Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/131

Rh and his whole property at his death consisted of 100, arrears due upon his pension of Crossraguell.

A story is told upon the authority of the Earl of Cromarty, who had it from his grandfather, Lord Invertyle, that Buchanan, on his death-bed, finding the money he had about him insufficient to defray the expenses of his funeral, sent his servant to divide it among the poor; adding, that if the city, meaning its authorities, did not choose to bury him, they might let him lie where he was, or throw his corpse where they pleased. This anecdote has been by some rejected as apocryphal; but there is no proof of its untruth, and it certainly does not startle us on account of any incongruity with Buchanan's character, which was severe, even to moroseness. He had passed through almost every vicissitude of human life, and, stern and inflexible, perhaps he had less sympathy with human frailty than the weaknesses of most men require. He was subject to that irritability of feeling which frequently attends exalted genius, but manifested at all times a noble generosity of spirit, which made him be regarded by his friends with a warmth of affection which mere intellectual eminence, though it were that of an archangel, could never inspire. By the general voice of the civilized world he held a pre-eminence in literature that seemed to render competition hopeless; but his estimate of his own attainments was consistent with the most perfect modesty, and no man was more ready to discover and acknowledge genuine merit in others. His brilliant wit and unaffected humour rendered his society highly acceptable to persons of the most opposite tastes and dispositions.

In 1584, only two years after the publication of the history, it was condemned along with De Jure Regni by the parliament of Scotland, and every person possessed of copies commanded to surrender them within forty days in order that they might be purged of the offensive and extraordinary matters which they contained.

We shall close this sketch of Buchanan's life with the concluding reflections of his learned biographer Dr Irving. "In his numerous writings," says the Doctor, " he discovers a vigorous and mature combination of talents which have seldom been found united in equal perfection. According to the common opinion, intellectual superiority is almost invariably circumscribed by one of the two grand partitions which philosophers have delineated; it is either founded on the predominancy of those capabilities which constitute what is termed the imagination, or of those which, in contradistinction, are denominated the understanding. These different powers of exertion, though certainly not incompatible with each other, are but rarely found to coalesce in equal maturity. Buchanan has, however, displayed them in the same high degree of perfection. To an imagination excursive and brilliant he unites an undeviating rectitude of judgment His learning was at once elegant, various, and profound. Turnebus, who was associated with him in the same college, and whose decisions will not be rashly controverted, has characterized him as a man of consummate erudition. Most of the ancient writers had limited their aspiring hopes to one department of literature; and even to excel in one, demands the happy perseverance of a cultivated genius. Plato despaired of securing a reputation by his poetry. The poetical attempts of Cicero, though less contemptible perhaps than they are commonly represented, would not have been sufficient to transmit an illustrious name to future ages. Buchanan has not only attained to excellence in each species of composition, but in each species has displayed a variety of excellence. In philosophical dialogue and historical narrative, in lyric and didactic poetry, in elegy, epigram, and satire, he has never been equalled in modern, and hardly surpassed in ancient, times. A few Roman poets of the purest age have excelled him