Renaissance Morals
Part of the price paid for the enlightenment of the Renaissance was that in too many instances its breadth of ethical as well as intellectual outlook was allowed by its possessor to sink into a practical licentiousness, open or concealed, that corrupted, or even totally destroyed, the moral and spiritual faculties. I cannot see proof of any such results in Buchanan’s case. I think he was careful to secure himself from danger on this side of his temptations. His bitterest detractors do not raise a whisper against him here. But there is a section of his poetry which may best be characterised as of the Ad Neæram, In Leonoram (Lenam), Ad Gelliam, Ad Briandum Vallium pro Lena Apologia order, which has occasioned misgiving to some of his friends. One biographer, a very competent authority on this period of Scottish history, says, somewhat severely, that these pieces ought not to have been written by the man who wrote Franciscanus—a powerful satire on the vices and hypocrisy of the monks. I must say that, with every deference to a critic highly worthy of respect, I am not able to see it. The Franciscanus was essentially an exposure of dishonesty, not so much of the vices practised under the cowl, as of the shameful trickery of using the cowl to cloak them. As far as honesty and consistency go, there is no reason why an honest and consistent man should not have written every word of these ‘Lena’ sketches. Even from an artistic point of view they will stand inspection. The subject, of course, is a revolting one, and so is Dame Quickly—but would any man of average robustness of mind wish Dame Quickly unwritten? Many people seem to forget that while the real itself may be unpleasant, the artistic image of the real may be a delight. We should shrink from Caliban in the flesh, but Shakespeare throws a charm over him; Pandemonium is not, I believe, a sweet scene, but Milton’s account of it is sublime; Falstaff was disreputable, but he makes an admirable stage figure; a corpse is an unlovely object, but Rembrandt’s ‘Dissectors’ has a fascination.
Probably it was for want of noting this distinction that the late Principal Shairp, who was a good judge of a certain class of poetry, lamented that Burns should have written Holy Willie’s Prayer and the Jolly Beggars!—a remark which led Louis Stevenson, in a compassionating way, to hint that Burns was perhaps too ‘burly’ a figure for the Principal’s microscope. There is a good deal of this ‘burliness’ in Buchanan’s Leonoras, which in point of graphic power are second only to the Jolly Beggars, while their savage and even hideous realism, contrasting with the elegance of the Latin line, produce a piquant effect from the mere point of view of art. But I demur to any suggestion that these or any of Buchanan’s so-called ‘amorous’ poetry are corrupting or intended to be, or that they exhibit any gloating over the degrading or the degraded on the part of the writer. From references in them I believe they were satires written for the warning of ‘college’ youth, and resembled certain passages in the Book of Proverbs and elsewhere in the Bible, where certain counsels, highly necessary and practical, are conveyed in language not deficient either in directness or detail. They could not possibly scandalise or tempt any one, being written in Latin. Mr. Podsnap and the ‘young person’ would pass equally scatheless, for they could not read them. Only men who could construe and scan Horace could understand them, and these might be trusted to see their true drift. Then the Ad Gelliam verses were merely playful little satires upon ladies who painted, or wore brass rings and glass gems, which might amuse readers, while producing no effect, good or evil, upon their subjects. As to the Neæra series, they are not love-poems at all, but epigrams. There is no passion, sensuous or otherwise, in them. What show of manufactured emotion there may be is simply a stage-scaffolding on which to plant and fire off the epigram. Probably the best known of the series is the following:—
‘Illa mihi semper præsenti dura Neæra,
Me quoties absum semper abesse dolet;
Non desiderio nostri, non mœret amore,
Sed se non nostro posse dolore frui’;
which James Hannay, who was well able to appreciate this class of work, translated thus:—
‘Neæra is harsh at our every greeting,
Whene’er I am absent, she wants me again;
’Tis not that she loves me, or cares for our meeting,
She misses the pleasure of seeing my pain’;
adding that ‘Ménage used to say that he would have given his best benefice to have written the lines—and Ménage held some fat ones.’ What anchorite could discover anything exceptionable here, or if he had any intelligence left, could fail to perceive that it was simply a case for admiring extreme cleverness of thought and smartness of phrase? If any one desires to see how Buchanan could appreciate and address the highest type of womanhood, let him read such verses as the Ad Mildredam or the Ad Camillam Morelliam, and he will see that he was a man with tenderness in him as well as virility, with grace as well as severity of speech; and the fact that in his maturer years he was not ashamed to publish the incriminated poetry, showed that he was not conscious of anything to be ashamed of, that he knew the poet’s dominion was conterminous with the whole range of things, and no part of it whatever exempt from his critical or sympathetic function, while his fiercest or lightest dealing with the facts of life is in no way inconsistent with a profound and silent veneration in presence of the mystery of existence.
CHAPTER VI
BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS