With his soreness on this point, it is not surprising that he should describe Buchanan as ‘easily abused, and sa facill that he was led with any company that he hanted for the tyme,’ and that ‘he spak and wret as they that were about him for the tym informed him.’ That is to say, Buchanan did not belong to Sir J.’s ‘set,’ which is not surprising. The Democratic old scholar and thinker was not likely to sympathise with the kind of people whom the courtier naturally regarded as the _élite_ of society and the salt of the earth. Knox and Scaliger, Moray and Mar, Randolph and Ascham, Melville and Scrymgeour, Beza and Tycho Brahé, were among his correspondents or intimates; and if Buchanan thought that ‘information’ derived from persons of that stamp was _prima facie_ trustworthy, it was no more than the rules of evidence permitted and justified. It is barely conceivable that they sought to ‘abuse’ him and succeeded, but specific proof of this is necessary in such a case, and is not forthcoming. That Buchanan was ‘sa facill that he was led with any company that he hanted for the tyme’ is rendered utterly incredible by the facts. It is one of the most remarkable circumstances in Buchanan’s career that he mixed with people of the most opposite and irreconcilable characters and positions, while preserving his independence of both. There was, for instance, a time when he was equally at home with Maitland and Moray, and what is more wonderful still, with Knox and Mary. On the very same day when he had been reading Livy and turning verses with Mary at Holyrood, he might be discussing Calvin and the political situation with Knox in his High Street house; and what is more, each of them knew it. To my mind this does not point to ‘facility,’ but to dominancy. The ‘Stoik philosopher’ was quietly their master, because he was his own. He was not moved by their inter-personal attractions and repulsions, but passionlessly contemplated them as interesting life-‘forces,’ that he had to take as they came along, and in his calm judicial presence they bowed their more vehement heads. That is as probable an explanation as any of a very striking psychological phenomenon. ‘_Gud Religion_’