  greater  intelligence  and  a  calmer  master 
of  himself  than  Knox,  and  probably  knew  that  any  one 
who  expects  to  find  more  than  twenty-five  per  cent. — if 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  115 

so  much — of  the  race  as  existing  at  any  given  moment 
worthy  of  intellectual  or  moral  respect,  must  either 
have  had  little  experience  of  life,  or  possess  a  very  low 
standard  of  human  excellence. 

Not  till  1696  was  the  plan  of  the  Book  of  Discipline 
adumbrated  in  legislation,  and  the  successors  of  the 
'  Lords  of  the  Congregation '  bound  by  law  to  provide 
a  school-house  and  a  salaried  teacher  in  every  parish. 
But  during  the  whole  of  the  intervening  century  and 
a  third,  the  Presbyterian  clergy  never  ceased  in  their 
efforts,  and  often  their  sacrifices,  for  popular  education, 
while  at  the  same  time  fighting  a  steady  battle  for  liberty 
against  as  mean  and  cruel  a  crusade  of  Absolutist 
Monarchy  and  Ecclesiastical  Tyranny  as  ever  was 
preached  by  a  ridiculous  and  pedant  Peter  against 
a  self-respecting  people.  For  myself,  I  fail  to  find 
much  of  the  theology  of  the  Covenanters  credible — 
although  I  must  say  I  should  like  if  we  could  hear 
Knox  and  Melville,  or  even  Cameron  and  Cargill,  on 
the  existing  state  of  things.  I  think  we  should  get 
some  different  guidance  from  what  we  are  receiving 
from  those  blind  leaders  of  the  blind  who  shiveringly 
and  stammeringly  attempt  to  fill  their  places.  For  it 
is  almost  impossible  to  appraise  too  highly  the  service 
done  by  the  Covenanters  for  the  cause  of  liberty  and 
popular  education ;  and  although  they  had  their  very 


n6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

obvious  faults,  one  is  always  sorry  to  think  that  the 
aristocratic  and  Episcopalian  prejudices  of  Scott  should 
have  led  him  to  hold  them  up  to  ridicule,  while  glad 
that  a  higher  and  juster  view  was  taken  by  a  greater 
Scotsman  even  than  Scott,  when,  in  answer  to  a  con- 
temptuous critic  of  the  men  of  the  Covenant,  Burns 
turned  on  him  with  the  withering  impromptu : — 

4  The  Solemn  League  and  Covenant 

Cost  Scotland  blood — cost  Scotland  tears — 
But  it  sealed  Freedom's  sacred  cause — 
If  thou'rt  a  slave,  indulge  thy  sneers.' ' 

We  go  back  to  young  George  Buchanan  (1517-19) 
at  the  Catholic  local  grammar-school  of  Killearn  or 
Dumbarton,  or  wherever  else  in  the  neighbourhood 
secondary  education  was  to  be  had.  The  boy  had 
shown  such  aptitude  that  his  uncle,  James  Heriot,  who 
is  said  to  have  been  Justiciar  of  Lothian,  sent  him  to 
the  University  of  Paris,  then,  though  not  quite  so  much 
as  at  an  earlier  date,  enjoying  the  reputation  of  the  most 
notable  of  any  seat  of  learning  in  existence.  Instead  of 

1  Burns  appears  to  have  afterwards  written  it  down  thus : — 

'  The  Solemn  League  and  Covenant 

Now  brings  a  smile,  now  brings  a  tear ; 
But  sacred  Freedom,  too,  was  theirs : 
If  thou  'rt  a  slave,  indulge  thy  sneer.' 

The  form  may  be  improved,  the  sentiment  could  not  be. 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  117 

being  required  to  pass  through  the  preparatory  school,  he 
at  once  began  his  studies  in  the  Arts  faculty  (1520,  age 
fourteen),  his  Scottish  acquirements  having  apparently 
been  sufficient  to  pass  him  through  whatever  entrance 
examination  was  imperative.  Here  he  spent  about 
two  years,  working  mainly  at  Latin  versification,  which, 
as  his  reputation  for  Latin  poetry  was  to  be  the 
making  of  him  in  after  years,  was  perhaps  the  best 
thing  he  could  do,  especially  as  he  liked  it.  At  this 
point,  as  evil  fate  would  have  it,  his  uncle  died,  and 
he  himself  fell  ill.  But  as  he  was  penniless,  he  had 
to  struggle  home,  illness  and  all,  as  best  he  could, 
and  was  not  able  to  move  about  again  for  a  year  or 
thereabouts  (1523).  And  then  it  turned  out  that  a 
very  singular  purpose  had  entered  the  mind  of  the 
ill  or  convalescent  student  of  seventeen. 

[Here  ends  Dr.  Wallace's  MS.] 

That  purpose  was  to  enlist  as  a  volunteer  in  an 
army  for  the  invasion  of  England,  to  be  led  by  the 
Regent  Albany,  who  had  supposed  wrongs  of  his  own 
as  well  as  of  the  borders  to  avenge  against  that  old 
neighbour  and  untiring  enemy.  That  army,  consist- 
ing of  French  auxiliaries  and  Scottish  recruits,  marched 
to  Melrose  and  then  partly  crossed  the  Tweed  by  a 


n8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

wooden  bridge,  then,  holding  Flodden  in  memory, 
intimated  a  mutinous  resolution  not  to  cross  the 
border,  then  marched  down  the  left  bank  of  the 
river,  and  for  three  days  besieged  Wark  Castle  to 
little  effect,  then  made  a  sudden  night-march  to 
Lauder  in  a  snowstorm,  'which  told  heavily  on  man 
and  beast,'  and  reduced  Buchanan  to  very  bad  health 
for  the  rest  of  the  winter.  Buchanan,  when  he  came 
to  write  his  own  life  in  his  old  age,  had  come  to 
believe  that  he  joined  this  abortive  expedition  to 
learn  the  art  of  war,  which,  without  intentions  more 
far-seeing  than  those  of  a  lad  of  eighteen,  he  certainly 
did,  just  as  Gibbon  was  educated  to  understand  the 
evolution  of  the  phalanx  and  the  legions,  by  what 
he  saw,  in  his  two  and  a  half  years'  captaincy  of  the 
Hampshire  Militia,  of  the  evolutions  of  a  modern 
battalion.  In  the  spring  of  1525  Buchanan  appeared 
as  a  '  pauper  student '  at  the  University  of  St.  Andrews, 
doubtless  specially  well  qualified  both  as  a  student 
and  as  a  'pauper' — which  epithet  'pauper,'  however, 
meant  probably  nothing  more  opprobrious  than  a 
youth  who  required  board  and  education  free,  like 
many  a  score  of  St.  Andrews  students,  from  poet 
Buchanan  to  poet  Fergusson,  who  about  two  and  a 
half  centuries  later  sat  at  the  bursar's  free  table  and 
said  grace  over  the  too  plentiful  college  rabbits  that 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  119 

were  last  century  procured  from  the  links  that  now 
swarm  only  with  golfers.  He  was  sent  there,  he  tells 
in  his  Autobiography )  to  'sit  at  the  feet  of  John 
Major/  the  celebrated  logician  of  that  age;  but  he 
did  not  long  sit  at  his  feet  as  pupil  before  he  felt 
in  a  position  to  criticise  his  master  as  a  teacher  of 
sophistry  rather  than  logic.  Next  summer,  having 
taken  the  St.  Andrews  B.A.  degree,  he  followed  or 
accompanied  Major  to  Paris,  and  there  passed  through 
two  years'  adversity  under  pressure  of  poverty  and 
the  suspicion  of  not  being  an  orthodox  Papist. 
Fortune  relaxed  her  frown,  and  he  was  admitted  to 
the  College  of  Ste.  Barbe,  in  which  he  was  Professor 
of  Grammar  for  three  years.  Meanwhile  Gilbert 
Kennedy,  the  young  Earl  of  Cassilis,  one  of  the 
earliest  of  Scottish  hero-worshippers,  had  the  insight 
to  appreciate  his  learning  and  genius,  and  the  devo- 
tion to  adhere  to  him  as  friend,  pupil,  and  protector 
for  five  years.  In  1533,  the  tutor  dedicated  to  the 
pupil  his  translation  of  Linacre's  Grammar,  one  of 
the  items  of  work  done  by  him  during  his  professor- 
ship in  the  College  of  Ste.  Barbe;  and  in  1558,  after 
this  pupil,  who  had  held  a  prominent  position  among 
Scottish  nobles,  died,  probably  from  poison,  at  Dieppe, 
on  his  way  home  from  the  marriage  of  Mary  Stuart 
to  the  Dauphin,  along  with  the  other  three  Scottish 


120  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

commissioners  who  had  attended  it,  Buchanan  cele- 
brated him  in  emphatic  Latin  verse  that  is  now  better 
known  than  most  contemporary  epitaphs.  Let  it  be 
told,  however,  to  illustrate  the  cross-threads  that  run 
through  the  web  of  life,  that  Queen  Mary,  on  9th 
October  1564,  granted  to  Buchanan,  who  had  been 
her  tutor  also,  and  probably  the  most  learned  and 
intellectual  of  all  her  friends,  a  pension  of  ^500 
Scots,  or  ^£25  sterling  a  year,  from  the  Abbey  of 
Crossraguel;  that  the  then  Earl  of  Cassilis,  son  of 
Buchanan's  old  pupil,  claimed  the  temporalities  of 
that  abbey  as  his  own,  and  sometimes  stopped  tem- 
porarily, and  often  permanently  diminished,  the  pension 
which  had  been  granted  by  the  Queen  out  of  the 
spoils  of  the  Reformation,  tarnishing  by  pious  Pro- 
testant greed  the  brightest  page  in  the  history  of  the 
earldom  of  Cassilis. 

After  Buchanan's  tutorship  of  the  father  of  this 
grasping  Protestant  was  ended,  and  Buchanan  was 
proposing  to  return  to  his  old  scholar's  life  in  Paris, 
James  v.  detained  him  to  act  as  tutor  to  one  of 
his  natural  sons  —  not  the  one  known  afterwards 
as  the  Good  Regent,  but  James  Stewart,  Prior  of 
Coldingham.  This  king,  who  entertained  the  idea 
that  the  clergy  ought  not  to  disregard  the  moral 
law  as  if  they  were  royal  personages  like  himself,  set 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  121 

Buchanan  to  the  not  uncongenial  task,  upon  which 
Dunbar  and  Sir  David  Lindsay  of  the  Mount  had 
previously  been  engaged,  of  'lashing  the  vices'  of 
the  clergy,  and  especially  of  the  monks.  In  the  form 
of  a  dream,  Somnium,  he  represented  to  St.  Francis 
the  reasons  of  a  decent  man  for  refusing  to  enter  this 
order  of  sainthood — reasons  which,  because  of  their 
truth,  might  satisfy  a  saint,  but  which  also,  because 
of  their  truth,  would  likely  be  disagreeable  to  sancti- 
fied hypocrites  and  scoundrels.  Two  palinodes,  wear- 
ing the  aspect  of  apologies,  were  seen  by  those  who 
understood  irony  to  be  rather  stinging  aggravations 
of  the  original  satire.  After  some  months  of  a  mixed 
tumult  of  priestly  rage  and  secular  laughter,  the  royal 
love  of  fun  and  of  virtue  again  prompted  Buchanan 
to  renew  the  attack,  which  he  did  by  beginning 
Franciscanus,  not  published  till  1560,  and  then 
dedicated  to  the  Regent  Moray  and  gradually  ex- 
tended to  a  thousand  Latin  lines,  which  contain  the 
most  polished,  skilfully  contemptuous  exposure  of 
the  arts,  ignorance,  and  vices  of  the  later  generations 
of  the  Romish  clergy  in  Scotland.  It  is  still  worth 
reading  by  all  who  enjoy  rough,  boisterous,  coarse 
humour,  as  also  by  all  anti-Papist  fanatics,  even  if 
they  should  renew  their  Latin  studies  for  nine  months 
to  enable  them  to  understand  and  utilise  it.  These 


i«2  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

men,  drenched  with  satire,  published  and  unpublished, 
whose  craft  of  various  hues  was  endangered  by  it,  of 
course  thought  that  it  would  be  judicious  if  not  just 
to  burn  its  author.  Cardinal  Beaton  had  him  on  his 
list  of  heretics, — for  what  heresy  could  be  so  dangerous 
as  disbelief  in  the  solid,  well-fed,  red-faced  exponents 
of  infallible  truth  ?  In  1539  he  escaped  from  prison 
in  Edinburgh1  when  his  guards  were  asleep.  But 
being  warned  after  the  King  had  received  the  MS.  of 
The  Franciscan  that  Beaton  had  offered  this  fickle 
monarch  a  price  for  his  head,  he  felt  constrained  to  bid 
farewell  once  more  to  his  native  country.  He  fled 
to  England,  but,  as  Henry  vin.  was  then  busy  burn- 
ing all  shades  of  believers  that  did  not  suit  his 
personal  fancy,  Buchanan  thought  it  prudent  to  trust 
his  safety  and  his  fortunes  once  more  to  Paris.  On 
arriving  there,  however,  he  found  that  Cardinal  Beaton 
was  there  before  him  as  ambassador,  so  on  the  invita- 
tion of  Andrew  Gouvda  he  withdrew  to  Bordeaux. 
There  he  taught  three  years  at  least  in  the  public 
schools,  and  wrote  four  tragedies  for  the  annual  ex- 
hibitions of  these  schools,  to  wit  The  Baptist,  Medea^ 
Jepthes,  and  Alcestis.  In  the  College  of  Guyenne  he 
had  Gouve'a  as  a  principal,  and  as  a  pupil  Montaigne, 

1  My  authority  is  Herkless's  Cardinal  Beaton ,  p.  153. 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  123 

the  celebrated  sceptic,  who  is  dogmatic  enough  to 
state  in  one  of  his  essays  that  Gouvea  was  'without 
comparison  the  chiefest  rector  in  France,'  and  that 
he  himself  had,  as  a  principal  actor,  'undergone  and 
represented  the  chiefest  parts  in  the  Latin  Tragedies  of 
Buchanan.'  When  here,  Beaton  and  the  Franciscans 
harassed  him  until  that  fear  was  dispelled  by  the 
plague  raging  over  Aquitaine  and  the  death  of  his 
fickle  patron,  the  King  of  Scots. 

Next,  about  1547,  in  the  wake  or  under  the  convoy 
of  Gouvea,  he  migrated  to  Portugal  in  response  to  the 
invitation  of  the  King  to  teach  in  a  resuscitation  of  the 
University  of  Coimbra  that  was  being  then  worked 
out  at  great  expense  for  education  in  the  liberal  arts 
and  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle.  Many  of  his  friends, 
eminent  for  learning,  were  there  before  him,  and  he 
expected  to  find  peace  in  that  out  of  the  way  corner  of 
the  world.  But  Gouvea  died  suddenly,  and  then  all 
his  enemies  ran  at  him  with  open  mouth.  He  was 
thrown  into  prison,  charged  with  writing  against  the 
Franciscans  and  eating  flesh  in  Lent.  The  Inquisitors 
tormented  themselves  and  him  for  six  months  without 
stateable  result;  and  then,  thinking  it  prudent,  and 
perhaps  honest,  to  conceal  that  their  toil  had  been 
in  vain,  they  shut  him  up  in  a  monastery  to  be  con- 
verted to  the  true  faith  or  to  be  prepared  for  the 


124  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

fagots.  To  the  great  scholar,  however,  the  monks, 
though  ignorant,  behaved  not  unkindly.  They  allowed 
him  the  truest  literary  leisure  and  quiet  he  ever  had 
except  perhaps  in  St.  Andrews ;  and  he  devoted  it  to 
the  so-called  translation  of  David's  Psalms  into  Latin 
verse,  which  are  in  truth  artistic  evolutionary  exposi- 
tions from  Hebrew  hints,  or  splendid  blossoms  of  sacred 
poetry  grown  from  the  seed  given  by  the  poet-king 
of  Israel  to  the  winds  of  heaven,  in  the  moments  of 
inspiration  occurring  in  a  life  of  suffering,  of  passion, 
and  of  hope.  Never  elsewhere  did  the  iron  fetters  of 
Buchanan's  own  environment  permit  him  to  soar  so 
close  to  the  firmament. 

When  set  at  liberty,  though  the  King  of  Portugal 
offered  him  the  means  of  subsistence,  he  returned  to 
England.  But  as  affairs  were  then  in  disorder  under 
a  young  king,  he  in  a  short  time  returned  to  France 
and  celebrated  the  siege  of  Metz  in  a  Latin  poem,  not 
without  the  approbation  which  rewarded  all  his  efforts 
in  that  line  of  composition.  Thereafter  the  Marshal 
de  Brissac  called  him  to  Italy,  and  he  lived  with  him 
and  his  son  in  Italy  and  France  for  four  years  till  1560, 
spending  much  time  in  writing  his  poem  De  Sphara, 
and  in  study  of  the  religious  controversies  then  seeth- 
ing through  civilised  Europe,  and  carrying  it  into  a 
scientific  region  that  rendered  a  poetic  exposition  of 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  125 

the  Ptolemaic  system  a  work  of  futility  and  utterly 
misspent  power. 

In  1561  he  returned  to  his  native  country,  and  there 
indicated  his  Rationalistic  leanings  to  the  side  of 
Protestantism.  Nevertheless,  the  non-Protestant  Mary 
Stuart,  of  ever-living  memory  in  the  realm  of  history 
and  romance,  pursued  her  studies  in  Livy  and  other 
classics  with  his  help.  As  formerly  mentioned,  she 
endowed  him  with  a  pension  of  ^500  a  year.  But  in 
after  years  Mary's  faults  or  her  misfortunes  threw  them 
into  the  hostile  camps  that  tore  Scotland  into  con- 
fusion and  deadly  discord.  In  regard  to  the  murder  of 
Darnley,  he  came  to  the  conclusion,  on  the  evidence 
of  open  foes  and  of  professed  friends,  that  she  was 
guilty.  He  preferred  truth  to  the  beautiful  queen,  and 
it  is  difficult  to  comprehend  how  any  man  capable 
of  weighing  and  scrutinising  such  evidence  as  was 
accessible  to  him  can  blame  him.1 

1  My  non-forensic  sympathy,  but  not  my  full  conviction,  goes 
with  Mr.  Hosack  and  Sir  John  Skelton  in  their  chivalrous  but  too 
unmeasured  defence  of  Mary.  My  verdict  in  regard  to  her  being 
'  art  and  part '  in  putting  an  end  to  that  traitor  in  heart  and  deed, 
the  good-for-nothing,  faithless  fool  Darnley,  is  a  hesitant  '  Not 
Proven  ' ;  but  if  otherwise,  then  a  distinct  non-hesitant  '  served  him 
right.'  Skelton's  clever,  interesting  book  upon  Maitland  of  Leth- 
ington,  Mary's  most  faithful  and  capable  minister,  does  not  throw 
much,  if  any,  light  upon  Buchanan.  In  it  he  is  treated  as  an  oppo- 
sition pleader,  capable  rather  than  scrupulous,  who  did  not  know 


ia6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Buchanan  has  been  accused  of  ingratitude  to  Mary, 
his  friend  as  well  as  his  mistress,  divinely  gifted  and 
divinely  appointed.  He  may  have  been  compelled  to 
seem  ungrateful  through  the  lying  of  ill-informed 
Reformers  and  rogues ;  but  sure  am  I  that  his  Latin 
and  other  Humanist  studies  with  that  most  fascinating 
and  accomplished  of  women,  or  at  least  of  queens,  gave 
him  the  opportunity  of  forming  an  idea  of  her  intel- 
lectual powers  and  unsurpassed  personal  charms  that 
no  other  contemporary  in  Scotland  was  mentally  and 
morally  capable  of  forming,  and  I  don't  doubt  that 
this  idea  finds  sincere  expression  in  his  dedication  to 
her  of  his  version  or  paraphrase  of  the  Psalms  of  the 
Hebrew  poet-king,  without  any  hint  whatever  of  kindred 

all  the  facts,  and  who  was  instructed  by  men  who  had  other 
purposes  to  serve  than  telling  the  whole  truth,  and  who  probably 
did  not  know  it  themselves  so  well  as  Skelton  had  opportunities 
to  come  to  know  it,  e.g.  in  regard  to  the  '  Casket  Letters ' — docu- 
ments that  could  be  satisfactory  to  no  modern  tribunal  except  a 
Dreyfus  court-martial.  Buchanan's  attack,  in  a  pamphlet  written 
in  Scotch,  upon  Skelton's  hero  Maitland,  entitled  The  Chameleon, 
Skelton  sneers  at  as  a  '  Dawb ' — not  entirely  an  inaccurate  criticism, 
for  The  Chameleon  is  a  caricature,  and  that,  of  course,  means  an 
exaggeration  of  all  faults,  actual  or  presumable.  But  when  a 
'  chameleon '  like  Disraeli  or  Maitland,  both  of  whom  have  found 
in  John  Skelton  an  ingenious  and  eloquent  hero-worshipper,  is 
assailed  by  satirists  in  Punch  or  elsewhere,  the  only  effective  con- 
demnatory judgment  worth  stating  is  that  the  caricature  is  not 
recognisable  by  an  honest  enemy  or  a  free  and  easy  friend.  For  my 
part,  I  believe  that  the  unvarnished  truth,  though  perhaps  not  the 
whole  of  it,  can  be  better  inferred  from  Buchanan  than  from  Skelton. 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  127 

royal  frailties,  or  of  tendencies  thereto.  What  Buchanan 
must  have  seen  in  her  when  he  had  the  best  opportunity 
of  sight  and  knowledge  stands  recorded  unalterably  in 
his  noble  verse  that  rolls  down  the  centuries,  bearing 
an  impress  of  insight  and  sincerity  unequalled  in  the 
poetical  portraiture  of  queens  till  Tennyson  laid  his 
dedication  at  the  feet  of  the  most  illustrious  and 
fortunate  of  all  her  countless  descendants.  A  true 
poet  I  believe  to  be  a  true  seer,  and  incapable  of  false- 
hood to  the  extent  that  he  has  had  the  chance  to  see. 
But  a  true  poet  may  be  deceived.  Spenser  and  Shake- 
speare were  deceived  into  uttering  gross  flatteries  about 
Queen  Elizabeth ;  but  they  were  deceived  by  the  dense 
atmosphere  of  lying  by  which  one  of  the  cleverest, 
falsest,  most  hateful  of  women  of  all  history  encom- 
passed herself.  That  Queen  Mary  should  have  been 
no  worse  than  she  was  in  a  world  with  her  royal  cousin 
and  rival  flaunting  her  fictitious  moral  and  physical 
beauties  at  the  head  of  it,  and  getting  prematurely 
canonised  as  the  Good  Queen  Bess,  ought  certainly 
to  qualify  or  blot  out  for  ever  all  that  can  be  stated 
truly  and  justly  in  condemnation  or  even  grave  censure 
of  Queen  Mary.  Therefore  let  the  modest  and  honest 
muse  of  History  cease  howling  and  canting  about  her 
crimes,  and  try  to  refrain  from  lavishing  eulogy  upon 
her  kindred  in  position  and  in  blood — Henry  VIIL,  the 


iz8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Royal  Bluebeard,  and  his  inconstant,  cruel,  deceitful 
daughter — a  pair  of  monarchs  whose  fickle  affections 
led  so  many  adventurous  wives  and  ambitious  wooers  to 
the  scaffold,  by  processes  that  involved  the  partial  but 
temporary  corruption  of  their  country's  conscience. 

The  wants  and  troubles  of  his  country  beset  Buchanan 
with  many  a  call  of  duty,  and  cast  upon  him  loads  of 
multifarious  work,  such  as  perhaps  never  in  the  history 
of  human-kind  before  were  thrown  upon  the  most 
accomplished  and  studious  of  living  men.  The  tasks 
assigned  to  Buchanan,  and  the  duties  imposed  upon 
him,  reflect  no  inconsiderable  honour  and  credit 
upon  his  lawless,  homicidal,  half-civilised  countrymen. 
While  still  friendly  with  Queen  Mary,  he  gave  effect 
to  his  Reformation  convictions,  by  sitting  and  working 
for  years,  from  1563  onwards,  as  a  member  of  the 
new-born  democratic  General  Assembly,  knowing  well 
enough  that  it  was  an  institution  that  the  Queen  would 
have  been  happy  to  see  strangled,  even  before  it  began 
to  discuss  the  scandals  of  Rizzio  and  Darnley  with 
the  plain-spoken  impudence  of  a  rustic  kirk-session 
and  the  arrogance  of  an  infallible  tribunal.  Buchanan 
was  one  of  the  Commissioners  that  revised  the  Book  of 
Discipline,  and,  along  with  Knox  and  others,  was  a 
member  of  a  committee  appointed  to  confer  regarding 
the  causes  that  fell,  or  that  ought  to  fall,  within  the 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  129 

jurisdiction  of  the  Kirk.  In  1567,  a  few  days  after 
the  beginning  of  Mary's  imprisonment  in  Lochleven, 
Buchanan  filled  the  chair  of  the  Moderator  of  the 
General  Assembly,  a  position  that  for  generations  has 
not  called  for  the  worldly  wisdom  and  terse,  im- 
patient talk  of  a  layman,  and  seldom,  if  ever,  so 
much  required  to  be  reminded  of  the  limits  of  its 
power  and  jurisdiction  as  when  Buchanan  sat  as 
its  Moderator,  and  the  head  of  the  State  was  a 
captive. 

In  the  previous  year,  Queen  Mary's  half-brother, 
the  Earl  of  Moray,  commendator  of  the  Priory  of  St. 
Andrews,  and  as  such  patron  of  the  Principalship  of 
St.  Leonard's  College  there,  appointed  Buchanan  to 
that  office,  which  he  held  for  four  years.  During  these 
years  St.  Leonard's,  which  in  the  first  year  was  student- 
less,  became  the  best  attended  of  the  three  St.  Andrews 
colleges.  But  the  fame  of  the  'greatest  poet  of  the 
age '  could  not  permanently  revive  the  fortunes  of  St. 
Leonard's,  nor  did  the  efforts  of  the  Parliamentary 
Commission  of  1579,  of  which  Andrew  Melville  as 
well  as  Buchanan  were  members.  By  the  time  Dr. 
Johnson  was  on  his  way  to  the  Hebrides,  the  College 
buildings  were  ruinous  and  forsaken,  including  St. 
Leonard's  Church,  of  which  the  Doctor  could  not  see 
the  inside,  because  of  decent  excuses  exciting  in  his 

I 


1 30  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

mind  the  hope  that  '  Where  there  is  still  shame  there 
may  yet  be  virtue.'1 

The  Regent  Moray,  Buchanan's  patron  and  friend, 
to  whom  the  Franciscanus  was  dedicated,  was  a  recog- 
nised mainstay  of  Protestantism,  heartily  hated  by  the 
allies  of  the  Queen  and  of  the  Pope.  He  was  assassin- 
ated in  Linlithgow  on  2oth  January  1570,  partly  to 
further  their  interests  and  partly  to  gratify  private 
revenge.  Hamilton  of  Bothwellhaugh  was  waiting  for 
him  in  the  house  of  his  uncle,  Archbishop  Hamilton, 
with  small-bore  matchlock  and  lighted  match,  and  the 
accident  of  a  crowded  street  gave  him  the  opportunity 
of  a  deliberate  aim.  His  death  was  laid  at  the  door 
of  the  Hamiltons,  and  it  stirred  the  patriotism  of 
Buchanan  to  write  a  political  pamphlet,  called  an 
Admonition  to  the  Treiv  Lordes,  in  the  vernacular  of 


1  Sir  David  Brewster,  when  Principal  of  the  United  College  of 
St.  Leonard  and  St.  Salvador,  had  a  residence  close  to  St. 
Leonard's  roofless  church.  In  1853,  Sir  David  told  to  a  breakfast- 
party  of  students,  which  included  Dr.  Wallace  and  the  writer,  that 
his  house  embraced  all  that  existed  of  Buchanan's  old  dwelling- 
house,  and  pointed  out  one  particular  part  of  the  ancient  outer  wall 
thick  enough  to  resist  the  artillery  of  Buchanan's  day.  Dr.  John- 
son's general  contempt  for  Scotland,  which  did  not  keep  silence 
in  St.  Andrews,  could  not  resist  the  inspiration  of  the  genius  loci 
of  St.  Leonard's  so  far  as  to  prevent  his  generously  recognising 
Buchanan's  claim  to  immortality  as  being  as  fair  as  modern 
Latinity  can  give,  and  '  perhaps  fairer  than  the  instability  of  verna- 
cular languages  admit. ' 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  131 

Scotland,  directed  against  the  Hamiltons  and  their 
friends — a  publication  full  of  practical  insight,  good 
sense,  and  cogent  argument,  the  work  of  a  wise,  earnest, 
sagacious  man,  who  in  the  zeal  for  the  good  of  his 
country  forgot  that  he  had  the  gift  of  poetic  inspiration, 
in  that  respect  very  unlike  his  great  successor  Milton 
when  he  too  became  a  political  pamphleteer,  more 
rhapsodical  than  relevant.  He  suspected  the  Hamil- 
tons of  a  desire  to  secure  the  crown,  and  Buchanan 
very  much  preferred  to  them  Queen  Mary  and  her  son, 
whose  birth  he  had  welcomed  as  a  star  of  hope  for  his 
country.  His  birthday  ode  of  welcome,  ostensibly 
intended  for  the  boy  when  he  grew  up,  but  positively 
in  the  meantime  for  the  guidance  and  the  warning  of 
his  mother,  is  in  substance  a  serious  homily  on  the  duty 
of  kings  to  God  and  the  people,  from  whom  their 
power  came,  and  whose  will  and  welfare  alone  justified 
its  exercise.  The  essence  of  the  Dejure  Regni  under- 
lies it,  an  essence  never  practically  intelligible  to  the 
fated  House  of  Stuart.  Neither  the  beautiful,  brilliant 
Mary  nor  her  erratic  but  not  stupid  race  could  under- 
stand the  teaching  of  Buchanan  as  an  exposition  of 
the  law  of  the  King  of  kings.  The  fate  of  that  race, 
from  her  flight  to  England  to  the  flight  from  Culloden, 
has  helped  the  world  to  understand  it.  They  were 
doomed  to  be  born  in  and  live  through  ages  of  ignor- 


13*  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

ance,  superstition,  and  falsehood,  in  which  few  men 
arose  who  could  discover  and  recognise  truth  and 
publish  it  at  their  risk  for  the  dark  here  and  the  darker 
hereafter,  as  was  done  by  Buchanan.  He  may  not 
have  been  infallible,  but  he  had  insight,  veracity,  and 
courage,  the  like  of  which  will  never  be  exhibited  by 
his  traducers  to  the  end  of  time.  Those  who  can 
believe  him  guilty  of  base  ingratitude  and  malicious 
falsehood  are  incapable  of  discriminating  the  best 
from  the  worst  in  human  nature  and  in  human 
history. 

Buchanan's  truthfulness  and  resolute  desire  to  be 
impartial  can  be  best  inferred  in  our  time  from  his 
History  of  Scotland,  at  which  he  had  written  for  years, 
and  for  which  he  had  collected  materials  from  his  boy- 
hood. The  style  of  it  appears  to  be  an  eclectic  adapta- 
tion of  available  and  appropriate  elements  from  the 
styles  of  Livy,  Sallust,  and  Tacitus.  It  wants  the 
special  charm  of  '  Livy's  pictured  page,'  for  Scottish 
places,  deeds,  heroes,  and  tastes  did  not  for  Buchanan's 
earnest,  realistic,  dialectical,  judicial  mind  present  in- 
ducements to  poetic  word-painting — indeed,  it  was 
after  his  day,  before  the  fascinations  of  the  picturesque 
dawned  upon  the  mind  of  Scotland,  unless  it  may  have 
been  to  some  semi-mythical,  mist-inspired  member  of 
the  tribe  of  Ossian.  The  speeches  of  his  History  are  the 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  133 

most  tersely  expressed,  forcibly  reasoned  specimens  of 
ancient  Scottish  oratory,  assuming,  of  course,  that  they 
ought  to  have  been  delivered,  but  that  they  never  were. 
They  want  the  terse,  pregnant  suggestiveness  of  the 
orations  of  Tacitus ;  but  they  may  probably  appear  to 
be  not  less  skilfully  adapted  for  the  dramatic  surround- 
ings in  which  they  are  supposed  to  have  been  delivered. 
Young  students  of  Latin,  especially  in  the  Aberdeen 
region,  have  found  it  to  be  for  their  interest  to  read 
and  re-read  Buchanan's  History,  and  it  is  in  the 
original  that  the  literary  art  and  linguistic  skill  of  its 
author  can  be  best  seen.  But  it  is  still  worth  reading, 
and  is  often  read  in  Dr.  Watkins'  translation,  which  as 
a  translation  reflects  a  good  deal  more  credit  upon  its 
author  than  his  old-womanly,  newspapery  but  not  dis- 
honest attempt  at  original  historical  composition  shown 
in  his  bringing  down  of  Buchanan's  masterly  story  to 
the  culmination  or  extinction  of  Scottish  history  in 
the  visit  of  George  iv.  to  Edinburgh.  The  babes 
and  sucklings  of  the  school  of  Dry-as-dust  assert  that 
Buchanan  is  superseded  as  an  historian ;  but  a  man  of 
Buchanan's  powers  and  opportunities  can  never  be 
superseded  as  a  narrator  of  the  history  of  his  own 
time. 

Buchanan  died  on  the  28th  September  1582,  a  few 
days  or  weeks  after  his  History  had  been  published. 


134  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

He  had  striven,  in  spite  of  old  age,  ill-health,  and 
poverty,  to  accomplish  this  long-meditated  patriotic 
task ;  and  when  he  had  corrected  the  proofs  and  given 
it  to  the  world,  he  felt  that  his  last  slender  tie  to  life 
was  broken,  and  his  long,  chequered,  poorly-paid  day's 
work  was  done. 

His  death  took  place  in  Kennedy's  Close,  the  second 
close  off  the  High  Street  of  Edinburgh  above  the 
Tron  Church,  as  recorded  by  'George  Paton, 
Antiquary,'  upon  the  rather  reliable  authority  of  an 
ancient  Lord  Advocate,  Sir  James  Stewart  of  Good- 
trees. 

His  last  lodging  was  in  '  the  first  house  in  the  turn- 
pike above  the  tavern,'  and  occupied  some  few  cubic 
feet  of  space,  probably  about  twelve  feet  above  the 
existing  causeway  blocks  of  Hunter  Square,  an  entirely 
vanished  pile  of  tall,  substantial,  over-populated 
masonry,  part  of  the  crest  of  the  High  Street  once, 
standing  within  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  the  vanished 
garden  in  which  Darnley  was  found  dead  in  his  shirt 
without  mark  of  violence,  still  nearer  to  the  site  of 
the  vanished  house  in  which  Walter  Scott  was  born, 
and  to  the  vacant  air-space  once  filled  by  Johnny 
Dowie's  vanished  tavern,  in  which  during  his  Edinburgh 
sojourn  Robert  Burns  was  wont  to  make  merry  with 
select  friends. 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  135 

The  records  of  the  Commissary  Court  show  that 
Buchanan  left  no  property  except  ;£ioo  of  his  Cross- 
raguel  pension  (gifted  by  Queen  Mary,  and  withheld  as 
often  and  as  long  as  he  could  by  the  Earl  of  Cassilis), 
which  had  been  in  arrear  from  the  previous  Whit- 
sunday. His  '  Inventar '  exhibits  him  in  his  true 
character  of  an  ancient  philosopher,  whether  Stoic  or 
not.  The  civic  authorities  of  Edinburgh,  who  from 
time  immemorial  have  been  ready  and  willing  to  bury 
scholars,  buried  his  body  the  day  after  his  death  at 
the  public  expense.  The  ground  of  Greyfriars,  one 
of  the  spoils  of  the  Reformation,  was  then  being 
turned  into  a  burying-ground,  and  Buchanan  was  the 
'  first  person  of  celebrity '  buried  in  it.  The  exact 
spot  of  his  sepulture  is,  however,  in  doubt,  though  a 
small  tablet  was  put  up  by  a  humble  blacksmith  to 
mark  where  it  is  believed  to  be — a  tribute  of  hero- 
worship  like  to  that  in  Parliament  Square  which  is 
supposed  to  mark  the  burial-place  of  Knox. 

It  is  not  likely  that  Buchanan  ever  asked  the  Town 
Council  of  Edinburgh  for  bread,  but  it  is  believed  that 
they  gave  him  a  stone — without  any  inscription,  how- 
ever, to  show  for  whom  it  was  intended,  so  that  by 
1701  it  was  lost  or  stolen.  His  skull  also  is  believed 
to  be  one  of  the  lawful  and  sacred  possessions  of  the 
Edinburgh  University.  If  genuine,  it  may  be  a 


136  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

phrenological  curiosity.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  once  used 
it  at  a  lecture  which  was  listened  to  and  approved  of 
by  Thomas  Carlyle.  Sir  William  demonstrated  to 
Carlyle's  satisfaction  that  the  said  skull,  supposed  to 
be  Buchanan's,  was  according  to  phrenological  dogmas 
far  inferior  to  that  of  some  '  Malay  cut  throat '  or  other 
unredeemed  ruffian.  Assuming  this  to  be  the  fact — 
and  my  authority  for  believing  it  is  a  letter  of  Carlyle 
published  in  Veitch's  Life  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton — I  am 
surprised  that  Mr.  Hosack  and  Sir  John  Skelton  were 
not  converted  to  phrenology.  But  for  my  part, 
believing  in  the  universal  but  mostly  untranslatable 
symbolism  of  Nature,  from  the  '  flower  in  the  crannied 
wall '  to  the  human  face  and  form  divine,  and  believing 
only  to  a  limited  extent  in  phrenology  as  the  dark  side 
of  physiognomy  that  is  open  to  touch  rather  than  to 
sight,  I  should  hold  that  the  skull  which  was  inferior 
to  a  Malay's  in  any  respect  except  thickness  could 
never  be  the  skull  of  Buchanan ;  and  it  would  not 
alter  my  conviction  to  feel  sure  that  George  Combe 
was  present  at  Sir  William  Hamilton's  lecture,  and  for 
the  first  and  only  time  in  their  career  of  phrenological 
disputation  expressly  agreed  with  him.  Whatever 
Buchanan's  head  and  face  may  have  been  like — and 
his  portraits  impute  to  him  either  sleepy,  benevolent 
dulness,  or  ferrety,  peevish  conceit — it  is  not  believable 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  137 

that  his  head  or  face  could  have  ever  resembled  that 
of  a  Malay  or  any  other  kind  of  savage.  So  acute  a 
logician  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  ought  to  have  doubted 
one  of  his  premises  at  least,  and  been  able  to  conceive 
it  possible  that  the  resetters  of  dead  men's  skulls  may 
be  sometimes  the  victims  of  outside,  as  well  as  inside, 
deception. 


EPILOGISTIC 

THE  sudden  and  untimely  death  of  Dr.  Wallace  has 
left  this  volume  incomplete,  and  incapable  of  being 
completed  as  he  would  have  done  it  Detailed  facts 
are  in  part  awanting,  but  they  are  awanting  in  every 
biography  and  autobiography,  and  after  the  oblivion 
of  centuries  has  passed  over  them,  they  tend  to  be 
unintelligible  and  uninteresting  as  lying  remote  from 
everyday  experience.  These,  however,  the  inquiring 
reader,  to  his  reasonable  satisfaction,  can  find  else- 
where ;  what  he  will  never  find  elsewhere  are  Dr. 
Wallace's  ultimate,  deliberate,  critical  estimates  of  the 
life  and  work  of  Buchanan.  His  book,  as  it  grew 
under  his  nimble  pen,  grew,  probably  unconsciously,  to 
be  not  so  much  an  articulation  of  the  bare  bones  of 
fact  as  a  narrative  of  the  genesis,  evolution,  growth, 
and  vitality  of  Buchanan's  ideas,  more  especially  his 
ideas  affecting  social  democratic  development,  and  in 
particular  his  capital  heresy,  dangerous  for  himself,  but 
vital  for  the  race,  touching  the  '  rights  of  man.' 

138 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  139 

Few  men  of  any  country  have  had  such  versatility  of 
talent,  and  have  in  life  found  tasks  so  varied  as  George 
Buchanan  and  Robert  Wallace.  No  other  Scotsman 
known  to  me,  through  credible  report  or  in  the  flesh, 
has  had  the  personal  experience  that  would  enable  him 
so  well  to  understand  and  interpret  the  personal 
experience  of  George  Buchanan.  Both  were  pre- 
eminent in  the  university  learning  of  their  respective 
eras,  which  had  little  in  common  except  Latin; 
scholastic  logic  and  metaphysic  being  the  dominating 
study  of  Buchanan's  days,  as  inductive  positive  science 
is  of  ours.  Both  were  wandering  scholars  seeking  for 
fortune,  or  at  least  for  bread ;  each  acting  as  tutor, 
schoolmaster,  university  professor,  man  of  letters, 
theologian,  politician,  and  teacher  of  public  men 
who  were  too  ignorant  or  too  neglectful  of  honest 
rational  principle  to  be  fit  to  rule  in  mercy  and  in 
justice ;  both  were  doomed  by  circumstances  or  by 
conscience  to  poverty  and  the  discrediting  influences 
of  poverty,  though  fit  to  furnish  invaluable  light  and 
guidance  to  their  fellow-men.  Methinks  the  pre- 
Reformation  church  was  a  kinder,  less  harsh  nursing- 
mother  to  the  inquiring,  doubting,  hesitating,  satirical 
Protestant,  than  the  dry-as-dust  nurses  of  ultra- 
Protestantism,  agnosticism,  atheism,  and  sincere 
worship  of  nothing  except  Mammon's  golden  calf  were 


i4o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

to  the  learned  literary  man  of  our  day  who,  afflicted 
with  distracting  doubts  himself,  and  many  sorrows, 
could  still  give  reasons  for  his  faith  in  a  supreme 
Creator  and  an  administrator  of  the  universe  accord- 
ing to  fixed  law  and  unswerving  right,  and  could  help 
to  lift  the  mind  of  his  age  out  of  a  darkness  deeper 
than  Popery — the  blackness  of  atheistic  despair.  Both 
knew  about  politics  as  revealed  in  the  wrangling  of 
churches  or  religious  sects,  and  the  strife  of  factions 
intriguing  and  fighting  for  power  to  govern  or  to  mis- 
govern. The  politics  familiar  to  Buchanan  included 
the  ethics  that  prompted  and  the  arts  that  effected  the 
murders  of  Cardinal  Beaton,  Rizzio,  Darnley,  Regent 
Moray,  and  Queen  Mary,  and  that  often  imperilled 
his  own  life.  Nevertheless,  worn  out  by  his  years  and 
assiduous  labours,  he  died  in  his  bed  when  his  work 
was  done,  a  fortnight  after  his  History  of  his  country 
was  published,  and  before  his  old  pupil  the  Scottish 
Solomon  had  time  to  discover  all  the  treason  it  con- 
tained ;  ordered  his  servant  to  give  his  few  last  coins  to 
a  beggar,  and  left  the  care  of  his  funeral  to  all  whom  it 
might  concern  on  Christian,  natural,  civic,  and  sanitary 
grounds,  ending  his  long,  busy,  chequered  tenure  of 
time  with  that  courage  and  hope  which  gilds  the  last 
sunset  of  those  who  have  striven  to  do  right  and 
never  doubted  that  God  is  just. 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  141 

There  was  no  man  in  Scotland  or  in  Europe  that 
could  have  been  of  so  much  service  to  Scotland  in 
guiding  it  through  the  troubles  and  storms,  political, 
moral,  and  religious,  of  the  Reformation  as  Buchanan, 
if  the  people  of  Scotland,  more  especially  the  feudal 
lords  of  Scotland,  had  been  fit  to  follow  the  dictates  of 
the  broadest,  most  complete  worldly  wisdom,  and  of 
the  clear  conscience  of  one  who  had  spent  his  years 
in  study  and  in  poverty,  who  had  lived  the  life  of  a 
stranger  to  the  entanglements  of  foolish  pleasure  and 
the  illusions  of  earthly  hope,  who  had  the  most  of  his 
possible  life  behind  him  and  eternity  in  no  distant 
prospect,  and  who  had  no  conceivable  motive  to 
applaud  murder  or  to  tell  lies.  Sceptical  by  innate 
constitution,  and  educated  to  doubt  in  the  schools  of 
adversity  and  experience,  personal  and  historical,  he 
was  not  the  man  to  commit  himself  hastily  to  faith  in 
dark  dogmas  and  half-explored  truths ;  he  was  the  man 
to  be  a  cautious,  judicious  reformer,  not  the  man  to 
be  an  impetuous,  frantic  destroyer,  too  rash  and 
unrestrained  to  discriminate  between  the  entirely  and 
partially  unsound,  too  just  to  plunder  churchmen,  some 
of  them  profligate,  in  order  to  enrich  feudal  lords 
skilled  in  few  arts  except  the  arts  of  war  and  theft. 
Like  Erasmus  and  Beza,  he  saw  that  the  old  order 
of  society  was  dissolving;  but,  like  all  wise  men, 


142  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

he     preferred     slow    and     gradual    to    revolutionary 
change. 

John  Knox,  in  point  of  culture  and  of  pure  intellect 
and  reason,  was  a  small  man — a  rash,  daring,  half- 
educated  schoolboy,  compared  with  Buchanan.  Know- 
ledge and  reason  are  conservative  forces,  and  Knox 
could  not  have  been  great  had  he  not  be«n  a  destroyer. 
His  most  indelible  historical  records  are  the  ruins  of 
cathedrals  and  other  religious  houses,  'rooks'  nests' 
requiring  to  be  pulled  down  only  in  the  judgment 
of  blind  superstition  and  rabid  fanaticism.  For  the 
ignorance  and  savagery  of  the  people  of  Scotland  the 
Church  of  Rome  was  primarily  to  blame.  That  Church 
required  reformation,  moral  and  intellectual;  but  no 
spiritual  entity,  however  corrupt,  can  be  miraculously 
reformed  by  the  destruction  of  Gothic  or  any  other 
architecture  which  took  its  form  under  the  sincere  art 
and  piety  of  buried  generations.  Cardinal  Beaton's 
mode  of  burning  good  true  men  to  support  and  pre- 
serve the  divine  truth  that  had  vitalised  his  Church 
for  centuries  was  irrational  and  infernal ;  but  it  was  not 
very  much  worse  than  the  mad,  destructive  fury  inspired 
by  John  Knox's  '  excellent '  sermons,  which,  whatever 
their  merits,  can  scarcely  have  emanated  from  a  mind 
that  had  any  clear  comprehension  of  the  processes  by 
which  spiritual  truth  makes  its  way  and  holds  its 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  143 

power  effectively  among  mankind.  Beaton  and  Knox 
were  both  powerful  in  their  age  and  characteristic  of 
it,  but  they  would  have  found  no  conspicuous  function 
in  an  age  that  was  not  in  the  course  of  emerging  from 
the  mire  of  savagery,  with  all  its  tendencies  to  violence 
and  to  vice.  Both  alike  were  uncompromising  enemies 
of  individual  freedom,  and  equally  bent  upon  the 
suppression  of  all  conscientious  opinions  that  did  not 
concur  with  their  own.  Both  were  patriots,  and  of 
signal  service  to  Scotland ;  but  the  evil  they  did  so 
nearly  counterbalances  all  the  good  they  did  (which 
might,  and  would,  in  time  have  been  done  by  less  un- 
scrupulous, ungentle  instruments),  that  it  might  have 
been  well  had  Scotland  been  liberated  by  Providence 
from  the  piebald  burden  of  both  of  them.1 

Buchanan  as  a  scholar  was  a  very  large  inheritor 
of  the  wisdom  of  many  ages,  the  largest  inheritor  of 

1  Carlyle's  estimate  of  Knox  I  accept  and  credit  as  the  estimate 
of  as  penetrating  an  insight  and  as  true  a  conscience  as  ever  uttered 
the  verdicts  of  history ;  but  it  is  the  estimate  of  a  mind  that  could 
discover  more  to  approve  in  the  storm  than  in  the  sunshine,  and 
who  too  readily  infers  noble  motives  from  splendid  results.  I 
believe  all  the  good  he  imputes  to  Knox  and  his  life-battle  for  truth, 
and  I  don't  believe  sufficiently  in  the  vileness  of  human  nature  to 
believe  in  any  of  the  charges  of  immorality  which  rival  ecclesiastics 
have  persisted  in  relating  against  him.  But  for  all  that,  I  am  not 
blind  to  his  human  imperfections.  I  am  far  from  thinking  him 
to  be  a  perfect  man,  much  less  a  perfect  Christian.  His  wild  joy 
and  unbridled  merriment  over  the  dying  miseries  of  Cardinal 


144  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

that  rare  kind  of  wealth  of  all  the  Scotsmen  of  his  day. 
He  was  by  nature  somewhat  of  a  sceptic,  the  teacher  in 
Latin — and  who  can  tell  what  beside? — of  Montaigne 
— most  candid  and  sincere  of  sceptics — by  necessity  a 
doubter,  as  true  seekers  of  truth,  especially  in  dark, 
troubled,  fermenting  ages,  cannot  help  being.  He  was 
a  philosopher — a  Stoic  probably,  as  most  impecunious 
philosophers  are  compelled  to  be  more  or  less,  capable 
of  bearing  the  inevitable  with  patience,  and  of  waiting 
to  solve  difficulties  by  skill  and  cautious  experiment 
rather  than  by  violence  or  deceit !  What  his  worldly 
wisdom  and  great  intellectual  power  might  have  done 
for  the  good  of  his  country  opens  up  a  wide  field  of 
conjecture  touching  the  solution  of  most  of  the  big 
problems  of  his  age.  Why  should  the  clever,  beautiful 
Queen  Mary  not  have  trusted  him  as  an  adviser  rather 
than  Scotch  rakes  and  traitors  and  Italian  fiddlers? 
Why  should  her  race,  more  gifted  than  most  royal 
races,  have  hugged  a  delusion  about  the  Divine  right 
of  kings  along  the  precipices  overhanging  death  and 
ruin  ?  Why  should  the  Reformers,  who  had  the  means 
of  ascertaining  that  among  them  he  was  a  veritable 

Beaton  and  of  Mary  of  Guise  would  be  scarcely  in  harmony  with  the 
budding  benevolence  of  a  half-reformed  cannibal.  His  virtues  were 
genuine,  and  not  hypocritical,  but  they  were  essentially  Pagan 
virtues — gifts  of  nature,  tested  and  strengthened,  but  not  acquired, 
through  his  experiences  as  a  notary  and  an  ecclesiastic. 


GEORGE  BUCHANAN  145 

Saul  among  the  prophets,  and  neither  a  fanatic  nor 
a  hypocrite,  not  have  utilised  his  wisdom  and  his 
inspiration  of  the  beautiful  and  the  true  to  direct  the 
course  and  shape  the  limits  of  the  Reformation,  without 
proclaiming  a  barbarian,  everlasting  divorce  between 
the  power  of  truth  and  the  beauty  of  holiness  ?  Why 
should  the  spiritual  force  and  illumination  of  every 
great  man  who  did  not  wear  fine  raiment  and  fare 
sumptuously  every  day,  of  the  prophets  of  Judaea  and 
the  sages  of  Greece  and  Rome,  have  been  lost  upon 
their  contemporaries  and  left  to  find  its  way  and  its 
expanding  efficacy  in  the  slow  course  of  centuries? 
Buchanan's  lot  was  the  common  lot  of  unendowed, 
and  therefore  unappreciated,  genius.  The  greatest 
scholar  and  writer  of  his  own  country  in  his  own  time, 
one  of  the  most  potent  of  the  intellectual  aristocracy 
of  Europe  for  all  time,  he  was  a  rustic  in  dress,  a 
plain,  unpretentious,  non-assertive  inhabitant  of  the 
European  villages  called  cities,  known  to  him  as  St. 
Andrews  and  Edinburgh;  a  man  pure  of  life  in  a 
vicious,  half-decent  age ;  loyal  to  truth  so  far  as  it  was 
possible  for  him  to  discover  it  among  contemporaries 
prone  to  falsehood  and  ready  for  the  perpetration 
of  it  by  forgery  or  any  other  effective  and  not  un- 
practicable  mode,  he  was  esteemed  a  stranger  in  his 
native  land,  and  not  a  Solon  or  a  seer  except  by 

K 


i46  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  more  cultured  of  his  own  unlettered  generation ; 
to  subsequent  vulgar  generations  he  was  so  unknown 
or  so  forgotten  as  to  fill,  in  their  rude  Temple  of  Fame, 
the  niche  of  a  mythical  court-jester  and  coarse  wit 
or  witling;  nevertheless  he  holds  a  title  to  lasting 
remembrance  as  sure  as  the  story  of  the  Reformation 
and  the  era  of  the  never-to-be-forgotten  Mary  Stuart 
can  give;  also  the  unique  distinction  of  being  the 
greatest  master  of  the  Latin  language  since  it  died  as 
a  vernacular,  and  became  the  immortal  medium  of 
intercommunication  for  the  wide,  high,  and  cold 
republic  of  scholars  and  thinkers,  scattered  through 
realms  of  ether  and  cloudland,  and  lit  by  volcanic  fire 
and  spiritual  aurora  fitfully  lifting  the  night  from 
peaks  of  rock  and  ice. 


INDEX 


Admonition  to  Trew  Lords,  the, 

130. 

^Eschylus,  15. 
Agamemnon,  15. 
Arius,  91. 

Ascham,  Roger,  81. 
Atonement,  the,  90. 
Augustine,  99. 
Aurelius,  Marcus,  100. 

Baptistes,  the,  57,  58. 
Beaton,  Cardinal,  122,  139. 
Begging  letter-writer,  31. 
Beza,  81. 
Boetius,  66,  100. 
Bordeaux,  58. 
Brahe,  Tycho,  44,  81. 
Brissac,  Marshal  of,  51. 
Brewster,  Sir  D. ,  129. 
Brown,  P.  Hume,  18. 
BUCHANAN,  GEORGE— 

Writings  burned  by  hangman,  9. 

Milton  and  Buchanan's  Dejure, 
10. 

Effect  of  the  De  Jure,  n. 

Relations  to  the  Scaligers,  13. 

Wordsworth  on  Buchanan,  14. 

Porson  and  Buchanan,  15. 

Milton's  opinion  of  him,  15. 

Hallam's  estimate  of  him,  16. 

Froude's  opinion  of  him,  16. 

Buchanan's  scholarship,  17. 


His  Detectio  Maries  Regina,  18. 
The  Marians  and  Buchanan,  20. 
The  chapbook  Buchanan,  21. 
His  humour,  22. 
Interview  with  Melvilles,  23. 
The  Countess  of  Mar  and,  25. 
Division  of  his  life  into  periods 

of  preparation  and  perform- 
ance, 27. 
Why  he  became  a  Protestant, 

28. 

Joseph  Scaliger's  elegy  on,  31. 
Begging  letter-writer,  31. 
Letters  to  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots, 

32. 

Letters  to  Earl  of  Moray,  32. 
Comparison  between  Erasmus 

and,  35. 
Hospitality  of  Roman  Catholic 

days,  36. 
His     influence     on     cultured 

Europe,  38. 
Parallel  ^between   his  conduct 

and  that  of  to-day,  39. 
No  loss  of  self-respect,  40. 
No  notoriety  hunter,  41. 
No  money  grabber,  43. 
Did  not  seek  power,  48. 
Dates  and  aims  of  his  works, 

SO- 
Moderator  of  General  Assembly, 

SL 

147 


148 


FAMOUS  SCOTS 


BUCHANAN,  GEORGE,  continued— 

Various  appointments  held,  51. 

Aids  in  drawing  up  First  Book 
of  Discipline,  51. 

Appointed  Principal  of  St.  Leo- 
nard's College,  51. 

Secretary  to  the  Scots  Commis- 
sion re  Mary,  51. 

Opinion  of  Sir  James  Melville 
of,  52. 

Not  to  be  blamed  for  James  vi.  's 
pedantry,  57. 

Dedicates  his  three  great  works 
to  the  king  —  Baptistes,  De 
Jure,  and  the  History,  57. 

Examination  of  the  Prefaces  to 
these,  58-65. 

Resembled  a  Scots  Stoic  philo- 
sopher, 66. 

His  courtly  manners,  70. 

Alleged  vindictiveness  towards 
Morton  disproved,  72. 

His  policy  regarding  Scots 
affairs,  76. 

Further  disproof  of  Sir  J.  Mel- 
ville's remarks,  80. 

His  religious  views,  83. 

The  Scots  Reformation  position, 
83-88. 

His  relations  to  Calvinism,  89- 
96. 

Not  a  zealot,  90. 

His  views  of  Evangelium,  90. 

His  pension,  92. 

His  dirge  upon  Calvin,  93. 

His  period  of  doubt,  98. 

Why  he  never  took  orders,  101. 

Is  Conformity  allowable?  104. 

Renaissance  morals,  106. 

Buchanan's  amorist  poetry,  107. 

Biographical  facts,  HI. 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church 
and  education,  1 12. 


Lords  of  the  Congregation  and 

education,  114. 
His  early  years  of  educat-on, 

116. 
Enlists  as  a  volunteer  to  invade 

England,  118. 
Life  at  St.  Andrews  University, 

119. 

Proceeds  to  St.  Barbe,  119. 
Friendship  with  Earl  of  Cassilis, 

119. 
James  v.  invites  him  to  write 

Frattciscanus,  121. 
Leaves  him  to  the  vengeance  of 

Beaton,  122. 

Escapes  from  prison  to  the  Con- 
tinent, 122. 
Migrates  to   Portugal :    seized 

by  the  Inquisition,  123. 
Imprisoned    in    a    monastery, 

where     he     translates     the 

Psalms,  123. 

Returns   to  Scotland   and   de- 
clares for  Protestantism,  124. 
Relations   between   Mary   and 

Buchanan,  125. 
Accused  of  ingratitude  towards 

her,  126. 
The    multifariousness    of    his 

work,  128. 
Writes  Admonition  to  the  Trew 

Lords,  130. 
Characteristics  of  his  History  of 

Seal  land,  132. 
Buchanan's  last  days,  133. 
His  burial-place  and  property 

135- 

Legend  of  his  skull,  135. 
Characteristics,  136. 
Final  summing  up,  137-145. 
Parallel    drawn    between    Dr. 
Wallace  and  Buchanan,  138. 
Burns,  107,  116. 


INDEX 


149 


CALVIN,  J. ,  82, 89,  90,  92,  94, 100. 

Cameron,  115. 

Cargill,  115, 

Carlyle,  T.,  34,  143. 

Casaubon,  13. 

Cassilis,  Lord,  51,  119,  134. 

Catullus,  66. 

Chameleon,  the,  50,  126. 

Chapbooks  on  Buchanan,  21. 

Charles  n.,  9. 

Cicero,  67. 

Coimbra,  college  of,  51,  98. 

College  de  Guyenne,  58. 

Congregation,  Lords  of,  114,  115. 

Covenanters,  115. 

DARNLEY,  128,  134,  139. 

Dawes,  Canon,  15. 

Detectio  Maries  Regintz,  18,  50. 

Diogenes,  69. 

Dionysius,  Lambinus,  67. 

Dirge,  the,  92. 

Discipline,  Book  of ,  112. 

Divine  right,  9,  n,  50,  57. 

Dryden,  John,  10. 

Dunbar,  William,  121. 

EDUCATION    in    Catholic   days, 

"3- 

Election,  doctrine  of,  90. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  127. 
England,  invasion  of,  118. 
Erasmus,  13,  34,  96,  99,  100. 
Eucharistic  controversy,  99. 
Evangelicals,  the,  89. 

FRANCE,  124. 

Franciscanus,  the,  50,  90,  98,  106, 

121. 

GAMALIEL,  58. 

General  Assembly  of  Church  of 
Scotland,  51. 


Genethliacon,  the,  56. 

Gibbon,  67,  118. 

Gouvea,  Andre"  de,  58,  122,  123. 

HACKNEY,  the,  75. 

Hamilton,  Sir  W.,  135. 

Hebrew  Psalms,  43,  123. 

Henry  Vin.,  127. 

Heriot,  J.,  116. 

Herod,  King,  58. 

Herodias,  58. 

History  of  Scotland,  50,  57,  63, 

132. 

Horace,  66. 
Hosack,  20. 
Humanists,  27,  28,  43,  58,  83,  84, 

126. 

INCARNATION,  the,  90. 
Indulgences,  90. 
Inquisition,  the,  43,  98. 

JAMES  iv.,  112. 
James  V. ,  50,  120. 
James  vi.,  46,  52,  56,  76. 
Johnson,  S. ,  15,  129. 
Justification  by  Faith,  86,  90. 

KlLLEARN,  III. 

Knox,  J.,  ii,  37,  40,  75,  76,  81, 
85,  92,  101,  102,  114,  115,  141. 

LATIN  Style,  17,  27,  132. 

'  Lena'  poetry,  the,  106. 

Lennox,  Earl  of,  33,  37. 

Leo  x. ,  84. 

Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  9. 

Livy,  31,  51,  132. 

Luther,  84. 

Lyndsay,  Sir  D.,  50,  121. 

MACAUSLAN,  in. 
Major,  John,  65. 


FAMOUS  SCOTS 


Mar,  Countess  of,  24.  81. 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  19. 31, 37, 40, 

51, 64, 75, 92,  120,  127, 128, 139. 
Mary  of  Guise,  102. 
Melville,  Andrew  and  James,  23, 

40,  81,  102,  115. 
Melville,  Sir  James,  52,  80. 
Milton,  John,  9,  10. 
Moderator  of  Assembly,  51,  128. 
Montaigne,  119. 
Moray,  Earl  of,  32,  33,  37,  51,  81, 

92,  121,  129,  130,  139. 
Morton,  Earl  of,  73,  74,  75,  79. 

Neara  pieces,  108. 
Nicenc  Dogmas,  86. 

OXFORD  UNIVERSITY,  9. 

PAN.STIUS,  67. 

Paris,  University  of,  116. 

Paten,  Guy,  16. 

Pension,  92. 

Petrus,  Victorinus,  67. 

Person,  15. 

Portugal,  43.  51,  98,  123. 

Prcdestinarianism,  86. 

Principal  of  St.  Leonard's,  51. 

Private  judgment,  86. 

RANDOLPH,  SirT.,  63,  71,  81. 
Reformation,  Scots,  n,  83, 85,  87, 
1 20. 


Renaissance,  the,  83,  87,  96,  106. 
Revolutions,  English,  American, 

and  French,  n. 
Kirzio,  128,  139. 
Roman  Catholic  hospitality,  36. 

Church,  28,  97,  99,  101. 

Russell.  Lord  William.  9. 

ST.  ANDREWS,  University  of  ,118, 

129. 

Sallust,  132. 

Scaligers,  the,  12,  13,  30,  48,  81. 
Scott,  Sir  W.,  116. 
Seneca,  63,  67,  100. 
Shairp,  Principal,  107. 
Shakespeare,  12,  15. 
Skelton.  Sir  J.,  20,  125. 
Skull,  Buchanan's,  135. 
Socrates,  69,  100. 
Stephanus,  12. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  107. 
Stoic  philosopher,  53,  63,  66,  69, 

73,  82,  100. 

TACITUS,  132. 
Tennyson,  12,  127. 
Thackeray,  34,  81. 
Thyutes,  the,  63. 
Transubstantiation,  90. 

WORDSWORTH,  W.,  14. 
YOUNG,  Peter,  53,  55,  57,  62. 


OPINIONS    OF    THE    PRESS    ON    THE 
'FAMOUS    SCOTS'    SERIES. 

Of  THOMAS  CARLYLE,  by  H.  C.  MACPHERSON, 

The  British  Weekly  says  : — 

'  We  congratulate  the  publishers  on  the  in  every  way  attractive  appearance  of  the 
first  volume  of  their  new  series.  The  typography  is  everything  that  could  be  wished, 
and  the  binding  is  most  tasteful.  .  .  .  We  heartily  congratulate  author  and  pub- 
lishers on  the  happy  commencement  of  this  admirable  enterprise." 

The  Literary  World  says : — 

'  One  of  the  very  best  little  books  on  Carlyle  yet  written,  far  outweighing  in  value 
some  more  pretentious  works  with  which  we  are  familiar.' 

The  Scotsman  says  : — 

'As  an  estimate  of  the  Carlylean  philosophy,  and  of  Carlyle's  place  in  literature 
and  his  influence  in  the  domains  of  morals,  politics,  and  social  ethics,  the  volume 
reveals  not  only  care  and  fairness,  but  insight  and  a  large  capacity  for  original 
thought  and  judgment." 

The  Glasgow  Daily  Record  says  : — 

'  Is  distinctly  creditable  to  the  publishers,  and  worthy  of  a  national  series  such  as 
they  have  projected." 

The  Educational  News  says  : — 
'  The  book  is  written  in  an  able,  masterly,  and  painstaking  manner." 

Of  ALLAN  RAMSAY,  by  OLIPHANT  SMEATON, 

The  Scotsman  says  : — 

'  It  is  not  a  patchwork  picture,  but  one  in  which  the  writer,  taking  genuine  interest 
in  his  subject,  and  bestowing  conscientious  pains  on  his  task,  has  his  materials  well 
in  hand,  and  has  used  them  to  produce  a  portrait  that  is  both  lifelike  and  well 
balanced.' 

The  People's  Friend  says  : — 

'  Presents  a  very  interesting  sketch  of  the  life  of  the  poet,  as  well  as  a  well-balanced 
estimate  and  review  of  his  works." 

The  Edinburgh  Dispatch  says  : — 
'  The  author  has  shown  scholarship  and  much  enthusiasm  in  his  task.' 

The  Daily  Record  says : — 

1  The  kindly,  vain,  and  pompous  little  wig-maker  lives  for  us  in  Mr.  Smeaton's 
pages." 

The  Glasgow  Herald  says  : — 
1  A  careful  and  intelligent  study." 

Of  HUGH  MILLER,  by  W.  KEITH  LEASK, 

The  Expository  Times  says : — 

'It  is  a  right  good  book  and  a  right  true  biography.  .  .  .  There  is  a  very  fine 
sense  of  Hugh  Miller's  greatness  as  a  man  and  a  Scotsman ;  there  is  also  a  fine 
choice  of  language  in  making  it  ours.' 

The  Bookseller  says  : — 

'Mr.  Leask  gives  the  reader  a  clear  impression  of  the  simplicity,  and  yet  the 
greatness,  of  his  hero,  and  the  broad  result  of  his  life's  work  is  very  plainly  and 
carefully  set  forth.  A  short  appreciation  of  his  scientific  labours,  from  the  com- 
petent pen  of  Sir  Archibald  Geikie,  and  a  useful  bibliography  of  bis  works,  complete 
a  volume  which  is  well  worth  reading  for  its  own  sake,  and  which  forms  a  worthy 
instalment  in  an  admirable  series." 

The  Daily  News  says  : — 
'  Leaves  on  us  a  very  vivid  impression." 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES — (ontinued. 

Of  JOHN  KNOX,  by  A.  TAYLOR  INNES,  Mr.  Hay  Fleming,  in 

The  Bookman  says : — 

'A  masterly  delineation  of  those  stirring  times  in  Scotland,  and  of  that  famous 
Scot  who  helped  so  much  to  shape  them.' 

The  Freeman  says : — 

1  It  is  a  concise,  well  written,  and  admirable  narrative  of  the  great  Reformer's  life, 
and  in  its  estimate  of  his  character  and  work  it  is  calm,  dispassionate,  and  well 
balanced.  .  .  .  It  is  a  welcome  addition  to  our  Knox  literature. 

The  Speaker  says : — 
'  There  is  vision  in  this  book,  as  well  as  knowledge." 

The  Sunday  School  Chronicle  says  : — 

1  Everybody  who  is  acquainted  with  Mr.  Taylor  Innes's  exquisite  lecture  on 
Samuel  Rutherford  will  feel  instinctively  that  he  ts  just  the  man  to  do  justice  to  the 
great  Reformer,  who  is  more  to  Scotland  '  than  any  million  of  unblameable  Scotsmen 
who  need  no  forgiveness.'  His  literary  skill,  his  thorough  acquaintance  with  Scottish 
ecclesiastical  life,  his  religious  insight,  his  chastened  enthusiasm,  have  enabled  the 
author  to  produce  an  excellent  piece  of  work.  .  .  .  It  is  a  noble  and  inspiring  theme, 
and  Mr.  Taylor  Innes  has  handled  it  to  perfection.' 

Of  ROBERT  BURNS,  by  GABRIEL  SETOUN, 

The  New  Age  says : — 

'  It  is  the  best  thing  on  Burns  we  have  yet  had,  almost  as  good  as  Carlyle's  Essay 
and  the  pamphlet  published  by  Dr.  Nichol  of  Glasgow.' 

The  Methodist  Times  says  : — 

'  We  are  inclined  to  regard  it  as  the  very  best  that  has  yet  been  produced.  _There 
is  a  proper  perspective,  and  Mr.  Setoun  does  neither  praise  nor  blame  too  copiously. 
...  A  difficult  bit  of  work  has  been  well  done,  and  with  fine  literary  and  ethical 
discrimination.' 

Youth  says : — 

'  It  is  written  with  knowledge,  judgment,  and  skill.  .  .  .  The  author's  estimate 
of  the  moral  character  of  Bums  is  temperate  and  discriminating  ;  he  sees  and  states 
his  evil  qualities,  and  beside  these  he  places  his  good  ones  in  their  fulness,  depth, 
and  splendour.  The  exposition  of  the  special  features  marking  the  genius  of  the 
poet  is  able  and  penetrating.' 

Of  THE  BALLADISTS,  by  JOHN  GEDDIE, 

The  Birmingham  Daily  Gazette  says  : — 

'  As  a  popular  sketch  of  an  intensely  popular  theme,  Mr.  Geddie's  contribution  to 
the  "  Famous  Scots  Series  "  is  most  excellent.' 

The  Publishers'  Circular  says  :— 

'  It  may  be  predicted  that  lovers  of  romantic  literature  will  re-peruse  the  old 
ballads  with  a  quickened  zest  after  reading  Mr.  Geddie's  book.  We  have  not  had  a 
more  welcome  little  volume  for  many  a  day.' 

The  f(Tfw  Age  says  : — 

'  One  of  the  most  delightful  and  eloquent  appreciations  of  the  ballad  literature  of 
Scotland  that  has  ever  seen  the  light.' 

The  Spectator  says  :— 

1  The  author  has  certainly  made  a  contribution  of  remarkable  value  to  the  literary 
history  of  Scotland.  We  do  not  know  of  a  book  in  which  the  subject  has  been  treated 
with  deeper  sympathy  or  out  of  a  fuller  knowledge.' 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES — continued. 

Of  RICHARD  CAMERON,  by  Professor  HERKLESS, 

The  Freeman  says  : — 

'  Professor  Herkless  has  made  us  all  his  debtors  by  his  thorough-going  and 
unwearied  research,  by  his  collecting  materials  from  out-of-the-way  quarters,  and 
making  much  that  was  previously  vague  and  shadowy  clear  and  distinct.' 

The  Christian  News  says  : — 

'This  volume  is  ably  written,  is  full  of  interest  and  instruction,  and  enables  the 
reader  to  form  a  conception  of  the  man  who  in  his  day  and  generation  gave  his  life 
for  Christ's  cause  and  kingdom.' 

The  Dundee  Courier  says : — 

'In  selecting  Professor  Herkless  to  prepare  this  addition  to  the  "  Famous  Scots 
Series"  of  books,  the  publishers  have  made  an  excellent  choice.  The  vigorous, 
manly  style  adopted  is  exactly  suited  to  the  subject,  and  Richard  Cameron  is  pre- 
sented to  the  reader  in  a  manner  as  interesting  as  it  is  impressive.  .  .  .  Professor 
Herkless  has  done  remarkably  well,  and  the  portrait  he  has  so  cleverly  delineated 
of  one  of  Scotland's  most  cherished  heroes  is  one  that  will  never  fade.' 

Of  SIR  JAMES  YOUNG  SIMPSON,  by  EVE  BLANTYRE  SIMPSON, 

The  Speaker  says : — 

'  This  little  book  is  full  o_f  insight  and  knowledge,  and  by  many  picturesque 
incidents  and  pithy  sayings  it  helps  us  to  understand  in  a  vivid  and  intimate  sense 
the  high  qualities  and  golden  deeds  which  rendered  Sir  James  Simpson's  strenuous 
life  impressive  and  memorable.' 

The  Daily  Chronicle  says : — 

'  It  is  indeed  long  since  we  have  read  such  a  charmingly-written  biography  as  this 
little  Life  of  the  most  typical  and  "  Famous  Scot"  that  his  countrymen  have  been 
proud  of  since  the  time  of  Sir  Walter.  .  .  .  There  is  not  a  dull,  irrelevant,  or  super- 
flous  page  in  all  Miss  Simpson's  booklet,  and  she  has  performed  the  biographer's 
chief  duty — that  of  selection — with  consummate  skill  and  judgment.' 

The  Leeds  Mercury  says  : — 

'The  narrative  throughout  is  well  balanced,  and  the  biographer  has  been  wisely 
advised  in  giving  prominence  to  her  father's  great  achievement — the  introduction  of 
chloroform — and  what  led  to  it.' 

Of  THOMAS  CHALMERS,  by  W.  GARDEN  BLAIKIE, 

The  Spectator  says : — 

'  The  most  notable  feature  of  Professor  Blaikie's  book— and  none  could_  be  _more 
commendable — is  its  perfect  balance  and  proportion.  In  other  words,  justice  is 
done  equally  to  the  private  and  to  the  public  life  of  Chalmers,  if  possible  greater 
justice  than  has  been  done  by  Mrs.  Oliphant.' 

The  Scottish  Congregationalist  says  : — 

'  No  one  can  read  the  admirable  and  vivid  sketch  of  his  life  which  Dr.  Blaikie  has 
written  without  feeling  admiration  for  the  man,  and  gaining  inspiration  from  his 
example.' 

Of  JAMES  BOSWELL,  by  W.  KEITH  LEASK, 

The  Spectator  says  : — 

'This  is  one  of  the  best  volumes  of  the  excellent  "  Famous  Scots  Series,"  and  one 
of  the  fairest  and  most  discriminating  biographies  of  Boswell  that  have  ever 
appeared.' 

The  Dundee  Advertiser  says  : — 

'  It  is  the  admirable  manner  in  which  the  very  complexity  of  the  man  is  indicated 
that  makes  W.  Keith  Leask's  biography  of  him  one.  of  peculiar  merit  and  interest. 
...  It  is  not  only  a  life  of  Boswell,  but  a  picture  of  his  time— vivid,  faithful, 
impressive.' 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES— continued. 

The  Morning  Leader  says : — 

'  Mr.  W.  K.  Leask  has  approached  the  biographer  of  Johnson  in  the  only  possible 
way  by  which  a  really  interesting  book  could  have  been  arrived  at— by  way  of  the 
open  mind.  .  .  .  The  defence  of  Boswell  in  the  concluding  chapter  of  his  delightful 
study  is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  convincing  passages  that  have  recently  appeared 
in  the  field  of  British  biography.' 

Of  TOBIAS  SMOLLETT,  by  OLIPHANT  SMEATON, 

The  Dundee  Courier  says : — 

**• '  It  is  impossible  to  read  the  pages  of  this  little  work  without  being  struck  not  only 
by  its  historical  value,  but  by  the  fairness  of  its  criticism.' 

The  Weekly  Scotsman  says  : — 

'  The  book  is  written  in  a  crisp  and  lively  style.  .  .  .  The  picture  of  the  great 
novelist  is  complete  and  lifelike.  Not  only  does  Mr.  Smeaton  give  a  scholarly 
sketch  and  estimate  of  Smollett's  literary  career,  he  constantly  keeps  the  reader  in 
conscious  touch  and  sympathy  with  his  personality,  and  produces  a  portrait  of  the 
man  as  a  man  which  is  not  likely  to  be  readily  forgotten.' 

The  Newsagent  and  Booksellers'  Review  says : — 

'  Tobias  Smollett  was  versatile  enough  to  deserve  a  distinguished  place  in  any 
gallery  of  gifted  Scots,  such  as  the  one  to  which  Mr.  Smeaton  has  contributed  this 
clever  and  lifelike  portrait.' 

Of  FLETCHER  OF  SALTOUN,  by  W.  G.  T.  OMOND, 

The  Edinburgh  Evening  News  says : — 

'  The  writer  has  given  us  in  brief  compass  the  pith  of  what  U  known  about  an  able 
and  patriotic  if  somewhat  dogmatic  and  impracticable  Scotsman  who  lived  in  stormy 
times.  .  .  .  Mr.  Omond  describes,  in  a  clear,  terse,  vigorous  way,  the  constitution 
of  the  Old  Scots  Parliament,  and  the  part  taken  by  Fletcher  as  a  public  man  in  the 
stormy  debates  that  took  place  prior  to  the  union  of  the  Parliaments  in  1707-  This 
part  of  the  book  gives  an  admirable  summary  of  the  state  of  Scottish  politics  and  of 
the  national  feeling  at  an  important  period.' 

The  Leeds  Mercury  says  : — 

'  Unmistakably  the  most  interesting  and  complete  story  of  the  life  of  Fletcher  of 
Saltoun  that  has  yet  appeared.  Mr.  Omond  has  had  many  facilities  placed  at  his 
disposal,  and  of  these  he  has  made  excellent  use.' 

The  Speaker  says : — 

'  Mr.  Omond  has  told  the  story  of  Fletcher  of  Saltoun  in  this  monograph  with 
ability  and  judgment.' 

Of  THE  BLACKWOOD  GROUP,  by  Sir  GEORGE  DOUGLAS, 

The  Scotsman  says  : — 

'  In  brief  compass,  Sir  George  Douglas  gives  us  skilfully  blended  together  much 
pleasantly  written  biography  and  just  and  judicious  criticism.' 

The  Weekly  Citizen  says  : — 

1  It  need  not  be  said  that  to  every  one  interested  in  the  literature  of  the  first  half 
of  the  century,  and  especially  to  every  Scotsman  so  interested,  "The  Blackwood 
Group  "  is  a  phrase  abounding  in  promise.  And  really  Sir  George  Douglas  fulfils 
the  promise  he  tacitly  makes  in  his  title.  He  is  intimately  acquainted  not  only  with 
the  books  of  the  different  members  of  the  "group,"  but  also  with  their  environment, 
social  and  otherwise.  Besides,  he  writes  with  sympathy  as  well  as  knowledge.' 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES— continued. 

Of  NORMAN  MACLEOD,  by  JOHN  WELLWOOD, 

The  Star  says  : — 

'  A  worthy  addition  to  the  "  Famous  Scots  Series  "  is  that  of  Norman  Macleod,  the 
renowned  minister  of  the  Barony  of  Glasgow,  and  a  man  as  typical  of  everything 
generous  and  broadminded  in  the  State  Church  in  Scotland  as  Thomas  Guthrie  was 
in  the  Free  Churches.  The  biography  is  the  work  of  John  Wellwood,  who  has 
approached  it  with  proper  appreciation  of  the  robustness  of  the  subject.' 

The  Scots  Pictorial  says  : — 

'  Its  general  picturesqueness  is  effective,  while  the  criticism  is  eminently  liberal  and 
sound.' 

The  Daily  Free  Press  says  : — 

'  It  is  one  of  the  great  merits  of  Mr.  Wellwood's  book  that  it  is  wholly  free  from 
dulness.  His  attention  once  secured,  the  reader  is  carried  irresistibly  along  till  he 
has  finished  the  whole  of  the  fascinating  story.' 

The  Daily  Chronicle  says  : — 

'  Mr.  Wellwood  is  in  thorough  sympathy  with  his  hero,  and  has  given  us  in  this 
little  volume  a  graphic  and  picturesque  sketch  of  him." 

Of  SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  by  GEORGE  SAINTSBURY, 

The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  says  : — 

'  Mr.  Saintsbury's  miniature  is  a  gem  of  its  kind.  .  .  .  Mr.  Saintsbury's  critique  of 
the  Waverley  Novels  will,  I  venture  to  think,  despite  all  that  has  been  written  upon 
them,  discover  fresh  beauties  for  their  admirers.' 

The  Morning  Leader  says  : — 
'  A  fresh  and  charming  biography." 

The  St.  James's  Gazette  says  : — 

1  Apart  from  Lockhart,  we  do  not  know  any  one  who  has  given  a  better  picture  of 
Scott  than  Mr.  Saintsbury,  and  there  is  no  sounder  and  more  comprehensive  estimate 
of  his  work.' 

The  Scots  Magazine  says  : — 

'  The  little  volume  is  bright,  informative  reading,  and  is  a  worthy  addition  to  a 
capital  and  much-needed  series." 

Of  KIRKCALDY  OF  GRANGE,  by  Louis  A.  BARBE, 

The  Scotsman  says  : — 

'  Mr.  Barbe's  sketch  sticks  close  to  the  facts  of  his  life,  and  these  are  sought  out 
from  the  best  sources  and  are  arranged  with  much  judgment,  and  on  the  whole  with 
an  impartial  mind." 

The  Glasgow  Herald  says  : — 

'  A  conscientious  and  thorough  piece  of  work,  showing  wide  and  accurate  know- 
ledge.' 

The  Speaker  says  : — 

'  This  scholarly  monograph  seeks  to  unravel  the  seeming  contradictions  of  a  great 
career,  as  well  as  to  show  that  Kirkcaldy  of  Grange  was  a  sincere  patriot.' 

The  Bookseller  says  : — 

'  Mr.  Barbe  has  put  together  a  very  instructive  and  interesting  account  of  his 
career.' 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES — continued. 

Of  ROBERT  FERGUSSON,  by  DR.  A.  B.  GROSART, 

The  Westminster  Gautte  says  : — 

'  One  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  "  Famous  Scots  "  Series  is  devoted  to  "  Robert 
Fergusson  "  the  poet,  to  whom  "the  greater  Robert,"  as  he  freely  acknowledged,  was 
under  so  many  obligations.  Dr.  Grosart  is  perhaps  the  best  living  authority  on  all 
that  relates  to  the  bard  of  "  The  Fanner's  Ingle,"  and  he  gives  many  new  facts  and 
corrects  a  number  of  erroneous  statements  that  have  hitherto  obtained  currency 
respecting  him.  We  have  read  it  with  genuine  pleasure.' 

The  British  Weekly  says  :— 

'It  is  a  creditable,  useful,  and  painstaking  book,  a  genuine  contribution  to 
Scottish  literary  history.' 

The  North  British  Daily  Mail  says  : — 

'  The  little  volume  is  a  thoroughly  competent  piece  of  work,  and  forms  a  valuable 
addition  to  an  excellent  series.' 

The  Weekly  Scotsman  says : — 

'  The  book  will  be  welcomed  as  a  worthy  addition  to  that  wonderfully  entertaining 
and  instructive  series  of  biographies,  the  "  Famous  Scots." 

Of  JAMES  THOMSON,  by  WILLIAM  BAYNE, 

The  Daily  News  says  : — 

*  A  just  appreciation  of  Thomson  as  poet  and  dramatist,  and  an  interesting  record 
of  the  conditions  under  which  he  rose  to  fame,  as  also  of  his  friendships  with  toe  great 
ones  of  the  eighteenth  century.' 

Literature  says : — 

'  The  story  o_f  Thomson's  claim  to  the  disputed  authorship  of  "  Rule  Britannia  "  is 
sustained  by  his  country-man  with  spirit,  and  in  our  judgment  with  success.' 

The  Publishers'  Circular  says  : — 

1  The  book  is  one  which  every  lover  of  Thomson  will  welcome,  and  which  students 
of  poetry  cannot  well  afford  to  neglect.' 

The  Spectator  says  :— 

1  This  is  one  of  the  compactest  and  best  written  volumes  of  the  useful  series  of 
biographies  to  which  it  belongs.' 

Of  MUNGO  PARK,  by  T.  BANKS  MACLACHLAN, 

The  Leeds  Mercury  says  :  — 

'  We  owe  to  Mr.  Maclachlan  not  only  a  charming  life-story,  if  at  times  a  pathetic 
one,  but  a  vivid  chapter  in  the  romance  of  Africa.  Geography  has  no  more  wonder- 
ful tale  than  that  dealing  with  the  unravelling  of  the  mystery  of  the  Niger.' 

The  Speaker  says : — 

'  Mr.  Maclachlan  recounts  with  incisive  vigour  the  story  of  Mungo  Park's  heroic 
wanderings  and  the  services  which  he  rendered  to  geographical  research.' 

The  Kilmarnock  Herald  says  : — 
'  It  is  a  thrilling  story,  powerfully  told,  of  one  of  Scotland's  noblest  sons.' 

The  Educational  News  says  : — 

'  Mungo  Park  has  his  record  here  summarised  in  such  a  manner  as  to  win,  inform, 
and  delight.' 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES— continued. 

Of  DAVID  HUME,  by  HENRY  CALDERWOOD, 

The  Speaker  says  :— 

'  The  little  book  is  a  virile  recruit  of  the  "  Famous  Scots  Series." ' 
'  This  monograph  is  both  picturesque  and  critical.' 

The  New  Age  says  : — 

'  To  the  many  students  of  philosophy  in  Scotland  a  special  interest  will  attach  to 
Professor  Calderwood's  sketch  of  David  Hume  from  the  fact  that  it  is  the  last  piece 
of  work  done  by  its  lamented  author  ;  and  very  pleasing  it  is  to  note  the  fairness  and 
charity  of  the  judgment  passed  by  the  most  evangelical  of  philosophers  upon  the  man 
who  used  to  be  denounced  as  the  prophet  of  infidelity.' 

The  Scotsman  says  : — 

1  Fulfils  admirably  well  the  purpose  of  the  writer,  which  was  that  of  presenting  in 
clear,  fair,  and  concise  lines  Hume  and  his  philosophy  to  the  mind  of  his  countrymen 
and  of  the  world.' 

The  Publishers'  Circular  says  : — 

'  This  biography  is  well  written,  and  it  will  no  doubt  be  considered,  as  it  really  is, 
one  of  the  best  of  the  "  Famous  Scots  Series."  ' 

Of  WILLIAM  DUNBAR,  by  OLIPHANT  SMEATON, 

The  Speaker  says  : — 

'  Mr.  Smeaton  looks  narrowly  into  the  characteristics  of  Dunbar's  genius,  and  does 
well  to  insist  on  the  almost  Shakespearian  range  of  his  gifts.  He  contends  that  in 
elegy,  as  well  as  in  satire  and  allegory,  Dunbar's  place  in  English  literature  is 
amongst  the  great  masters  of  the  craft  of  letters. ' 

The  Glasgow  Herald  says :  — 

'  This  is  a  bright  and  picturesquely  written  monograph,  presenting  in  readable 
form  the  results  of  the  critical  research  undertaken  by  Laing,  Schipper,  and  the 
other  scholars  who  during  the  present  century  have  done  so  much  for  the  elucidation 
of  the  greatest  of  our  early  Scottish  poets.' 

The  Bailie  says  : — 

'  A  graphic  and  informed  account  not  only  of  the  man  and  his  works,  but  of  his 
immediate  environment  and  of  the  times  in  which  he  lived.' 

The  Bookman  says  : — 

'  The  book  is  an  admirable  biography,  one  of  the  liveliest  and  most  readable  in  the 
series.' 

Of  SIR  WILLIAM  WALLACE,  by  Professor  MURISON, 

The  Speaker  says  : — 

'  Mr.  Murison  is  to  be  congratulated  on  this  little  book.  After  much  hard  and 
discriminative  labour  he  has  pieced  together  by  far  the  best,  one  might  say  the  only 
rational  and  coherent,  account  of  Wallace  that  exists." 

Mr.  William  Wallace  in  the  Academy  says  : — 
'  Professor  Murison  has  acquitted  himself  of  his  task  like  a  patriot.' 
'  Capital  reading.' 

The  Daily  News  says  : — 

'  A  scholarly  and  impartial  little  volume,  one  of  the  best  yet  published  in  the 
"  Famous  Scots  Series." ' 

The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  says  :— 

'  A  bright  little  book  which  will  be  much  relished  north  of  the  Tweed,  and  also 
among  those  Scottish  exiles  who  are  supposed  to  be  pining  away  their  lives  south 
of  it.' 

The  New  Age  says  : — 

'Anyhow,  here,  at  least,  we  have  his  life-story — a  most  difficult  tale  to  tell — 
recorded  with  a  painstaking  research  and  in  a  spirit  of  appreciative  candour  which 
leave  almost  nothing  to  be  desired.' 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES— continued. 

Of    ROBERT    LOUIS    STEVENSON,    by    MARGARET    MOVES 

BLACK, 

The  Banffshire  Journal  says :  — 

1  The  portrait,  drawn  as  it  in  by  a  loving  hand,  is  absolutely  photographic  in  its 
likeness,  and  the  literary  criticisms  with  which  the  book  is  pleasantly  studded  are 
alike  careful  and  judicious,  and  with  most  of  them  the  ordinary  reader  will  cordially 
agree.' 

The  Bookman  says  : — 
'  This  little  book  is  sure  to  get  a  welcome.' 

The  Speaker  says  :— 

'Sense  and  sensibility  are  in  these  pages,  as  well  as  knowledge  and  delicate 
discrimination.' 

The  Outlook  says  :— 

'  Certainly  one  of  the  most  charming  biographies  we  have  ever  come  across.  The 
writer  has  style,  sympathy,  distinction;  and  understanding.  We  were  loth  to  put 
the  book  aside.  Its  one  fault  is  that  it  is  too  short.' 

The  Daily  Free  Press  says  : — 

'  One  of  the  most  charming  sketches — it  is  scarcely  a  biography — of  a  literary  man 
that  could  be  found  has  just  been  published  as  the  latest  number  of  the  "  Famous 
Scots  Series'* — "  R.  Louis  Stevenson,"  by  Miss  Black.  The  excellence  of  the  little 
book  lies  in  its  artless  charm,  in  its  loose  and  easy  style,  in  its  author's  evident  love 
and  delight  in  her  subject.' 

Of  THOMAS  REID,  by  Professor  CAMPBELL  ERASER, 

The  North  British  Daily  Mail  says  :  — 
'  A  model  of  sympathetic  appreciation  and  of  succinct  and  lucid  exposition.' 

The  Scotsman  says  : — 

'  Professor  Campbell  Fraser's  volume  on  Thomas  Reid  is  one  of  the  most  able  and 
valuable  of  an  able  and  valuable  series.  He  supplies  what  must  be  allowed  to  be  a 
distinct  want  in  our  literature,  in  the  shape  of  a  brief,  popular,  and  accessible 
biography  of  the  founder  of  the  so-called  Scottish  School  of  Philosophy,  written  with 
notable  perspicuity  and  sympathy  by  one  who  has  made  a  special  study  of  the 
problems  that  engaged  the  mind  of  Reid.' 
The  Glasgow  Herald  says  : — 

'  We  do  not  know  any  volume  of  the  "  Famous  Scots  Series"  that  deserves  or  is 
likely  to  receive  a  heartier  welcome  from  the  educated  public  than  this  life  and 
estimate  of  Reid  by  Professor  Campbell  Fraser.  The  writer  is  no  amateur,  but  a 
past-master  in  the  subject  of  Scottish  philosophy,  and  it  has  evidently  been  a  real 
pleasure  to  him  to  expiscate  quite  a  number  of  new  facts  regarding  the  professional 
and  private  life  of  its  best  representative.' 
The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  says  :— 

'  The  little  work  is  of  high  excellence — comprehensive  in  view,  clear  in  exposition, 
and  exemplary  in  literary  style.' 

The  Saturday  Review  says  : — 

'  Mr.  Campbell  Fraser  has  added  to  the  "  Famous  Scots  Series  "  an  excellent  little 
book  on  Reid  and  his  philosophy,  dealing  lucidly  with  the  philosopher's  relations 
with  contemporary  thinkers  and  with  modern  thought.' 

Of  POLLOK  AND  AYTOUN,  by  ROSALINE  MASSON, 

The  Spectator  says  : — 

'  One  of  the  most  artistically  conceived  and  gracefully  written  of  the  series  to  which 
it  belongs.' 

The  Glasgow  Herald  says  : — 

'  The  facts  of  the  two  lives  are  presented  by  Miss  Masson  with  intelligence  and 
spirit,  and  the  volume  will  take  a  good  place  among  the  rest  of  the  series.' 


PRESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES — continued. 

Of  ADAM  SMITH,  by  HECTOR  C.  MACPHERSON, 

The  Speaker  says  : — 

'  This  little  book  is  written  with  brains  and  a  degree  of  courage  which  is  in  keeping 
with  its  convictions.  It  has  vision,  too,  and  that  counts  for  righteousness,  if  any- 
where, in  political  economy.' 

The  Echo  says  :— 

'  Smith's  life  is  briefly  and  clearly  told,  and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  independent 
criticism  interspersed  amidst  the  chapters  on  the  philosopher's  two  principal 
treatises.  Mr.  Macpherson's  analysis  of  Smith's  economic  teaching  makes  excellent 
reading. ' 

The  Scots  Pictorial  says : — 

'  One  of  the  best  of  an  admirable  series.' 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  says  : — 

'  I  have  learned  much  from  your  sketch  of  Adam  Smith's  life  and  work.  It  pre- 
sents the  essential  facts  in  a  lucid  and  interesting  way.  Especially  am  I  glad  to  see 
that  you  have  insisted  upon  the  individualistic  character  of  his  teaching.  It  is  well 
that  his  authority  on  the  side  of  individualism  should  be  put  forward  in  these  days 
of  rampant  Socialism,  when  the  great  mass  of  legislative  measures  extend  public 
agency  and  restrict  private  agency ;  the  advocates  of  such  measures  being  blind  to 
the  fact  that  by  small  steps  they  are  bringing  about  a  state  in  which  the  citizen  will 
have  lost  all  freedom.' 

The  Glasgow  Herald  says : — 

1 A  sound  and  able  piece  of  work,  and  contains  a  fair  and  discerning  estimate  of 
Smith  in  his  essential  character  as  the  author  of  the  doctrine  of  Free  Trade,  and 
consequently  of  the  modern  science  of  economics.' 

Of  ANDREW  MELVILLE,  by  WILLIAM  MORISON, 

The  Spectator  says : — 

'  The  story  is  well  told,  and  it  takes  one  through  a  somewhat  obscure  period  with 
which  it  is  well  to  be  acquainted.  No  better  guide  could  be  found  than  Mr.  Morison." 

The  Speaker  says  : — 

'  The  great  aspects  of  his  career  as  Principal  of  Glasgow  and  then  of  St.  Andrews 
— it  has  been  said  that  the  European  renown  of  the  Scottish  Universities  began  with 
Melville — are  admirably  discussed  in  this  virile,  and  at  the  same  time  critical 
monograph." 

The  North  British  Daily  Mail  says  :— 

'  Mr.  Morison  outlines  the  main  facts  of  Melville's  life-work  with  singular  lucidity 
and  point.  He  displays  a  full  and  accurate  knowledge  of  the  ecclesiastical  history 
of  the  period,  and  his  judgments  are  invariably  sound.  Altogether  the  book  is  one 
of  the  best  of  the  series.' 

The  British  Weekly  says  : — 

'  Mr.  Morison  writes  with  full  knowledge  of  Scottish  history,  and  also  with  what 
is  equally  important,  perfect  sympathy  with  the  strong  men  who  made  it.' 

The  Academy  says : — 
'  Mr.  Morison  has  told  Melville's  story  with  a  care  for  accurate  history.' 

Of  JAMES  FREDERICK  FERRIER,  by  E.  S.   HALDANE, 

The  Scotsman  says : — 

'  Ferrier  the  man,  and  even  Ferrier  the  professor,  Miss  Haldane  brings  near  to 
us,  an  attractive  and  interesting  figure." 

The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  says : — 

'  His  splendid  and  transcendental  thought  and  fine  eloquence  were  so  inspiring 
and  stimulating,  and  his  personal  charm  was  so  fascinating,  that  a  study  of  the  man 
must  engage  the  sympathies  of  every  student.  The  author,  who  is  already  known 
for  admirable  work  in  the  philosophical  field,  has  written  an  excellent'exposition  of 
Ferrier's  views. 


I'RESS  OPINIONS  ON  'FAMOUS  SCOTS'  SERIES— continued. 

Of  KING  ROBERT  THE  BRUCE,  by  Professor  MURISON, 

The  Morning  Leader  says  : — 

'  Professor  Murison  has  given  us  a  book  for  which  not  only  Scots,  but  every  man 
who  can  appreciate  a  record  of  great  day*  worthily  told  will  be  grateful.' 

The  Aberdeen  Journal  says  : — 

'  The  story  of  Bruce  is  brilliantly  told  in  clear  and  flexible  language,  which  draws 
the  reader  on  with  the  interest  of  a  novel.  Professor  Murison  is  a  most  impartial 
and  thoroughly  reliable  critic,  and  may  be  followed  with  confidence  by  all  who 
desire  a  truthful  and  unprejudiced  picture  of  this  greatest  of  the  Scot*.' 

The  Leeds  Mercury  says  : — 
'  A  worthy,  as  it  is  a  necessary,  addition  to  an  admirable  series.' 

The  Speaker  says  : — 

'  He  has  sifted  for  himself  State  records,  official  papers,  old  chronicles,  and  has 
come  to  his  own  conclusions  without  the  aid  of  modern  historians.  Therein  lies  the 
value  of  the  book :  it  is  a  fresh,  independent,  critical  estimate  of  a  man  who 
emancipated  Scotland  from  a  thraldom  which  was  almost  worse  than  death.  Brace's 
career  from  first  to  last  is  described  in  these  pages  with  uncompromised  fidelity,  and 
no  attempt  is  made  to  gloss  over  the  faults  of  a  masterful  nature.' 

The  Morning  Leader  says : — 

'  Professor  Murison  has  given  us  a  book  for  which  not  only  Scots,  but  every  man 
who  can  appreciate  a  record  of  great  days  worthily  told,  will  be  grateful.' 

Of    JAMES     HOGG,    THE    ETTRICK    SHEPHERD,    by    Sir 
GEORGE  DOUGLAS, 

The  Scotsman  says : — 

1  Sir  George  Douglas  has  contributed  a  gracefully  written  and  well-knit  biography 
of  the  Ettrick  Shepherd  to  the  "Famous  Scots"  Series.  It  follows  in  a  spirit  of 
kindly  criticism  the  steps  of  Hogg  through  the  shadow  and  sunshine,  the  failures 
and  successes  of  his  career,  from  the  hillsides  of  Yarrow  and  Ettrick  to  the  more 
slippery  places  of  the  world  of  literature,  and  back  again  to  the  solitude  of  the 
forest ;  and  it  gives  us  judicious  and  sympathetic  appreciations  of  bis  work  in  prose 
and  in  verse,  much  of  it  already  fallen  into  unmerited  neglect.' 

The  New  Age  says  : — 
'A  capital  biography — full,  careful,  discriminating,  and  sympathetic.' 

The  Daily  News  says  : — 

'The  story  of  James  Hogg's  manly,  honourable  battle  with  poverty,  and  of  his 
literary  achievement,  is  excellently  told  by  Sir  George  Douglas.' 

The  Expository  Times  says  : — 
1  The  book  is  accurate,  and  must  have  cost  research,  but  it  is  written  in  a  pleasant 

§pssipy  manner,  quite  as  if  Hogg  had  flung  the  flavour  of  Hogg's  writings  over  his 
iographer.' 

Saint  Andrew  says : — 

1  We  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  this  valuable  and  interesting  volume  will 
be  welcomed  by  the  Scots  people  as  heartily  as  any  that  have  preceded  it.' 

Of  THOMAS  CAMPBELL,  by  J.  CUTHBERT  HADDRN, 

The  Scotsman  says : — 

'A  very  useful,  compact,  well-digested,  and  well-written  account  of  Campbell's 
career  and  literary  labours. 


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DA  Wallace,   Robert 

78?  George  Buchanan 

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