The community of letters in these days was in the habit of expressing the intensest mutual admiration, except when a contrary feeling not less strong animated their minds and pens. Buchanan dedicated his psalms to his beautiful pupil and patron in terms as highflown but more elegant, and with a justifiable wealth of hyperbolical adulation. It would be an undue demand upon humanity to require nothing more than plain fact in a poetical address to a young Sovereign so gracious, so accomplished, and so fair. And yet in the extraordinary circumstances, so soon to be swallowed up in the abyss of a catastrophe still more extraordinary, there is little extravagance in Buchanan's address, of which we shall attempt a translation though most unworthy. "Lady, who bears the sceptre of this land By endless forefathers transmitted down, Whose worth exceeds thy fortune far, as stand Thy virtues o'er thy years, and the renown Of noble gifts over thy noble line, And spirit o'er thy sex:--without a frown Accept in this poor Latin garb of mine The noble songs of Israel's prophet king. Far from Parnassus and the classic shore, From under northern stars my gift I bring; Nor had I ventured such an ill-born thing To lay before thee, but for fearing more To miss the little chance of pleasing thee, Whose understanding gives a merit not in me." Buchanan followed this publication by various others, and strangely enough, while still enjoying the royal favour brought out his _Franciscanus_, his _Fratres Fraterrimi_, and other satires specially directed against the monks: which, however, seem to have done him no harm, for he talks in 1567 of "the occupations of a court," which kept him from bestowing the time and trouble he wished on the preparation of his various books for the press. Whether the readings from Livy went on all this time we have no record; but when Queen Mary married Darnley, and when her son was born, Buchanan would still seem to have occupied the position of Court poet, and celebrated both events by copies of verses as flattering, as well as elegant, as the dedication. From the first of these we may quote the lines in which Buchanan proves, notwithstanding his long absence and cosmopolitan training, that the native brag of the Scot was as strong in him as if he had never left his native shores. It could scarcely be to flatter either of the bridal pair that he burst forth into this celebration of "the ancient Kingdom."