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Knox own country to all of like belief. He had a strong attachment to that part of the English nation which afterwards became puritan and republican, and to the reformed churches of the continent. He carried the Scottish people with him, and for a time, during the crisis of the Reformation, he was political leader of the Scottish nobles and the guide in Scottish affairs of the English statesmen. But the real aim of both these allies differed from his. Through their selfishness, as he thought, he died with the reformation of religion he wished only partially accomplished, and the reformation of education, which was an integral part of his endeavours, scarcely begun. The spectacle of a single democratic leader holding the chief influence, not as Calvin in a republican city, but in an aristocratic country still governed by a monarch, commanded the attention of the cotemporary world. He left a still deeper mark on his own countrymen, whose ecclesiastical polity has continued largely to reflect his spirit.

It is easy to detect his faults. They lay on the surface, yet sprang from the depths of his character. Bellesheim, the modern Romanist historian, dwells on the cruelty shown by his approval of Beaton's murder, and the enactment of a death-penalty for the third celebration of the mass, his inordinate love of power, his vehement language in prayers as well as in sermons, and his meagre store of theology. It is erroneous to charge him with inconsistency as to his views on episcopacy, or with profiting by Lord Ochiltree's wealth. He was narrow, fierce, with regard to some subjects coarse, and with regard to some persons unforgiving. At his best he resembled a prophet of the Old Testament, not an evangelist of the New. At his worst he was a political partisan and ecclesiastical bigot, who could see no merit in an opponent, and could overlook any faults in a follower. Yet he was unselfish in a time of self-seeking, straightforward in an age of deceit. A strain of humour saved him from pedantry, and his severity was occasionally exchanged for a tenderness, more valued because so rare. A shrewd discerner of the character of others, and a close observer of civil as well as religious politics, his foresight was mistaken for a prophetic gift. As an author his reputation rests on ‘The History of the Reformation,’ unequal and incomplete, but unsurpassed for its vigorous representation of the principal acts and actors of the historic drama in which he himself plays the leading part.

A portrait of Knox, painted by Vaensoun, was sent by James VI in 1580, along with one of himself, to Beza, and was engraved in Beza's ‘Icones,’ Geneva, 1580. The best reproduction is that by Jodocus Hondius [q. v.], in Verheiden's ‘Præstantium aliquot Theologorum,’ Hague, 1602. It was again engraved by Boissard in the ‘Bibliotheca Chalcographica,’ 4th edition, Frankfort, 1650. This portrait, undoubtedly genuine, presents a long straight nose, large eyes, sunk cheeks, firm brow, strong under-lip, and ‘a river of a beard.’ In 1836 another quite different head was given in Knight's ‘Gallery of Portraits,’ from a picture in the possession of Lord Somerville. This represents a face with an oblique nose, which gives an unpleasant expression to somewhat commonplace eyes, and a weak chin, covered by a short pointed beard. The white tippet covering the shoulders, which takes the place of the high ruff or collar in Beza's portrait, should have put any one on his guard against accepting it as a divine of the sixteenth century. The costume belongs to the seventeenth. Unfortunately, Carlyle in his old age insisted that it was the only likeness of Knox, and was backed up in his opinion by Boehm the sculptor, and by injudicious friends with no qualifications to offer an opinion on such a point. Mr. James Drummond, R.S.A., conclusively refuted Carlyle in a paper read to the Royal Scottish Antiquarian Society in 1878 entitled ‘The Portraits of John Knox and Buchanan.’

After Knox's death the general assembly granted Bannatyne 40l. (March 1572–3) to enable him to put in order Knox's manuscript ‘History of the Reformation of Religioun within the Realme of Scotland,’ which he had completed as far as 1564, but nothing was heard again of the work till 1584, when Vautrollier printed in London the first three books. Most of the copies were seized and destroyed by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury (February 1586–7). In 1664 an edition of the whole five books by David Buchanan was published (London, fol.); but Buchanan's interpolations destroy much of the value of his labours (cf., Scottish Hist. Library, 1776, p. 109). An improved edition, called the fourth, edited by Ruddiman, is dated 1732. The best edition is in the first two volumes of David Laing's Knox's ‘Works’ (vols. i–ii. 1846–8). His other works have been already described. [Knox's Correspondence supplements the History as the chief source of his biography. The other sources are the Narrative of Richard Bannatyne and the Memoirs of James Melville, published for the Bannatyne Club; Thomas Smeaton's Account of his last Illness and Death, published by Charteris in 1579, reprinted in Laing's edition of Knox's Works, vi. 647; the English State Papers or Letters of Randolph