on Indian affairs; and when his former patron Marquis Wellesley went as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland he was solicited to accompany him in an official capacity an offer which his declining health and love of domestic quiet induced
him to decline. Dr Buchanan died, June 15th, 1829, in the 67th year of his age.
BUCHANAN, George, one of the most distinguished reformers, political and religious, of the sixteenth century, and the best Latin poet which modern Europe has produced, was born in the parish of Killearn, Stirlingshire, in February, 1506, "of a family," to use his own words, "more ancient than wealthy." His father, Thomas, was the second son of Thomas Buchanan of Drumikill, from whom he inherited the farm of Moss, on the western bank of the water of Blane, the house where, though it has been several times rebuilt, still, in honour of the subject of this memoir, preserves its original shape, and dimensions, with a considerable portion of its original materials. His mother was Agnes Heriot of the family of Tabroun in East Lothian. The Buchanans of Drumikill were highly respectable, being a branch of the family of Buchanan of Buchanan, which place they held by charter as far back as the reign of Malcom III. Antiquity of descent, however, is no preservative against poverty, of which our poet's family had their full share, for the bankruptcy of his grandfather, the laird of Drumikill, and the death of his father while in the flower of his age, left George Buchanan, when yet a child, with four brothers and three sisters, with no provision for their future subsistence but their mother's industry. She appears, however, to have been a woman of excellent qualities; and by the prudent management of the farm, which she retained in her own hands, brought up her family in a respectable manner, and had the satisfaction of seeing them all comfortably settled. George, the third son, received the rudiments of his education in the school of his native village, which was at that time one of the most celebrated in Scotland; and having at an early period given indications of genius, his maternal uncle, James Heriot, was induced to undertake the care and expence of his education; and, in order to give him every possible advantage, sent him, in 1520, when fifteen years of age, to prosecute his studies in the university of Paris. Here he studied with the greatest diligence, and impelled, as he has himself told us, partly by his inclination, and partly by the necessity of performing the exercises of his class, put forth the first blossom of a poetical genius that was afterwards to bear the rich fruits of immortality. Scarcely, however, had his bright morning dawned when it became suddenly overcast. Before he had completed his second year, his uncle died, leaving him in a foreign land, exposed to all the miseries of poverty, aggravated by bodily infirmity, occasioned, most probably, by the severity of his studies, for, at the same time that he was in public competing with the greatest talent of the several nations of Europe, who, as to a common fountain, were assembled at this far famed centre of learning, he was teaching himself Greek, in which he was latterly a great proficient. He was now obliged to return home, and for upwards of a twelvemonth was incapable of applying to any business. In 1523, he joined the auxiliaries brought over from France by Albany, then Regent of Scotland; and served as a private soldier in one campaign against the English. He tells us that he took this step from a desire to learn the art of war; but perhaps necessity was as strong a prompter as military ardour. Whatever were his motives, he marched with the army commanded by the Kegent in person, who entered England and laid siege to the castle of Werk, in the end of October, 1523. Repulsed in all his attempts on the place, Albany, from the disaffection among his troops and the daily increasing strength of the enemy, soon found himself under the necessity of re-crossing the Tweed ; and being overtaken by a
