137 
of Edinburgh, Session 1880-81. 
as I mean only to gossip about biography and bibliography, and 
mainly of the characters and lives of the men whose writings I have 
taken as my text. 
The famous and forgotten treatises to which I refer are substan- 
tially five : — lsf, Buchanan’s tract “ De jure regni apud Scotos ; ” 
2d, Milton’s “ Defensio pro populo Anglicano ” against Salmasius ; 
3 d, Samuel Butherford’s dissertation entitled “ Lex Bex;” 4 th, 
Harrington’s “ Oceana ; ” and 5 th, Algernon Sydney’s volume on 
“ Government.” These writings were all of them famous in their day. 
I don’t think that I am wrong in saying that they are all thoroughly 
forgotten now, — so completely forgotten that even the existence of 
some of them is unfamiliar to most general readers, although the 
names of their authors are remembered. I doubt if many of my 
hearers ever read one of them throughout, and most of them I sus- 
pect never read a word of any of them. 
The two which stand first on my list are the works of very 
celebrated men — the memory of whom is green and fresh to this 
day — Buchanan for his prodigious scholarship and his mastery of 
the Latin language; Milton for a muse which will make him 
famous to all time, while our language survives. Yet Bayle, in 
his Dictionary, treats Buchanan’s tract as the most renowned of his 
famous works, and recognises in Milton only the antagonist of 
Salmasius; nor is it until the later notice in his article under 
Milton’s name, that he condescends even to mention the “ Paradise 
Lost,” and then only in reference to a tradition or rumour that 
Dryden thought well of it. Had the reputation of these two great 
men rested only on performances which made them the literary 
heroes of the day, their chance of immortality would have been 
slight. Brunet, in his “ Manuel du Libraire,” — a publication, as 
is well known, of the present century, — while he fully describes 
many editions of the works of both, does not guide the collector 
to a single separate edition of discourses which made such a stir 
in Europe, and which were separately the subject of more than one 
continental printing-press. Both Buchanan’s treatise and Milton’s 
“ Defensio ” were printed by the Elzevirs more than once ; and yet 
even these productions of a celebrated press have been apparently 
forgotten. The other works which I have mentioned have also 
sunk into utter oblivion, although they also had their share of 
