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CHARACTERISTICS

Buchanan’s life, like the lives of most people who have done anything worth speaking of in their time, divides itself roughly into two sections—the period of preparation, and the period of performance. What I shall call his period of performance, or at all events chief performance, was from the time when he finally returned to Scotland, after an absence abroad, with brief interruptions, of twenty-two years, and spent the remaining twenty-one years of his life in more or less intimate occupation with the public affairs of his country. On the 19th of August 1561, Queen Mary, then in her nineteenth year, landed at Leith, and was escorted to Holyrood by her enthusiastic subjects, by whom she was also serenaded at night in a style which, as the queen’s French retinue thought, showed more heart than art. Shortly before or after this date, Buchanan, now fifty-five years old, also appeared in Scotland, for his final settlement there. It is a curious coincidence that these two persons, eminent alike in their widely divergent spheres, and destined alternately to a literary friendship that was pleasant to both, and a political antagonism that was fatal to one of them, should have appeared on the scene of their sympathies and conflicts practically at the same time. I have said that the division of Buchanan’s life into a period of preparation and a period of performance is a rough division. By that I mean that what really deserves to be called performance could not be absolutely excluded from the preparation period, and that, to some extent, one stage of the performance period was often a preparation for the next; but taken with this qualification, the division is a sufficiently valid one.

It was, for instance, mainly during the preparation or foreign period that Buchanan wrote those poems which stamped him not only as a man of wit and poetic genius, but as the first Latin stylist in Europe of his day. During this period, too, he acquired from classic and other sources those broad and comprehensive ideas on the leading questions of the day which made him the thinker and Humanist as contrasted with the mere cleric or scholastic obscurantist. It was then also that, through observation on the spot, he was able to comprehend the ‘true inwardness’ of the struggle that was going forward between the old order of things and the new, and often give practical advice that was useful. In this period, too, he completed that thorough study of the Roman and Protestant controversy which ended in determining him to identify himself publicly with the Protestant side in the great conflict that was on foot—in itself no inconsiderable event. All this was undoubtedly performance of no mean order, but from the Scottish national point of view, and from the point of view of general history, on which the special Scottish history exerted so profound an influence, it was preparatory to the great work he did in his native land. His Latin and his various Continental activities are forgotten, but his Scottish work is still memorable. Yet it was because he was the great Humanist and unequalled Latinist, as well as the thinker and experienced observer of affairs, that he was able to command the ear of learned and diplomatic Europe, and through them to make the events that were happening in his country a factor in the world’s history. His foreign performance was therefore, in reality, a preparation for his crowning performance at home. I shall not labour the point of one stage of his performance being preparatory to another.

Of course I do not mean to say that Buchanan did all this consciously and systematically; that he deliberately prepared abroad, and then came and deliberately performed at home. Few men, especially men of Buchanan’s type, shape their lives on such lines of exact and exhaustive purpose. I leave out of account the unhappily large class who foolishly, and even wickedly, throw away their lives, and have hardly ever tried or desired to make a better of it. I confine myself to those who do get something out of life for themselves or society, or both. But I doubt if any, beyond a small minority even of this class, begin life with a distinct aim at reaching what they end life by becoming. There is, of course, the famous case of Whittington, who set himself in cold blood to become Lord Mayor of London. But for one Whittington there have been centuries of Lord Mayors who never dreamt of the Mansion House when they started business in the City. The glory and the turtle came upon them, virtually unsolicited; and even Whittington would probably not have addressed himself as he did to his high achievement, had it not been for the unique campanula of inspiration caught by his ear alone. Probably Napoleon early laid his plans for attaining the mastership of France, possibly of Europe; but did Cæsar begin life with a determination to conquer Rome and become its dictator, or Cromwell with a sketch-plan for cutting off his king’s head, cashiering his country’s parliament, and making himself Lord Protector and military despot?

Millionaires are seldom so of set design. They begin, most probably, by aiming at a competent fortune, but having got that length, the acquired delight in pulling the strings of an extensive and possibly adventurous undertaking, and not mere miserly greed, has kept them at a task which they find they can perform, until the millions roll in as a justification of their ideas and processes. In politics and the professions men probably set out with a general aim at the best position and the most money they can make for themselves; but very few, I should imagine, of those who have reached the greatest eminence or prosperity possible to them said in their youth, ‘I mean to be Prime Minister, or Lord Chancellor, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or President of the Royal College of Physicians, or of the Royal Academy.’ Buchanan seems to have belonged to a type of character which does not include either of the classes of persons just considered. Neither cupidity nor ambition nor any of the ordinary self-aggrandising motives seems to have had much, if any, place in his character. Apostrophising Buchanan in his Funeral Elegy, Joseph Scaliger says:—

‘Contemptis opibus, spretis popularibus auris,

Ventosæque fugax ambitionis, obis.’

‘Despising wealth, spurning the mob’s applause, and shunning vain ambition, thou passest away.’

This was literally true. Buchanan lived from hand to mouth during the greater part of his career. But there is no evidence that he ever tried to make a fortune. He might have prospered in the Church, as Dunbar was willing to do. But he had ideas of his own on that subject, and neither gold nor dignities could tempt him to sell his soul.