登陆注册
14811700000046

第46章

"Tell me, man," said Buchanan, "if I have told the truth." They could not, or would not, deny it. "Then I will abide his feud, and all his kin's; pray, pray to God for me, and let Him direct all.""So," says Melville, "before the printing of his chronicle was ended, this most learned, wise, and godly man ended his mortal life."Camden has a hearsay story--written, it must be remembered, in James I.'s time--that Buchanan, on his death-bed, repented of his harsh words against Queen Mary; and an old Lady Rosyth is said to have said that when she was young a certain David Buchanan recollected hearing some such words from George Buchanan's own mouth. Those who will, may read what Ruddiman and Love have said, and oversaid, on both sides of the question: whatever conclusion they come to, it will probably not be that to which George Chalmers comes in his life of Ruddiman: that "Buchanan, like other liars, who, by the repetition of falsehoods are induced to consider the fiction as truth, had so often dwelt with complacency on the forgeries of his Detections, and the figments of his History, that he at length regarded his fictions and his forgeries as most authentic facts."At all events his fictions and his forgeries had not paid him in that coin which base men generally consider the only coin worth having, namely, the good things of this life. He left nothing behind him--if at least Dr. Irving has rightly construed the "Testament Dative" which he gives in his appendix--save arrears to the sum of 100 pounds of his Crossraguel pension. We may believe as we choose the story in Mackenzie's "Scotch Writers" that when he felt himself dying, he asked his servant Young about the state of his funds, and finding he had not enough to bury himself withal, ordered what he had to be given to the poor, and said that if they did not choose to bury him they might let him lie where he was, or cast him in a ditch, the matter was very little to him. He was buried, it seems, at the expense of the city of Edinburgh, in the Greyfriars' Churchyard--one says in a plain turf grave--among the marble monuments which covered the bones of worse or meaner men; and whether or not the "Throughstone" which, "sunk under the ground in the Greyfriars," was raised and cleaned by the Council of Edinburgh in 1701, was really George Buchanan's, the reigning powers troubled themselves little for several generations where he lay.

For Buchanan's politics were too advanced for his age. Not only Catholic Scotsmen, like Blackwood, Winzet, and Ninian, but Protestants, like Sir Thomas Craig and Sir John Wemyss, could not stomach the "De Jure Regni." They may have had some reason on their side. In the then anarchic state of Scotland, organisation and unity under a common head may have been more important than the assertion of popular rights. Be that as it may, in 1584, only two years after his death, the Scots Parliament condemned his Dialogue and History as untrue, and commanded all possessors of copies to deliver them up, that they might be purged of "the offensive and extraordinary matters" which they contained. The "De Jure Regni"was again prohibited in Scotland, in 1664, even in manuscript; and in 1683, the whole of Buchanan's political works had the honour of being burned by the University of Oxford, in company with those of Milton, Languet, and others, as "pernicious books, and damnable doctrines, destructive to the sacred persons of Princes, their state and government, and of all human society." And thus the seed which Buchanan had sown, and Milton had watered--for the allegation that Milton borrowed from Buchanan is probably true, and equally honourable to both--lay trampled into the earth, and seemingly lifeless, till it tillered out, and blossomed, and bore fruit to a good purpose, in the Revolution of 1688.

To Buchanan's clear head and stout heart, Scotland owes, as England owes likewise, much of her modern liberty. But Scotland's debt to him, it seems to me, is even greater on the count of morality, public and private. What the morality of the Scotch upper classes was like, in Buchanan's early days, is too notorious; and there remains proof enough--in the writings, for instance, of Sir David Lindsay--that the morality of the populace, which looked up to the nobles as its example and its guide, was not a whit better. As anarchy increased, immorality was likely to increase likewise; and Scotland was in serious danger of falling into such a state as that into which Poland fell, to its ruin, within a hundred and fifty years after; in which the savagery of feudalism, without its order or its chivalry, would be varnished over by a thin coating of French "civilisation," and, as in the case of Bothwell, the vices of the court of Paris should be added to those of the Northern freebooter.

To deliver Scotland from that ruin, it was needed that she should be united into one people, strong, not in mere political, but in moral ideas; strong by the clear sense of right and wrong, by the belief in the government and the judgments of a living God. And the tone which Buchanan, like Knox, adopted concerning the great crimes of their day, helped notably that national salvation. It gathered together, organised, strengthened, the scattered and wavering elements of public morality. It assured the hearts of all men who loved the right and hated the wrong; and taught a whole nation to call acts by their just names, whoever might be the doers of them.

It appealed to the common conscience of men. It proclaimed a universal and God-given morality, a bar at which all, from the lowest to the highest, must alike be judged.

同类推荐
  • 广笑府

    广笑府

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 佛说鹿母经

    佛说鹿母经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 嵩山野竹禅师录

    嵩山野竹禅师录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 内经药瀹

    内经药瀹

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 南窗纪谈

    南窗纪谈

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
热门推荐
  • 落叶回归

    落叶回归

    落叶回归这个国度实在是神秘的让人不可思议,每一件事都似乎有蹊跷,它们真的有关联吗?而在这里的人也让人深不可测,一群少年是否能摆脱宿命的束缚,去追求自己真正想要的幸福呢?初见,她是高高在上的神秘国度公主,而他却只是不幸闯入的异族少年,在几经波折后他们终于在一起了,可幸福只是暂时的,当初的预言是否实现,他是否会陨落..........
  • 福妻驾到

    福妻驾到

    现代饭店彪悍老板娘魂穿古代。不分是非的极品婆婆?三年未归生死不明的丈夫?心狠手辣的阴毒亲戚?贪婪而好色的地主老财?吃上顿没下顿的贫困宭境?不怕不怕,神仙相助,一技在手,天下我有!且看现代张悦娘,如何身带福气玩转古代,开面馆、收小弟、左纳财富,右傍美男,共绘幸福生活大好蓝图!!!!快本新书《天媒地聘》已经上架开始销售,只要3.99元即可将整本书抱回家,你还等什么哪,赶紧点击下面的直通车,享受乐乐精心为您准备的美食盛宴吧!)
  • 无限之奥特曼的心

    无限之奥特曼的心

    穿越无数世界,寻找属于自己的心,属于自己,身为奥特曼的心。嘛,开始准备新书
  • 网游之笑傲群侠

    网游之笑傲群侠

    现实中只是一个猥琐宅男的张龙,来到了一个满地侠客的世界,从此换醒了他胆小羞涩的现实外表下那颗勇敢洒脱的心。天大危机有木有?有,只要你敢闯过去。天赐机缘有木有?有,只要你敢捡便宜。风险与机遇并存,做侠客,一个人就行。但是,“侠之大者,为国为民。”张龙能领悟这其中最深的意义么?是笑傲群侠还是统率群侠,只在人的一念之间。
  • 月下雨寒

    月下雨寒

    一年前的花季,桃花盛开的地方,成了他与她的初见,谁也没有想过,只是因为在人群中多看了一眼,成就了一段爱情,可是上天却没有给她与他一个美好的结局……
  • 海贼王之零开始

    海贼王之零开始

    被人生分裂了人格,两个极端的她,谁能得到自己想要的,早已坠入深渊的她,能否被温暖的太阳脱离,逃离黑暗的阴谋,迎来光明。
  • 关于我们的这十年

    关于我们的这十年

    转学而来的曹思凡打乱了简一一原本平静如水的生活。随着他的离开,她的身边到处是悲剧。两人的再次重逢,他依旧还是年少时曾令自己心动的少年,而她早以不再是那个拥有爽朗笑声的女孩。分分合合之后他们是否还会在原地等待着彼此?
  • 你为什么睡不着:个人情绪管理指南

    你为什么睡不着:个人情绪管理指南

    很多人很难入睡,这主要和睡前的情绪有关,他们总是对过去的一天做了什么、什么还没做感到忧心忡忡,或者对明天将发生什么感到迷茫无助。 不会休息的人,就不会工作。这一点是非常肯定的。因为只有带着一天的充实感激入棉被的夜晚里,只要能获得安眠,就可以隔天所需的活力做好准备。 睡眠的力量就是生存的力量,让你的每一天都能“一觉到天明”。 我相信诸位读者读完这本书,会从情绪的困扰中走出来!
  • 重生学霸妃:盛宠无敌

    重生学霸妃:盛宠无敌

    “一男,你这么小,这么小……”一见倾心,皇上绝世容颜,书妃旷世促狭。君生我未生,我生君已老。但这,又有什么关系?她和他相逢,她说,皇上,你太美,我够不着.沧海学院,她是二级学修,一米八五个头,颜值仅属中姿.却在一年一度的皇室学霸大选中,意外获荣.入宫前夕,遭人暗算.命运无舛,蛇修奸女化身她体,前往宫中一睹倾城.重生,她为学霸,全能魔修撼山冼岳.杀尽天下!
  • 穿越火线之末日战神

    穿越火线之末日战神

    我叫杨勇,是一名大学生,我是个穷屌丝,虽然长的不错但是家境贫寒,当末日来临,看我如何摸爬打滚。