Systematically analytical, the book is easier to consult than to follow; but its Latin style is of that sincere, capable, unpretentious sort which had been established for history by the Italians. The political ideas of the Methodus are carried out by the same systematic analysis in Bodin’s second book, Les Six Livres de la république, 1576.[87] Greek and Latin political usage is made by a long wall of citations to support, with other proofs from history, the theory of absolute monarchy.
Such support of the new monarchies by a reasoned theory based on ancient history did not pass unchallenged. George Buchanan, with more literary competence in Latin, though with less knowledge of politics, offered for his little Scotland a theory of monarchy answerable to the people (De jure regni apud Scotos dialogus, 1579).[88] The preface, addressed to James VI, keeps a tutorial tone, as of one still laying down the law. The occasion put forth for the Ciceronian dialogue is French reprobation of Scotch politics. How shall this be met? The method is evident from the first three points.
To distinguish a king from a tyrant, we must remember that society is founded not only on utility, but on natural law implanted by God. A king is typically shepherd, leader, governor, physician, created not for his own ends, but for the welfare of his people (1-6).
Kingship, being an ars based on prudentia, needs guidance by laws (8). Objection: who would be king on these terms? Answer: ancient history and doctrine show motives higher than lust for power and wealth (9).
These two points being iterated in summary for transition, the third is the need not only of laws, but of a council (11-14).
The many exempla from ancient and modern history confirming or challenging the a priori progress of the dialogue do not touch the recent events that raised the question. Scotch history is used even less specifically than ancient to confirm the theory of limited monarchy. But though Buchanan does not prove that recent politics were an application of his theory, he makes the theory itself interesting and sometimes persuasive.
The Latin style has more liveliness, expertness, and range than Bodin’s. But the argument, though urgent as well as scholastically ingenious, remains unconvincing. After debating general considerations inconclusively, it falls back at last on the particular customs and needs of Scotland. These are not applied specifically enough to be determining. The expertness of the dialogue is rather literary than argumentative.
Brought down to the market place by printing, controversy by the end of the century was learning the ways of journalism in pamphlets. Meantime printing had opened such compilation as Elyot’s, samples of learning for those eager readers who had not gone to school with the Latin manuals of Erasmus.
The best of these sixteenth-century discussions, the piercing urgency of Macchiavelli, the charming exposition of Castiglione, the philosophical survey of More, the systematic analysis of Bodin, the hot attack of Buchanan, are all essays in that modern sense of the word which applies it to consecutive exposition involving argument. They show essay-writing of this kind—which was to move more surely in the seventeenth century—already on a firm footing. They recognize the Italian tradition of history in abjuring the decorative dilation which was habitual in other fields. They show Latin and vernacular side by side, and vernacular prose gaining point and finish from the Latin commanded by all their writers. They are a solid literary achievement of the Renaissance.