George Buchanan

by Robert Wallace; John Campbell Smith

Begging Letter-Writer

He was often ‘hard up,’ but it does not appear to have depressed his spirits. Indeed, he is never sprightlier, more epigrammatically witty, or more genially humorous than when he is what some of us might call ‘begging’ from some wealthy friend who could appreciate his genius and accomplishments. Here, for instance, is a ‘begging letter’ to Queen Mary, in the days when they were still friends, and read Livy, and doubtless indulged in fencing-matches of wit together:—

‘Do quod adest: opto quod abest tibi: dona darentur
Aurea, sors animo si foret æqua meo.
Hoc leve si credis, paribus me ulciscere donis:
Et quod abest, opta tu mihi: da quod adest.’

Which may be literally, or nearly so, according ‘to the best of my knowledge and belief,’ as the affidavits say:—

‘To you I give what I do have: for you I wish what you don’t have:
Golden, indeed, would be my gifts, were Fortune equal to my will.
If you should chance to think this levity, in equal levities have your revenge:
For me wish you what I don’t have: to me give you what you do have.’

Dr. Hume Brown puts it neatly into rhyme thus:—

‘I give you what I have: I wish you what you lack:
And weightier were my gift, were fortune at my back.
Perchance you think I jest? A like jest then I crave:
Wish for me what I lack, and give me what you have.’

Take another in the same strain:—

‘Ad Jacobum, Moraviæ Comitem.
‘Si magis est, ut Christus ait, donare beatum,
Quam de munifica dona referre manu:
Aspice quam faveam tibi: sis ut dando beatus,
Non renuo fieri, te tribuente, miser.’

‘To James, Earl of Moray.

‘If, as Christ says, it is more blessed to give than to receive gifts from a munificent hand, just see what a favour I am doing you: that you may be blessed in giving, I am ready to play miserable receiver to your happy donor.’

Or, to cite Dr. Brown again:—

‘It is more blest, saith Holy Writ, to give than to receive:
How great, then, is your debt to me, who take whate’er you give!’

With equally humorous familiarity he sends in an application, ‘Ad Matthæum Leviniæ Comitem, Scotiæ Proregem’ (To Matthew, Earl of Lennox, Regent of Scotland’). I quote only the concluding couplet:—

‘Denique da quidvis, podagram modo deprecor unam:
Munus erit medicis aptius illa suis.’

That is—

‘To be brief, give me whatever you like—only, not your gout. That will be a more appropriate fee for the doctors who are trying to cure it.’

Or to fall back on Dr. Brown’s translation once more:—

‘Since I am poor and you are rich, what happy chance is thine!
My modest wishes, too, you know—one nugget from your mine!
Only, whatever be your gift, let it not be your gout:
That, a meet present for your leech, I’d rather go without.’

These are merely samples of many communications, similar in object and style, which he addressed, at various periods of his life, to quarters where he thought they would not be ill-taken. As a rule, he supported himself by ‘regenting’ in colleges, or acting as tutor in royal or noble families. It was only when he could not make a better of it that he asked Society, through its most likely magnates, to give him something ‘to go on with.’ What else could he do? Carlyle’s description of Thackeray as ‘writing for his life’ could never have applied to Buchanan. Literature was not yet a profession or ‘bread-study.’ It was not till next century that Milton got £5 for Paradise Lost; and even Shakespeare made his money less as a writer than as a showman. The idea of Buchanan or Erasmus—a much more importunate beggar than Buchanan—going into business, say the wine or the wool trade, would have been absurd. They would have ruined any house that adopted them in two or three years, to say nothing of the indecency of allowing intellectual leaders of high genius to be lost in work which could be much better done by humbler men. There was nothing else for it, in Buchanan’s case, but to do as he did.

Of course, in this age of contract and commerce, we are apt to associate an idea of meanness and pitifulness with the conduct of Buchanan and Erasmus and others in this matter. Our first feeling is that nobody should give any other body anything except according to bargain. Every man should be independent, and if he asks anything outside a contract, he might as well go bankrupt at once. He must clearly be a weakling, and the weak must go to the wall. The feudal sentiment, however, amidst which Buchanan lived, was entirely different, and had a nobler side than ours, although one does not want feudalism back merely on that account. Kings and lords took everything to themselves, in the shape of power and possession, that they could lay their hands on; but it was on the understanding that they were to make a generous use of what they had appropriated. Noblesse oblige was still a maxim with vitality in it. The right men acknowledged it, and acted on it; the ruffians, as their manner is, wherever they are placed in life, ignored it. Patronage was not an act of grace: it was a duty. It was part of the honourable service to society, by which the patron’s tenure of his prosperity was conditioned. More particularly must this duty have been recognised by right-minded possessors of power and wealth who had felt the influence of the Renaissance, that mighty and far-reaching effort of the human intellect to assert its freedom and its varied energies against the narrowing and obscurantist influences of scholasticism, reduced to its then existing state of enslavement, often against its better knowledge and attempts at self-emancipation, by Ecclesiastical authority, wielding the weapon of Papal and Conciliar decree, sanctioned by fire and faggot.

Then there was still the tradition of hospitality which the Old Church, with all its faults, had kept up. In these contractual days of ours, there is very little hospitality, as it was defined by the Author of Christianity. A modern dinner is generally a meeting of creditors, or a combination of clever or stupid epicureans, the better to amuse or otherwise enjoy themselves, according to their tastes in meat and drink, or even conversation. It is often a case of undisguised ‘treating’ on the part of the so-called host, who wants to use his so-called guests for a purpose, and whose performance might very appropriately go into a schedule to some of the Bribery and Corruption Acts. But in the days of the Old Church, a wandering or needy scholar would have been welcomed at many, if not all, of the religious houses, and treated on a very different footing from our applicants for relief at the casual wards of one of our workhouses, probably the only institution resembling Christian hospitality authorised by modern organised society.

This latter may be a better arrangement, for anything I know to the contrary. All I say is that it is different from what was recognised in Buchanan’s day. It would never occur to Buchanan that he was doing anything inconsistent with self-respect in putting his position before people like Queen Mary, or Moray, or Lennox, and asking their temporary aid or a permanent office. They had taken over the wealth of the religious houses; did not their hospitalities pass with it? They had divided up the country among themselves and others; were they not honourably bound to see that a great civilising force like Buchanan was not extinguished? Besides, he understood his own value. A man is not six feet six inches high without being aware of it. He knew what he was, and what he had made himself, and what he was worth, and that he was giving as good as he was getting, or likely to get. In those days a great master of the New Learning was an object of the highest admiration, as a sort of intellectual Magician. Moreover, he was a power, in as far as he was a leader of contemporary thought and learning.

In these respects Buchanan was an invaluable acquisition to persons like Mary, or Moray, or Lennox, or Knox, who must have winked at a good deal in Buchanan, which he would not have stood in a less potent ally. In his prime, and even until his death, no one had an equal command over the universal ear of cultured Europe. To the rulers of his time he was worth what, say, fifty friendly editors of newspapers—including the Times and all the sixpenny weeklies, as far as they are worth anything would be to a politician of to-day. To Queen Mary especially, with her refined intellectual tastes and her ambition to be a figure in the world, it was no small matter to have the greatest and most brilliant scholar-poet of the day as a part of her court, whether he read Livy and exchanged wit with herself, or officiated as her poet-laureate on great occasions. As a mere ornament he was worth a considerable fraction of her best diamond necklace.

I am dwelling on this point because it will save time and trouble afterwards, and accordingly I ask further if Edie Ochiltree, in later times, and in a less feudalistic state of public sentiment, could beg round the district, without loss of respect, on the strength of his badge and uniform, testifying to past good service in his time and station, why should not an eminent public servant like Buchanan, in a totally different state of general feeling on such matters, ask society, through representatives of it who, he knew, should not and would not treat him roughly, to help him in prosecuting his shining and useful career? He had done a good work on the High Street of the World. He had sung it a song or played it a melody such as it would hear nowhere else. Was he not entitled to send round his hat among the listeners? Is it not what is done by every book-writer of to-day, who, when the last page is finished, sends out a confederate in the shape of a publisher to canvass the public—for a consideration—with the book in one hand and the hat in the other? Is it not what is done, inter alia, by every Parliamentary lawyer, who goes into the House of Commons to grind his axe, when the fitting occasion arises, and he says to his party leader, ‘I have fought two general elections for you. I have spoken for you unnumbered times in the House and on the platform. I have voted for you, up hill and down dale, through thick and thin, right or wrong, and now I will trouble you for that Chancellorship, or that Chief-Justiceship, or that Attorney-Generalship, or that Puisne or County Court Judgeship that has just fallen vacant’? Except that Buchanan and his work were not shams, but realities, the cases are the same.

Buchanan’s enemies say that in accepting maintenance or preferment he sold his independence to the donors, and when it is answered that he showed anything but want of independence in the case of Queen Mary and others, whom he subsequently came to oppose in the public interest, they tack about and accuse him of the basest ingratitude—in biting the hand that fed him, as they put it. It is as if in these days Sir Gorgias Midas, M.P., were to say to some editor who had noticed a speech of his unfavourably, ‘Ungrateful scribbler, have I not, over and over again, dined you and wined you with the best that larder and cellar can produce, and do you now turn and rend me?’ There have been editors who would have answered, ‘Presumptuous moneybag, I suppose I paid fully for my dinner with my company, and I am perfectly free to criticise you as you deserve.’ Buchanan stood equally free in his relations to his patrons. From the personal point of view, whether his connection were regarded as an ornament, a pleasure, or a utility, his alliance was worth his subsidy. From the public point of view it was their duty, as trustees for the public property and progress, to maintain a great civiliser like Buchanan in a position where his powers had scope, while it was Buchanan’s privilege and duty to exercise his creative and critical capacities in the public interest without fear or favour. And this, as will be seen, is what Buchanan substantially did. Knox and Melville repeatedly reminded Queen Mary and King James that there was another kingdom in the realm besides theirs—the kingdom of Christ, to wit—and suggested, or rather demanded, that their Majesties should not meddle with officials of this spiritual kingdom like themselves, the said Knox and Melville. This claim they rested on a supernatural, and therefore disputable, basis. But there could be nothing disputable about the ground Buchanan stood on. He too was a potentate—of the intellect; a king of thought, learning, and poetic might, and in that dominion, when it was necessary, bore himself with a courage and independence that have not always been successfully reproduced by his successors, when confronted with the monarchies and lordships of material power and glory.