FURTHER CHARACTERISTICS

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.

Alleged Vindictiveness

The fastidious Sir James seems to think that Buchanan rather stepped down from the high ‘Stoik philosopher’ pedestal in being what he calls ‘extrem vengeable against any man that had offendit him.’ But, as already suggested, Dr. Johnson, who was a tolerable authority on the higher morality, would have been rather prejudiced in Buchanan’s favour on this very account, and would probably have wished to know Sir James’s evidence for unfavourably meant reflection, and would certainly have thought that it did not amount to much. It may be pardoned in an old ex-courtier to think it a dreadful thing to have written ‘dispytfull invectives against the Erle of Monteith.’ No doubt, the fact that the subject of the incriminated ‘invectives’ was some ‘particulaires that was between him (the “Erle”) and the Laird of Buchwhennen,’ would dispose Buchanan to do his best, because blood is thicker than water, and when Buchanan was at his best on an invective, it is likely enough that the object of it and his friends might think it ‘dispytfull,’ if not worse, although unprejudiced people might find it very good reading. But everything depends on the merits of the ‘particulaires,’ and of these Sir James tells us nothing. With every respect to him and his kidney, an ‘Erle’ may be in the wrong while a ‘Laird’ is in the right, and if that were so in the present instance, it was the part of a ‘philosopher,’ and especially a ‘Stoik’ one, to take an ‘Erle’ precisely for what he was worth and no more, as Diogenes, the champion Stoic, in the famous anecdote, whether vero or ben trovato, tells Alexander the Great that, as far as he knew, the only thing he (the Great) could do for him (the champion) was to stand out of his light.

Sir James’s other instance of Buchanan’s ‘vengeableness’ is not much more to the point. Perhaps the story of the requisitioned ‘hackney’ that was ‘sa sur of foot and sa easy’ is not true, and merely an instance of the baseless gossip that so easily gets into circulation about distinguished people, and people that are not distinguished as well. But even if the ‘said horse’ and Melville’s history of it are facts, most people will be of opinion that Buchanan had grounds of displeasure. He was deprived of the ‘said horse’—there is no word of a price, but that is immaterial—for public purposes during the civil wars. When the public purpose was satisfied, the animal ought to have been returned to him. In the meantime Morton had ‘bocht’ the beast, apparently from the requisitioner or his donee, and Morton was not the man to pay too much for him. But when the morally rightful proprietor applied to have his own back, and that time after time, he found the Regent of Scotland standing upon his real or fancied contractual rights. If Buchanan and Morton were the great friends Melville says they were, Buchanan was not treated in a friendly manner. It takes two to make a friendship, and by the proverb it is ‘giff gaff,’ not giff and no gaff, that creates the connection. ‘Love me, love my dog,’ is one thing; but love me, and let me love your horse À la Morton, is very much another thing. Loyalty is tested by conduct in small matters, even more than in great ones, and in the circumstances stated, it would not have been wonderful if Buchanan’s feeling of personal liking for Morton, if it ever existed, underwent a change. It is certain that Buchanan at a particular point ceased to approve of parts of Morton’s policy, but not for any such trumpery reason as the one assigned by tattling Sir James. While Knox was alive, there was a complete solidarity of public action between him and Morton and Buchanan, to whom the cause of Protestantism meant the cause of liberty. Their aim was to strengthen the position of Protestantism in Scotland by the English Alliance, and to strengthen the position of Elizabeth as fighting the general battle of Protestantism against the Catholic reaction of the Continent; while, even in spite of Elizabeth herself, who had an interest in Monarchical Absolutism as well as in Protestant freedom, they firmly resisted every attempt to restore Mary, the champion of the old faith and its political tyranny.

With this view Knox, who was a statesman, and not the mere crazy fanatic and demagogue that he is sometimes mistaken for, winked at the moral irregularities of Morton, and would even have joined the General Assembly in making him an ‘Elder,’ if he had not himself, though quite free from scruples, felt that this would have been putting on rather too much; while Buchanan gave him every support in his power, and as internal evidence shows, wrote for him the Memorial demanded by Elizabeth at the final London Conference, in which the right of the Scottish nation to depose Mary from her regal office is defended on the same principles and often in the same language as are employed in the Detectio, the De Jure, the History, and indeed all through Buchanan’s writings. After Knox’s death he still pursued the anti-Marian and pro-Elizabethan policy, but with a difference. To complete the unity of Scottish and English Protestantism, Morton sought to reduce the Scottish Church to the same level with the English—that is, to make it Episcopal and Erastian. When he made this proposal he was fully aware of the opposition on which he had to reckon; for although he made very light of the other Presbyterian clergy, and indeed told some of them who kept boring him beyond endurance that he might have some of them ‘hanged’ if they did not take care, he knew that in Knox he met a man who was not afraid of him, or any one, or anything else, and who was the one man in Scotland who was a stronger man than himself.

But when Knox was gone, he had the stage to himself, and began to develop his views, apparently seeking to use Buchanan as a tool for carrying them into execution. James Melville, in his entertaining diary, tells us that when Andrew his uncle returned from abroad, Morton sent Buchanan to him to try whether the influence of an old master over an old pupil and lifelong friend could not prevail on Andrew to assist him in more or less Anglicising the ‘Kirk.’ The idea of getting Andrew Melville to assent to Episcopacy and Erastianism, or any modification of them, was of course utterly futile and ludicrous. You might as well have tried to marry fire and water. To Buchanan himself the proposal would not appear unreasonable in itself. He was not an ecclesiastic, but a scholar and thinker to whom the struggle between Presbyterian and Prelate would appear a sectarian squabble, but his interview with his severely Puritanical pupil undoubtedly convinced him that Morton’s scheme for turning the Scottish into a branch of the Anglican church would simply defeat itself. It would rend and desolate the ecclesiastical life of Scotland—as was too amply proved by the Scottish history of the seventeenth century,—and paralyse it for the time as a power in resisting the efforts of the avowed or tacit Catholic League to crush that element of liberty in the Protestant revolt, which to Buchanan was its most valuable characteristic. This, and not ‘the said horse,’ was unquestionably the explanation of Buchanan’s growing antagonism to Morton. If ‘the said horse’ was not a myth, it might, taken in conjunction with the abortive Melville negotiation, lead Buchanan to think that Morton was just a little too much disposed to convert his friends into useful instruments for his own purposes—an impression which would be greatly deepened when he noticed Morton’s great and increasing anxiety to get the young King, Buchanan’s special charge, into his power, Buchanan’s opposition to which project, for which Melville (Sir James) expressly vouches, contributed ultimately to Morton’s downfall.

But that Buchanan, from the alleged ‘hackney’ period, and from ‘hackney’ causes, ‘spak evil’ of Morton ‘in all places and at all occasions,’ is not only incredible when we remember the high character and intellectual tastes of the man, but inconsistent with the facts of the situation. If Buchanan had desired to abuse Morton in a vindictive spirit, he had the amplest opportunity in his History. But what are the facts? There is not a word of depreciation, but many of praise, more or less direct. He does full justice to Morton’s great powers and wise foresight, and in accordance with a rule which he held ought to be applied to public men, screens his defects. He describes him exactly as he was, a fearless and skilful military leader, and a sagacious, firm, and patriotic statesman. He even goes out of his way a little to state facts in Morton’s favour, recording the energy and self-sacrifice which he once and again displayed in rising from a sick-bed of very serious prostration and redeeming a dangerous crisis to which he knew no one else was equal, and in relating the last negotiations which Morton conducted with Elizabeth and her council pays a due compliment to his diplomatic dexterity and merit. Detractors have said that he stopped in his History when on the threshold of Morton’s Regency, because he did not wish to advertise an adversary. But it was really death, not animosity, that stayed the narrator’s hand. By a weird prescience, Buchanan forecast the hour of his exit from time to a nicety, if such a term may be employed in such a connection. He worked up to within a month of his death; and then, when asked whether he meant to go on with his work, he said he had now another work to do; and when further asked what that was, he said it was the work of ‘dying,’ to which he addressed himself in the fashion we have already seen—a fashion not unworthy of a ‘Stoik philosopher.’

Not so Facile

It is of course a pity that we do not possess an account and criticism of Morton’s singularly able and interesting rule in Scotland by so original a contemporary observer as Buchanan. That it would, in all respects, have been favourable, is not likely, for the reasons already noticed. That it would have been consciously unjust is incredible in the light of such treatment of Morton by Buchanan as we have, much of which must have been written after Morton’s violent and unjust execution. Indeed, one could almost wish to be sure that the ‘hackney’ story was true, as it would show how superior the ‘Stoik philosopher’ can rise to petty and personal considerations when he has to discharge the high function of narrator and judge of public events. That his delineation of men and events would have been conspicuously able is as certain as any such matter can be, notwithstanding good Sir James’s remark that ‘in his auld dayes he was become sleperie and cairless, and followed in many things the vulgair oppinion, for he was naturally populaire,’ etc. There is no sign of this alleged falling off into sleepiness and carelessness in Buchanan’s History. The last chapter is as well thought out and written as the first. You may think him wrong, but you can have no doubt about the distinctness of his explanation of the sequence of events and the motives and aims of historic characters, while the style in no respect falls below the unsurpassed standard of prose Latinity maintained throughout the entire work. One grows a little suspicious of Sir James’s judgment when his reasons for it are considered. Buchanan had come, he says, to ‘follow in many things the vulgair oppinion, for he was naturally populaire’; that is to say, he was democratic in spirit. Of course he was. He felt it to be his mission in life to oppose Regal Absolutism in behalf of public liberty, and never let slip an opportunity of maintaining that all sovereignty originated from the people, and was justifiable only as it subserved their advantage. The courtly Sir James did not like this. He was a good deal of what Thackeray has immortalised as a ‘Snob.’ He might very well be called Sir ‘Jeames,’ and when he says Buchanan had been ‘maid factious,’ we must not forget that the ‘faction’ Sir J. had in his eye was the ‘faction’ of Liberty against Tyranny, and how far that can be justly called a faction will be settled by different critics according to their different tastes.

With his soreness on this point, it is not surprising that he should describe Buchanan as ‘easily abused, and sa facill that he was led with any company that he hanted for the tyme,’ and that ‘he spak and wret as they that were about him for the tym informed him.’ That is to say, Buchanan did not belong to Sir J.’s ‘set,’ which is not surprising. The Democratic old scholar and thinker was not likely to sympathise with the kind of people whom the courtier naturally regarded as the Élite of society and the salt of the earth. Knox and Scaliger, Moray and Mar, Randolph and Ascham, Melville and Scrymgeour, Beza and Tycho BrahÉ, were among his correspondents or intimates; and if Buchanan thought that ‘information’ derived from persons of that stamp was prima facie trustworthy, it was no more than the rules of evidence permitted and justified. It is barely conceivable that they sought to ‘abuse’ him and succeeded, but specific proof of this is necessary in such a case, and is not forthcoming. That Buchanan was ‘sa facill that he was led with any company that he hanted for the tyme’ is rendered utterly incredible by the facts. It is one of the most remarkable circumstances in Buchanan’s career that he mixed with people of the most opposite and irreconcilable characters and positions, while preserving his independence of both. There was, for instance, a time when he was equally at home with Maitland and Moray, and what is more wonderful still, with Knox and Mary. On the very same day when he had been reading Livy and turning verses with Mary at Holyrood, he might be discussing Calvin and the political situation with Knox in his High Street house; and what is more, each of them knew it. To my mind this does not point to ‘facility,’ but to dominancy. The ‘Stoik philosopher’ was quietly their master, because he was his own. He was not moved by their inter-personal attractions and repulsions, but passionlessly contemplated them as interesting life-‘forces,’ that he had to take as they came along, and in his calm judicial presence they bowed their more vehement heads. That is as probable an explanation as any of a very striking psychological phenomenon.

‘Gud Religion’

‘He was also of gud religion for a poet,’ says Sir James, when adding the last item to the creditor side of his profit and loss account of Buchanan’s qualities. ‘Gud religion for a poet’ is good, and characteristic of the times which said Ubi tres medici, duo athei,—‘Three Physicists,[4] two Atheists.’ Humanists, and still more Humanist poets, were also suspect, and for the same reason. The rebellion against Scholasticism, the resuscitation of the old Pagan spirit in thought and art and science, involved a staggering blow to Ecclesiastical Faith. Men whose minds were steeped in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome could not take sympathetically, I will not say, to Christianity, but to the dogmatic system of the Church, and even to much of its ethical teaching. ‘Humanity,’ in the sense of ‘the humanities,’ really meant the antithesis of Divinity. The Renaissance was a wakening up of the human intellect, an assertion of ‘private judgment’ in every possible sphere of its exercise, and in innumerable instances the Humanist created a faith and a code of morals for himself, although for comfort and convenience he might conceal his spiritual interior from the view of the ignorant and the unenlightened. In many an instance he held that there was one law for the men who understand, and another for the ‘vulgar’ who cannot understand. Popes and priests were often at heart Humanists of the most ‘advanced’ type, pushing the right of ‘private judgment’ to its furthest limit, discarding the public creed, and in morals, exercising, in favour of their appetites, that dispensing power which ‘private judgment,’ the Pope’s successor in so many awakened intellects, carried over with it, at all events extensively into practice, while simultaneously a silent outward conformity with the established system was carefully maintained.

Not that it did not sometimes betray itself. It is a Roman dignitary who is credited with the famous remark about the profit brought in by ‘this fable of Christ’; and everybody remembers how horrified poor Luther was in Rome when he heard the priests at Mass saying panis es, panis manebis,—‘bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain.’ The open licentiousness of many Church dignitaries of those days is too notorious for special mention. ‘Private judgment’ may be a primary human right and a duty owing by reason to itself of the highest order; but to cast off in its favour an inveterate obedience to authority, is a psychological problem surrounded with the greatest difficulty and danger, and unless when under the control of an adequately strong judgment and will, may cause much wreckage of faith and conduct. I do not think that Buchanan suffered much in this way—certainly not so much as many others among the leaders and supporters of the Reformation; while any damage he sustained was amply compensated by his gains. Knox and other Reformers—I speak of Scotland—were driven by the violence of the recoil involved in their assault on the Catholic and Feudal system into extreme positions, necessarily harmful to themselves, and bequeathing legacies of disadvantage to their successors.

They needed, through polemical necessities, an authority equal to that of Rome, which they had overthrown, and this drove them into placing Scripture in a position which the speculative and historical criticism of the last two centuries has made highly uncomfortable for many people of intelligence, including Broad Churchmen, whom it has driven into crypto-scepticism, and Evangelicals and Ritualists, whom it has moulded into wilful believers. Their denunciation and destruction of ‘idolatry’ and every rite ‘not appointed in the Word,’ with the necessity they lay under of maintaining a high standard of Biblical morality as a proof that Antinomian licence was not the necessary result of Justification by Faith, engaged them in a war against Art, Literature, and Natural Beauty and Pleasure, which, while it stamped the national consciousness with a grave, deep, and serious habit of regarding life, which is of the greatest value, produced also an immense amount, not yet exorcised, of official Pharisaism, popular hypocrisy, and practical pessimism, with all its miserable consequences. These were unfortunate results of the great rebellion against authority and claim of ‘private judgment,’ apparently suggested, in part at least, by self-defence; while the Nicene and Predestinarian dogmas were put forward with an emphasis and detail which would not be attempted in the present day, but were very seasonable in times when immaculate and even strained orthodoxy was both weapon and armour in a degree that does not prevail now.

Knox, it must be remembered, did not discourage the belief that he could predict the future and had a good deal of the ‘second-sight’ in him. He had a powerful political instinct, and he and his chief associates knew that if they went ‘too far’ in their destructions, the alarm would be taken, and the life and death struggle in which they were engaged would for them be lost for ever; and every man of any depth of thought or feeling is aware that the ‘doctrines of grace,’ in their inner, perhaps mystical, interpretation, and apart altogether from the stupendous metaphysical and historical setting assigned them in systems of Christian dogma, have a consoling, strengthening, and guiding influence on that vast body of serious, simple, if often practically powerful natures, to whom Criticism is neither a necessity nor a possibility. Such a union of accommodation and exaggeration need not be construed as of set purpose propositional in form, and deliberate in execution. In the transition from authority to private judgment initiated by Humanism and the Renaissance generally, special Reformation exigencies may be conceived as leading to such a union, so that in thought and action it was only semi-conscious and instinctive, and there was little time for the minutiÆ of introspective scrutiny. On the ethical side, however, there was no Renaissance loosening among the mass of the leading Reformers. The value of the controversial mendacities propagated about the morals of Knox may be judged of by the fact that the coryphÆus of the revilers maintained that he won his second wife by magic! As a rule they kept the ten commandments, and especially the seventh, rigidly. They failed a good deal on the new one of Charity. They preached the ‘Gospel’ with technical accuracy, but they mostly practised the ‘Law,’ and if Paul had returned among them, he would probably have re-edited his Epistle to the Romans, with up-to-date applications, as indeed he might have to do still.