there is always in Buchanan's work, it seems to me, a want
of unconsciousness, and a want of tenderness--but still a genius worthy
to be placed beside those ancient writers from whom he took his manner.
Whether or not we agree with his contemporaries, who say that he equalled
Virgil in Latin poetry, we may place him fairly as a prose writer by the
side of Demosthenes, Cicero, or Tacitus. And so I pass from this painful
subject; only quoting--if I may be permitted to quote--Mr. Burton's wise
and gentle verdict on the whole. "Buchanan," he says, "though a zealous
Protestant, had a good deal of the Catholic and sceptical spirit of
Erasmus, and an admiring eye for everything that was great and beautiful.
Like the rest of his countrymen, he bowed himself in presence of the
lustre that surrounded the early career of his mistress. More than once
he expressed his pride and reverence in the inspiration of a genius
deemed by his contemporaries to be worthy of the theme. There is not,
perhaps, to be found elsewhere in literature so solemn a memorial of
shipwrecked hopes, of a sunny opening and a stormy end, as one finds in
turning the leaves of the volume which contains the beautiful epigram
'Nympha Caledoniae' in one part, the 'Detectio Mariae Reginae' in
another; and this contrast is, no doubt, a faithful parallel of the
reaction in the popular mind. This reaction seems to have been general,
and not limited to the Protestant party; for the conditions under which
it became almost a part of the creed of the Church of Rome to believe in
her innocence had not arisen."

If Buchanan, as some of his detractors have thought, raised himself by
subserviency to the intrigues of the Regent Murray, the best heads in
Scotland seem to have been of a different opinion. The murder of Murray
did not involve Buchanan's fall. He had avenged it, as far as pen could
do it, by that "Admonition Direct to the Trew Lordis," in which he showed
himself as great a master of Scottish, as he was of Latin prose. His
satire of the "Chameleon," though its publication was stopped by
Maitland, must have been read in manuscript by many of those same "True
Lords;" and though there were nobler instincts in Maitland than any
Buchanan gave him credit for, the satire breathed an honest indignation
against that wily turncoat's misgoings, which could not but recommend the
author to all honest men. Therefore it was, I presume, and not because
he was a rogue, and a