PREFACE. THE intellectual endowments of George Buchanan reflect the highest splendour on the land of his nativity; and every scholar who derives his origin from the same coun try, is bound to cherish and revere his memory. Nor is his reputation confined to his native soil, and to the sister kingdoms; he has received the homage of every learned nation of Europe. The most fastidious of his cotemporaries recognized him as the prince of poets: and by a rare felicity of genius which yet remains without a parallel, he attained to the same preeminence as a writer of prose. His profound and masterly treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos, excited the universal odium of those who imagined it absolutely unwarrantable to resist the wildest encroachments of arbitrary power; but it has taught modern philosophers to discuss the principles of political science with new freedom and energy. These are not the hardy assertions of a recluse who amuses himself with advancing singular opinions; they are abundantly confirmed by the authority of many distinguished writers of various nations, and of every age from Buchanan's to that in which we live. The high estimation in which he was held by the greatest of modern scholars, will in some measure appear from the subsequent memoirs: but it may not here be superfluous to exhibit the previous testimonies of several British authors of distinction, who flourished during the two centuries which have intervened since his death. 99a Archbishop Spotswood denominates him a man so well deserving of his country as none more. Nor can that worthy and able primate be suspected of any undue partiality in his favour. Bishop Burnet has remarked that "in his writings there appears, not only all the beauty and graces of the Latine tongue, a Spotswood's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, p. 325. |