Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/157

 "Aug. 24. To Maister John Ballentyne, in part payment of the second buke of Titus Livius, £8.

"Nov. 30. To Maister John Ballentyne, be the kingis precept, for his laboris dune in translating of Livie, £20.

The literary labours of Ballentyne were still further rewarded by his royal master, with an appointment to the archdeanery of Moray, and the escheated property and rents of two individuals, who became subject to the pains of treason for having used influence with the Pope to obtain the same benefice, against the king's privilege. He subsequently got a vacant prebendaryship in the cathedral of Ross. His translation of Boece was printed in 1536, by Thomas Davidson, and had become in later times almost unique, till a new edition was published in a remarkably elegant style, in 1821, by Messrs Tait, Edinburgh. At the same time appeared the translation of the first two books of Livy, which had never before been printed. The latter work seems to have been carried no further by the translator.

Ballentyne seems to have lived happily in the sunshine of court favour during the remainder of the reign of James V. The opposition which he afterwards presented to the reformation, brought him into such odium, that he retired from his country in disgust, and died at Rome, about the year 1550.

The translations of Ballentyne are characterised by a striking felicity of language, and also by a freedom that shows his profound acquaintance with the learned language upon which he wrought. His Chronicle, which closes with the reign of James I., is rather a paraphrase than a literal translation of Boece, and possesses in several respects the character of an original work. Many of the historical errors of the latter are corrected—not a few of his redundancies retrenched—and his more glaring omissions supplied. Several passages in the work are highly elegant, and some descriptions of particular incidents reach to something nearly akin to the sublime. Many of the works of Ballenden are lost—among others a tract on the Pythagoric letter, and a discourse upon Virtue and Pleasure. He also wrote many political pieces, the most of which are lost. Those which have reached us are principally Proems prefixed to his prose works, a species of composition not apt to bring out the better qualities of a poet; yet they exhibit the workings of a rich and luxuriant fancy, and abound in lively sallies of the imagination. They are generally allegorical, and distinguished rather by incidental beauties, than by the skilful structure of the fable. The story, indeed, is often dull, the allusions obscure, and the general scope of the piece unintelligible. These faults, however, are pretty general characteristics of allegorical poets, and they are atoned for, in him, by the striking thoughts and the charming descriptions in which he abounds, and which, "like threds of gold, the rich arras, beautify his works quite thorow."

, of Halhill, an eminent lay reformer, and also a prose-writer of some eminence, was born of poor parents in the town of Kirkaldy. After an academical course at St Andrews, he travelled to the continent, and, hearing of a free school in Cologne, procured admission to it, and received a liberal education, together with instruction in protestant principles. Returning to his native country, he applied himself to the study of law, and acted for some time as a procurator at St Andrews. In the year 1538, he was appointed by James V. a senator of the college of Justice, a court only instituted five years before. Notwithstanding the jealousy of the clergy, who hated him on account of his religious sentiments, he was employed on important embassies by James V., and subsequently by the governor Arran, during the first part of whose regency he acted as secretary of state. Having at length made an open profession of the Protestant religion, he was, at the instigation of Arran's brother, the Abbot of