‘Since I am poor and you are rich, what happy chance is thine! My modest wishes, too, you know--one nugget from your mine! Only, whatever be your gift, let it not be your gout: _That_, a meet present for your leech, I’d rather go without.’ These are merely samples of many communications, similar in object and style, which he addressed, at various periods of his life, to quarters where he thought they would not be ill-taken. As a rule, he supported himself by ‘regenting’ in colleges, or acting as tutor in royal or noble families. It was only when he could not make a better of it that he asked Society, through its most likely magnates, to give him something ‘to go on with.’ What else could he do? Carlyle’s description of Thackeray as ‘writing for his life’ could never have applied to Buchanan. Literature was not yet a profession or ‘bread-study.’ It was not till next century that Milton got £5 for _Paradise Lost_; and even Shakespeare made his money less as a writer than as a showman. The idea of Buchanan or Erasmus--a much more importunate beggar than Buchanan--going into business, say the wine or the wool trade, would have been absurd. They would have ruined any house that adopted them in two or three years, to say nothing of the indecency of allowing intellectual leaders of high genius to be lost in work which could be much better done by humbler men. There was nothing else for it, in Buchanan’s case, but to do as he did. Of course, in this age of contract and commerce, we are apt to associate an idea of meanness and pitifulness with the conduct of Buchanan and Erasmus and others in this matter. Our first feeling is that nobody should give any other body anything except according to bargain. Every man should be independent, and if he asks anything outside a contract, he might as well go bankrupt at once. He must clearly be a weakling, and the weak must go to the wall. The feudal sentiment, however, amidst which Buchanan lived, was entirely different, and had a nobler side than ours, although one does not want feudalism back merely on that account. Kings and lords took everything to themselves, in the shape of power and possession, that they could lay their hands on; but it was on the understanding that they were to make a generous use of what they had appropriated. _Noblesse oblige_ was still a maxim with vitality in it. The right men acknowledged it, and acted on it; the ruffians, as their manner is, wherever they are placed in life, ignored it. Patronage was not an act of grace: it was a duty. It was part of the honourable service to society, by which the patron’s tenure of his prosperity was conditioned. More particularly must this duty have been recognised by right-minded possessors of power and wealth who had felt the influence of the Renaissance, that mighty and far-reaching effort of the human intellect to assert its freedom and its varied energies against the narrowing and obscurantist