He praises him, not in the fulsome and fawning language of the Dedication literature of the time, but with evident sincerity and honest, hearty admiration for the brightness of his abilities, his intellectual interests, his independence of judgment while inquiring into the truth of things and opinions. He congratulates him, too, on his present aversion to flattery, that ‘nurse of Tyranny, and deadliest of plagues to genuine kingship’--_tyrannidis nutricula, et legitimi regni gravissima pestis_,--and rejoices that he seems ‘instinctively to detest’--_naturæ quodam instinctu oderis_--‘the courtly solecisms and barbarisms’--_solæcismos et barbarismos aulicos_--affected by those self-chosen ‘arbiters of elegance’--_elegantiæ censores_--who ‘spice their conversation’--_velut sermonis condimenta_--with ‘profuse employment of “Your Majesty,” “Your Lordship,” “Your Illustrious Highness,” and any other still more sickening title they can find’--_passim_ MAJESTATES, DOMINATIONES, ILLUSTRITATES, _et si qua alia magis sunt putida, adspergant_. Was there any latent reference here to ‘Mester Peter Young’ and his courtier ways? Anyhow, Buchanan plainly owns that he has doubts and fears for James’s future. He tells him of the dangers of evil companionship, and invites him to the study of the essay thus dedicated to him, not only as an instructor that will show him the right and wrong of the subject, but as a Mentor that may ‘keep at him’ in importunate and even audacious fashion, as it may seem for the moment. If he is faithful to the principles commended to him, there will be peace in the present for him and his, and lasting glory in the future. James subsequently thought he could do better, and threw off his early training; but, notwithstanding, or in consequence, he failed alike to achieve a peaceful career or to transmit a glorious memory. The citation from the chorus in the _Thyestes_ of Seneca--who also was tutor to a royal failure, although James must, of course, be admitted to have been a brilliant success compared with Nero--in which the great but ill-starred Roman delineates the Stoic king, appended to Buchanan’s dedication, no doubt expresses his own view of what James might and should have been: beginning with-- ‘Regem non faciunt opes Non vestis Tyriæ color,’ etc. ‘It is not wealth nor the purple robe that makes a king,’ etc. and ending-- ‘Rex est, qui metuit nihil, Rex est, qui cupiet nihil. Hoc regnum sibi quisque dat.’ ‘He is a king who has conquered Fear and Desire. Such a kingship every man may give himself, and none else.’