In 1566 Buchanan was appointed principal of Saint Leonard's College of Saint Andrew's University, but he resigned his principalship in 1570 to take charge of the education of the young King, James VI, then four years old; and he continued to superintend his instruction for about eight years. During this period he was for a short time director of chancery and later keeper of the privy seal. In spite of these appointments, he does not seem to have held, or to have sought, a leading position in politics. The most important writings of his later years were a dialogue,
Jure Regni apud Scotos,' a defense of Scotland's treatment of Mary, and his
The comparative obscurity into which Bu chanan's name and writings have sunk to-day is in striking contrast to the splendor of his contemporary reputation. Throughout the lat ter part of the 16th century he was regarded by men of letters in Europe as easily the most distinguished representative of humanism in Britain, and this reputation continued for more than a century after his death. The contrast is explained by the medium in which he wrote. Like most of his learned contemporaries, he had no doubt that Latin was to be the universal language of the future, and almost all his writings are in that language. His mastery of Latin remains the admiration of scholars, but for the world in general his works are dead.
By genius and temperament he was a poet, and his Latin verses represent his best work. These belong to the conventional types of his age. Of his satires, the most notable are those already mentioned, against the Franciscans. To modern taste they pass the bounds of decency, but in brilliance and point they stand in the first rank of post-classical productions. His epigrams are entitled to the same blame and the same praise. He wrote complimentary poems to most of the persons of distinction with whom he came in contact, and an epithalamium on the marriage of Mary and the Dauphin, con taining a famous passage in praise of the Scots. More genuinely poetical is his piece on The First of May.' His love-poetry need not be taken as having any relation whatever to his experience. Such poems as those to Leonora and Newra are merely academic exercises in the fashion of the Renaissance on the model of Catullus and Tibullus. Of his dramatic
efforts, the most artistic is a play which still holds a place among the best of the attempts to revive the drama of antiquity. under the guise of the story of John the Baptist, is a thinly-veiled parable ex pressing Buchanan's views on kingship. His most ambitious poem is the Sphmra,' an elaborate exposition of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, and his most popular production is his Latin translation of •the Psalms into a variety of classical metres. The last continued to be used as a schoolbook in his native coun try into the 19th century.
Of his prose works, his Jure Regni' sets forth explicitly and with special reference to Scotland the same doctrine of the sover eignty of the people which was shadowed in (Baptistes.' Both this work and his history earned the distinction of being later suppressed by the government. The (Historia' covered the history of Scotland from the earliest times till 1580 and, while far from being a critical work in the modern sense, is much more dis criminating than most of the chronicles that preceded it. Its chief value is for the period of his own life, and here his authority is that of the honest partisan.
The general impression left by his work is that of an acute, vigorous and independent mind, poetical rather than practical or philo sophical; of a temperament capable of strong emotion; of a character showing some of the defects common to most men of his age, but on the whole straightforward and robust. And if the use of Latin has caused his writings to cease to be read to-day, it is to be remembered that for the Europe of his own time he was the foremost man of letters in Britain, and in the opinion of such judges as the Scaligers and Montaigne, the first Latin poet in Europe.
Buchanan's complete works were collected by T. Ruddiman (re-edited by Peter Burman, 2 vols., Lugduai Batavorum 1725). The vernacular writings have been is sued by the Scottish Text Society, with life and notes by P. Hume Brown (Edinburgh 1892). The 'Lives' by Irving and Chalmers are now superseded by P. Hume Brown's 'George Buchanan' (Edinburgh 1890). Shorter sketches are those of D. Macmillan (Edinburgh 1906) and of Robert Wallace, 'Famous Scots Series' (Edinburgh 1900). His portraits are discussed in Drummond's 'Portraits of Knox and Buchanan' (1875). Bibliographies are given by Ruddiman and Irving.