read occasional Lectures on Divinity. But his great power as a scholar-the best Latinist of his time, unrivalled by any Scotsman since-must, one would think, have done something to promote scholarship in St. Andrews. But the academic cloister was far too narrow a sphere for a spirit busy and turbulent as his. Where the fray was thickest, thither his nature carried him, and from the time he left St. Andrews till his death he was immersed in the stormy politics of the time. Once again he intromitted with his University, when, as a member of the Commission of 1579, which from him is sometimes spoken of as George Buchanan's Commission, he came to reform the University. There had been various attempts made before this with the same view.

The First Book of Discipline contained a scheme for remodelling the other universities as well as St. Andrews. A Commission for the reform of abuses in St. Andrews followed in 1563, but it came to nothing. The Commission of 1579 went to work more energetically. It found that all the colleges 'disagreed in many things from the true religion, and were far from that perfection of learning which this learned age craves,' and they agreed on a new form of instruction to be observed in the University. The Report containing. this improved plan is written in the Scottish dialect and is still preserved. It was ratified by Parliament. Some credit Buchanan with being the author of this Report, but McRie believes that Melville had the chief hand in it. The main practical result was that St. Mary's College was set apart for the study of theology and the languages connected with the books of Scripture, and Melville was appointed Principal of St. Mary's to carry out his own scheme. The two other colleges had new and improved courses of study laid down for them, and it is to be noted that the study of some parts of the Platonic philosophy were enjoined as a counteractive to the Aristotelian philosophy hitherto exclusively taught. It would have been interesting to have followed into detail the improved course of instruction, had it ever been carried out. But so far was this from being the case, that throughout the whole of the seventeenth century down to the great Royal visitation of 1718-19, commission followed commission, each new commission complaining that abuses still continued, and that the enactments of the last had failed to be carried out. Each new change in the ecclesiastical régime of Scotland was followed by a commission charged to see that the teaching and discipline of the University were brought into harmony with the dominant Church system. When we remember how rapidly these followed each other-that Knox's system of Superintendents lasted from 1560 till 1572; that this was succeeded by Tulchan Bishops till 1590; that from 1590 till 1610 Melville's stern form of Presbytery reigned; from 1610 till 1638 the Episcopate, of which Archbishop Spottiswoode was the chief ornament ; that from 1638 till 1660 Covenanting Presbytery held its tyranny; then, from 1660 till 1690 the return of the Stuarts and Episcopacy again; lastly, from 1690 onward, the Moderate or non-Covenanting

Presbytery;—when we keep steadily in view these rapid changes in the ecclesiastical firmament, and remember that the Universities were as sensitive to these changes as our bodies are to the weather; that they were then the creatures of the Church, whatever form it might take, the wonder is, not that they made no steady progress, but that they were able to survive such frequent and violent vicissitudes. In this century and a half of turbulence and disorder, when Superintendency, Tulchan Bishops, Melville Presbytery, Spottiswoode Episcopacy, the Covenant-restored Episcopacy, and Moderate or nonCovenanting Presbytery, were jostling each other; when the whole kingdom was full of quarrelling, fighting, plotting, convulsions, reactions, and counter revolutions, the calm pursuit of knowledge was impossible. The strifes that raged without intruded within the walls of the colleges, and made the teachers either strive with each other, or live and teach as they listed, heedless of the commissioners and all their enactments. St. Salvator seems to have been the most obstinately recalcitrant. Here are a few of the charges urged against it by the Visitation of 1588: That all the masters or regents had disregarded the enactments of 1579, and that each regent continued to teach the class with which he began, throughout the whole course of philosophy. This custom, though forbidden, was continued down till the eighteenth century. Altercations, too, seem to have been rife. The provost asserts that he teaches the Aphorisms of Hippocrates once a week. The masters say that he never teaches, or scantily once a month. Mr. Welwood says that he teaches the Institutions Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The provost says that he neglectis oft.' Mr. Cranston has no class by reason of the pest, and therefore teaches the grammar to the Earl of Cassilis and others privately. A memorial of the Visitation of 1588 opens thus:

It is maist difficil in this confused tyme (when all folks are looking for the weltering of the warld) to effectuat any gude commoun werk, although men were never so weill willit; and specially where ye ar not certainly instructit, and hes na greit hope of thankes for your travell.

The memorial concludes with this advice to the Regents :

Forbid thair quarelling, . . . albeit it be not altogether prohibit that they may flyte (i.e. scold), yet forbid fechting or bearing of daggis (pistols) or swerdis.

Amid such a state of things it took a strong man to hold his own, and to effect any useful work. Such a strong man the University had at the very time of the above memorial, in Andrew Melville, who was Principal of St. Mary's from 1580 till 1607.

Melville had been originally educated at St. Andrews. He entered St. Mary's College in 1559, when he was only fourteen. At that time all the sciences taught in the University were from Latin translations or scholastic commentaries on Aristotle. Melville had learned Greek from a famous schoolmaster in Montrose, the first who

ever taught that language in Scotland. His nephew, in his 'Diary,' says that throughout his course Andrew used the Greek Logicks of Aristotle, whilk was a wounder to them (his teachers) that he was sa fyne a schollar, and of sic expectation.' Again, he says, 'All that was taught of Aristotle he learned and studyed it out of the Greek text, which his masters understood not.' When he had got all the learning that St. Andrews could give him, he passed to the Continent, studied in the University of Paris, at Poictiers, and finally at Geneva. In these places he perfected his knowledge of Greek and acquired many other things besides. At Paris he made the acquaintance of Peter Ramus, the famed logician, and of Joseph Scaliger, the first scholar of the age; and at Geneva became the friend of the reformer Beza, who had before been the friend of Knox and Buchanan. During all Melville's foreign sojourn France was disturbed by the wars between Catholics and Huguenots, which culminated in St. Bartholomew's day in 1572. The French refugees, who after that dreadful event. crowded to Geneva, became Melville's friends. At Geneva, which was then the hotbed of democracy and of Presbyterianism, Melville greedily imbibed both, and became fitted to carry on the work which Knox and Buchanan had begun. In 1574 he returned to Scotland, and was appointed Principal of Glasgow University, which he found in a decayed condition, but did not long suffer to remain so. His nephew says, Mr. Andro entering as principal master,

all was committed and submitted to him. To another he left the care of the college, and threw himself wholly into teaching. The account of the labour he underwent in teaching is all but incredible. He himself took the ablest youths, who had been grounded in Latin, read with them Virgil and Horace and other Latin authors, taught them Greek (which till then was little studied), and read with his pupils Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, Pindar, and Isocrates; taught them Logic, in which he indoctrinated them in the new doctrines of his teacher, Peter Ramus; taught them Moral Philosophy from Cicero's works, Aristotle's Ethics and Politics, and Plato's Dialogues; instructed them in Natural Philosophy from the best extant sources, besides Plato and Aristotle, adding moreover a view of Universal History and of Chronology; introduced them to Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac languages, lecturing himself on the different Books of Scripture; and finally introduced them to the Theology of Calvin's Institutes. He was in fact in himself an embodied and living university. We might fail to credit it, were not all I have stated, and more, set down in the Diary' of his nephew, James Melville, who, though a partial, is generally considered a faithful witness. For six years he continued thus to teach twice every day of the week, Sabbath not excepted. Well may his nephew, I dar say ther was na place in Europe comparable to Glasgow for guid letters during these yeirs, for a plentifull and guid chepe mercat of all kynd of langages, artes, and scienses.'

When Mr. Andro passed to St. Mary's College in this University,

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he continued with the same energy, only confined within narrower limits by his special duties as a teacher in theology, or by the urgent calls which he thought Church and State made upon his services. His nephew informs us that a great contradiction brake out against him in the University. When the regents of philosophy in St. Leonard's heard that Andro mightily confuted Aristotle, they maid a strange steir, and cryed, great Diana of the Ephesians, thair bread winner, their honour, their estimation, all were gan, giff Aristotle sould be sa owirharled in the heiring of thair schollars. But Mr. Andro, nothing daunted, plied them still more vehemently, so that he dashit them, and in end sa convicted them in conscience,' that he won over his chief gainsayers. He stirred up the theologians from 'the coldness and ignorance and negligence' into which, according to James Melville, they had fallen since Knox's day.

...

As for languages, arts, and philosophie (he continues), they did na thing for all, but a few books of Aristotle, which they learnt pertinatiuslie to bable and flyte upon. . . . But within a year Mr. Andro, be his delling in publict and privat with every one of them, prevalit sa, that they fell to the langages, studied thair arts for the right use, and perusit Aristotle in his awin langage, sa that they became bathe philosophers and theologes, and acknawlagit a wounderfull transformation out of darkness into light. Bot, indeid, this was nocht done without mikle feghting and fasherie.

We can well believe it.

The above account is that of his nephew, naturally partial to his great uncle. But it would seem that in his engrossment with the affairs of Church and State, Melville had in some measure neglected his academic duties. In the Visitation of 1597 we find these charges against him: that he had neglected his duties as rector for the ruling and ordering of the University; and that neither in the government of the college, nor in teaching, nor in the administration of their rents, had he conformed to the reformed foundation and Act of Parliament. And Spottiswoode further accuses him of teaching, instead of divinity, the principles of republicanism; discussing before his students whether the election or succession of kings was best, how far the royal power extended, and if kings might be censured for abusing the same, and deposed by the estates of the kingdom.

But Melville's 'feghting and fasherie' were not confined to the University. Outside and beyond it, he had still more trouble to reestablish and systematise a thoroughgoing Presbyterian system on the ruins of Tulchan Episcopacy, which, always infirm, was by the time of Melville's return to St. Andrew's falling to pieces. To touch on this is beside our purpose. His public exertions for his Church must have filled his mind more than his academic labours. In civil and ecclesiastical politics alike, Melville was, as Mr. Hill Burton says, more of a leveller than Knox. There was in him the fiery fanaticism of the French Huguenots, and the stern classical republicanism of Buchanan, with a dash of the Puritanism then rising in England.' When King James was trying to infuse into the stern

Presbyterianism of which Melville was the champion a little beauty and Catholic observance, more than once the King and the Principal came into severe collision. On these occasions, Melville treated the young King with the same unceremonious rudeness which Knox had shown towards his mother. In 1596, when the King attended divine service in the town church of St. Andrews, the preacher expressed some sentiments of which the King disapproved. He interrupted the preacher and ordered him to desist. Indignant at this interference, Melville rose and sharply rebuked the King;' and censured the commissioners of the church for sitting by in silence.

Again, there is the famous scene at Falkland Palace. Thither, in September 1590, four ministers were sent by the General Assembly's Commissioners from Cupar, to remonstrate with the King against the return of the Papist lords, and other changes which he was favouring. James Melville, who was one of the four deputies, narrates the story in his own quaint way: 'We came to Falkland where we found the King very quiet.' The others made James their spokesman, alleging that he could propose the matter in a mild and smooth manner, whilk the King liked best. James accordingly told the King that 'to watch for the weal of the kirk in sa dangerous. a time, they had convened at Cupar. At the whilk words the King interrupts me, and crabbedly quarrels our meeting, alleging it was without warrant and seditious. To the whilk I beginning to reply in my manner, Mr. Andro doucht nocht abyd it; but brak off upon the King in so zealous, powerful, and unresistible a manner, that, howbeit the King used his authority in maist crabbit and coleric manner, yet Mr. Andro bore him down and uttered the commission as from the mighty God, calling the King, God's silly vassal, and, taking him by the sleeve,' preached him such a sermon as perhaps never king before or since heard from a subject. The Stuarts may have had many faults, but it can hardly be said to be one of them that they did not greatly love such candid counsellors as Knox, Buchanan, and Andrew Melville. The King could not overpower Melville by force, but when he passed to the English throne, he circumvented him by stratagem. He summoned Andrew and some other ministers to London, as it were on public business. When Andrew was there he committed himself by writing a Latin epigram bitterly satirising one of the Church of England services which he had witnessed. For this he was thrown into the Tower, and on being released he was sent into exile, whence he returned no more to St. Mary's. Whatever we may think of Melville's views, ecclesiastical or political, his scholarship and vigour of mind are undeniable. He gave a great impetus to learning and literature not only in St. Andrews University, but throughout Scotland-an impetus which would have been far greater had not the public turmoils of the succeeding century thwarted it. In words that have been applied to him, Melville was 'master of a great wit, a wit full of knots and clenches, a wit sharp and satirical, exceeded by none of his countrymen.' But his mind was too keen and caustic to