none of the 'Evangelical' fervour which marked the utterances of Knox, Luther, Calvin though to a less degree, and the Reforming preachers of Scotland. He never preached, in the popular sense

tructive side. Indeed, much of his literary work was done before he openly and formally broke with Rome, which he was in no hurry to do. He satirises the clergy, especially the monks, and ridicules such doctrines as those of Indulgences and Transubstantiation, the latter especially in the Franciscanus, where it is stated with a grossness and extravagance of literalism which would probably be disowned by the highest order of Catholic dogmatist. As the

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n's tutor, described him, in writing, as an 'Atheist'; but that was in the sense in which Athanasius described Arius as an atheist, and is said to have seized an opportunity of striking him in the jaw in that capacity, to show what he thought of it and him. Arius, however, constantly professed himself a believer in 'God, the Father Almighty,' under, of course, 'heretical' modifications; but Athanasius thought that a wrong God-that is, a God that was not God, according to Athanasius-was no God, and spoke and acted accordingly. Buc

ary's Court poet, and possibly meditating on the 'Pompa' or masque for her wedding, and getting on so well with her that she was arranging for giving him that ￡500 (Scots) pension from Crossraguel Abbey, out of which it cost him such excruciating difficulty to get anything at all, at the same time that he was helping the General Assembly to revise the Book of Discipline, translating Spanish despatches for the Privy Council, and generally acting as 'handy man' on the highest planes all round. This 'Dirge' is too long for quotation: a curious attempt to combine the Pagan spirit and the Calvinistic theology-spiritual elevation and sarcastic wit in the best poetic form. 'Those who believe that there are no Manes, i.e. no hereafter, or if they do, live despising Pluto and the trans-Stygian penalties, may well deplore their coming fate, while they leave sorrow to surviving friends. But we have no such grief over our lost Calvin. He has passed beyond the stars, and, filled with a d

nce, and grasping at mere shadows of the "right and good,"' sees the 'darkness disappear, the vain "simulacra" cease, the unveiled face of "truth" reveal itself in light.' I may be wrong, but this looks to me more like a Pantheistic theory of 'illumination' than the 'regeneration' of the Calvinistic creeds! Besides, there is no word of 'sin,' and the change to at least an incipient 'holiness' only from 'illusion' to 'truth' (verum). If it be said that this must be assumed, then a new contradiction of Calvinism arises, since a divine Soul of the soul cannot will ev

he scantiness, brevity, for the most part simply Theistic references he makes to matters of faith, are significant. He clearly was not zealous about most of those doctrines on which the Reforming preachers placed the greatest emphasis. His training and wide intellectual illumination must have stood in the way of his sympathising with the more violent among them, probably not excepting Knox himself occasionally. In this connection one thinks of another illustrious son of the Renaissance, Erasmus, Buchanan's senior by forty years. After all he had said and done, the Protestants demanded, with loud reproaches, that he should publicly join their ranks. Erasmus would not, perhaps cou

lunders and shortcomings, so easy to point out at this distance, Luther took his own way, and did what he did. Truth is greater than peace. 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,' is the method of Christianity, unless the Founder of it is mistaken. The martyrs had faults and weaknesses-say even that they were mistaken,-but they were men of nobler spirit, and did more for us and our liberties than the traditores, the 'traitors' who handed over their Scriptures to the Pr?tor rather than face the lions. Up to a certain point, Buchanan's attitude seems to have been practically that of Erasmus. He tells us himself in his Autobiog

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inst him that could properly be called heretical. He was said to have eaten flesh in Lent, but everybody did it there, when they could get it. He was said to have given it as his opinion that on the Eucharistic controversy Augustine's opinions were more favourable to the Lutherans than to the Church; but that was merely literary or historical criticism, not heresy. Two young gentlemen testified that Buchanan was not at heart a good Catholic-which was probably true enough, but was n

a polished courtier. When Buchanan went over to the Reformers, it was the smartest epigrammatist going who was joining the most advanced party and leaving the 'stupid' party behind. To return. It was a well-known rule of the Stoics not to quarrel with the popular beliefs, but, if possible, to utilise them for good, as we see Buchanan does with the Pagan mythology in his Dirge on Calvin's death. Socrates, their model wise man, teaches conformity to the cult of the city where the sage resides; and everybody will recollect the care with which, as his trial approached, he arranged that Esculapius should have the cock that was due him. Probably Esculapius is still receiving a good deal of that class of poultry. For a long time-indeed un

tant from a position in which he would be bound to dogmatise. He did not frown upon Mary's private Mass, while Knox denounced it as worse than ten thousand armed opponents. When he narrates the hanging of a priest, according to statute, for saying Mass a third time, he does not exult, as was no doubt done by the men of the 'Congregation,' and possibly by Knox himself, when they heard of the happy event. There is nothing about him of the zeal of the renegade, who often out-Herods Herod in championing his new faith-a tendency from which Knox was by no means free. In his History he evidently tries t

be perilous or fatal to its revealer, and the hero of Truth who dies in his bed has probably made a good many compromises with his conscience to achieve that result. It is all a matter of degree, a comparison of the well and the very well, of the bad and the too bad. A good man is a man who tries to be good, and a bad man is a man who does not care whether he is bad or good. But man is finite, and there can be nothing absolute in human life, except perhaps the absolute fool who thinks there may. Everything depends on the state of the facts. In these days, for instance, when historical and speculative criticism has put Scripture and the supernatural in so very different a position from that assigned to them by the Reformers, there is too good reaso

ts harness open to the shafts of the satirical sharpshooter, but they would probably not have done so great and grave a work in the world. Dire, however, are the fruits of an igneous temperament and a ligneous intellect, and Praise-God Barebones and Co. have done an evil turn to a good undertaking. The capacity and habit of seeing and enjoying the ludicrous are a temptation to their possessor to forget that life has its serious aspect also, and in too many instances this seems to be forgotten. Hence the presumption is against the laugher until he has become better known. I recollect once hearing a celebrated preacher give a highly comical account of his own conversion, and albeit n

sance

order, which has occasioned misgiving to some of his friends. One biographer, a very competent authority on this period of Scottish history, says, somewhat severely, that these pieces ought not to have been written by the man who wrote Franciscanus-a powerful satire on the vices and hypocrisy of the monks. I must say that, with every deference to a critic highly worthy of respect, I am not able to see it. The Franciscanus was essentially an exposure of dishonesty, not so much of the vices practised under the cowl, as of the shameful trickery of using the cowl to cloak them. As far as honesty and consistency go, there is no reason why an honest and consistent man should not have wr

demur to any suggestion that these or any of Buchanan's so-called 'amorous' poetry are corrupting or intended to be, or that they exhibit any gloating over the degrading or the degraded on the part of the writer. From references in them I believe they were satires written for the warning of 'college' youth, and resembled certain passages in the Book of Proverbs and elsewhere in the Bible, where certain counsels, highly necessary and practical, are conveyed in language not deficient either in directness or detail. They could not possibly scandalise or tempt any one, being written in Latin. Mr. Podsnap and the 'young person' would pass equally scatheless,

emper pr?sen

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ell able to appreciate this c

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absent, she

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pleasure of s

w Buchanan could appreciate and address the highest type of womanhood, let him read such verses as the Ad Mildredam or the Ad Camillam Morelliam, and he will see that he was a man with tenderness in him as well as virility, with grace as well as severity of speech; and the fact that in his maturer years he was not ashamed to publish the incriminated poetry, showed that h