The fastidious Sir James seems to think that Buchanan rather stepped down from the high ‘Stoik philosopher’ pedestal in being what he calls ‘extrem vengeable against any man that had offendit him.’ But, as already suggested, Dr. Johnson, who was a tolerable authority on the higher morality, would have been rather prejudiced in Buchanan’s favour on this very account, and would probably have wished to know Sir James’s evidence for unfavourably meant reflection, and would certainly have thought that it did not amount to much. It may be pardoned in an old ex-courtier to think it a dreadful thing to have written ‘dispytfull invectives against the Erle of Monteith.’ No doubt, the fact that the subject of the incriminated ‘invectives’ was some ‘particulaires that was between him (the “Erle”) and the Laird of Buchwhennen,’ would dispose Buchanan to do his best, because blood is thicker than water, and when Buchanan was at his best on an invective, it is likely enough that the object of it and his friends might think it ‘dispytfull,’ if not worse, although unprejudiced people might find it very good reading. But everything depends on the merits of the ‘particulaires,’ and of these Sir James tells us nothing. With every respect to him and his kidney, an ‘Erle’ may be in the wrong while a ‘Laird’ is in the right, and if that were so in the present instance, it was the part of a ‘philosopher,’ and especially a ‘Stoik’ one, to take an ‘Erle’ precisely for what he was worth and no more, as Diogenes, the champion Stoic, in the famous anecdote, whether _vero_ or _ben trovato_, tells Alexander the Great that, as far as he knew, the only thing he (the Great) could do for him (the champion) was to stand out of his light.