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of Edinburgh, Session 1880 - 81 . 
he started on his career with none of the advantages of fortune 
in his favour. His father having died early, in embarrassed cir- 
cumstances, he was sent, by the liberality of an uncle, and when 
only fourteen years of age, to the University of Paris, in the year 
1520. He there remained two years, when his kind relative died, 
and he himself was the victim of a serious illness, aggravated by 
being left in poverty in a foreign land. He returned home in 1522, 
when he enlisted as a soldier, and accompanied the Duke of 
Albany’s ill-fated expedition to Berwick in 1523, and thereafter 
studied under the celebrated John Mair or Major at St Andrews, 
with whom, after taking a degree as Bachelor of Arts in 1525, he 
returned to Paris in 1527. After many discouragements and some 
amount of success, we find him in 1529 as a regent or professor in 
the College of St Barbe, at the age of twenty-three. The position, 
however honourable, seems to have been respectable poverty, and one 
of rather thankless toil ; for he thus concludes an elegy, the first of 
the series in his works, written during his tenure of office, after 
descanting mournfully on the miseries of a teacher of letters : — 
‘ { Ite igitur, musse steriles, aliumque nfinistrum 
Quserite ; nos alio sors animusque vocat. ” 
In 1532 he became the preceptor of the young Earl of Cassilis, 
and after residing with him in France for five years, returned with 
him to Scotland in 1537, and rose to considerable favour with the 
king, James V. But his sharp pen and evil fortune brought him 
into trouble; and having incurred the wrath of the Franciscan 
clergy by his two satires, still famous, of the “ S omnium ” and the 
" Franciscanus,” he with difficulty made his escape from prison, and 
after many adventures returned to France in 1539. Finding him- 
self even in Paris pursued by the enmity of Cardinal Beaton, he 
accepted the invitation of Andrew Govea, a native of Portugal, and 
a man of great learning, to fill the office of professor in the College of 
Guienne, in Bordeaux, in which Govea was principal. There he 
spent three years in the heart of a cluster of distinguished men, 
including the elder Scaliger, who resided in the neighbourhood of 
Bordeaux, and for whom he contracted a warm attachment. 
While at Bordeaux he wrote his tragedies of “Jephtha” and 
“ Baptistes,” mainly as exercises for his students, and among the 
