formidable, and with difficulty obtained the situation of clerk to an attorney. In this capacity, with a salary of £40, he managed to subsist nearly a year, all which time he pretended in his letters to his parents to date from Florence. In 1789 he made the acquaintance of the admirable John Newton, and through him of an influential and wealthy gentleman, who immediately conceived so high an opinion of the young man, that he sent him to Cambridge at his own expense, to prepare for the church. Having been ordained by the bishop of London, he became the curate of his tried and loved friend, Mr. Newton, but had only been in that position a few months, when the offer of a chaplaincy in India was made to him, which he immediately accepted (1794). His station was at Barrackpore, near Calcutta, where he remained, although much dissatisfied with his position, till 1801, when he was made vice-provost of the newly-founded college of Fort-William. The success of this institution, not a little of which was owing to the energy of the vice-provost, excited immediate and universal interest. An account of the benefits accruing to the population of India from its foundation should be looked for in Mr. Buchanan's "Primitiæ Orientales." In 1806 he set out on a tour through the Madras and Bombay presidencies and Ceylon; the result of which was the admirable work by which he is best known, as it is a work by which he will be long remembered—"The Christian Researches." The university of Glasgow conferred on the author the degree of D.D. Dr. Buchanan returned to England in 1808, when the East India Company's charter was about to be renewed. To his efforts at that critical moment was mainly owing the foundation of an ecclesiastical establishment in India. He died in 1815, while engaged in preparing a Syriac edition of the New Testament.—J. W. D.
BUCHANAN, George, the third son of Thomas Buchanan and Agnes Heriot, was born in a farmhouse called the Moss, near Killearn, Stirlingshire, about the beginning of February, 1506. The family of Buchanan was ancient but poor, magis vetusta quam opulenta, as George himself styles it in his brief autobiography. His father died at an early age, and at this trying period his grandfather became insolvent. But in the midst of such adversity his mother struggled hard for her numerous family, consisting of five sons and three daughters. George received his first education at the parish school of Killearn, but his uncle, James Heriot, sent him in 1520 to prosecute his studies at Paris, and here he first gave himself to the composition of poetry. Two years afterwards this uncle died, and the young Scottish student, left in destitution and disease, immediately came back to Scotland, and in a short time enrolled himself among the troops of the duke of Albany, not from the love of adventure only, but, as himself confesses, to learn something of the military art. About the age of eighteen, he entered the university of St. Andrews, and on the 3rd of October, 1525, he took his degree of B.A., having been ranked as a pauper. John Mair's prelections made St. Salvador's famous. Buchanan, whatever his opinions of his preceptor at this period, afterwards, in a famous epigram, saluted him with the wicked pun—"Solo cognomine Major." But in 1527 he followed Mair into France, entered the Scottish college, and became master of arts in March, 1528. In the meanwhile he adopted Lutheran opinions, and two years after his degree he became a regent or professor in the college of St. Barbe. Here he taught grammar for three years, and the misery he suffered from inadequate remuneration he has immortalized in one of his poems. His acquaintance with Gilbert Kennedy, earl of Cassilis, began at this epoch; and his first work, a Latin translation of Linant's Latin Grammar, on being published was dedicated to his pupil, Lord Cassilis, "a youth of the most promising talents." The date is Paris, 1533. Five years afterwards, in company with his pupil, he returned to Scotland, and sojourned for a brief period at the baronial residence in Ayrshire. Here he composed his "Somnium," a satire on the vices of ecclesiastics, and the inconsistencies, hypocrisy, and indolence of a monastic life. In this dream St. Francis appears to the poet, and endeavours, by describing the character and pleasures of the order, to induce him to enter it. One of his enemies gave him, in revenge, the title of "Bacchicus histrio et atheus poeta." King James then retained him as tutor for one of his natural sons, so that the rage of the Franciscans did not hinder his preferment. Then, at the royal request, he published his "Franciseanus," a scourge not of whips but of scorpions. The poem is one of the most felicitous of satires: the wit and the scorn are clothed in a style of racy magnificence—now flashing into humour, and now darkening into fulmination. The rancour of his adversaries broke out at once upon him; Cardinal Beaton offered a price for his head; but though he was arrested he contrived to escape, and fled, as might have been expected, through many dangers to London. Applications for pecuniary assistance to the starving satirist were made in vain to Thomas Cromwell and King Henry; and it seems that, when he was necessitated to beg, he made his Latin muse his intercessor. Turning his footsteps to France, Buchanan learned that Cardinal Beaton was there as ambassador, but, on the invitation of Andrew Govea, he found refuge in Bourdeaux, became a professor of Latin in the college of Guienne recently established, and in this capacity presented a Latin poem to Charles V. on his entry into the city. There he composed his earliest drama, the "Baptistes," and wrote a Latin version of the Medea of Euripides. Both tragedies were well received; then came the original drama of "Jephthes," and a translation of the Alcestis. These tragedies, both original and translated, show a wondrous command over the Latin language, unequalled since the period of its native bards. The "Baptistes" and the "Jephthes" abound rather in noble sentiments than in rich or crowded imagery. Buchanan could picture what was terrible far better than delineate what was touching or pathetic—could more easily stir the indignation or horror of his readers than excite them to tears. Honour, courage, liberty, and patriotism are his favourite themes, as his lines roll on in sonorous declamation. There is nothing mawkish or meretricious—no glitter or false pomp—none of the fustian that apes the sublime, or of the sentimental that often passes for tenderness. Michel de Montaigne and the elder Scaliger were among Buchanan's cherished friends in the south of France.
After residing at Bourdeaux for three years, he returned to Paris, and was appointed a teacher in the college of cardinal le Moine, and had among others, Turnebus and Muretus for his colleagues. In 1547 Buchanan and Govea sailed for Portugal, the native country of the latter, and settled, with other distinguished men, at the new university of Coimbra. After the death of Govea, Buchanan and his coadjutors became the victims of Portuguese bigotry. Buchanan was confined for several months, and during this incarceration, he began his famous Latin version of the Psalms. When set at liberty, he longed to be again at Paris, and sighed his regret in his "Desiderium Lutetiæ," but he finally embarked at Lisbon for England. About 1553 he returned to France, a nation admired and loved by him, for what he calls its summa humanitas. He was first appointed a regent in the college of Boncourt, and two years afterwards he became tutor to the son of the comte de Brissac. The following year appeared the first specimen of his translation of the Psalms. Like the Consolations of Boethius, the Evidences of Grotius, the History of Raleigh, the Henriade of Voltaire, and the Pilgrim of Bunyan, this work of Buchanan's had been projected and commenced in a dungeon. Immediately after 1560 he returned to Scotland, and in a short time became classical tutor to the young queen, who read with him every afternoon a portion of Livy, and gave him in compensation the temporalities of Crossraguel abbey, worth nearly 500 pounds Scots. Publicly avowing his attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation, he was, by the earl of Moray, nominated principal of St. Leonard's college in 1566. This year appeared the second edition of his Psalms, dedicated tersely but gracefully to his royal pupil, whose marriage he had celebrated in his spirited and beautiful "Epithalamium." A second edition of the "Franciscanus" appeared at this time, dedicated to the earl of Moray. Another of his satires, "Fratres Fraterrimi," was also prepared during these months, and there followed others of his lighter pieces, such as his "Elegiæ," "Silvæ," "Hendecasyllabi." The high estimation in which Buchanan was held is seen in the fact, that after being a member of various assemblies of the Scottish church, and one of a commission to revise the Book of Discipline, he was chosen moderator when the high ecclesiastical court met in June, 1567. The conduct of Queen Mary had produced a complete alienation from her in Buchanan's mind, and he became the earl of Moray's coadjutor before Elizabeth's commissioners at York and Westminster, and his "Detectio," not his "Actio contra Mariam," was published in 1571. In 1570 he published, in his own vernacular, another political tract, called the "Chameleon"—a satire directed against the laird of Liddingtone.
