Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/166

430 delighted his readers. This quality abounds in every page of the present work, and invests it with a new and extraordinary interest, when we regard it as the last words of a talented intellect now in the grave."

A circumstance sufficiently trivial in the literary life of Macnish, so that we had almost forgotten it, was, that in 1835 he was made an LL.D. by Hamilton College, United States, America. That deluge of doctorships had already com- menced which threatens to level all literary distinction. His remains were interred in the burial-ground of St. Andrew's Episcopal Chapel, Glasgow, but with neither tablet nor inscription to mark the spot, as his fellow-townsmen were soon bestirring themselves in collecting subscriptions to erect a monument to his memory.

MAITLAND,, Duke of Lauderdale.—This nobleman, who occupies so unenviable a position during one of the most disastrous periods of his country's history, was descended from the Maitlands of Lethington, a family undistinguished among the barons of Scotland, until it was brought into notice by that talented and versatile personage who officiated as secretary to Mary of Guise, and also to her daughter, Mary Stuart, whom he successively benefited and betrayed, and who was an adherent and afterwards an opponent of the Scottish Reformation. As the Macchiavelli of Scotland, he will long continue to be admired for his remarkable political talents, as well as wondered at for those manifold changes of principle that only ended in disappointment and a miserable death. The subject of our present notice was grandson of John Maitland, Lord of Thirlstane, the younger brother of the famous statesman; and eldest son of John, second lord of Thirlstane, and first earl of Lauderdale, by Isabel, daughter of Alexander Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, and Chancellor of Scotland. John Maitland, the future duke, was born at the ancient family seat of Lethington, on May 24, 1616. In the learned languages, which at that period constituted almost the' whole round of education, he made great proficiency; and as he was carefully trained in Presbyterian principles, he entered public life as a keen abettor of the Covenant, and adherent of its principal champions. On this account, as well as his talents, he was emplo3 r ed by them in confidential commissions, and especially in their negotiations with the Presbyterians of England during the Civil war; and in 1643 he was one of a deputation of the principal men of Scotland sent to reason with Charles I. on his despotic views both in church and state^government, and endeavour to bring him to milder measures, as a preparative for the restoration of monarchy. During the same year also, he attended, as an elder of the Church of Scotland, the Assembly of Divines held at Westminister. On the following year, having succeeded to the earldom of Lauderdale and family estates by the death of his father, he was sent by the Scottish Parliament, a few weeks after, as one of their four commissioners for the treaty of Uxbridge. Here his zeal was so hot and his language so intemperate, that it has been thought the negotiation was considerably retarded on that account. As events went onward, he crowned his anti-monarchical and anti-prelatic zeal by being a party to the act of delivering up Charles I. to the English army at Newcastle.

Having gone thus far with the men whose cause he had adopted, and even exceeded them in some of his proceedings, the Earl of Lauderdale was now to undergo that change to which extreme zeal is so often subject. The recoil was manifested in 1647, when he was sent, with other Scottish commissioners, to persuade the king to sign the Covenant. This was at Hampton Court,