A Stoic Philosopher
We are now, perhaps, in a better position to face Melville’s further characterisation of him as a ‘Stoik philosopher, of gud religion for a poet.’ That Sir James knew something about Stoicism, although perhaps not very deeply, is shown by his apparent familiarity with the Seneca, whom he quotes in that remarkable preface of his, although only for a sarcastic comment upon those foolish political Stoics who, like Sir James himself, throw away their Stoical honesty upon unappreciative ‘Princes,’ and repent of their Stoicism when too late. That Buchanan had studied the Stoics goes without saying. He was as familiar with the metres of Seneca and Boëtius as with those of Horace and Catullus, and he was not the man—not the pedant or grammarian—to master the form and style merely of his author without penetrating to his inner thought. How minutely he had read Cicero appears from his famous emendation in the second Philippic of patrem tuum, passed over by previous commentators, into matrem, subsequently parentem tuam—a case in which even Gibbon would probably have admitted that a vowel, to say nothing of a diphthong, was vital to truth, and which gave occasion to Dionysius Lambinus to flay alive a rival Ciceronic editor, Petrus Victorius by name, for critical larceny, in having feloniously but silently appropriated, first, the laurels of Buchanan who did the good deed, and next, those of him, Lambinus, who had the sagacity to recognise and adopt Buchanan’s great performance. But Buchanan had doubtless read Cicero’s De Officiis with not less care, and had gathered from its pages some idea of Stoicism as expounded by Cicero’s own early tutor, Panætius, probably the most distinguished of Rome’s then professional teachers of this great ethical system. He must have come across such a passage as this, where Cicero says: ‘What is called the summum bonum by the Stoics, to live agreeably to Nature (convenienter Naturæ vivere), has, I conceive, this meaning—always to conform to virtue; and as to all other things which may be according to Nature (secundum naturam) [i.e. other possible bona besides the summum: as gratifications of appetite, propensity, ambition, etc.], to take them if they should not be repugnant to virtue,’—a declaration which Butler, with his supremacy of conscience as part of true Nature, would have accepted, and in substance, indeed, has explicitly endorsed. Probably, too, he had noticed the habitual doctrine of Epictetus, ‘this is the great task of life also, to discern things and divide them, and say, “Outward things are not in my power; to will is in my power. Where shall I seek the Good, and where the Evil? Within me—in all that is my own. But of all that is alien to thee, call nothing good nor evil, nor profitable nor hurtful, nor any such term as these. What then? should we be careless of such things? In no wise. For this, again, is a vice in the Will, and thus contrary to Nature. But be at once careful, because the use of things is not indifferent, and steadfast and tranquil because the things themselves are.... And hard it is, indeed, to mingle and reconcile together the carefulness of one whom outward things affect, with the steadfastness of him who regards them not. But impossible it is not; and if it is, it is impossible to be happy.... Take example of dice-players. The numbers are indifferent, the dice are indifferent. How can I tell what may be thrown up? But carefully and skilfully to make use of what is thrown, that is where my proper business begins”’ (Rolleston translation).
This seems to me to describe the general temper and spirit in which Buchanan confronted the vicissitudes of life. I do not say that in a Register of Religions like that provided under 6 and 7 Will. IV. c. 85 and amending acts, he would have entered himself as ‘G. B., Stoic.’ For one thing, he had not the chance, as only one denomination was allowed. Nor do I think he ever said in his heart, ‘I am a Stoic, and mean to guide my life by the Stoical system’; but all the same, I believe that convenienter naturæ vivere, interpreted in the Stoical sense, sank with gradually increasing depth into his moral nature as life went on, and preserved him from Epicurean timidity, levity, and egotism. Not that he succeeded perfectly, but he kept trying to. Stoicism did not, any more than Christianity, maintain that the concrete Stoic was free from sins, both of omission and commission. Not Socrates, nor even Diogenes—most misunderstood of men, who attained the high degree of Cynic—would have been claimed as impeccable, although they came very near it. It has been said that Buchanan in several ways allowed the ‘outward things that were not in his power’ get the better of the ‘will’ that was, that he was, for instance, fiery and irritable, for little other reason, apparently, than that he had Celtic blood in him, and was bound to be so; that he was disappointed and soured by his early struggle with poverty, his critics assuming that this must have been the case, because in his circumstances they would have been so themselves; that he was a ‘good hater’—as if that were really a fault at all, etc.
Had he been all that his detractors call him, that would not have unstoicised him, since, as already said, the system admits that ‘no mere man is able to keep the commandments, but doth daily break them,’ as the Shorter Catechism puts it in questionable grammar. But his censors have not sufficiently observed that if he displayed faults of passion, eagerness, temper, impatience, it was when he was young; and the fair inference is that if he overcame those tendencies as life proceeded, it was by a persistent effort of ‘will,’ repelling the invading influence of the ‘outward.’ By all accounts his age was not a ‘crabbed age.’ Though plain, and even rustic, in appearance—in the matter of dress he seems to have carried his superiority to the ‘outward’ to a really unstoical extreme—when he opened his mouth he was a different being, courtly in manner, refined and elegant in expression, humorous and entertaining, as well as instructive even to the verge of ‘edifying,’ in every way a polite and variously pleasant companion—‘with nothing of the pedagogue about him but the gown,’ said a keen and competent observer, who knew him well. ‘Plaisant in company,’ says the slightly garrulous Sir James, ‘rehersing at all occasions moralities short and fecfull, whereof he had aboundance, and invented wher he wanted’—a combination, in short, of wit, wisdom, resource, and pith, anything but a picture of the snappish old curmudgeon, soured and made ill-natured by disappointments which he had not wisely overcome. His letters, too, of which unfortunately we possess only a few, reveal the same well-ordered and placid moral interior: full of the purest friendly devotion, ready always to do a good turn, especially to merit in obscurity, not insensible to the difficulties and distresses of life, but rising above them, and achieving in spite of them not only contentment, but a degree of light-heartedness. He was long a martyr to gout—a sore affliction, if sufferers from it may be trusted. But he took it with a smile. Writing (1577) at seventy-one to his old friend and pupil Randolph, by that time Postmaster-General to Queen Elizabeth, he tells him that he is hard at work on his History, and adds: ‘The rest of my occupation is wyth the gout, quhilk holdis me besy both day and nyt. And quhair ye say ye haif not lang to lyif [live], I traist [trust] to God to go before you, albeit I be on fut, and ye ryd the post.... And thus I tak my leif [leave] shortly at you now, and my lang leif quhen God pleasis.’ The fun may not be of a side-splitting character, nor the seriousness very unctuous, but the man who could encounter the gout keeping at him night and day in this fashion, must have practised keeping the ‘outward’ at bay in a considerable variety of situations, and for a considerable time, and with considerable success.