e alone perhaps there
was to be found the kind of work for which he was most fit and the
literary applause and emulation which were dear to his soul.

He was about to set out when the King, who doubtless had owed some
entertainment to Buchanan on the lingering homeward journey, and who
must have been well aware of his character and gifts, made him pause by
offering him the tutorship of his illegitimate son, one among several
for whom James, so young as he was, not more than twenty-five, was
already responsible, another James Stewart, though not the notable James
who was afterwards the Regent Murray. This appointment brought Buchanan
at once within the charmed circle of the Court, and probably prepared
the way for all his after-honours. But his career in Edinburgh at this
moment was not especially glorious. Delighted by the _Somnium_, which
had been read to him and applauded by all the obsequious audience round,
James, who though a good Catholic liked a clever assault upon the
priests as much as any one, recommended the new member of his household
to resume the subject. It is supposed that the Grey Friars from their
great lodgment so near the Court had found fault with the appointment of
Buchanan and assailed himself as a profane and scoffing heretic. It was
certainly strange that a man who had adopted the heresies of Luther
should be appointed to the care of the son of a Catholic King, but
Buchanan it is probable kept his religious opinions to himself, and it
was not necessary to be a Protestant to give vent to the broadest
satires against the monks and friars who had been for so long the least
defensible portion of the Catholic establishment. Buchanan, however, was
not bold enough to fall upon his enemies as Sir David Lindsay did. A
poor man and a dependant, had he the highest spirit in the world, must
still bear traces of the yoke to which circumstances have accustomed
him, and a scholar is not necessarily brave. He shrank from encountering
the great and powerful community of the Grey Friars in the eye of day,
and instead of the lively assault expected from him, temporised and
wrote something which was neither satisfactory to the King who wanted a
laugh at the expense of the monks, nor to the monks who were more
enraged by the covert character of a satire which could be read both
ways, than they would have been by straightforward abuse. The
dissatisfaction of James moved Buchanan to bolder measures, and after
his half