James married (his second wife) Mary of Lorraine, widow of Longueville, who brought him several sons and a daughter, the latter of whom alone survived him as the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots. From the epoch of his marriage he seems to have dedicated his days to foreign relations, to his warlike propensities, and his nights to jollity. But he only found disappointments, with vanity and vexation of spirit. A broken heart seems to have ended in a fever, which closed his career on the 14th December, 1542, at Falkland Castle.

This prince (whose character for wit and libertinism bears a great resemblance to that of his gay successor, Charles II.) was noted for travelling about his dominions disguised as a tinker or beggar, and for his frequent gallantries with country girls. Two adventures of this kind he is said to have celebrated in the two poems which have procured him a place in these volumes-the Gaberlunzie Man and the Jolly Beggar. The poem of Christ's Kirk on the Green, generally ascribed to James I. of Scotland, is by Bishop Tanner and Bishop Percy given to James V.

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GEORGE BUCHANAN.

(1506-1582.)

George Buchanan, the most celebrated of the learned men of his time, of all the famous writers that Scotland hath produced, being in his prose both elegant and judicious (insomuch that Vossius, selecting out from several countries each of their prime historians, names him for the history of his own country); and for verse, if not the chief of modern Latin poets, as some account him, yet at least the chief of that nation; which however barren of soil esteemed, yet hath been sufficiently fruitful of good wits, and even famous, particularly for Latin verse."

The poet thus heralded by Edward Phillips, not improbably in the words of Milton, was George Buchanan, born in the parish of Kellerne, in Lenoxshire, Scotland, in February 1506. His family, which was never very rich, was, soon after the birth of this son, reduced to great straits by the bankruptcy of his grandfather and the death of his father, who left a widow with five sons and three daughters, whom nevertheless she brought up by her prudent management. Her brother, Mr. James Heriot, observing a promising genius in George when at school, sent him to Paris for his education; but in two years the death of his uncle, and his own bad state of health and want of money, forced him to return. About a year after he made a campaign with the French auxiliaries, in which he suffered so many

hardships that he was confined to his bed by sickness all the ensuing winter. Early in the spring he went to St. Andrew's to learn logic under Mr. John Mair, whom he followed in the summer to Paris. Here he embraced the Lutheran tenets, which at that time began to spread; and after struggling for nearly two years with ill fortune, he went, in 1526, to teach grammar in the college of St. Barbe, which he did for two years and a half. The young Earl of Cassilis meeting with him, took a liking to his conversation, and valuing his parts, kept him with him for five years, and then carried him into Scotland. Upon the earl's death, about two years after, Buchanan was preparing to return to France to resume his studies; but King James V. detained him, to be preceptor to his natural son James, afterwards the famous earl of Murray, regent of Scotland. Some sarcasms thrown out against the Franciscan friars, in a poem entitled Somnium, which Buchanan had written to pass an idle hour, so highly exasperated them, that they represented him as an atheist. This served only to increase that dislike which he had already conceived against them on account of their irregularities. Some time after, the king having discovered a conspiracy against his person, in which he was persuaded some of the Franciscans were concerned, commanded Buchanan to write a poem against them. Our poet, unwilling to disoblige either the king or the friars, wrote a few verses susceptible of a double interpretation. But the king was displeased because they were not severe enough, and the others held it a capital offence so much as to mention them other than to their honour. The king ordered him to write verses more poignant, which gave occasion to the piece entitled Franciscanus. Soon after, being informed by his friends at court that the monks sought his life, and that Cardinal Beaton had given the king a sum of money to have him executed, he fled to England. But things being there in such an uncertain state that Lutherans and papists were burnt in the same fire on the same day, whilst Henry VIII. studied more his own safety than the purity of religion, he went over to France. On his arrival at Paris, he found his inveterate enemy Cardinal Beaton at that court, in the character of ambassador; wherefore he retired privately to Bordeaux, at the invitation of Andrew Govianus, a learned Portuguese. He taught in the public school lately erected there three years; in which time he wrote four tragedies, afterwards occasionally published. The Baptista was the first written, though it was the last published, and then the Medea of Euripides. He wrote them to comply with the rules of the school, which every year demanded a new fable; and his aim in choosing these subjects was to draw off the youth of France as much as possible from the allegories which were then greatly in vogue, to an

imitation of the ancients, in which he succeeded beyond his hopes. Meanwhile Cardinal Beaton sent letters to the archbishop of Bordeaux to cause him to be apprehended; but these luckily fell into the hands of some of Buchanan's friends, who prevented their effect. Not long after he went into Portugal with Govianus, who had received orders from the king his master to bring him a certain number of men able to teach philosophy and classical learning in the university he had lately established at Coimbra. Every thing went well whilst Govianus lived; but after his death, which happened the year following, the learned men who followed him, and particularly Buchanan, who was a foreigner and had few friends, suffered every kind of illusage.

After cavilling with him a year and a half, his enemies, that they might not be accused of groundlessly harassing a man of reputation, sent him to a monastery for some months, to be better instructed by the monks. It was chiefly at this time that he translated the Psalms of David into Latin verse. In July 1554 he published his tragedy of Jephtha, with a dedication to Charles de Cossi, marshal of France; with which the marshal was so much pleased, that the year following he sent for Buchanan into Piedmont, and made him preceptor to his son. Buchanan spent five years with this youth, employing his leisure hours in the study of the Scriptures, that he might be the better able to judge of the controversies which at that time divided the Christian world. He returned to Scotland in 1563, and joined the reformed church in that kingdom. In the beginning of 1565 he went again to France, whence he was recalled the year following by Mary Queen of Scots, who had fixed upon him to be preceptor to her son, when that prince should be of a proper age to be put under his care, and in the meantime made him principal of St. Leonard's college in the University of St. Andrew's, where he resided four years. But upon the misfortunes of that queen, he joined the party of the Earl of Murray, by whose order he wrote his Detection, reflecting on the queen's character and conduct. He was by the states of the kingdom appointed preceptor to the young king James VI. He employed the last twelve or thirteen years of his life in writing the history of his country, in which he happily united the force and brevity of Sallust with the perspicuity and elegance of Livy. He died at Edinburgh, the 28th of February, 1582, aged 76.

SIR THOMAS WYAT.

(1503-1541.)

Sir Thomas Wyat, the only son of Sir Henry Wyat of Allington Castle, Kent, was born 1503. His father was imprisoned in the Tower in the reign of Richard III., where he is said to have been preserved by a cat, which fed him while in that place; for which reason he was always pictured with a cat in his arms, or beside him.

After being educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and at Christ Church, Oxford, young Wyat travelled for some time on the Continent; and then returned a gentleman of such high accomplishments, elegant manners, and conversational talents, as to attract the attention of all ranks, and particularly of his sovereign, who knighted him, and employed him in several embassies.

In him is said to have been combined the wit of Sir Thomas More and the wisdom of Sir Thomas Cromwell. It is no small confirmation of this character, that his friend Surrey describes him as of "a visage stern and mild."

We are told that he brought about the Reformation by a bon-mot, and precipitated the fall of Wolsey by a seasonable story. When the king was perplexed respecting his divorce from Queen Catherine, which he affected to regard as a matter of conscience, Sir Thomas exclaimed, "Lord! that a man cannot repent of his sin without the Pope's leave!" The story by which he promoted the fall of Wolsey has not descended to our times. Lloyd merely says that when the king happened to be displeased with Wolsey, "Sir Thomas ups with the story of the curs baiting the butcher's dog, which contained the whole method of that great man's ruin."

Sir Thomas was much courted for his splendid entertainments; his knowledge of the world; his discernment in discovering men of talent, and his readiness to encourage them; and for the interest he was known to possess at court. It became a proverb, when any person received preferment, that "he had been in Sir Thomas Wyat's closet."

Amidst this prosperity he had the misfortune, like most of the eminent persons of his time, to fall under the severe displeasure of the king, and was twice imprisoned. Fuller tells us he "fell into disfavour about the business of Queen Anne Bullen;" and some have gone so far as to accuse him of an amour with that queen. But he himself expressly imputes his first imprisonment to Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. His second misfortune arose from the villany of Bonner, bishop of London, whose clownish manners, lewd behaviour, want of religion,

and malicious perversion of truth, Sir Thomas paints with equal humour and asperity. The charges against him he repelled with great spirit, ease, and candour. He was tried before a committee of the council, and probably acquitted, as we find that he regained the confidence of the king, and was afterwards sent ambassador to the emperor. His eagerness to execute this commission, whatever it was, proved fatal; for riding fast in the heat of summer, he was attacked by a malignant fever, of which he died at Sherborne in Dorsetshire,

1541.

Sir Thomas was closely allied with Lord Surrey by friendship and similarity of taste and studies. His poems were first published by Tottle, with Lord Surrey's. The authenticity of Surrey's and Wyat's poems seems to be confirmed by this care of Tottle to distinguish what he knew from what he did not know. He contributed but little to the refinement of English poetry, and his versification and language are deficient in harmony and perspicuity. From a close study of the Italian poets, his imagination dwells too often on puerile conceits. As a lover, his addresses are stately and pedantic, with very little mixture of feeling or passion; and although detached beauties may be pointed out in a few of his sonnets, his genius was ill adapted to this species of poetry. In all respects he is inferior to his friend Surrey, and claims a place in the English series of poets chiefly as being the first polished satirist, and as having represented the vices and follies of his time in the true spirit of the didactic muse.

JOHN KAYE. POETS LAUREATE.
(Circa 1506.)

The first mention of a king's poet, under the appellation of Laureate, occurs in the reign of Edward IV., by whom John Kaye was appointed to that office. It happens, however, singularly enough, that this proto-poet-laureate has left no pieces of poetry to prove his pretensions to his laureateship. The only composition he has transmitted to posterity is a prose English translation of a Latin history of the siege of Rhodes. In the dedication of this translation (printed 1506), addressed to King Edward, or rather in the title, Kaye styles himself hys humble Poete Laureate.

Great confusion has entered into this subject of poet-laureateship, on account of the degrees in grammar (which included rhetoric and versification) anciently taken in our universities, particularly at Oxford; on which occasion a wreath of laurel was presented to the new