Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/188

 their society. The father, thinking proper to refuse the request, became an object of such wrath to that learned and unscrupulous fraternity, that he was compelled to abandon all his preferments, and seek refuge in England. This was in 1603, just at the time when his native sovereign had acceded to the throne of England. James I. offered him a pension, and a place in his councils, on condition that he would embrace the protestant faith; but though indignant at the intrigues of the Jesuits, he would not desert their religion. In 1604, he returned to France, and became professor of civil law at Angers, where he taught for a considerable time with high reputation. It is said that he entertained a very high sense of the dignity of his situation. He used to "go to school every day, attended by a servant who went before him, himself having a rich robe lined with ermine, the train of which was supported by two servants, and his son upon his right hand; and there hung about his neck a great chain of gold, with a medal of gold, with his own picture." Such was, in those days, the pomp and circumstance of the profession of civil law. He did not long enjoy this situation, dying towards the close of 1605. He is allowed to have been very learned, not only in the civil and canon law, but in the classical languages, and in ecclesiastical history. But his prejudices were of so violent a nature as to obscure both his genius and erudition. He zealously maintained the absolute power of monarchs, and had an illiberal antipathy to the protestant religion. His works are, 1, a controversial treatise on the royal power, against Buchanan and other king-killers, Paris, 1600; 2, a treatise on the power of the Pope, showing that he has no right of rule over secular princes, 1609; 3, a commentary on the title of the pandects de rebis creditis, &c; 4, a commentary on Tacitus's Life of Agricola, All these works, as well as their titles, are in Latin.  author:John Barclay (1582-1621), son of William Barclay, was born at Pontamousson in France, January 28, 1582, and was educated under the care of Jesuits. When only nineteen years old, he published notes on the Thebais of Statius. He was, as above stated, the innocent cause of a quarrel between his father and the Jesuits, in consequence of which the family removed to England, in 1603. At the beginning of 1604, young Barclay presented a poetical panegyric to the king, under the title of Kalendæ Januariæ. To this monarch he soon after dedicated the first part of his celebrated Latin satire entitled, Euphormion. John Barclay, like many young men of genius, was anxious for distinction, quocunque modo, and, having an abundant conceit of his own abilities, and looking upon all other men as only fit to furnish him with matter of ridicule, he launched at the very first into the dangerous field of general satire. He confesses in the apology which he afterwards published for his Euphormion, that, "as soon as he left school, a juvenile desire of fame incited him to attack the whole world, rather with a view of promoting his own reputation, than of dishonouring individuals." We must confess that this grievous early fault of Barclay was only the transgression of a very spirited character. He says, in his dedication of Euphormion to King James, written when he was two-and-twenty, that he was ready, in the service of his Majesty, to convert his pen into a sword, or his sword into a pen. His prospects at this court were unfortunately blighted, like those of his father, by the religious contests of the time; and in 1604 the family returned to France. John, however, appears to have spent the next year chiefly in England, probably upon some renewal of his prospects at the court of King James. In 1606, after the death of his father, he returned to France, and at Paris married Louisa Debonnaire, with whom he soon after settled at London. Here he published the second part of his Euphormion, dedicating it to the Earl of Salisbury, a minister in whom he could find no fault but his excess of virtue. Lord Hailes remarks, as a surprising circumstance, that the writer who could discover no faults