Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/129

Rh Wilson requested the loan of it he yielded it to the importunity of the chancellor, from whom the treasurer procured a perusal of it, and has not yet returned it; so that, to this day, it has never been in my custody."

Amidst multiplied labours Buchanan was now borne down with the load of years, aggravated by the encroachments of disease. His poetical studies seem now to have been entirely suspended, but his history of Scotland was unfinished, and was probably still receiving short additions or finishing touches. His life, too, at the request of his friends, he compiled when he had reached his 74th year, and his epistolary correspondence, which was at one time very extensive, was still continued with some of the friends of his earlier days. He had been long- in the habit of writing annually, by some of the Bourdeaux merchants, to his old friend and colleague Vinetus, and one of these letters, written in March 1581, the year before his death, gives a not unpleasing picture of his state of feeling. "Upon receiving accounts of you," he says, "by the merchants who return from your courts, I am filled with delight, and seem to enjoy a kind of second youth, for I am there apprised, that some remnants of the Portuguese peregrinations still exist. As I have now attained to the 75th year of my age, I sometimes call to remembrance through what toils and inquietudes I have sailed past all those objects which men commonly regard as pleasing, and have at length struck upon that rock beyond which, as the ninetieth Psalm very truly avers, nothing remains but labour and sorrow. The only consolation that now awaits me, is to pause with delight on the recollection of my coeval friends, of whom you are almost the only one who still survives. Although you are not, as I presume, inferior to me in years, you are yet capable of benefiting your country by your exertion and counsel, and even of prolonging, by your learned cornpositions, your life to a future age. But I have long bade adieu to letters. It is now the only object of my solicitude, that I may remove with as little noise as possible from the society of my ill-assorted companions, that I who am already dead, may relinquish the fellowship of the living. In the meantime I transmit to you the youngest of my literary offspring, in order that when you discover it to be the drivelling child of age, you may be less anxious about its brother. I understand that Henry Wardlaw, a young man of our nation, and the descendant of a good family, is prosecuting his studies in your seminary with no inconsiderable application. Although I am aware of your habitual politeness, and you are not ignorant that foreigners are peculiarly entitled to your attention, yet I am desirous he should find that our ancient familiarity recommends him to your favour." Thuanus, who had seen this epistle in the possession of the venerable old man to whom it was addressed, says it was written with a tremulous hand, but in a generous style.

The last of Buchanan's productions was his history of Scotland, which it is doubtful whether he lived to see ushered fairly into the world or not. By the following letter to Mr Randolph, dated at Stirling in the month of August, 1577, it would appear that this work wis then in a state of great forwardness. "Maister, I haif resavit diverse letters from you, and yit I haif ansourit to naine of thayme, of the quhylke albiet I huf mony excusis, as age, forge tfulness, besines, and desease, yit I wyl use nane as now except my sweirness and your gentilness, and geif ye thynk nane of theise sufficient, content you with ane confession of the fait w'out fear of punnition to follow on my onkindness. As for the present, I am occupiit in wryting of our historic, being assurit to content few and to displease mony tharthrow. As to the end of it, yf ye gett it not or thys winter be passit, lippen not for it, nor nane other writyngs from me. The rest of my occupation is wytli the gout, quhylk haldis me busy bath day and nyt. And quliair ye say ye haif not lang to lyif, I truist to God to go before