George Buchanan

c Phil

mbinus 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, Pan?tius, 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 agreeably to Nature (convenienter Natur? 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 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 his supremacy of conscience as part of true Nature, would have accepted, and in substance, 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

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 well. '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 li

Vindic

ink 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 when 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 everything depends on the mer

ot 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 à 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.

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. 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 E

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

lic 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 stopped in his History whe

so F

ble 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'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 '

from persons of that stamp was prima facie trustworthy, it was no more 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 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 wonderfu

Rel

ece 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 created a faith and a code of morals for himself, although for comfort and convenience he might conceal his spiritual interior from the view of the ignorant and the unenlightened. In many

mention. 'Private judgment' may be a primary human right and a duty owing by 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

not 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 hy

ng, 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 minuti? of introspective scrutiny. On the ethical side