FRINTED FOR BELL AND BRADFUTE, AND A. LAWRIE;
AND LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME,

LONDON.

1807.
JJ, 7

PREFACE.

THE intellectual endowments of George Buchanan reflect the highest splendour on the land of his nativity; and every scholar who derives his origin from the same country, is bound to cherish and revere his me mory. Nor is his reputation confined to his native soil, and to the sister kingdoms; he has received the homage of every learned nation of Europe. The most fastidious of his cotemporaries recognized him as the prince of poets: and by a rare felicity of genius which yet remains without a parallel, he attained to the same preeminence as a writer of prose. His profound and masterly treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos, excited the universal odium of those who imagined it absolutely unwarrantable to resist the wildest encroachments of arbitrary power;