Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/68

56  of St. Leonard's Coll., St. Andrews, was a supporter of the party of the Regent Moray, produced in 1571 his famous Detectio Mariæ Reginæ, a scathing exposure of the Queen's relations to Darnley and the circumstances leading up to his death, was tutor, 1570-78, to James VI., whom he brought up with great strictness, and to whom he imparted the learning of which the King was afterwards so vain. His chief remaining works were De Jure Regni apud Scotos (1579), against absolutism, and his History of Scotland, which was pub. immediately before his death. Though he had borne so great a part in the affairs of his country, and was the first scholar of his age, he d. so poor that he left no funds to meet the expenses of his interment. His literary masterpiece is his History, which is remarkable for the power and richness of its style. Its matter, however, gave so much offence that a proclamation was issued calling in all copies of it, as well as of the De Jure Regni, that they might be purged of the "offensive and extraordinary matters" which they contained. B. holds his great and unique place in literature not so much for his own writings as for his strong and lasting influence on subsequent writers.

 Author:Robert Williams Buchanan (1841-1901).—Poet and novelist, b. at Caverswall, Staffordshire, the s. of a Scottish schoolmaster and socialist, and ed. at Glasgow, was the friend of (q.v.), and with him went to London in search of fame, but had a long period of discouragement. His first work, a collection of poems, Undertones (1863), had, however, some success, and was followed by Idylls of Inverburn (1865), London Poems (1866), and others, which gave him a growing reputation, and raised high hopes of his future. Thereafter he took up prose fiction and the drama, not always with success, and got into trouble owing to some drastic criticism of his contemporaries, culminating in his famous article on the Fleshly School of Poetry, which appeared in the Contemporary Review (Oct. 1871), and evoked replies from Rossetti (The Stealthy School of Criticism), and Swinburne (Under the Microscope). Among his novels are A Child of Nature (1879), God and the Man (1881), and among his dramas A Nine Days' Queen, A Madcap Prince, and Alone in London. His latest poems, The Outcast and The Wandering Jew, were directed against certain aspects of Christianity. B. was unfortunate in his latter years; a speculation turned out ruinously; he had to sell his copyrights, and he sustained a paralytic seizure, from the effects of which he d. in a few months. He ultimately admitted that his criticism of Rossetti was unjustifiable.

 , Author:George Villiers,  (1628-1687).—Dramatist, s. of the 1st Duke, who was in 1628 assassinated by Felton. His life was full of adventure and change of fortune. The Restoration gave him back his already twice lost estates, which he again squandered by a life of wild extravagance and profligacy at Court. He was a member of the "Cabal" and intrigued against Clarendon. He wrote pamphlets, lampoons, and plays, but his chief contribution to literature was The Rehearsal, a comedy, in which he satirised the heroic drama of Dryden and others. It is believed that had a hand in it. had his revenge in his picture of B. as Zimri in Absalom and Achitophel. 