his Latin plays1, and his translation of the Medea and Alcestis in Latin verse, his scholarship is best represented by his Latin version of the Psalms in various metres (1566 etc.), mainly produced during his stay in Portugal. One of the most elegant is his rendering of the psalm By the waters of Babylon, which begins as follows: 'Dum procul a patria, mœsti Babylonis in oris, Fluminis ad liquidas forte sedemus aquas; The following is the first half of the poem dedicating the work to 'Nympha, Caledoniæ quæ nunc feliciter oræ Carmina, fatidici nobile regis opus'. Henry and Robert Stephens in all their editions describe the translator as poëtarum nostri saeculi facile princeps. Scaliger says of him: Buchananus unus est in tota Europa, omnes post se relinquens in latina poësi3. Even in his lifetime his Latin Psalms were studied in the schools of Germany; they remained long in use in the schools of Scotland, and an edition was even set to music in 1585 Buchanan has not merely translated the Psalms into Latin 1 His Jepthes (1554) is described by Ascham (Sch. 169) as 'able to abide the true touch of Aristotle's precepts and Euripides' examples'. This play and John the Baptist have been translated into English verse by the Rev. A. Gordon Mitchell. 2 Cp. Eglisham's Duellum Poëticum (London, 1618 f), and the criticisms on the same by Arthur Johnston (1619) and W. Barclay (1620); also Andrew Symson's Octupla (Edinb. 1696). 3 Scaligerana I. Cp. Blount's Censura. P. Hume Brown's Buchanan (1890), 146–9. Preceded by another musical ed., Lyons, 1579. verse; he has endeavoured to clothe them in the form and texture of lyrical and elegiac Latin poems. Sir Philip Sidney declares that 'the tragedies of Buchanan doe justly bring forth a divine admiration". 'Buchanan' (said Dr Johnson) 'was a very fine poet', 'whose name has as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modern Latinity'; he 'not only had great knowledge of Latin, but was a great poetical genius'. It is as a writer of history that he is described by Dryden as 'comparable to any of the moderns, and excelled by few of the ancients'. His Rerum Scoticarum Historia, a folio volume in twenty books, was published in the year of his death (1582). His instincts as a humanist prompted him to select Latin as the language of this work, which was read with interest by the scholars of Europe for two centuries. In the eighteenth century it was seriously debated whether the historian's model was Caesar or Livy or Sallust, and it was almost universally agreed that he had surpassed his predecessors. He is now remembered mainly for his compositions in Latin verse. He wrote a May-day poem that was a joy to Wordsworth', a poem closing with the lines in which that day is hailed as the image of life's early prime and as the happy omen of a new age: 'Salve vetustae vitae imago, Et specimen venientis aevi '5. 1 Apology for Poetry, 67 ed. Arber. Boswell's Life, i 376 Napier; cp. iii 295. 3 Hume Brown, 3, 293 f, 327. Life by Chr. Wordsworth, ii 466 (Calendae Maiae, translated in Hume Brown's Buchanan, 177–9). • On Buchanan, cp. Bernays on Scaliger, 108 f; Henry Morley, English Writers, viii 339-352; Testimonia in Allibone's Dictionary; and esp. P. Hume Brown, George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer (1890); also Life by D. Macmillan (1906), and Essay by T. D. Robb; Lit. Suppl. to The Times, 6 July, 1906; C. Whibley in Blackwood, July, 1906. The portrait on p. 244 is reproduced from that in Boissard's Icones (1597 f), which has been copied in the bust in Greyfriars Churchyard, and in Hume Brown's frontispiece. For another portrait, see Bullart's Académie, ii 351 (1682). Opera omnia, ed. T. Ruddiman (Edinb. 1715); for the best bibliography of Buchanan, see (Dr David Murray's) Catalogue of the Quatercentenary Exhibition held in Glasgow (1906) including list of 13 portraits in oils, with more than 6 engravings; reprinted as part of the 'Quatercentenary Studies', ed. G. Neilson, with Robb's Humanism in Buchanan (1907). See also St Andrews Memorial, ed. D. A. Millar (1907). Florentius One of the most interesting of the minor 'Scots abroad' was Florentius Volusenus (c. 1504-47), who was educated at Aberdeen, and resided in Paris (1528–35). When he called on Sadoleto, bishop of Carpentras, he so completely charmed that Ciceronian scholar by his exquisite Latinity, that he was at once appointed principal of the local school, where he lectured on Latin authors for ten years (153646). The humanist and the Christian alike are represented in his Ciceronian dialogue, De Animi Tranquillitate. He died at Vienne on his way home to Scotland, and is commemorated in the following lines by Buchanan: 'Hic Musis Volusene jaces carissime ripam Ad Rhodani, terra quam procul a patria! Melville In the generation next to that of Buchanan we have Andrew Melville (1545-1622), who, as a Latin poet, is sometimes ranked second to Buchanan. Among the finest of his hexameter poems is that on the Creation, and the paraphrase of the Song of Moses'. He studied under Ramus in Paris, was professor at Geneva in 1568, was acquainted with Scaliger, and, as head of Glasgow University in 1574, and principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews, in 1579, led the revolt against the mediaeval method of studying Aristotle, and created a taste for Greek letters in Scotland. The foundation of the university of Glasgow had been sanctioned in 1450 by a Bull issued by Nicolas V, but the study of Greek was not introduced into Scotland until 1534, when John Erskine of Dun (1509—1591), on returning from his travels, brought with him Petrus de 1 P. Hume Brown's Buchanan, 71–74. 2 Delitiae, ii 77, 84. Cp. Dr McCrie's Life of Andrew Melville, i 92-6. 3 James Melvill's Diary, 48 f, 67, 123 f (owing to Andrew Melville's influence at St Andrews, they 'perusit Aristotle in his awin langage'). McCrie, i 78, 258 f; R. S. Rait, on 'Andrew Melville and the Revolt against Aristotle in Scotland,' in Eng. Hist. Rev. 1899, 250—260. 4 Latin Poems in Delitiae, ii 67-137; an epigram of six lines led to his being imprisoned for nearly four years in the Tower of London (1607–11); Life by Dr McCrie, 242 f. Marsiliers, a native of France who taught Greek at Montrose1. Andrew Melville studied under him as a boy in 1556-8', but Andrew's nephew, James, who 'would have gladly' learnt Greek and Hebrew at St Andrews, complains that 'the langages war nocht to be gottine in the land; our Regent...teatched us the A, B, C of the Greek, and the simple declintiones, bot went no farder'3. The influence of the Humanist-Pope, who had granted the Bull for the founding of Glasgow, had not availed to arouse an interest in Greek on the distant banks of the Clyde; and at St Andrews, in 1564, the great Latin scholar, Buchanan, failed to obtain recognition for the study of Greek. The honour of promoting the study of that language at Glasgow was reserved for the protagonist of presbyterianism, Andrew Melville, who substituted for a blind faith in the authority of Aristotle an intelligent study of Greek With Melville, however, the languages were simply the handmaids to theology. The Union of the Crowns in 1604, which 'brought about the victory of the party opposed to Melville, placed in the universities a new type of men, who cared for the humane learning for its own sake'. The period of the first episcopalian supremacy (1604-38) has accordingly been described as 'the golden age of the humane letters' in Scotland'. texts. In that age a closer rendering of the Psalms than that of Buchanan was produced in 1637 by his countryman, Johnston Arthur Johnston (1587-1641). It will be remem bered that the Baron of Bradwardine used to read 'Arthur Johnston's Psalms of a Sunday, and the Deliciae Poëtarum Scotorum". Johnston has a pretty poem on his birthplace, beside the river Ury and below the ridge of Bennachie, both of which are named in the following graceful lines:— 1 James Melvill's Diary (ed. 1842), 39; cp. McCrie's Life of Knox, period i, note C, and James Grant's Burgh Schools of Scotland (1876), 46–48, 330-349. 2 Diary, 39. 4 Hume Brown, 238 f. 3 Diary, 30. R. S. Rait, on University Education in Scotland, in Proceedings of Glasgow Archaeological Society, 15 Dec. 1904. P. Hume Brown's Buchanan, 147–9. 7 Waverley, c. 13. 'Mille per ambages nitidis argenteus undis Gemmifer est amnis, radiat mons ipse lapillis, Queis nihil Eous purius orbis habet". He had taken the degree of M.D. at Padua, and was a physician in Paris. On his return to Scotland after an absence of twentyfour years, he was patronised by Laud as a rival to Buchanan'. While Buchanan uses a variety of metres in his version of the Psalms, Johnston confines himself to the elegiac couplet. He has been called 'the Scottish Ovid', his style 'possessing somewhat of Ovidian ease, accompanied with strength and simplicity". A word of praise may be added on the Heroides of Mark Alexander Boyd (1563-1601), and on the poem on Anne of Denmark by Hercules Rollock (fl. 1577-1619). David Wedderburn (1580 --1646), who compiled a Latin Grammar (1630), was from 1620 to 1646 the official Latin poet of Aberdeen. One of his poems is an elegy on Arthur Johnston (1641). Johnston's Psalms had been published in 1637. After the Scottish Revolution of 1638, 'down with learning' was the cry of some of the extreme Covenanting divines. The biographer of Buchanan has aptly described William Drummond, of Hawthornden (1585-1649), as 'the only Scotsman of eminence in whom it is possible Drummond to find the humanist even in his milder form; and Drummond all through his life felt himself an alien in a strange land". He attended lectures on law at Bourges and Paris (1607-8), shortly before becoming laird of Hawthornden (1610). His sonnets were 1 Delitiae Poët. Scol. i 601, ed. 1637. 2 i.e. a rival to Buchanan's posthumous fame (Buchanan having died five years before the birth of Johnston). 3 A fine ed. of Johnston's Poems was produced by Geddes, 1892–5, with copies of three portraits. Cp. Bibliography and Portraits by W. Johnston, 1896. 4 W. Tennant, quoted (with other Testimonia) in Allibone's Dict. 5 Cp. McCrie, ii 328 f. 6 James Grant's Burgh Schools of Scotland, 365-8. 7 P. Hume Brown, 236. |