The following Volumes are now ready:— GEORGE BUCHANAN BY ROBERT WALLACE COMPLETED BY J CAMPBELL SMITH FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES PUBLISHED BY OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER EDINBURGH AND LONDON 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....

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 Greyfri

GEORGE BUCHANAN CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL On the 21st July 1683, Lord William Russell was beheaded in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, because Charles II. , F.D., who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one, thought it would help to keep alive the Stuart doctrine of the Divine right of kings. On the same day, the political writings of George Buchanan and one John Milton were, by decree of the learned and loyal University of Oxford, publicly burned in front of their Schools by the commo

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:— Which may be literally, or ne

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

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 w

This view of Buchanan’s character and scheme of life is confirmed by the remarkable and elaborate account of him given, in his own Memoirs , by Sir James Melville of Halhill (1545-1617), a professional courtier and diplomatist who had served on the Continent in important missions and affairs, and had been a confidential servant both to Queen Mary and her son James VI. He is describing the guardians of the boy-king at Stirling (1570-78), and after having highly eulogised the Governor, he proceeds

His whole connection with James makes this plain. It begins with his Genethliacon or Birthday Ode, in which, after apostrophising the infant prince as the hope of all who desired the unity and consequent tranquillity of the two kingdoms, he addresses the felices felici prole parentes (‘parents to be felicitated on an offspring born to a felicitous career’), and under guise of a sketch, in verse of Virgilian elevation and beauty, of the standard of character up to which they should train their ch

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,’

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

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, on

‘ 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 medici, duo athei ,—‘Three Physicists, [4] two Atheists.’ Humanists, 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 sc

It is remarkable that in his History he associates the Reformers less with Evangelium than with Libertas . They are the vindices libertatis —‘the champions of liberty’—quite as much or oftener than the Evangelii professores —‘the professors of the Evangel,’—from which it might 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 ag

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

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 cannot 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

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 Autobiography , 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

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 elsewhere; what he will never find els

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