[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.
It would lose nothing of the lyrical by translation, but your readers
being all classical I forbear.