the aspect of supplanters of native talent to many hostile
lookers-on. Men of their pursuits and modes of thought, aliens in an
unknown country, perhaps sufficiently free of speech to alarm the
narrow-minded, no great observers of ritual or ceremony, were too likely
under any circumstances to attract the notice of the Inquisition in a
place so wholly given over to its sway.

Buchanan was probably the most distinguished among this band of
scholars; and a vague report that he had written something against the
Franciscans attached to him a special prejudice. As nobody knew what
this work was, it could not be brought formally against him, but lesser
crimes were found, such as that of eating meat in Lent and speaking
disrespectfully of monks, sins which even in Portugal most people were
more or less guilty of. Buchanan, however, had no very dreadful penalty
to bear. He was imprisoned for some months in a monastery, that he might
be brought by the monks' instruction to a better way of thinking. The
prisoner was fair enough to admit that he found his jailors by no means
bad men or unkindly in their treatment of him--an acknowledgment which
is greatly to his credit, since prejudice was equally strong on both
sides and a persecuted scholar was as little apt to see the good
qualities of his persecutors as they were to accept his satires. It
would be interesting to know what the homely fathers thought of him,
this dreadful freethinker and satirist committed to their care for
instruction. He found them "entirely ignorant of religious questions,"
though evidently so much less hostile than he had expected, and occupied
his enforced leisure in making his translation of the Psalms, a monument
of elegant verse and fine Latinity, for which the quiet of the convent
and the absence of interruptions must have been most favourable. He
would seem to have corrected the bad impression he had at first made, by
these devout studies and his behaviour generally; for when he was
released the King would not let him go, but gave him a daily allowance
for his expenses until some fit position could be found for him. But
there was evidently nothing in Lisbon which tempted Buchanan to stay. He
languished in the little capital separated from all congenial society,
and sighed for his beloved Paris which he addressed as his mistress,
writing a poem, _Desiderium Lutetiae_, in praise of and longing for the
presence of that nymph whom so many have wooed.

At l