Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/189

 in Salisbury, aimed the shafts of ridicule at Sully; but nothing can be less surprising in such a person as Barclay. A man who satirized only for the sake of personal eclat, would as easily flatter in gratitude for the least notice. It should also be recollected, that many minds do not, till the approach of middle life, acquire the power of judging accurately regarding virtue and vice, or merit and demerit: all principles, in such minds, are jumbled like the elements of the earth in chaos, and are only at length reduced to order by the overmastering influence of the understanding. In the disposition which seems to have characterised Barclay, for flattering those who patronised him, he endeavoured to please King James, in the second part of the Euphormion, by satirizing tobacco and the puritans. In this year he also published an account of the gun-powder plot, a work remarked to be singularly impartial, considering the religion of the writer. During the course of three years' residence in England, Barclay received no token of the royal liberality. Sunk in indigence, with an increasing family calling for support, he only wished to be indemnified for his English journeys, and to have his charges defrayed into France. At length he was relieved from his distresses by his patron Salisbury. Of these circumstances, so familiar and so discouraging to men of letters, we are informed by some allegorical and obscure verses written by Barclay at that sad season. Having removed to France in 1609, he next year published his Apology for the Euphormion. This denotes that he came to see the folly of a general contempt for mankind at the age of twenty-eight. How he supported himself at this time, does not appear; but he is found, in 1614, publishing his Icon Animarum, which is declared by a competent critic to be the best, though not the most celebrated of his works. It is a delineation of the genius and manners of the European nations, with remarks, moral and philosophical, on the various tempers of men. It is pleasant to observe that in this work he does justice to the Scottish people. In 1615, Barclay is said to have been invited by Pope Paul V. to Rome. He had previously lashed the holy court in no measured terms; but so marked a homage from this quarter to his distinction in letters, as usual, softened his feelings, and he now accordingly shifted his family thither, and lived the rest of his life under the protection of the pontiff. In 1617, he published at Rome his "Parænesis ad Sectarios, Libri Duo;" a work in which he seems to have aimed at atoning for his former sarcasms at the Pope, by attacking those whom his holiness called heretics. Barclay seems to have been honoured with many marks of kindness, not only from the Pope, but also from Cardinal Barberini; yet it does not appear that he obtained much emolument. Incumbered with a wife and family, and having a spirit above his fortune, he was left at full leisure to pursue his studies. It was at that time that he composed his Latin romance called Argenis. He employed his vacant hours in cultivating a flower garden; and Rossi relates, in his turgid Italian style, that Barclay cared not for those bulbous roots which produce flowers of a sweet scent, but cultivated such as produced flowers void of smell, but having variety of colours. Hence we may conclude that he was among the first of those who were infected with that strange disease, a passion for tulips, which soon after overspread Europe, and is commemorated under the name of the Tulipo-mania. Barclay might truly have said with Virgil, "Tantus amor flotum!" He had two mastiffs placed as sentinels to protect his garden; and rather than abandon his favourite flowers, chose to continue his residence in an ill-aired and unwholesome situation.

This extraordinary genius, who seems to have combined the perfervidum ingenium of his father's country, with the mercurial vivacity of his mother's, died at Rome on the 12th of August, 1621, in the thirty-ninth year of his age. He left a wife, who had tormented him much with jealousy, (through the ardour of