spoke
his mind, fearless of consequences, in the face of a king who he must
have known--for Buchanan was no dullard--regarded him with deep dislike,
who might in a few years be able to work his ruin.

But those few years were not given to Buchanan. He had all but done his
work, and he hastened to get it over before the night should come wherein
no man can work. One must be excused for telling--one would not tell it
in a book intended to be read only by Scotchmen, who know or ought to
know the tale already--how the two Melvilles and Buchanan's nephew Thomas
went to see him in Edinburgh, in September, 1581, hearing that he was
ill, and his History still in the press; and how they found the old sage,
true to his schoolmaster's instincts, teaching the Hornbook to his
servant-lad; and how he told them that doing that was "better than
stealing sheep, or sitting idle, which was as bad," and showed them that
dedication to James I., in which he holds up to his imitation as a hero
whose equal was hardly to be found in history, that very King David whose
liberality to the Romish Church provoked James's witticism that "David
was a sair saint for the crown." Andrew Melville, so James Melville
says, found fault with the style. Buchanan replied that he could do no
more for thinking of another thing, which was to die. They then went to
Arbuthnot's printing-house, and inspected the history, as far as that
terrible passage concerning Rizzio's burial, where Mary is represented as
"laying the miscreant almost in the arms of Maud de Valois, the late
queen." Alarmed, and not without reason, at such plain speaking, they
stopped the press, and went back to Buchanan's house. Buchanan was in
bed. "He was going," he said, "the way of welfare." They asked him to
soften the passage; the king might prohibit the whole work. "Tell me,
man," said Buchanan, "if I have told the truth." They could not, or
would not, deny it. "Then I will abide his feud, and all his kin's;
pray, pray to God for me, and let Him direct all." "So," says Melville,
"by the printing of his chronicle was ended, this most learned, wise, and
godly man ended his mortal life."

Camden has a hearsay story--written, it must be remembered, in James I.'s
time--that Buchanan, on his death-bed repented of his harsh words against
Queen Mary; and an old Lady Rosyth is said to have said that when she was
young a certain David Buchanan recollected hearing some such words from
Geo