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.