of Edinburgh, Session 1880-81. 
143 
Buchanan had in view was to vindicate the course which the nobility 
and the parliament had followed in regard to Queen Mary. And 
when he comes to apply the general views which are announced and 
enforced in the course of his argument, it is to this conclusion that 
he wishes to bring his readers. T am not, however, to inquire here 
how far he succeeds in his main attempt, but I am rather concerned 
with his work as a philosophical discourse on the principles of 
government, and whatever opinion one may form of the scope of his 
performance, there can be but one estimate of its extreme ability, 
and also looking at him in the light of the times in which we live, 
of its moderation also. That his ideas on government were to some 
extent swayed by his own individual experience, perhaps his indi- 
vidual peril, may be assumed. But I think all must see, in this 
most thoughtful composition, the fruit of long reflection amid many 
vicissitudes. One peculiarity it has deserving notice ; it is a purely 
political essay. Although he deals with the power of the pope and 
the Roman Catholic clergy, the views illustrated are hardly tinged 
at all with the ecclesiastical controversies of the time, and indeed 
Buchanan was little of an ecclesiastic, although he and Knox appear to 
have been intimate. The sketch which he gives of his ideal ruler is 
worked out in Latinity of wonderful elegance and power, with a 
subtle continuity of reasoning which marks the weight and depth 
of a true statesman. 
The treatise itself is cast in the form of a dialogue between 
Buchanan and a friend — Thomas Maitland — a brother of Mait- 
land of Thirlstane, himself a man of letters of some repute. This 
machinery of dialogue gives, especially at the outset, an impres- 
sion of restraint and weariness to the reader, and excites a wish 
that the author would come to the point much sooner. Indeed, 
he takes the lion’s share of the conversation to himself, and his friend 
can hardly have been flattered by the interjectional and fractional 
utterances assigned to him as his contribution to the discourse. But 
there was an ingenious design in this. This supposed listener, or 
disputer, is used to modify, qualify, and illustrate Buchanan’s own 
propositions, to wear off their edges and prevent them being too 
bluntly and ungraciously presented. Maetellanus, or Maitland, has 
a leaning for monarchy, and a fear of the many-headed monster, 
without carrying these to excess : he likes “the divinity that doth 
VOL. XI 
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