alamium on the marriage of poor Mary Stuart, noble and sincere,
however fantastic and pedantic, after the manner of the times; "Pomps,"
too, for her wedding, and for other public ceremonies, in which all the
heathen gods and goddesses figure; epigrams, panegyrics, satires, much of
which latter productions he would have consigned to the dust-heap in his
old age, had not his too fond friends persuaded him to republish the
follies and coarsenesses of his youth. He was now one of the most famous
scholars in Europe, and the intimate friend of all the great literary
men. Was he to go on to the end, die, and no more? Was he to sink into
the mere pedant; or, if he could not do that, into the mere court
versifier?

The wars of religion saved him, as they saved many another noble soul,
from that degradation. The events of 1560-1-2 forced Buchanan, as they
forced many a learned man besides, to choose whether he would be a child
of light or a child of darkness; whether he would be a dilettante
classicist, or a preacher--it might be a martyr--of the Gospel. Buchanan
may have left France in "the troubles" merely to enjoy in his own country
elegant and learned repose. He may have fancied that he had found it,
when he saw himself, in spite of his public profession of adherence to
the Reformed Kirk, reading Livy every afternoon with his exquisite young
sovereign; master, by her favour, of the temporalities of Crossraguel
Abbey, and by the favour of Murray, Principal of St. Leonard's College in
St. Andrew's. Perhaps he fancied at times that "to-morrow was to be as
to-day, and much more abundant;" that thenceforth he might read his
folio, and write his epigram, and joke his joke, as a lazy comfortable
pluralist, taking his morning stroll out to the corner where poor Wishart
had been burned, above the blue sea and the yellow sands, and looking up
to the castle tower from whence his enemy Beaton's corpse had been hung
out; with the comfortable reflection that quietier times had come, and
that whatever evil deeds Archbishop Hamilton might dare, he would not
dare to put the Principal of St. Leonard's into the "bottle dungeon."

If such hopes ever crossed Geordie's keen fancy, they were disappointed
suddenly and fearfully. The fire which had been kindled in France was to
reach to Scotland likewise. "Revolutions are not made with rose-water;"
and the time was at hand when all good spirits in Scotland, and George
Buchanan among them, ha