BUG 



33 



B U C 



Bucchorm BUCCHOREST. See BUCHAREST. 



BUCENTAUR, the name of the splendid state 



^Buchanan. ve88e i j n w },j c h U,,. Venetians perform the annual ce- 

 remony of wedding the sea. See VENICE. 



BUCHAN, a district in the north of Scotland, 

 lying partly in the county of Aberdeen, and partly 

 in the county of Banff. The Bullers of Buchan are 

 great hollows in a rock projecting into the sea, on the 

 coast of Buchan. These hollows, which are open 

 at the top, arc about 30 fathoms deep, and 50 in 

 diameter. They have three entrances, through which 

 fishing-boats sail without apprehension. 



BUCHANAN, GEORGE, a celebrated scholar, 

 of whom any country might be proud, and whose 

 name is peculiarly dear to Scotland. Of the very 

 early part of his life we know wonderfully little ; and 

 the little that we do know, is not unmixed with con- 

 jecture. He was born in the parish of Killearn, and 

 county of Stirling, about the beginning of Febru- 

 ary, in the year 1506. His father occupied the farm 

 of Mid-Cowen, or the Moss ; but through his pre- 

 mature death, and the contemporaneous insolvency 

 of the grandfather, the family, consisting of five 

 sons and three daughters, were left in extreme po- 

 verty. The mother, being a woman of spirit and 

 management, made a successful struggle with the 

 difficulties of her situation, and contrived to rear her 

 numerous offspring in a decent and respectable man- 

 ner. We have it from tradition, that George got 

 the rudiments of that literature in which he ultimate- 

 ly became so eminent, at the public school of Kil- 

 learn, which was two miles distant from his native 

 place ; ^ind we have it from authority not much su- 

 perior to tradition ( Mackenzie's Lives of Scotch 

 Writers), that he afterwards went, whether from 

 choice or from necessity we are not informed, to 

 prosecute his youthful studies in the school of Dum- 

 barton. His maternal uncle, James Heriot, per- 

 ceiving the superiority of his talents, paid him the 

 attention of a kind and liberal patron, and sent him, 

 when he was about fourteen years of age, to the 

 universtty of Paris, where he improved his know- 

 ledge of Latin, acquired the Greek language by his 

 own unaided exertions, and first began to shew and 

 cultivate his poetical powers. He had not been two 

 years at Paris, when his uncle died, and left him in 

 a state of great destitution, the misery of which was 

 aggravated by a severe distemper, induced, it is pro- 

 bable, by disappointment and mortification. This 

 unfortunate event obliged him to return to Scotland. 

 After devoting a considerable time to the restoration 

 of his health, he entered the army, in which he con- 

 tinued for a year, engaged in active and dangerous 

 warfare with England, mingling with enthusiasm in 

 military operations, and preparing himself for giv- 

 ing those animated descriptions of gallantry and for- 

 titude which are to be met with in his History of 

 Scotland. The first campaign, however, in which 

 he served as a soldier, was extremely inglorious ; and 

 while no honour was acquired, the hardships which 

 he had to suffer so much affected his constitution, 

 that he was for several months confined to bed. As 

 coon as he had completed his eighteenth year, he went 

 to the university of St Andrews. He there recei- 

 red the degree of Bachelor of Arts, in the year 



VOL. V. PART I. 



1.525, at which time he was a pauper or exhibitioner. 

 He soon after went a second time to Pans, where he 

 became a student in the Scotibh college. There he 

 obtained various degrees of merit ; and, in the year 

 '>, secured, by competition, the procuratorship 

 of the German nation, which was one of the four 

 classes into which the students were divided, and 

 comprehended those from Scotland. But what was 

 of still greater consequence, he there imbibed tin- 

 spirit and sentiment* of the Reformer*, which by 

 that time had made considerable progress on the 

 Continent. At the expiry of two years, he was ap- 

 pointed a professor in the college of St Barbe. In 

 that situation, he taught grammar for three years, 

 without receiving, however, any remuneration that 

 was at all adequate to the extent or value of his la- 

 bours. Indeed, it appears from his elegies, and from 

 the writings of other authors, that the teachers of 

 humanity were at that time in a most wretched con- 

 dition in point of emolument, and that Buchanan, in 

 this case, experienced only what was common to all 

 who held that honourable and useful office. In the 

 year 1532, he became tutor to Gilbert Kennedy, 

 Earl of Cassilis, to whom he inscribed his first work, 

 a Translation of Linacre's Rudimenti of Latin 

 Grammar y and whose conduct in after life reflected 

 no small credit on the abilities and virtue of his pre- 

 ceptor. With this young nobleman, Buchanan re- 

 turned to Scotland in 1537. Having spent some 

 time in his native country, during which he quarrel- 

 led with the Franciscan friars, in consequence of a 

 satirical poem, entitled Somnium, he determined to 

 go back to France, and betake himself to his former 

 employment ; but James V. retained him as precep- 

 tor to his natural son James Stuart, who died in the 

 year 1548. The Franciscans, whom Buchanan had 

 deeply offended, and whose favour he shewed no in- 

 clination to regain, endeavoured to make the king 

 his enemy ; but so far were they from succeeding in 

 this attempt, that James, who had no reason to love 

 them, only instigated the poet to make fresh attacks 

 upon their principles and character. In his Francis- 

 canus, he exposed their ignorance, their irreligion, 

 and their vices, in a strain of such appropriate and 

 masterly ridicule, and in language so powerful and 

 captivating, as to render him, ever after, the object 

 of their unqualified hatred and resentment. Very 

 soon, indeed, they tried to sacrifice him to their ven- 

 geance, by comprehending him in the general arrest 

 to which many Lutherans were then subjected, and 

 giving him over to trial and punishment for his alle- 

 ged heresies. But he had some friends at court by 

 whom he was warned of his danger ; and, though 

 Cardinal Beaton was his active and zealous enemy, 

 he fortunately escaped from the apartment in which 

 he had been confined, and succeeded in getting to 

 London, where he was protected from the hostility 

 of the Papists by Sir John Rainsford, to whom he 

 has gratefully inscribed a small poem. In London, 

 however, he did not remain long. His spirit was 

 too proud to brook the necessity under which his in- 

 digence had laid him, of practising literary mendi- 

 city ; and his love of freedom was too ardent to ad- 

 mit of much attachment to a country in which the 

 monarch was a capricious, unprincipled, and cruel 



E 



Buctuun- 



