We are now, perhaps, in a better position to face Melville’s further characterisation of him as a ‘Stoik philosopher, of gud religion for a poet.’ That Sir James knew something about Stoicism, although perhaps not very deeply, is shown by his apparent familiarity with the Seneca, whom he quotes in that remarkable preface of his, although only for a sarcastic comment upon those foolish political Stoics who, like Sir James himself, throw away their Stoical honesty upon unappreciative ‘Princes,’ and repent of their Stoicism when too late. That Buchanan had studied the Stoics goes without saying. He was as familiar with the metres of Seneca and Boëtius as with those of Horace and Catullus, and he was not the man--not the pedant or grammarian--to master the form and style merely of his author without penetrating to his inner thought. How minutely he had read Cicero appears from his famous emendation in the second Philippic of _patrem tuum_, passed over by previous commentators, into _matrem_, subsequently _parentem tuam_--a case in which even Gibbon would probably have admitted that a vowel, to say nothing of a diphthong, was vital to truth, and which gave occasion to Dionysius Lambinus to flay alive a rival Ciceronic editor, Petrus Victorius by name, for critical larceny, in having feloniously but silently appropriated, first, the laurels of Buchanan who did the good deed, and next, those of him, Lambinus, who had the sagacity to recognise and adopt Buchanan’s great performance. But Buchanan had doubtless read Cicero’s _De Officiis_ with not less care, and had gathered from its pages some idea of Stoicism as expounded by Cicero’s own early tutor, Panætius, probably the most distinguished of Rome’s then professional teachers of this great ethical system. He must have come across such a passage as this, where Cicero says: ‘What is called the _summum bonum_ by the Stoics, to live agreeably to Nature (_convenienter Naturæ vivere_), has, I conceive, this meaning--always to conform to virtue; and as to all other things which may be according to Nature (_secundum naturam_) [_i.e._ other possible _bona_ besides the _summum_: as gratifications of appetite, propensity, ambition, etc.], to take them if they should not be repugnant to virtue,’--a declaration which Butler, with his supremacy of conscience as part of true Nature, would have accepted, and in substance, indeed, has explicitly endorsed. Probably, too, he had noticed the habitual doctrine of Epictetus, ‘this is the great task of life also, to discern things and divide them, and say, “Outward things are not in my power; to will is in my power. Where shall I seek the Good, and where the Evil? Within me--in all that is my own. But of all that is alien to thee, call nothing good nor evil, nor profitable nor hurtful, nor any such term as these. What then? should we be careless of such things? In no wise. For this, again, is a vice in the Will, and thus contrary to Nature.