Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/293

 was author of a treatise on the Æbudae or Western Isles, with an account of the Clag or Claik Geese, and the trees upon which they were found to grow; a work no longer to be found, but the best parts of which are probably embodied in Boece's history of Scotland. Arthur Boece, brother to the principal, was also one of his assistants. He was a tutor of the canon law, and a licentiate in the civil; a man of great eloquence and singular erudition. Besides these, Boece has commemorated several others, who were his assistants, and reflected lustre upon the dawn of learning in the north. Some of them were, according to the learned principal's account, men of high eminence, whose influence was great in the days in which they lived, and whose example extended even to after ages. He particularly refers to John Adam, who was the first to receive the degree of Doctor of theology in the University; after which he was made principal of the Dominican order, which, from the vicious lives, the poverty, and the ignorance of its members, had sunk into great contempt, but which he raised into high respectability, both for piety and learning. On the death of his patron Bishop Elphinstone, in 1514, Boece, out of gratitude for his friendship, and respect for his great learning and exemplary virtue, resolved to give to the world an account of his life, in composing which he was so struck with the exemplary conduct of others who had filled that see, that he determined to write the history of the lives of the whole of the bishops of Aberdeen. This laborious undertaking he completed in Latin, after the custom of the age, and gave to the world in the year 1522. It was printed at Paris by Badius Ascensius.

His next, and by far his greatest work, was a history of Scotland, from the earliest accounts. To this work he was probably stimulated by the example John Mair or Major, a tutor of the Sorbonne, and principal of the college of St Salvadore at St Andrews, whose history of Scotland, in six books, was published at Paris in the year 1521. The Scotichronicon had been originally written by John Fordun a canon of Aberdeen and continued by Walter Bower or Bowmaker to the death of James I., nearly a century previous to this, as had also the metrical Chronykil of Scotland by Andrew Winton prior of Lochleven, but all of them written in a style beneath the dignity of history, and disguised by the most contemptible fables. Mair was more studious of truth, but his narrative is meagre and his style loose and disjointed. Boece was a man of high talent, and one of the best Latin scholars which his country has at any period produced; but he was credulous in a high degree, and most unquestionably has given his authority, such as it was, to many fables, if he did not himself absolutely invent them; and he has rested the truth of his facts upon authors that never existed except in his own imagination. Of the "Inglis lyis," which Buchanan complains had cost him so much trouble to purge out of the "story of Scotland," perhaps he had not preserved the greatest number, but he certainly had more of the "Scottis vanitie" than even that great man was willing to part with. In imitation of some other historians he has introduced his history with the cosmography of the country, in which he has been followed by Buchanan. Some passages we have selected from this part of the work, illustrative of his taste for, and his knowledge of, natural history. The extracts are taken from the translation of John Bellenden archdeacon of Murray, which was made for the benefit of King James V., who, from a defective education, was unable to read the original. That they may afford the reader a genuine specimen of our ancient Scottish prose, we have given these few extracts in their original orthography. The first is the result of the inquiries of Hector Boece into the claicks or clsggeese that were supposed to grow upon trees.

"Sum men belevis that thir claiks grows on treis by the nobbis, bot thalr opinion is vane. And because the nature and procreation of thir claikis is