BUCHANAN. 



741 



family," as he says himself, "more ancient than 

 wealthy." He received the rudiments of his educa- 

 tion in the school of his native village, which was at 

 that time one of the most celebrated in Scotland; and 

 having, at an early period, given indications of genius, 

 his maternal uncle, James Heriot, was induced to 

 undertake the care and expense of his education ; 

 and, in order to give him every possible advantage, 

 sent him, in 1520, when fifteen years of age, to pro- 

 secute his studies in the unive rsity of Paris., Before, 

 however, he had completed iiis second year there, his 

 uncle died, leaving him in a foreign land, exposed to 

 all the miseries of poverty, aggravated by bodily in- 

 firmity, occasioned, most probably, by the severity of 

 his studies, for, at the same time that he was in public 

 competing with the greatest talent of the several na- 

 tions of Europe, who, as to a common fountain, were 

 assembled at this far famed centre of learning, he was 

 teaching himself Greek, in which he was latterly a 

 great proficient. He was now obliged to return home, 

 and for upwards of a twelvemonth was incapable of 

 applying to any business. In 1523 he joined the aux- 

 iliaries brought over from France by Albany, then 

 regent of Scotland ; and served as a private soldier in 

 one campaign against the English. He tells us that 

 he took this step from a desire to learn the art of war ; 

 but perhaps necessity was as strong a prompter as 

 military ardour. Whatever were his motives, he 

 marched with the army commanded by the regent in 

 person, who entered England, and laid siege to the 

 castle of Werk, in the end of October, 1523. Re- 

 pulsed in all his attempts on the place, Albany, from 

 the disaffection among his troops, and the daily in- 

 creasing strengtli of the enemy, soon found himself 

 under the necessity of re-crossing the Tweed ; and 

 being overtaken by a severe snow storm in a night 

 march toward Lauder, lost a great part of his army ; 

 Buchanan escaped, but, completely cured of his 

 warlike enthusiasm, if any such sentiment ever in- 

 spired him, was confined the rest of the winter to his 

 bed. In the ensuing spring he was sent to the uni- 

 versity of St Andrews to attend the prelections of 

 John Mair, or Major, in St Salvator's college. Hav- 

 ing continued one session at St Andrews, where he 

 took the degree of bachelor of arts, on the 3d of Oc- 

 tober, 1525, being then, as appears from the college 

 registers, a pauper or exhibitioner, he accompanied 

 Major to France the following summer. There he 

 became a student in the Scots college of Paris, and in 

 March was incorporated a bachelor of arts the de- 

 gree of master of arts he received in April, 1528. In 

 June the following year he was elected procurator for 

 the German nation, one of the four classes, into 

 which the students were divided, and which included 

 those from Scotland. At the end of two years he was 

 elected a professor in the college of St Barbe, where 

 he taught grammar three years. Soon after entering 

 on his professorship, Buchanan attracted the notice 

 of Gilbert Kennedy, earl of Cassillis, then residing in 

 Paris, whither he had been sent to prosecute his 

 studies, as the Scottish nobility at that period generally 

 were ; and at the end of three years Buchanan was 

 engaged to devote his time entirely to the care of the 

 young earl's education. With this nobleman he 

 resided as a preceptor for five years ; and to him, as 

 " a youth of promising talents, and excellent disposi- 

 tion," he inscribed his first published work, a transla- 

 tion of Linacre's rudiments of Latin grammar, which 

 was printed by the learned Robert Stephens, in 1533 

 In 1536 James V..made a 'matrimonial excursion to 

 France, and having married Magdalene, daughter o 

 Francis I., returned to Scotland in May, bringing 

 with him Cassillis and George Buchanan. This ac 

 counts for the future intimacy between the latte 

 person and the king, which in the end was like tc 



lave had a tragical termination. The connexion 

 >etween Buchanan and the earl seems, however, not 

 o have been immediately dissolved ; for it was while 

 esiding at the house of his pupil, that the poet com- 

 iosed Somnium or the Dream, apparently an imitation 

 f a poem of Dunbar's, entitled, " How Dunbar was 

 iesyred to be ane frier," and a bitter satire upon the 

 mpudence and hypocrisy of the Franciscans. This 

 iece of raillery excited the utmost hostility on the 

 ^art of its objects, and to avoid their vengeance, 

 which he had every reason to dread, Buchanan had 

 letermined to retire to Paris, where he hoped to be 

 able to resume his former situation in the college of 

 St Barbe. James V., however, took him under his 

 rotection, and retained him as preceptor to his natu- 

 ral son James Stuart. Buchanan afterwards wrote 

 lis Palinodia in two parts, a covert satire, which 

 wounded the ecclesiastics still more painfully than its 

 >redecessor the Somnium ; and his Franciscanus, one 

 )f the most pungent satires to be found in any lan- 

 guage. The Catholic clergy being still the dominant 

 jarty in Scotland, Buchanan, to avoid persecution, 

 led to England, and afterwards to France. At Paris 

 to his dismay he found cardinal Beaton resident as 

 ambassador from the Scottish court. This circum- 

 stance rendered it extremely unsafe for him to re- 

 main ; happily he was invited to Bourdeaux by 

 Andrew Govia, a Portuguese, principal of the college 

 ot'Guienne, lately founded in that city, through whose 

 interest he was appointed professor of humanity in 

 that afterwards highly famed seminary. Here Bu- 

 chanan remained for three years, during which he 

 completed four Tragedies, besides composing a num- 

 ber of poems on miscellaneous subjects. He was all 

 this while the object of the unwearied enmity of Car- 

 dinal Beaton and the Franciscans, who threatened his 

 life. Among his pupils at Bourdeaux, Buchanan 

 numbered the celebrated Michael de Montagne, who 

 was an actor in every one of his dramas ; and among 

 his friends were not only his fellow professors, but all 

 the men of literature and science in the city and 

 neighbourhood. One of the most illustrious of these 

 was the elder Scaliger, who resided and practised as 

 a physician at Agin ; at his house Buchanan and the 

 other professors used to spend part of their vacations. 

 Here they were hospitably entertained, and in their 

 society Scaliger seems not only to have forgot, as he 

 himself acknowledges, the tortures of the gout, but, 

 what was more extraordinary, his natural talent for 

 contradiction. The many excellent qualities of this 

 eminent scholar, and the grateful recollection of his 

 conversational talents, Buchanan has preserved in an 

 elegant Latin Epigram, apparently written at the 

 time when he was about to quit the seat of the muses, 

 to enter upon new scenes of difficulty and danger. 

 The younger Scaliger was but a boy when Buchanan 

 visited at his father s house ; but he inherited all his 

 father's admiration of the Scottish poet, whom he de- 

 clared to be decidedly superior to all the Latin poets 

 of those times. After having resided three years at 

 Bourdeaux, Buchanan removed to Paris ; and, in 

 1544, we find him one of the regents in the college 

 of Cardinal le Moire, which station he seems to have 

 held till 1547. 



In the year 1547 Buchanan again shifted his place, 

 and, along with his Portuguese friend, Andrew 

 Govea, passed into Portugal. Govea, with two bro- 

 thers, had been sent for his education into France, by 

 John HI. of Portugal, who, having now founded the 

 university of Coimbra, recalled him to take the prin- 

 cipal superintendence of the infant establishment. 

 France, at this period, threatened to be the scene of 

 great convulsions, and Buchanan regarded this retire- 

 ment to Portugal as an exceedingly fortunate circum- 

 stance, and for a short time his expectations were 



