Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/194

 names borrowed from classical masters, are realistic, probably real. It is possible that Milton's lines, Were it not better done, as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?— (Lycidas, 67) glanced at Buchanan as well as at the classic elegiacs. Between 1544 and 1547 Buchanan returned to Paris and taught in the college of Cardinal le Moine, where the loss of his Bordeaux friends was compensated by the companionship of another circle of scholars, Turnebus, the great Grecian, Charles Stephen, the physician and printer of the family which gave its chief fame to the press of Paris, and Groscollius, and Gelida, less known scholars. Buchanan here became a victim of the gout, which never left him, and aggravated a temper naturally hasty. Govea, the principal at Bordeaux, was a Portuguese, and was summoned by John III of Portugal to preside over the newly founded college at Coimbra. He brought to his aid some of his learned friends, and among them Buchanan and his brother Patrick. John of Portugal, the friend of learning, though not of the Reformation, had already admitted the inquisition into his dominions, and on the death of Govea in 1548 Buchanan was accused of the use of flesh in Lent, of writing against the Franciscans, and of the remark that Augustine would have favoured those whom the Roman church condemned. Two secret witnesses reported that he thought ill of Roman doctrine, and he was immured in a monastery for some months, in the hope that seclusion and the monks might reclaim him. He occupied himself instead with translating the Psalms into Latin. On his release he was invited to remain in Portugal, but sailed for England in 1552. There he remained only a short time, and returned to Paris in the following year. At the solicitation of his friends he composed a poem on the raising of the siege of Metz, though with some reluctance, as Melinde de St. Gelais, a poet of the school of Marot, had already written on the subject. A graceful elegy on his return to France, ‘Adventus in Galliam,’ celebrates its praises in contrast with Portugal. After teaching a short time in the college of Boncourt he was engaged by Maréchal de Brissac, governor of the French territory on the Italian coast, as tutor for his son, Timoléon de Cossé, an office he held for five years, residing partly in Italy and partly in France. He was fortunate in his pupil, who, short as his life was, acquired credit in letters as well as a place among Brantome's great captains of France. Brissac's confidence in Buchanan was so great that he was sometimes admitted to the council of war. During this period several of his works were first published; his ‘Alcestis’ and a specimen of his version of the Psalms, which Henry Stephen brought out without his consent, along with four other versions by scholars of different countries, among whom he gave Buchanan the palm, and his own Greek version. At this time he wrote new poems on the ‘Taking of Calais’ and the ‘Epithalamium of the Dauphin and Mary Stuart.’ He also studied the Bible that he might form an opinion on religious controversies. The date of his return to Scotland is not certain, but he was there in 1562, and in April Randolph writes to Cecil: ‘The queen readeth daily after her dinner, instructed by a learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie.’ He now openly embraced the doctrines of the reformed church, and at once took part in its government. He was a member of the general assembly at Edinburgh on 25 Dec. 1563, and of a commission for revising the ‘Book of Discipline.’ He sat in the assemblies of 1564–7, and served on their judicial committee. In that of June 1567 he was moderator, one of the few laymen who have held that office. The year before he had been appointed by Moray principal of the college of St. Leonard's, and in that, as well as the following year, his name occurs among the electors, assessors, and deputies of the rector. In the register he receives the epithet already given him by foreign scholars, ‘Hujus sæculi poetarum facile princeps.’ He also appears as auditor of the accounts of the quæstor for the year 1566–7, and as assessor of the dean of the faculty of arts in 1567–9. In the parliament of 1563 Buchanan was appointed one of the commissioners to inquire into the foundations of St. Andrews and other universities. No report of this committee is extant, but a sketch for it, of which a copy exists in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, is credited to Buchanan. It differs from the scheme in the ‘Book of Discipline,’ but, like it, aimed at an organisation of the separate colleges of St. Salvator, St. Leonard, and St. Mary, which overlapped each other. According to his plan there was to be a college of humanity, with a principal, public reader, and six regents, for the teaching of languages on the model of the academy of Geneva; a college for philosophy with a principal, a reader in medicine, and four regents; and a college of divinity, with a principal who was to read Hebrew, and a reader in law. This inadequate scheme, in which languages were given too great preponderance, was much improved by the reform projected and in part effected by