"Most of them," Buchanan says, "were men bound to him (Buchanan) for many years in the ties of closest friendship, men who were renowned for their works all over the world," and in whose society the Scottish scholar felt that he would be not among strangers but among kinsmen and friends. A still stronger inducement was, that while all Europe was ablaze with wars and religious controversies, that one little kingdom was at peace. The band of scholars thus removed together to their new sphere, like a hive of bees, and at first all went well with them; but they had not been long in Portugal when Govra died, leaving them without any powerful patronage or protection, a band of strangers, no doubt appearing in the aspect of supplanters of native talent to many hostile lookers-on. Men of their pursuits and modes of thought, aliens in an unknown country, perhaps sufficiently free of speech to alarm the narrow-minded, no great observers of ritual or ceremony, were too likely under any circ.u.mstances to attract the notice of the Inquisition in a place so wholly given over to its sway.
Buchanan was probably the most distinguished among this band of scholars; and a vague report that he had written something against the Franciscans attached to him a special prejudice. As n.o.body knew what this work was, it could not be brought formally against him, but lesser crimes were found, such as that of eating meat in Lent and speaking disrespectfully of monks, sins which even in Portugal most people were more or less guilty of. Buchanan, however, had no very dreadful penalty to bear. He was imprisoned for some months in a monastery, that he might be brought by the monks" instruction to a better way of thinking. The prisoner was fair enough to admit that he found his jailors by no means bad men or unkindly in their treatment of him--an acknowledgment which is greatly to his credit, since prejudice was equally strong on both sides and a persecuted scholar was as little apt to see the good qualities of his persecutors as they were to accept his satires. It would be interesting to know what the homely fathers thought of him, this dreadful freethinker and satirist committed to their care for instruction. He found them "entirely ignorant of religious questions,"
though evidently so much less hostile than he had expected, and occupied his enforced leisure in making his translation of the Psalms, a monument of elegant verse and fine Latinity, for which the quiet of the convent and the absence of interruptions must have been most favourable. He would seem to have corrected the bad impression he had at first made, by these devout studies and his behaviour generally; for when he was released the King would not let him go, but gave him a daily allowance for his expenses until some fit position could be found for him. But there was evidently nothing in Lisbon which tempted Buchanan to stay. He languished in the little capital separated from all congenial society, and sighed for his beloved Paris which he addressed as his mistress, writing a poem, _Desiderium Lutetiae_, in praise of and longing for the presence of that nymph whom so many have wooed.
At last he contrived to escape in a ship bound for England, which, however, he found as little congenial as Portugal, and with as short a delay as possible he returned to that Lutetia which he loved. Arrived there, he would seem to have resumed his old work as schoolmaster in one of the colleges, no way advanced, despite his fame and adventures, from the first post he had held when little more than a boy, though he was now between forty and fifty, and one of the best-known scholars of his time. A few years later he became a member of the household of the Marechal de Brissac as tutor to his son, and with him spent five years, partly in Italy in the province of Liguria where the Marechal was governor. For the first time he would seem to have been treated with honour, and his advice taken in affairs of state and public business generally, and here he tells us he devoted much of his time to the study of sacred literature, so that he might be able to form a matured judgment as to the controversies which were tearing the world asunder.
In the year 1560, his services being no longer required by his pupil, Buchanan at last decided upon returning to his native country. "The despotism of the Guises," he says, "was over, and the religious excitement had begun to calm down." It would appear that though his convictions had so long been on the side of the Reform, he had not yet publicly made himself known as a member of that party. And his return to Scotland was made with the full intention so to do.
Such was the wandering and uncertain career of the scholar and man of letters of the sixteenth century. Perhaps Buchanan"s temper was less compliant, his character less easily adaptable to the society in which he found himself, than most; but it may be doubted whether this was the cause of the very small advancement in life to which he had come, since he was complaisant enough to indite many fine verses in praise of people who gave him a banquet or a shelter, and he seems to have gone nowhere without making friends. He had got abundant reputation, however, if not much else, and was known wherever he went as the celebrated poet, which doubtless was agreeable to him if not very profitable. But it gives us a certain insight into the life of the literary cla.s.s in his time to see so notable a man wandering from one place to another, professor or regent or private tutor as it happened, never well off, never secure, often in the position of a dependant. When Milton speaks of the "others," poets whom he thus adopts into a kind of equality, who "use"
"To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera"s hair,"
it is supposed to be Buchanan whom he refers to, which is perhaps honour enough for a modern cla.s.sicist; though Amaryllis, the critics say, was no more individual a love than the Lutetia before mentioned, for whom he pined. Yet though all the scholars of his time admired and followed him, he had to return again and again to his Latin grammar, and to small boys not so wonderful as Michel of Montaigne; and when he returned to Edinburgh at the age of fifty-five his worldly position was scarcely better than when he got his first appointment at twenty-one to the College of St. Barbe. His life was now, however, to take another form.
Buchanan"s return to Scotland "after the despotism of the Guises was over" corresponded very nearly with the return of Queen Mary. It is surmised that he may have travelled in the suite of "the Lord James,"
the future Earl of Murray, who paid his sister a visit very soon after the death of her husband, King Francis: certainly nothing could be more probable than that the Scotch scholar, seeking an opportunity to return to his native country, should have joined himself to the train of the prince, who probably had been acquainted in his childhood with his brother"s tutor, and who was himself a man of education and a patron of literature. If this guess should be correct it would account for Buchanan"s rapid promotion to Court favour. Edinburgh was in a state of happy expectation when the poet came back. What was virtually a new reign, though Mary had been the nominal possessor of the throne from her birth, was about to begin; the fame of the young Queen had no doubt been blown far and wide about the country on every breeze--that fame of beauty, sweetness, and grace which is the most universally attractive of all reputations, and which made the proud Scots prouder still in the possession of such a prodigy. That there were graver thoughts among the very serious and important party, who felt the safety of their newly-established and severely-reformed Church to be in doubt if not in danger, and who hated and feared "the ma.s.s" and the priests who performed it as they did the devil (with whom indeed they were more amiably familiar), does not alter the fact that the antic.i.p.ation of Mary"s return was a happy one, and her welcome cordial and without drawback. n.o.body knew that there had been a project of a landing at Aberdeen, where Huntly and the other northern lords had proposed to meet her with twenty thousand men, thus enabling her to march upon her capital as a conquering heroine of the old faith, putting Satan, in the shape of John Knox, under her feet. Had she accepted this proposal how strangely might the face of history have been changed! But there is no reason to suppose that Mary desired to come to Scotland with fire and flame, any more than there is that her destruction was a foregone conclusion. She came with many prognostics of success, though also with a continual possibility that "terrible tragedies" might come of it; and for some time it would appear that her Court was as seemly and pleasant as any Court could be, full of youthful pleasure and delight as became her years and the gay youthful company that surrounded her, but also of graver matters and thoughts and purposes becoming a n.o.ble Queen.
The first notice we have of Buchanan after his return to Scotland is conveyed in a letter from Randolph, the English envoy in Edinburgh, in which the question, "Who is fittest to be sent from this Queen to attende upon the Queen"s Majesty (Elizabeth) for the better continuance of intelligence with her Highness?" is discussed. "Of any that I know,"
says the representative of England, "David Forrest is likeliest, and most desireth it. There is with the Queen one called Mr. George Buchanan, a Scottishe man very well learned that was schollemaster unto Monsieur de Brissac"s son, very G.o.dly and honest, whom I have always judged fitter than any other I know." This was written in January 1562, and shows that Buchanan was at that time about the Court and in the way of employment, though he was not then chosen as confidential messenger between the two queens. A little later he is visible in the exercise of his old vocation as the tutor of Mary herself. "The Queen readeth daily after her dinner," says the same careful narrator, "instructed by a learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie." These few words set before us a curious scene. Mary at the height of her good resolutions and good beginning, keeping up her literature as well as all her pleasures, her hunting, her riding, her music, her embroideries, all the accomplishments of her royal training--makes a delightful picture.
She had the habit of working with her needle like any innocent lady in her bower, while the lords of her Council, grim lords whom it is strange to a.s.sociate with this pretty pose of royal simplicity, discussed around her the troublous affairs of the most turbulent kingdom in Christendom: and after her dinner, in the languor of the afternoon, one wonders if the lovely lady was diligent over her Livy or rather seduced her preceptor to talk about Paris, that much-desired Lutetia which he had so longed for, as no doubt in the bottom of her heart she too was sometimes doing. The two so unlike each other--the beautiful young princess not quite twenty, the old scholar and schoolmaster though a poet withal, drawing near the extreme boundaries of middle age, and worn with much struggling against the world and poverty--would yet find a subject and mutual interest far apart from the book, which made endless conversation possible, and many a pleasant comparison of experiences so different.
Buchanan had dedicated a book to one of those fair and famous Margarets who adorned Paris at that epoch, and presumably knew her or something of her state, and could understand her Majesty of Scotland"s allusions, and knew something of the gossip of the Court, or at least could pretend to do so, as a man who was aware what was expected of a courtier. It is possible indeed that Mary was truly studious, and liked her Livy as her contemporary did, the gentle Lady Jane who had so sad a fate; but it is much more likely, we think, that the big volume lay open, while the scholar"s eyes glowed and shone with cherished reminiscences of that enchanting city in which his best days had flown, and Mary Stewart responded to his recollections with all her gay wit and charm of pleasant speech. Many are the tragic a.s.sociations of Holyrood: it is well to note that other companions more sober than Signor Davie, more calm than Chastelar, shared now and then the Queen"s leisure. Grave commentators conclude that it spoke well for her Majesty"s Latinity that Buchanan put her on Livy; for my part I have no doubt that these two unlikely gossips, after perhaps a sentence or two, forgot about Livy, and talked of their Paris all the time.
Buchanan took the opportunity of this quiet and prosperous period, when all was hopeful in the nation as well as in his own prospects, to publish the poetical version of the Psalms which had occupied his enforced leisure in the Portuguese monastery years before. They had not yet seen the light in a complete form, although several of them had been included by the well-known printer Etienne, or Stepha.n.u.s as he is more generally called, in a collection of similar translations by several learned hands, among which he gives in a flattering preface by far the highest place to Buchanan. The terms of laudation in which he speaks, and which it was the fashion of the time to employ, may be judged from the following extracts quoted by Irving. After commenting upon the general excellence of his friend"s work, superior to all others, he adds,--
"There is nothing more honourable, nothing more splendid, than after excelling all others, at length to excel one"s self; so in my judgment you have most happily attained to this praise in your version of these psalms. For in translating the other odes of this sacred poet, you have been Buchanan, that is, you have been as conspicuous among the other paraphrasists as the moon among the smaller luminaries; but when you come to the hundred and fourth psalm you surpa.s.s Buchanan; so that you do not now shine like the moon among the lesser luminaries but like the sun you seem to obscure all the stars by your brilliant rays."
The community of letters in these days was in the habit of expressing the intensest mutual admiration, except when a contrary feeling not less strong animated their minds and pens. Buchanan dedicated his psalms to his beautiful pupil and patron in terms as highflown but more elegant, and with a justifiable wealth of hyperbolical adulation. It would be an undue demand upon humanity to require nothing more than plain fact in a poetical address to a young Sovereign so gracious, so accomplished, and so fair. And yet in the extraordinary circ.u.mstances, so soon to be swallowed up in the abyss of a catastrophe still more extraordinary, there is little extravagance in Buchanan"s address, of which we shall attempt a translation though most unworthy.
"Lady, who bears the sceptre of this land By endless forefathers transmitted down, Whose worth exceeds thy fortune far, as stand Thy virtues o"er thy years, and the renown Of n.o.ble gifts over thy n.o.ble line, And spirit o"er thy s.e.x:--without a frown Accept in this poor Latin garb of mine The n.o.ble songs of Israel"s prophet king.
Far from Parna.s.sus and the cla.s.sic sh.o.r.e, From under northern stars my gift I bring; Nor had I ventured such an ill-born thing To lay before thee, but for fearing more To miss the little chance of pleasing thee, Whose understanding gives a merit not in me."
Buchanan followed this publication by various others, and strangely enough, while still enjoying the royal favour brought out his _Francisca.n.u.s_, his _Fratres Fraterrimi_, and other satires specially directed against the monks: which, however, seem to have done him no harm, for he talks in 1567 of "the occupations of a court," which kept him from bestowing the time and trouble he wished on the preparation of his various books for the press. Whether the readings from Livy went on all this time we have no record; but when Queen Mary married Darnley, and when her son was born, Buchanan would still seem to have occupied the position of Court poet, and celebrated both events by copies of verses as flattering, as well as elegant, as the dedication. From the first of these we may quote the lines in which Buchanan proves, notwithstanding his long absence and cosmopolitan training, that the native brag of the Scot was as strong in him as if he had never left his native sh.o.r.es. It could scarcely be to flatter either of the bridal pair that he burst forth into this celebration of "the ancient Kingdom."
"For herein lies the glory of the Scot, To fill the woods with clamour of the chase; To swim the stream, and cold and heat defy, And hunger and fatigue. To guard their land Not with deep trench or wall, but with the force Of arms, contemning life for honour"s sake; To keep their troth, to reverence the bonds Of friendship, to love virtue and not gifts.
Such acts as these secured throughout the land Freedom and peace, when war raged o"er the world, And every other nation was constrained To change its native laws for foreign yoke, The fury of the Goth stopped here; the onslaught fierce Of the strong Saxon, and the tribes more strong, The Dane and Norman, who had conquered him, Nay, in our ancient annals live the tales Of Roman victory stayed--the Latin tide Which neither south wind checked, nor Parthia bleak, Nor waves of Meroi, nor the rushing Rhine, Was here arrested by this only race Before whose face the Roman paused and held The frontier of his empire, not by lines Of hill and river, but by walls and towns, By Caledonian axes oft a.s.sailed, Laying all hope of further gain aside."
In the meantime, while these poetical performances went on, and the scholar occupied his leisure in preparing for publication his scattered works--an occupation which of itself proved the quiet and good hope in which he was living--more serious labours also occupied his mind.
Notwithstanding his tutorship at Court, Buchanan took advantage of the moment to declare himself an adherent of the newly formed and very belligerent Church, now settled and accepted on the basis of the Reformation, but with little favour at Court as has been seen. He not only put himself and his erudition at once on that side in the most open and public way, but sat in the General a.s.sembly, or at least in one of the a.s.semblies which preceded the formal creation of that great ecclesiastical parliament, in 1563, less than two years after his arrival in Scotland. Nor was his position that of a simple member taking part in the debates; he seems to have sat upon various special committees, and to have been entrusted, along with several others, to revise the Book of Discipline, the standard of order and governance: and this while he was still a courtier, Mary"s tutor and gossip, holding his place in her presence, and celebrating the events of the time in courtly and scholarly verse--a curious instance of toleration in a time which scarcely knew its name.
To recompense Buchanan"s services Queen Mary granted him, in the year 1564, an allowance from the forfeited Church property, making him pensioner of the Abbey of Crossraguel, with an income of five hundred pounds Scots--a sum very different, it need not be said, from the same sum in English money. The abbey had been held by a Kennedy, the brother of Buchanan"s first pupil, the Earl of Ca.s.silis, and very probably he had thus some knowledge of and connection with the locality, where he had gone with Ca.s.silis many years before. The grant would seem for some years to have profited him little, the then Earl of Ca.s.silis, son of his gentler Gilbert, having little inclination to let go his hold of the rents which his uncle had drawn, either in favour of a new abbot or of the pensioner; and the cruelties with which this fierce Ayrshire lord treated the functionary who succeeded his uncle seem incredible to hear of. George Buchanan kept out of his clutches; but it was not till some years afterwards that we find the local tyrant bound over in sureties to leave the two lawful proprietors of these funds alone. So far as can be made out, Mary"s grant to Buchanan was almost identical in date with the publication of the Psalms and the sonnet which he placed at their head: a graceful and royal return for the compliment, quite in harmony with the customs of the time. Both events occurred, as would appear, in the year 1564, when all was still well with the unfortunate Queen.
Buchanan has been accused of great ingrat.i.tude to Mary, because at one time he served and flattered her, and received as a recompense for the incense he offered, a substantial benefit: but afterwards turned from her party to that of her brother, and condemned her with unsparing blame in his History, as well as acted against her after her downfall. But the ingrat.i.tude is quite incapable of proof. To be devoted to a royal personage in his or her youth, and to maintain unbroken, however he or she may change, this early devotion through evil and through good report, is a romantic grace which is given to few. It was given to very few of those who received with enthusiasm the young Queen of Scotland, when she came unsullied, with all her natural fascination and charm, into the country which hoped everything from her, yet knew nothing of her. After the half-dozen years of disaster and tragedy, of which a much greater number of her people believed her the guilty cause than the innocent victim, there were few indeed who maintained their faith. And Buchanan was neither romantic nor young; he had none of the elements of an enthusiast in him. A caustic man of the world, a self-absorbed scholar without domestic ties or usage in the art of loving, it would have been wonderful indeed had he const.i.tuted himself the champion of his beautiful pupil in her terrible adversity because she had shown him a little favour and he had laid poetical homages at her feet in a brighter time. It would be hard indeed if such a pa.s.sage of mutual good offices were to bind a man"s judgment for ever, and prevent him from exercising the right of choosing whom he will serve to all time. Mary"s bounty would suffice to give to her tutor the independence which he had struggled for all his life, if it had been paid; but it was not paid for several years; and it was a bounty which cost the giver nothing, so that the claim for eternal grat.i.tude is overweening in any case.
At the same time, both then and ever, Buchanan"s patron and backer was the Lord James, a man with whom he was very much more likely to find himself in sympathy than with the young Queen. A grave temper and some learning, and also the charm of early a.s.sociation, would naturally attract the elderly scholar more than Mary"s feminine gifts, however great their charm. It was Murray, no doubt, who presented him to the Queen, and procured him his position at Court; and just as the tragic moment approached, when Mary"s brilliant life was about to plunge into darkness, Murray bestowed on Buchanan the place of all others best suited for him, and to which his whole previous existence tended--that of Princ.i.p.al of the College of St. Leonard"s in the University of St.
Andrews. A more fit position, as the best field for his great gifts and dignified retirement for his old age, could not be imagined. Buchanan was sixty; he was of all the scholars of his time _facile princeps_, according to the opinion of the great French printer and scholar, whose expressions were adopted in the register of the University as describing the qualifications of the new Princ.i.p.al. It might well have been supposed that in the reconst.i.tution and improvement of that old University, in the supervision of his students, in the periodical visit to Edinburgh for Church matters or educational duties, which has afforded the necessary relaxation to many a succeeding princ.i.p.al, the peaceful days of the greatest scholar in Europe would now have pa.s.sed tranquilly, until he found his resting-place, like so many others, under the soft green mantle of the turf which, broken only by solemn mounds--the last traces of individuality--encircled the great Cathedral of St. Andrews as it now encircles the ruins of that once splendid shrine.
The events of the time, however, permitted no such dignified and calm conclusion. One can imagine the horror and dismay with which the little community at St. Andrews heard the dreadful news, carried far and wide on every breeze, with every kind of whispered comment and suggestion--soon to be no longer whispered with pale face and bated breath, but proclaimed from the housetops--of Darnley"s murder. Buchanan had poured forth his celebrations of Mary"s marriage and of the birth of the heir while still a member of her household. And no doubt he had become aware of the dissensions in that royal house, of Darnley"s ingrat.i.tude and folly and the Queen"s impatience, before he escaped from all the talk and endless gossip to the quiet of his college. But it would seem equally clear that when the action of the sombre tragedy quickened he was absent from the scene and knew of it only by the rumours and reports that came across the Firth. First Rizzio"s murder, which the distant spectators would discuss, no doubt, with a thrill not entirely of horror, a stern sense that justice had been done, a satisfied prejudice--and no doubt some patriotic, if still prejudiced, hope that now the Italian was removed there would be less of foreign policy, and a more entire regard for the welfare of affairs at home.
Then would come the rumours of the Queen"s vengeance, lightly held at first, of Bothwell always in the foreground, her chief supporter and partisan--Bothwell who, though loved by n.o.body, was yet a Protestant, and therefore not altogether beyond hope. And then with ever-quickening haste event after event--the murder of the King, for whom no one would have mourned much had it been attended by circ.u.mstances less terrible; the mad proceedings of the Queen, whether constrained or free, her captivity, outrage, or conspiracy, whichever it was, her insane and incomprehensible marriage, which no force or persuasion could account for. As the posts arrived at uncertain intervals, delayed by weather, strong winds and heavy seas, by breaking down of conveyances, by the very agitations and tumults in the capital which made them so terribly interesting, the eager spectators in Fife must have congregated to await their arrival with an intensity of excitement, of which, with our endless sources of information and constant communication, we can form little idea now.
And there would seem to be no doubt of the strong immediate feeling which arose against the Queen, the instant conclusion of the bystanders as to her guilt. There have been no greater fluctuations in historical opinion than those that have arisen around the facts of Mary"s life.
Historians of the eighteenth century considered it as a test of a man"s moral sanity whether he persisted in believing in Mary"s innocence or not. Among her contemporaries the progress of time which softened impression, and the many pathetic situations of her later history, the terrible misfortunes under which she fell, her endless miseries and troubles, and the brave spirit with which she met them, turned some hearts again towards her, an ever-troubled but ever-devoted body of partisans. But at the moment when these terrible events occurred there can be little doubt that the horror and condemnation were almost unanimous. No reasoning could explain away those wild and mad acts, no discussion of probability come in. The mob in Edinburgh which raged against her was checked in its fierceness and subdued to pity at sight of the wretched lady in her despair, at that awful moment when she appeared at the window of the Provost"s lodging in the High Street, and made her wild appeal, in all the force of impa.s.sioned and terrible emotion, to the overawed and excited crowd. They saw her in the carelessness of misery half-dressed, unadorned, disenchanted, and delivered from the maddening delusion which had carried her away, recognising in its full extent the horrors of the result--and their hearts were rent with pity. But notwithstanding that pity and all the innate chivalry which her sufferings called forth, Edinburgh and Scotland, the whole alarmed and terrified nation, believed at first the evidence of their senses. There seems nothing more distinct than this fact throughout all the trouble and tumult of the moment. It is not to be taken as an absolute proof of Mary"s guilt. Such impressions have existed in other though less conspicuous cases and have been proved untrue. But that it did exist universally there can be little doubt.
The scene at the window of the Provost"s lodging where the unfortunate Queen was lodged, near the Nether Bow of Edinburgh, when brought back from Dunbar after the flight of Bothwell by the angry lords, with the mob clamouring underneath, and her enemies holding her fate in their hands, seems to me one of the most significant in her history. No woman was ever in circ.u.mstances more terrible. The situation is stronger if we suppose her guilt, and that what we see before us is a great spirit carried away by pa.s.sion--that something beyond reason, beyond all human power to restrain, which sometimes binds an angelic woman to a villain, and sometimes a man of the highest power and wisdom to a lovely trifler or a fool. It seems to me as at once more consistent with the facts and with human nature to realise the position of the unhappy Queen as transported by that overwhelming sentiment, and wrought on the other side to an impatience almost maddening, by the injuries, follies, treacheries, and universal provocation of her unworthy husband, until the force of the bewildering current carried her in a disastrous moment over a precipice worse than any Niagara, in a headlong course of mingled misery, exasperation, love, and despair. Before she had even accomplished the terrible circle of events, and become Bothwell"s wife, it requires no strong effort of the imagination to perceive that the despair might well have come uppermost, and that Mary fully recognised, not only the horror, but the futility and wretched failure into which she had plunged. We do not pretend to believe that there was much to cause remorse in the mind of such a woman in such an age in the death, however brought about, of the miserable Darnley. Mary could have brushed him from her memory like a fly, had that been all. But the rage of despair and failure was in her soul when she raved like a caged lion from door to window, imprisoned, trapped, and betrayed, expressing her incoherent transport of pain to the mob which would have had her blood, but which, overcome by the spectacle of that supreme and awful pa.s.sion, became silent with awe or hushed by a spasm of pity and tears.
So it has remained, a spectacle to all the earth, which the fiercest a.s.sailant and the most rigid judge cannot long contemplate without yielding to a painful compa.s.sion which rends the heart. Why should all that faculty and force, all that wonderful being, with every capacity for happiness and making happy, for wise action and beneficent dealing, for boundless influence and power--why such youth, such strength, such spirit, equal to every enterprise, should they have been swept away by that remorseless fate? We can still see the trapped and ruined Queen--exasperated still further by the consciousness that many of the men now holding her in bonds were at least as guilty as she, guilty of Darnley"s blood, guilty if not of favouring yet of fearing Bothwell and yielding their countenance to his plans--pacing that chamber, appearing at that window, her loveliness, her adornments, and all the wiles of triumphant beauty forgotten, throwing forth to the earth that was as bra.s.s and the skies that were as iron, like a wild animal in its torment, her hoa.r.s.e inarticulate cry. And, whatever we may think of her merits, that terrible spectacle is more than flesh and blood can bear.
Pity takes the place of wrath and indignation that she alone should suffer: why not Lethington, Huntly, Athole, and the rest, all those stern peers who counselled with her upon the most effectual way of having Darnley removed, the thankless fool who disturbed every man"s peace--why were not they tried along with her, they who took such high ground as her judges? Why should she bear the brunt of all? Even Bothwell had escaped, and Mary stood at the bar of the world alone.
But such thoughts would not seem to have moved the first spectators, to whom all that d.a.m.ning sequence of events, one precipitated on the heels of another, came fresh as they occurred day by day. As for Buchanan, he would be less p.r.o.ne to doubt than any. He knew something of the Court of France and of the atmosphere in which Mary had received her training. He was acquainted with many a royal scandal, and had much experience of a world in which vice was the rule and good behaviour a mere exception, due to a cold temperament, or a wariness uncongenial to generous youth.
Such an old man of the world is slow to believe in innocence at all, and it is very likely that to him who knew her so well it was impossible to conceive of Mary as an example of weak but spotless virtue. The Princ.i.p.al of St. Leonard"s went over to Edinburgh a few days after the completion of that tragic chapter, when Mary had been consigned to Lochleven, and Murray had a.s.sumed the Regency. The city was still agitated by much discussion of the dreadful questions which occupied all minds yet was slowly calming down like an angry sea, with long seethings and swellings of excitement. The object of Buchanan"s visit was not curiosity or desire to be in the centre of that excitement, but a simpler matter, which has drawn many a Princ.i.p.al of St. Andrews since to the capital of Scotland, an a.s.sembly of the Church, which opened "in the Nether Tolbooth" on the 25th of June. Of this a.s.sembly he, though a layman, was appointed Moderator "for eschewing of confusion in reasoning"--a curious motive, which proves at least that his contemporaries had great confidence in his judgment, and also that the pa.s.sion of this excited and tumultuous time ran so high in the Church that a stronger authority than usual was wanted to keep it within bounds. The sentiment of the Church, or at least of the dominant party in it, would seem to have been rather satisfaction that the Sovereign, foreign alike in training and religion, had been set aside than any distress at the cause. The a.s.sembly congratulates itself that "this present has offered some better occasion than in times bygane, and has begun to tread down Satan under foot," which is not a very amiable deliverance: but kindness and charity were not the Christian virtues most approved in those days.
From this time Buchanan took up with vehemence, and indeed with violence, the prosecution of Mary, acting often as her accuser, and always as an active agent, secretary, or commissioner, in the conduct of the indictment against her. He has been subject on this account to very hard treatment especially from the recent defenders of the Queen. Mr.
Hosack, in his able book _Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers_, denounces him as having offered verses and adulations to the Queen at a time when, according to his own after-statement, everybody knew her to be living in shameless vice and corruption. This, however, is not at all a necessary inference. It might, on the contrary, very well have lent bitterness to Buchanan"s historical record, written after the dreadful catastrophe which so many accepted as a revelation of Mary"s real character, that he had himself been one of the deceived, who for years had entertained no suspicion, but accepted the fair seeming as truth.
Such a sentiment is one of the most common in human nature. The friend deceived becomes the bitterest enemy; and he who has been seduced into undeserved approval is apt to go farther than the fiercest adversary when he learns that his own utterances have helped to veil the crime which he had never suspected the existence of. This motive is enough, we think, to account for the special virulence with which Buchanan certainly does a.s.sail the Queen, and the pa.s.sion which thrills through the _Detectio_, a sort of fury and abhorrence which makes every paragraph tingle. She had done nothing to Buchanan to rouse any desire for individual vengeance; and it is more rational, certainly, to believe that the horror of the discovery inspired with a sort of rage the bosom of the scholar--rage which was perfectly genuine in its beginning, though it might, no doubt, be raised to whiter heat by the continually increasing fervour of partisanship. The curious description of him given by Sir James Melville (the courtier, not the divine) that "he was easily abused, and so facile that he was led with any company that he haunted for the time, which made him factious in his old days; for he spoke and writ as they that were about him for the time informed him," would, if accepted, give a still easier solution to this question. But it is a little difficult to accept such a character of Buchanan, who does not seem to have been a man easily put off from his own way, especially when taken in conjunction with the a.s.sembly"s minute, recording his election as president "for eschewing of confusion in reasoning." It is more easy to believe the statement that he was "extreme vengeable against any man that offended him, which was his greatest fault."
The much darker accusation against Buchanan, that he was a party to, or indeed the most active agent in, the forging of certain letters reported to have been sent by Mary to Bothwell before Darnley"s murder, and known far and wide as the Casket Letters, seems to rest upon nothing but conjecture. He was one of the few members of the party who possessed the literary gift, the only one, perhaps, except Lethington, whom Mr.
Skelton has presented to us as not only a very enlightened statesman, but at all times the faithful servant of Mary, but who is accused by earlier writers of much tergiversation and falsehood. He it was, according to Chalmers, who was the forger, reaching the summit of wickedness "in forging his mistress"s handwriting for the odious purpose of convicting her of the crime of aggravated murder." Chalmers was as st.u.r.dy a champion of Mary"s innocence in the eighteenth as Mr. Skelton is in the nineteenth century, but the conduct of historical research has very much altered in the meantime. The changes have been rung between Lethington and Buchanan by various critics, but the last light upon the subject seems to be that there is none, and that if the letters were forged the forger at least cannot be identified by any art known to history.
It is unnecessary to pursue the question, or to bring further arguments to prove that nothing else in Buchanan"s writings indicates the possession of such dramatic and constructive power as would be necessary for the production of such a letter as that professedly written from Glasgow, which is by far the most important of the contents of the Casket. A woman"s distracted soul, divided between pa.s.sion and shame, the very exaltation of guilty self-abandonment and the horror of conscious depravity and despair, is not a thing which can be imagined or embodied by the first ready pen, or even able intellect. No one of all the tumultuous band that directed affairs in Scotland has given us any reason to suppose that he was capable of it. Its very contradictions, those changes of mood and feeling which the most ignorant reader can perceive, are quite beyond the mark of ordinary invention. Mr. Froude has said that only Shakespeare or Mary Stewart could have written it--at all events the writer, supposing it to be forged, must have been of unquestionable imaginative genius. It is one of the most wonderful compositions ever given to the world. We look on with awe while those dark secrets of the heart are unfolded. The revelation is too tremendous, too overwhelming, and far too true to nature, to call forth mere horror and condemnation. It is a proof of the often-repeated statement that could we but see into the heart of the greatest criminal pity would mingle with our judgment. Nothing could be more criminal and horrible than the acts therein antic.i.p.ated, yet we think it would be impossible for any unbia.s.sed mind to read this letter for the first time without an increase at least of interest in the writer, so transported by her love, ready almost to brag of the falsehood and treachery into which it leads her, till sick shame and horror of herself breathes over her changing mood, and she feels that even he for whose love all is undertaken must loathe her as she loathes herself. To imagine Buchanan, an old man of the world, somewhat coa.r.s.e, fond of a rough jest, little used to women, and past the age of pa.s.sion, as producing that tragical and terrible revelation, is almost more than impossible, it is an insult to the reader"s intelligence. And accordingly the latest writers on this subject have relinquished that accusation; they no longer charge the old pedagogue with such an effort of genius; they confine themselves to accusing him of ingrat.i.tude towards his benefactress, which is as much as to say that a little personal favour, even when well earned, is to compel a man to shut his eyes henceforward to the character and conduct of the person who has conferred it, and that both patriotic feeling and political policy are to be quenched by a pension, which is a strange view.
There can be no doubt, however, that Buchanan made out the case against the Queen with all the rhetorical force of which he was capable; that the accusation was bitter, as of a man who had been personally deceived and injured, as indeed it is quite possible that he may have felt himself to be; and that there was no pity, no mercy, nor compunction towards her, such as arose in many men"s bosoms after a little time, and have been rife ever since both in writers and readers. The _Detection_ is without ruth, and a.s.sumes the most criminal and degrading motives throughout. Its intention clearly is to convince Scotland, England, and the world of Mary"s utter depravity, and the impossibility of any excuse for her or argument in her favour. The strong and fiery indignation in it is indeed lessened in effect, at least to us in these latter days, by the over strength of the indictment; and the reader who turns from the perusal of the Glasgow letter--which d.a.m.ns indeed yet rouses a world of conflicting feelings, awe and terror and pity for the lost soul thus tragically self-condemned--to the historical doc.u.ment in which the charges against the Queen are authoritatively set forth, cannot fail to be struck by the difference. It is far from being simple abhorrence with which we regard the revelation of the one, but in the other there is no light; the picture is inhuman and impossible in its utter blackness, the guilt imputed to the Queen is systematic, unimpa.s.sioned, the mere commonplace of an utterly depraved nature. The wild emotion and terrible impulse in her becomes mere vulgar vice in her accuser"s hands. In this there is nothing wonderful, nothing out of the common course of nature, which is p.r.o.ne to make every indictment more bitter than the facts that prove it.
But it may well be believed that it was something of a fierce consolation to the high-tempered and strong-speaking Scots, in the rush of universal popular condemnation, to believe and a.s.sert that the Queen, who had so disappointed and disenchanted all her well-wishers, had been bad through and through, indecent and shameless. The inclination, almost the wish, to think the worst of every fallen idol has not died out with the generation which condemned Mary Stewart; and Buchanan was the spokesman, the advocate of the other party, whose conduct could only be justified by the establishment of her guilt. If she were not guilty, they were traitors. If all the proof against her was but a ma.s.s of distorted facts and false swearing, nothing in the way of punishment was too bad for her unfaithful subjects. A mistake was impossible, the struggle was one of life and death. The spokesman in such a tremendous issue, the narrator and setter forth of the terrible question, especially if he is a person whose trade it is to write, and who can be accused of doing his work for hire, is always at a disadvantage. It can never be proved to the vulgar mind that he has not formed his opinions to order, that he does not give them out to the world according as they may best benefit and satisfy his employers. His masters may be hated, but he is both hated and despised. If it could be proved that Murray was solely actuated by ambition and the hope of getting the throne for himself, he would still be a belligerent with the honours of war due to him; but the scribe, the hireling who is employed to state the whole matter, has no position but that of a venal dependant ready to set forth whatever is for his master"s interests. Thus the historian of a party, who makes money by his work, the literary advocate whose office it is to make the strongest statement possible of his employer"s case, is subject--or at least was subject in more primitive times--to the worst reproaches. His testimony was seldom taken as conscientious or true.
Buchanan"s _Detection_ was peculiarly subject to this reproach. It was written for the purpose of proving the case of the lords by demolishing entirely that of the Queen--before England and the commissioners of England first, seated in session to investigate the subject, and after them before the world in general. The inquiry which was opened at York in October 1568, six months after Mary"s escape to England, was the most like a trial of anything in which her history was discussed. She was represented by commissioners, while Murray and several of his colleagues were present in person, along with Buchanan and other secretaries or minor commissioners. It was at this inquiry that the Casket Letters were first produced under, we are bound to say, if we judge by the rules of a period of settled law and order like our own, very suspicious circ.u.mstances. Even the question of the language in which they were written is a very difficult one. All through, indeed, this question is difficult, though it is never formally discussed until that tragical occasion. In what language did Mary and Knox hold their discussions?
Could it be always in French that this accomplished Queen wrote and spoke? When she is reported to have said, as recorded in a previous chapter, "That man gart me greet sore, and grat never tear," is this expression, so distinctively and strongly Scots, a translation from some more elegant murmur in another language? She who had so many tongues, had she left out that in which she had been born, the language of her childhood and of her country? This problem is only considered by the historians when it is required to prove that a letter must be forged because it is apparently first written in Scots. There is also a very great point made of the difference between Scots and English, which seems to have been very slight indeed, a difference of spelling more than anything else, nothing that could confuse any but the most ignorant reader. The following sentences from Buchanan"s "_Admonition direct to the Trew Lordis, maintaineris of justice_" will throw some light on the latter question, the difference between the written speech of the two different kingdoms, which one writer tells us would have made it easier for Queen Elizabeth to read letters in French than Scots:--
"It may seme to zour lordshippis," says Buchanan, "yat I, melling with heich materis of governing of comoun welthis do pa.s.s myne estait, being of sa meane qualitie, or forgetting my dewtie geveing counsal to ye wysest of yis realme. Not the les seeing the miserie sa greit appeiring, and the calamitie sa neir approching, I thocht it les fault to incur the cryme of surmounting my private estait than the blame of neglecting the publict danger."
From this the reader will be able to judge what extraordinary difficulty there was in the Scotch to an English reader of those days. The use of z instead of y, of y instead of th, are matters very easily mastered; and it is surely the utmost folly to suppose that Queen Elizabeth could have found the slightest difficulty in deciphering this northern version of the common tongue.
The doc.u.ment quoted above is a very powerful and no doubt also violent a.s.sault upon the Hamiltons, especially called forth by the murder of the Regent Murray, the slackness of the succeeding Government in the punishment of his a.s.sa.s.sin, and the powerful reasons there were for destroying--a measure which Buchanan thought imperative both for the safety of the realm and the child-king--that powerful family, the head of which was next in succession to the Scotch Crown, and had been popularly believed to be ready for any crime to obtain it. Now that there was nothing but the life of a child between the Hamiltons and this elevation, Buchanan lifted up his testimony against the supineness which left the race undisturbed to carry out its evil designs. Murray had been murdered in the beginning of 1570, and the _Admonition_ was printed at Stirling a few months later. In the same year Buchanan wrote that curious tract called the _Chameleon_, a satirical attack upon Lethington, which is not very brilliant either in language or conception, and fails altogether in the incisive bitterness which characterises most of Buchanan"s other political papers. "It is at least equal in vigour and elegance to that of most compositions in the ancient Scottish language," says Buchanan"s biographer, but few modern readers will agree in this verdict. Buchanan"s hand had not the lightness necessary for such a performance. The guilt of Mary and the death of Murray furnished him with more emphatic motives than the iniquities of Maitland, and he was evidently stronger in a.s.sault and invective than in the lighter methods of composition.
It might have been supposed that his hopes of preferment would have been seriously injured by Murray"s death. But it was after this event that he was selected for the greatest office which Scotland could bestow upon a scholar--the education of the young King. Buchanan"s services were no doubt well worthy of such a reward: at the same time it may be allowed that a scholar so renowned, the first of contemporary poets according to the judgment of his cla.s.s, and the greatest of lettered Scotsmen beyond all question, could not be pa.s.sed over. During the intervening time he had retained the appointment of Princ.i.p.al of St. Leonard"s College, his frequent absences being made possible by the fact that though he had much to do with the government and regulation of the University of St.
Andrews, he was not actively employed in giving instruction. But after this we float at once into a halcyon time. It was in the end of 1569 or beginning of 1570 that he was appointed the governor of the King, and in this capacity and amid peaceful surroundings more appropriate to his character than the rage of politics, the old scholar becomes more distinctly visible than it was possible he could be in the midst of contention and under the shadow of greater men. He was about sixty-four at the time he entered upon the active duties of the office. "A man of notable endowments for his knowledge of Latin poesie--much honoured in other countries, pleasant in conversation, rehearsing on all occasions moralities short and instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing when he wanted," says Sir James Melville. _Sandford and Merton_ had not been written for the advantage of schoolboys in Melville"s days, yet the picture is that of an antiquated Mr. Barlow never forgetting the art of instruction. The particular anecdotes, however, told of Buchanan, do not recall Mr. Barlow or his "moralities" at all.
[Ill.u.s.tration: STIRLING CASTLE]
The little King James, a precocious and clever child like all the infantile monarchs of the house of Stewart, had been established at Stirling, always a favourite residence of the Scotch Kings, where he held his baby Court in peace while his mother pined in England, and the Scotch lords struggled for the mastery, and succeeded each other as Regents at home. The troubles of the world outside seem to have been kept far from the surroundings of the boy, to whom both the kingdoms looked as their heir, the child in whom the glories of his race came to a climax, and the union of the warring kingdoms was at last secured.
Personally, he was by far the least distinguished of his name, but no one as yet suspected this fact or thought of Buchanan"s pupil as less hopeful than any of the gallant Jameses who had preceded him. The little Court at Stirling was presided over at this early period by the Lady Mar, a dignified matron who was "wise and sharp and kept the king in great awe," although at the same time very tender of the child and respectful of his royal dignity. Almost all James"s immediate surroundings seem to have belonged to this powerful race. The master of the household was a certain Laird of Drumwhasel, to whom no other name is given, and who is described as ambitious and greedy, a man whose "greatest care was to advance himself and his friends." Alexander Erskine, another member of the household, calls forth something like enthusiasm in the courtly narrative as "a gallant, well-nurtured gentleman, loved and honoured by all men for his good qualities and great discretion, no ways factious nor envious, a lover of all honest men, desiring to see men of good conversation about the prince rather than his own nearest friends if he found them not so meet." In addition to this official household were the tutors charged with James"s education, two of them being members of the Erskine family, abbots of Cambuskenneth and Dryburgh, though those t.i.tles were no doubt merely fict.i.tious, meaning only that the "temporalities," the endowments of the extinct monasteries, were in their hands. The other and princ.i.p.al masters of James were Sir Peter Young and Mr. George Buchanan. Young was "gentle, loth to offend the king at any time, carrying himself warily as a man who had a mind to his own weal by keeping of his majesty"s favour"--"but Mr. George," adds the historian, "was a Stoick philosopher who looked not far before him." He "held the king in great awe," so that James "even trembled" as he himself says elsewhere, "at his approach,"
and did not spare either rod or word in the interests of his pupil. Some of the anecdotes of this severe impartiality are amusing enough. At one time annoyed by the noise which the King and his playfellows were making, Buchanan bade them be silent under certain penalties if the offence were repeated, and provoked by a childish impertinence from James, took up the little culprit and whipped him with exemplary impartiality, notwithstanding that his companion, the little Master of Mar, stood by, on whom vicarious chastis.e.m.e.nt might have been applied.
Lady Mar, rushing to the scene of action at the sound of "the wailing which ensued," took the child from his master"s hands and consoled him in her motherly arms, asking Buchanan indignantly how he dared to touch the Lord"s anointed. The incident is very natural and amusing in its homely simplicity; the child crying, the lady soothing him, the sardonic old master in his furred nightgown and velvet cap, looking on unmoved, bidding her kiss the place to make it well. The Master of Mar no doubt would cry too for sympathy, and the old gentleman take up his big book and move off to seek a quieter place for study. On another occasion, when the little King tried to get a sparrow from his companion and crushed the bird in the struggle, Buchanan rated him as himself a bird out of a b.l.o.o.d.y nest. He was an old man and alone in the world, indifferent to future favours from a king whose reign he would probably not live to see, and treating him with impartial justice.
There was, however, no indifference to James"s education in this austere simplicity: indeed it would seem that Buchanan, like other preceptors of monarchs, had some hope of forming an ideal prince out of the boy. A few years after his appointment to his office, and when James was still too young to profit by it, he began to write his famous treatise, in the form of a dialogue, upon the laws of the kingdom, the duty respectively of kings and subjects. The _De Jure Regni_, published when the King was about twelve, was dedicated to him in a grave and dignified letter in which Buchanan describes his work as an attempt to expound the prerogatives of the Scottish Crown, "in which," he says, "I endeavoured to explain from their very cradle, so to speak, the reciprocal rights and privileges of kings and their subjects." He goes on to say that the book was written in the midst of the public troubles with a view to enlightening the disturbers of the commonwealth as to their duties: but that peace beginning to be established he had sacrificed his argument for the sake of public tranquillity. Now, however, that it may be useful to the development of the King he brings it forth again. The direct address to James is full of that curious self-deception or defective insight which is so common among those who have the training of a pupil of great importance in the world. The boy had grown beyond the age of personal chastis.e.m.e.nt; he had reached that in which the precocious facility of comprehension, which is so strongly fostered by the circ.u.mstances of such a position as his, looks to the dazzled pedagogues and attendants like genius, and there seems no prognostic too happy or too brilliant for the new career in which at last there is about to be fulfilled all that men have dreamed of a king.
"Many circ.u.mstances tend to convince me that my present exertions will not prove fruitless, especially your age, yet uncorrupted by perverse opinions; a disposition beyond your years, spontaneously urging you to every n.o.ble pursuit; a facility in obeying not only your preceptors, but all prudent monitors; a judgment and dexterity in disquisition which prevent you from paying much regard to authority, unless it be confirmed by solid argument. I likewise perceive that by a kind of natural instinct, you so dislike flattery, the nurse of tyranny, and the most grievous pest of a legitimate monarchy, that you as heartily hate the courtly solecisms and barbarisms as they are relished and affected by those who consider themselves as the arbiters of every elegance, and who, by way of seasoning their conversation, are perpetually sprinkling it with majesties, lordships, excellencies, and, if possible, with other expressions still more nauseous. Although the bounty of nature and the instruction of your governors may at present secure you against this error, yet am I compelled to entertain some slight degree of suspicion lest evil communication, the alluring nurse of the vices, should lend an unhappy impulse to your still tender mind, especially as I am not ignorant with what facility the external senses yield to seduction. I have therefore sent you this treatise, not only as a monitor, but even as an importunate and sometimes impudent dun, who in this turn of life may convoy you beyond the rocks of adulation; and may not merely offer you advice, but confine you to the path which you have entered, and if you should chance to deviate may reprehend you and recall your steps. If you obey this monitor you will ensure tranquillity to yourself and your family, and will transmit your glory to the most distant posterity."
That James VI should be described as disliking flattery and despising authority, if not enforced by solid argument, is strange to hear; and that he should be so boldly called upon to consider a plea for national freedom and a const.i.tutional rule, as the chief guarantee of tranquillity and honour, is still more remarkable. Certainly it was not from Buchanan that he got those high pretensions of divine right, which had never flourished in Scotland; although by a not uncommon paradox the most faithful partisans of the family which was brought to ruin by these pretensions were found in the northern kingdom. Very different were the doctrines upon which Buchanan nourished the royal child. James acknowledged afterwards not ungracefully the distinction of his instructor in letters. "All the world," he says, "knows that my master George Buchanan was a great master in that faculty." But his opinions in politics found no favour in his pupil"s eyes when James emerged from his youthful subjection and began to show his native mettle. At twelve, individuality in that respect would scarcely be developed, and a reverence for his tutor"s sharp tongue and ready hand would keep the King from premature opposition.
While this work was going on in the comparative quiet of Stirling, Scotland was lost in the turmoil of one of the most wild and terrible portions of her history. It is indeed rather from the glimpse we have of the little royal household in the foreground of all that strife and bloodshed, the Lady Mar in her matronly dignity, Buchanan in his furred gown among his books, and the clamour and laughter of the two boys interrupting the quiet, that we can believe in any semblance of peace or domestic life at all in the distracted country. The Regent Lennox, the King"s grandfather, was killed under the very rocks of the castle where James learned his lessons. His young companion"s father, the Earl of Mar, was taken from the family at Stirling and raised to a brief and agitated Regency, through all of which a civil war was raging. And till from beyond the seas there came the still more horrible news of that French ma.s.sacre which convulsed the world, and made an end of Mary"s party, nothing was secure from one day to another in Scotland. It was in the midst of that very tumult and endless miserable conflict, in which Mary"s followers had at last set up the doctrine of her irresponsibility and divine right to retain her position as Queen whatever might be her guilt as Mary Stewart--that the scholar set himself to compose his work upon the rights of the kingdom and the duties of kings. His high temper, his strong partisanship, his stern logic, would find an incitement and inspiration in those specious arguments on the other side which were so new to Scotland, and had been contradicted over and over again in her troublous history, where no one was so certain to be brought to book for his offences as the erring or unsuccessful monarch. It must be difficult for a great cla.s.sicist to be at the same time a believer in the divine right of kings; and it was a new idea for the mediaeval Scot accustomed to reverence the name, but to criticise in the sharpest practical way the acts of his sovereign. And we may imagine that the old scholar, who could not but hear from his window the shouts of the warfare between the Queen"s party and the King"s, would have a grim satisfaction as he sat high above them, protected more or less by the royal name, in forging at his leisure those links of remorseless argument which, though they had no effect upon the pupil to whom they were dedicated, had their share in regulating that great rebellion which had so important an effect upon the after-history of the two kingdoms.