No Notoriety Hunter

‘Denique da quidvis, podagram modo deprecor unam:Munus erit medicis aptius illa suis.’

That is—

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

Or to fall back on Dr. Brown’s translation once more:—

‘Since I am poor and you are rich, what happy chance is thine!My modest wishes, too, you know—one nugget from your mine!Only, whatever be your gift, let it not be your gout:That, a meet present for your leech, I’d rather go without.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His most famous production as a poet, his version of the Hebrew Psalms, or rather series of poems based upon these, was certainly not written for fame. Every Humanist of eminence was expected to try his hand upon the Psalms, and when Buchanan found himself in Portugal under lock and key, at the instance of the Inquisition, among a set of monks, whom he hits off as equally good-natured and ignorant, and who had been told off to instruct him in orthodoxy, he addressed himself to a classic rendering of the Psalms with the double purpose of discharging his duty by his Humanistic Vocation, and doing something that might redeemhis time and his temper from the boredom of the uncongenial society amidst which misfortune had placed him. There does not seem in all this much of that passionate desire of distinction to which Burns confesses. It is said, however, that fame was his object in commencing and carrying on his poem on theSphere, 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 theSphere, he says that bad health had compelled him,spem scribendi carminis in posterum penitus abjicere,—‘completely to abandon the hope of writing a poem for posterity.’ Three years afterwards, writing to a literary friend in England, who, like many others, kept dunning him for his promised books, and even for ‘copy,’ he says, with respect to his ‘astronomical’ aims in poetry, he had not so much voluntarily abandoned them, as been obliged reluctantly to submit to the deprivation of them;neque enim aut nunc libet nugari, aut si maxime vellem per ætatem licet. Accessit eo historiæ scribendæ labor,—‘for neither am I now greatlydisposed 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 myHistory’; the plain meaning being that as his years forbade him to do both theHistoryand theSphere, he elected to go on with theHistoryand give up theSphere, as a form ofnugarior ‘dilettantism.’

All this does not look very like a burning eagerness for posthumous fame, at all events of the kind that moves a certain class of people to leave money for hospitals, or almshouses, or learned foundations, to perpetuate names that would otherwise never have risen out of obscurity or escaped oblivion. As a matter of fact, Buchanan knew that he was celebrated, but no one had a poorer opinion of the work that had won him reputation than he had himself, not from the modesty of merit, as the common form carelessly puts it, but from the consciousness of merit, and because he felt that it was in him to do better. He hated the idea of having more celebrity than he deserved, and wanted to produce something that would show he was not an impostor or a quack. In short, he did not want more fame, but what he thought a better and honester title to the fame he had. That, however, is not the passion for fame, but simply self-respect, and an unselfish anxiety for the good name of those friendswho 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 theSphereand took up theHistory. 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, JamesVI., 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 theHistoryby representing that no subject wasaut uberius ad laudem, aut firmius ad memoriæ conservandam diuturnitatem,—‘better fitted to win him renown or prolong his memory.’ It is not on the strength of such hopes, however, that he describes himself as working. It was, by his own account, only the shame of leaving unfinished a task he had engaged himself to his friends to perform that made him persevere at a labour which, he says,in ætate integra permolestus, nunc vero in hac meditatione mortis, inter mortalitatis metum, et desinendi pudorem, non potest non lentus esse et ingratus, quando nec cessare licet, nec progredi lubet,—‘would, even in the flower of my age, have been a burden, but now, in contemplation of my end, what between the dread of death interrupting me before I am done, and the shame there would be in abandoning my undertaking, I neither find myself free to stop, nor feel any pleasure in going on.’ Not much there of glory for himself, although something of an heroic devotion to the claims of friendship and the call of duty!

CHARACTERISTICS—(continued)

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

That is really Buchanan in a nutshell. He followed the bent of his genius, and did not pick and choose his work, but performed, to the best of his ability, the task placed before him by Destiny. He lived up to his nature and his Fate, did with his might what his hand found to do, then took up the next undertaking that came along, and handled it in the same fashion. He waited upon ‘time and the hour’ rather than sought to force its hand—a very good way, if not indeed the best way, to confront life and its problems, for those who are wise enough and strong enough to do it. He made himself master of the spirit, ideas, and style of the great writers and thinkers of classic antiquity, because it was the work that lay nearest to his hand, and because he liked it—passionately—and could not rest until it was all and easily his own, and not because he thought he could make it pay, whether in money or reputation, or both. Except in the case of the unlucky and unfinishedSphere, he did not sit down to compose poetry deliberately and in cold blood, at the rate of somany 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 JamesV.(1537) that led to his becoming the most powerful satirist of his time and country, much above Lyndsay, at least on a level with Dunbar, and second only to Burns. His ‘Psalms’ were written (1550-51) to kill time while imprisoned in a Portuguese monastery. His Elegies, Epigrams, Tragedies, Masques, Addresses (1530-66) were thrown off in answer to the call of the moment and the circumstances. TheDetectio Reginæ(1569-71) was composed at the desire of the great anti-despotic and reforming party to which he belonged. The ‘Admonition to the Trew Lordis’ and the ‘Chameleon’ were political tracts for the times designed to stimulate the flagging zeal of the friends of freedom. TheDe Jure(1570-79) was inspired by a present and a foreseen necessity of making Liberty impregnable as against the reactionaries of Absolutism. TheHistorywas undertaken and completed (1569-82) less for a scientific than for a patriotic and politico-paideutic purpose, to set his country and its constitution in a true light before the world, and tohelp in moulding its future king into the constitutional ruler of a free people.

He held many appointments, and executed many commissions, not a few of them of the highest responsibility and dignity, but most of them sought him, not he them. Lord Cassilis had him for tutor-companion (1532-37). King JamesV.engaged him as tutor for one of his children (1538-39). The King of Portugal employed him to aid in founding and conducting his College at Coimbra, and did his best, though in vain, to retain him in his kingdom (1547-52). The famous Maréchal de Brissac chose him to mould the mind of his son, and sometimes had him at a Council of War (1555-60). Queen Mary attached him to her Court, and as we have seen, read Livy with him, and, no doubt, much else (1562). The General Assembly of the Reformed Church of Scotland chose him, though a layman, as their Moderator (1567), he having already sat four years as a member and aided them in drawing up theirFirst 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 Parliamentchose him to the extremely responsible office of Tutor to the youthful King JamesVI.(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.

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

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

Melville was scarcely the man to take the measure of Buchanan on the more important side of his character, but he may be trusted to have given an honest view of him according to his lights—which, in some serious respects, were darkness—as well as of the impression which Buchanan had made on better judges of remarkable men than was the worthy SirJames himself. The latter’s preface is a charming piece ofnaïveté. 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’smorale, 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 ‘lookednot far before the hand.’ That is, he was not a calculating person, and set his duties above his interests; did his work to the best of his ability, and took his reward if, as, and when it came, but was really less anxious about securing the reward than about doing the work as it ought to be done.

His whole connection with James makes this plain. It begins with hisGenethliaconor 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 thefelices felici prole parentes(‘parents to be felicitated on an offspring born to a felicitous career’), and under guise of a sketch, in verse of Virgilian elevation and beauty, of the standard of character up to which they should train their child, lays down with ‘faithful’ outspokenness the lines of duty on which their own lives should run, and warns them of the ruin which neglect of his counsel would bring. It is not, except in style, a courtly production. Darnley probably could not, but Mary certainly both could and would see the poet’s drift, and happy would it have been for both had they avoided the faults against which the poet directed his pointed admonition.

If James turned out ‘the wisest fool in Christendom,’ the folly was not the fault of Buchanan, but of James’s nature, and perhaps also of flatterers of the ‘Mester Peter Young’ order, who scattered tares among the wheat of the more worthy sower. At all events he made James a scholar, if the latter made himself a pedant; and this implied, in the circumstances and the particular case, an exercise of firm and even stern discipline—of which a famous if not quite elegant instance has been quoted above,—and which was better fitted to improve themoraleof 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—hisBaptistes, hisDe Jure Regni, and hisHistory—Buchanan dedicated to James, in prefaces as remarkable as the works themselves. All three books were mainly, the second entirely, motived by the idea which Buchanan seems to have regarded as constituting and directing his true mission in life, namely, the unspeakable value of liberty, the constant possibility and deadly evil of tyranny, and the corresponding and always pressing duty of forestalling this possibility and resistingthis evil by abundant proclamation and practice of the doctrine that legitimate political sovereignty exists only for the good and by the will of the people—a principle, of course, entirely subversive of the despotic doctrine of the Divine right of kings, so prevalent in usurpationist quarters in that day, and anticipatory of the modern and accepted democratic ‘platform’ of ‘Government of the People, by the People, for the People.’

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

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

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

He praises him, not in the fulsome and fawning language of the Dedication literature of the time, but with evident sincerity and honest, hearty admiration for the brightness of his abilities, his intellectual interests, his independence of judgment while inquiring into the truth of things and opinions. Hecongratulates him, too, on his present aversion to flattery, that ‘nurse of Tyranny, and deadliest of plagues to genuine kingship’—tyrannidis nutricula, et legitimi regni gravissima pestis,—and rejoices that he seems ‘instinctively to detest’—naturæ quodam instinctu oderis—‘the courtly solecisms and barbarisms’—solæcismos et barbarismos aulicos—affected by those self-chosen ‘arbiters of elegance’—elegantiæ 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’—passimMajestates,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 hecould 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 theThyestesof 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 opesNon vestis Tyriæ 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 hisHistoryto the King (1582, James sixteen). He knows perfectly well how his book is likely to be taken. Writing (1577) to Sir Thomas Randolph, Queen Elizabeth’s representative at the Scottish court, and Buchanan’squondampupil at Paris, he says: ‘I am occupiit in wryting of our historie, being assurit to content few, and to displease many thairthrow.’ Among the many ‘displeased,’ he could not but foresee that possibly the young King might be found, on account of the unfavourable view which, in common with most historians, he felt himself obliged to take of the character and career of the King’s own mother, Queen Mary. He must have felt too that, unless James were all the more magnanimous, he might take deep offence—as he did, death alone saving Buchanan from criminal proceedings on account of his ‘seditious’ writings—at his now nominal preceptor’s contention that by the Constitution of Scotland the monarchy had, as an historical fact as well as by a true philosophy, been all along a derivative and limited, even very limited, one, and anything but a divinely authorised Absolutism, as maintained by courtly authorities. Buchanan, however, prefers to assume that James had enough of the king and the public man in him to sink private feeling in public duty and accept truth, however unpleasant; and accordingly he dedicates hisHistoryto 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 DavidI., the ‘sair saunt for the crown’ of one of hissuccessors 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 highmoraleto have stamped himself as a wholly high-minded and even heroic character.

FURTHER CHARACTERISTICS

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 Boëtius 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 appearsfrom his famous emendation in the second Philippic ofpatrem tuum, passed over by previous commentators, intomatrem, subsequentlyparentem 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’sDe Officiiswith not less care, and had gathered from its pages some idea of Stoicism as expounded by Cicero’s own early tutor, Panætius, 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 thesummum bonumby the Stoics, to live agreeably to Nature (convenienter Naturæ vivere), has, I conceive, this meaning—always to conform to virtue; and as to all other things which may be according to Nature (secundum naturam) [i.e.other possiblebonabesides thesummum: as gratifications of appetite, propensity, ambition, etc.], to take them if they should not be repugnant to virtue,’—a declaration which Butler, withhis 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 impossible 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 andspirit in which Buchanan confronted the vicissitudes of life. I do not say that in a Register of Religions like that provided under6 and 7 Will.IV.c. 85and 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 thatconvenienter naturæ 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 disappointed and soured by his early struggle withpoverty, 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, eagerness, 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 different 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 himwell. ‘Plaisant in company,’ says the slightly garrulous 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 hisHistory, 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 thepost.... And thus I tak my leif[leave]shortly at you now, and my lang leif quhen God pleasis.’ Thefun may not be of a side-splitting character, nor the seriousness very unctuous, but the man who could encounter 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.

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 Erle of Monteith.’ No doubt, the fact that the subject of the incriminated ‘invectives’ was some ‘particulaires that was between him(the “Erle”)and the Laird of Buchwhennen,’ would dispose Buchanan to do his best, because blood is thicker than water, and whenBuchanan 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 everything depends on the merits of the ‘particulaires,’ and of these Sir James tells us nothing. With every respect to him and his kidney, an ‘Erle’ 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 ‘Erle’ precisely for what he was worth and no more, as Diogenes, the champion Stoic, in the famous anecdote, whetherveroorben 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 ‘vengeableness’ 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 displeasure. He was deprived of the ‘said horse’—thereis 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 requisitioner 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 horseà la Morton, 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, underwent 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 actionbetween him and Morton and Buchanan, to whom the cause of Protestantism meant the cause of liberty. Their aim was to strengthen the position of Protestantism in Scotland by the English Alliance, and to strengthen the position of Elizabeth as fighting the general battle of Protestantism against the Catholic reaction of the Continent; while, even in spite of Elizabeth 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 irregularities 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 theDetectio, theDe Jure, theHistory, and indeed all through Buchanan’s writings.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 Protestantism, 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 himself, 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. Youmight 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 convert his friends into useful instruments for his own purposes—an impression which would be greatly deepened when he noticed Morton’s great and increasing anxiety to get the young King, Buchanan’s special charge, into his power, Buchanan’s opposition to whichproject, 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 hisHistory. 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 negotiations which Morton conducted with Elizabeth and her council pays a due compliment to his diplomatic dexterity and merit. Detractors have said that he stoppedin hisHistorywhen 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.’

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 contemporary 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 wishto 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 falling off into sleepiness and carelessness in Buchanan’sHistory. 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,forhe 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 letslip 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 theéliteof society and the salt of the earth. Knox and Scaliger, Moray and Mar, Randolph and Ascham, Melville and Scrymgeour, Beza and Tycho Brahé, were among his correspondents or intimates; and if Buchanan thought that ‘information’ derived from persons of that stamp wasprima facietrustworthy, it was no morethan 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 irreconcilable 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 Holyrood, 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 passionlessly 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 explanation as any of a very striking psychological phenomenon.

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