ISBN: 9781459098404

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustra… Altro …

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1880 Excerpt: ... GEORGE BUCHANAN. Or those who in modern times have acquired a profound knowledge of the Latin tongue, and have written in it with purity and correctness, George Buchanan stands among the first. His name is indeed one of which all Scotchmen may well be proud, for it alone is sufficient to redeem, in great measure, the fame of Scottish classical learning from the slurs which have been so often cast upon it. Dr Johnson, who was never tired of sneering at the scholarship of Scotland, and whose political principles were by no means such as to prejudice him in Buchanan''s behalf, is nevertheless constrained to own his superiority. In his Journey to the Western Islands, he says:-- At an hour somewhat late we came to St Andrews, a city once archiepiscopal; where that university still subsists in which philosophy was taught by Buchanan, whose name has as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modern Latin, and perhaps a fairer than the instability of modern languages admits. Buchanan''s knowledge of Latin was by no means confined to grammatical minutiae and verbal subtleties: he was as familiarly acquainted with all its resources as he was with those of his mother tongue--perhaps even more so. He has written Latin prose with an elegance and vigour which Livy might have envied, and some of his Latin verses possess such,sweetness and grace that Virgil himself would not have disdained to own them. George Buchanan was born in the parish of Killearn, Stirlingshire, in February 1506. He came, to use his own words, of a family more distinguished by antiquity than opulence. He was the third of a family of eight children, who, by the premature death of their father and the insolvency of their grandfather, were left solely dependent upon their mother''s industr... Henry James Nicoll, Books, History, Great Scholars; Buchanan, Bentley, Porson, Parr And Others Books>History <