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It has no doubt some want of variety, and in some of the contro- 
versies to which I have alluded, each combatant bespatters the other 
with the same kind of arrows drawn from the same quiver, spears 
belonging to the same armoury ; but still their mastery of these 
weapons is in the last degree admirable. As to how the wise men of 
those days lived, and what was the tone of their private and social 
intercourse, it is not easy to form an adequate conjecture. One 
is apt to fancy that if the Latin language was that of learned conver- 
sation — when you complimented your host in Latin elegiacs if he had 
been civil, and lampooned him in Latin epigram if he had given you 
offence, the general social atmosphere must have been somewhat 
pedantic and wanting in ease, as it is certain it was wanting in 
refinement. Probably, however, this would be an erroneous conclu- 
sion, and although without the canons of modern good breeding, it 
is probable that these circles had brightness, vivacity, and humour. 
Buchanan is specially mentioned as charming and witty in conver- 
sation ; and it was said of him that there was not an agreeable man 
in Europe with whom he was not familiar. In later life he was 
described by the unfriendly as rustic, “ agrestis ” in his appearance 
and demeanour, and slovenly in his dress ; but age, broken health, 
and incessant turmoil may have given his bachelor habits, for he 
was never married, a stronger hold on him than they had when he 
charmed the fastidious circles of Paris, twenty years before. He had 
almost ceased to be a Scotchman. The great De Thou claimed him 
as a countryman — “ a native of the banks of the Blane in Scotland, 
by birth,” he says of him, “ but one of us by choice.” Buchanan pro- 
bably thought more in Latin and in French than in his mother tongue. 
On his first arrival the queen was unquestionably partial to him. 
He read classics with her, and she confided to him the charge of 
her son, — for whose benefit indeed the treatise I have spoken 
of was afterwards comnosed, — and he dedicated to her the first 
edition of his Psalms, in an epigram, as he styles it, full of grace. 
Into the troubles which followed, and the part he took in them — - 
whether he was ungrateful, as one section of critics maintain, or 
patriotic as the other side says, I do not stop to inquire. He was 
unquestionably in the front, whatever were the merits of the conflict. 
But in 1579 the battle was over. His royal pupil was on the throne 
when he wrote this celebrated treatise. The direct object which 
