R. R. M.
[Query, May not this have been the original passing bell?]
"Laus tua non tua Fraus," &c. (Vol. i., p. 416.; Vol. ii., p. 77.;Vol. iii., p. 290.).
—There is the following allusion to these lines by Question and Answer in the New Help to Discourse, published about 1670, p. 102.:
Q. "How came the famous Buchanan off, when travelling into Italy, he was, for the freeness of his writing, suspected of his religion, and taken hold of by some of the Pope's Inquisitors?"
A. "By writing to his Holiness this distich:
'Laus tua, non tua fraus, virtus, non copia rerum,
Scandere te fecit hoc decus eximium.'"
For which encomium he was set at liberty; and being gone out of the Pope's jurisdiction, he sent to his Holiness, and desired, according to his own true meaning, to read the self-same verses backward.
If George Buchanan, born 1506, was indeed the author of them, it is certain that no Pope Alexander could have been the subject of them, when written, I presume, in 1551, that being the year in which he obtained his liberty. And now to J. F. M.'s Query p. 290.—If he has transcribed Puttenham aright, he might justly condemn them as very bad "verse Lyon," if that be Leonine; but I take it that he has condemned what is worthy of some praise, and of being "called verse Lyon," for Lyric.