Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/122

416 which he had probably thought still right in the main, though disfigured and disgraced by the figments and the follies of an ignorant and corrupt priesthood. The result of this examination, however, was a perfect conviction that many of the Romish doctrines were erroneous ; that the worship was idolatrous; and the discipline utterly depraved and perverted; and, consequently, that the necessity of separation from this church was imperative upon all who had any regard to the Word of God and the salvation of their own souls : and no sooner did he arrive in Scotland than he acted accordingly.

As Buchanan's connexion with the Marshal de Brissac terminated in 1560, when the civil wars in France had already begun, he probably returned immediately to Scotland, though the exact period has not been ascertained. He had courted, while he resided in France, the notice of Mary, by an Epithalamium on her marriage with the Dauphin; and in January, 1561-2, we find Randolph, the English ambassador, writing thus from Edinburgh to his employers: "Ther is with the quene [Mary] one called George Bowhanan a Scottishe man very well learned, that was Schollemaster unto Monsr de Brissack's son, very Godlye and honest." And in a subsequent letter, dated from St Andrews, he says, "the quene readeth daylie after her dinner, instructed by a learned man, Mr George Bowhanan, somewhat of Livy." Mary had been sent to France in the sixth year of her age, and her education had in some respects been carefully attended to. She spoke Scottish and French, as if both had been her vernacular tongue, which in some degree they might be said to be. With Italian and Spanish she was familiar, and she was so much a master of Latin as to compose and pronounce in that language, before a splendid auditory, a declamation against the opinion of those who would debar the sex from the liberal pursuits of science and literature. This oration she afterwards translated into French, but neither the translation nor the original has been published. Mary was at this time in the full bloom of youth and beauty, and to have such a pupil must have been highly gratifying to Buchanan, who, with all the leaders of the reformation in Scotland, was at first much attached to her. This attachment he took occasion to express in a highly finished copy of Latin verses, prefixed to his translation of the Psalms, which he had just finished, and sent to the press of his Mend Henry Stephens. The exact date of the first full edition of this important work is not known, no date being on the title; but a second edition was printed in 1566, in which was included the author's tragedy of Jepthes. On the titlepage of both these impressions, Buchanan is styled Poetarum nostri sceculi facile princeps, and the paraphrase was recommended by copies of Greek verses by the printer, Henry Stephens, one of the first scholars of the age, by Franciscus Portns, and Fredricus Jamotius, and in Latin verses by Henry Stephens and Castlevetro. Mary must have been highly pleased by a compliment which carried her fame over all Europe, and as a reward for his services, bestowed upon her preceptor and poet, in 1561, the temporalities of the abbey of Crossraguell, vacant by the death of Quintin Kennedy, brother to Buchanan's former pupil, the Earl of Cassillis. These temporalities were valued at five hundred pounds Scots a-year, and the poet seems to have held them till the day of his death. Mary's love of power, and her attachment to popery, soon, however, alienated the affections of her friends; and, aware that he held her favour by a precarious tenure. Buchanan sedulously cultivated the friendship of the leaders of the reformation', which was now become the first object of his solicitude. In the same year in which he was promoted to the temporalities of Crossraguell, he prepared for the press a collection of satires, "Fratres Fraterrimi," in which the fooleries and impurities of the popish church were treated with the keenest irony, and