Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

  [p51]

A lament on the death of Thomas Reid

1Of course this is enduring virtue's fate, and this is the birth of an acute genius: a as it prepares to extend the boundaries of its fame beyond the funeral pyres, it contracts the limits of its life into a narrow passage; then it summons the grave, and freed from the grave, it accomplishes its task; and its cloudy shadow happens to gather its life-giving air.

6I now lament, Reid, that you are thus snatched away: while you tried with all your might to write the famous name of Mnemosyne in the fasti, b whether you were happy to grow pale in reclusive studies, so you could be of benefit to the world, or whether you followed royal orders, and it was given to you to send a letter in a polished Italian fashion c to other kings. Under such a burden, you increasingly struggled for breath. The fiery power of your mind, using only servile limbs, completed such onerous commands that the powers of the highest genius would not satisfy their demands, even as it chased the rewards of a great reputation. Yet a lurid disease took hold of your paling body with a deathly thinness, and with a slow flame devoured you from the inside. We saw that your torch was often thus consumed; while expending all its light in dangerous pursuits, it remained bright, and fed upon its own marrow with its fire.

21However, if ever there is the promise of any survival for one's name, if ever power was given to New Goddesses to consecrate their devotees, d your posthumous glory, Reid, will grow old through countless ages.

25Of course, Athena herself was your nurse when you were young, in that part of Scotland that touches the north. She gave you her breast, she rocked your cradle, she lulled you to sleep with the pleasing rhythmns of Italian and Greek song. Then, while you were tentatively making your first steps through the trackless wilds of Pindar, through the Aonian regions and the pleasant meadows of the blessed groves, which the laurel tree shades, Phoebus himself directed your steps, with the entire troop of the Muses cheering you on. e Then, more surely than your years would suggest, with Wisdom's happy blessing, you explored all of Nature's secrets, and saw each thing that Democritus said was submerged in the dark depths of a well. f You also sought out the heights of the heavens with your mind, and as Urania uncovered the veil, g   [p52]you dared to examine those things impervious to human eyes, and to wander far and wide across the entire heavens.

40Aided by such great forces, and steadied by such a support, you wanted to leave your native mist, and to look upon other regions. h In this way a bird, with its mother left behind, abandons the native crib of its little nest, about to make the first attempt with its wings. So too a trader seeks out regions lying under a foreign sun, intending to trade his native produce and the bounty of his land for the rewards of an alien world.

48Firstly you saw Gaul, but Gaul was seen only in passing (like a dog drinking from the River Nile). i For Germany summoned you with the intoxicating potion of both entreaty and job, and through these twin means it changed your plan to tarry. So one is chosen from between these two friends; not the one which is the more beatiful in rosy mouth, but the one which greater excels in constant study, and very vigorously bears down upon base desire and the fires of Venus' flame.

56Here in Leipzig, in the camp of Pallas Athena, you stayed for a long time, as you presided in remarkable triumphs over defeated Stupidity, and the pretentious sophists. Who believed that they would be admitted by right to the inner sanctum of Phoebus, without Reid opening the doors? Who dared to try to pass through the thickets of the Lyceum, j unless Reid was guide and director?

63Nor did you have a lesser reputation in Rostock, which faces the Baltic coast: in only a few years there your very great glory increased; as many wondered at so great the concentration of profound learning collected in one mind, and the happy style of speaking, in whatever language you were happy to speak, in whatever fashion you were happy to bring forth the fruits of your mind, and to bring to life the inanimate page with your words.

70 However, rewards fitting to such a great virtue had not yet come to you; your character was not yet close enough to center stage. England, famous for its flourishing state, held this for you; you were the flower destined for its flourishing court, and it suited such a flower to shine in such a theatre.

75 For although nourished in Minerva's shade, you had nevertheless been a stranger to civil affairs.  [p53]But the felicity of your flexible genius had rendered you equally capable in the pursuits of both court and school. Where came the incorruptible fidelity, the wise industry, the deliberated judgment, and the eloquence matching ancient Rome's that brought forth the mighty grace of this man who manages the burdens of very great affairs, and conveys imperial pronouncements on Latin documents? k And this mighty grace mastered every brief, and it fell to him to be able to please a great king, and to have in his corner such a great witness to his talents: for the heavens saw nothing more wise than him on earth. Through your eloquence, he deemed you worthy of such an honour, and consequently entrusted you with the records of his own deeds to shape them with your words, so that through your words his deeds would be able to find an audience across the globe, and to aid kings as an example - not just where the boundaries of British power lies, but also wherever discourse in the Latin tongue takes place.

93Here, then, you appeared to reach the zenith of your wishes; fame had not been able to increase your glory any more, neither had greedy envy been able to lower your repute, nor Nemesis who is unfriendly in happier times. O the treachery of fate! Since it could not detract from your reputation, it deprived you of both light and vital air.

99Now you lie amid works half-finished, and amid great imposing writings. l If only your finishing hand had been applied to these works, no page of poetry and wisdom would have been more illustrious than that which bore the name of Reid!

104Now, only a very few unpolished works that you produced in the occasional stolen hour survive, as if they were rescued from your burning funeral pyre. However, whatever there are, they themselves will prove to be a light for Caledonia's pupils; and prove your genius, which could equal both the cleverness of subtle Scotus, and the delightful poems of Buchanan. m

110So now farewell, my dear Reid (ah, you who were once the greatest part of me, are now the greatest part of heaven), through your death the unwelcome tyrant of fate has inflicted such a grief-laden blow in my heart that it has forced me to break off my praise in tears.

114Alas how often I have said that, should I happily descend into the Elysian shades,  [p54]and in readiness die, Reid would then write a poem upon my tomb. Now, with nature's and my own desired order reversed, you go first down into the shades (for shame, fate!), and you entrust to me the task of the final rites, n which, while my bond of friendship, cemented over many years, is anxious to discharge, I nevertheless lament over your dear hands, and not justly executing the just rites, I assail with an unlearned piety your learned (oh woe) shade.

123However, may you receive the offerings of my devotion upon your peaceful body; for he will be able to appear worthy, who wished to hand down your name to posterity at the expense of his own, and to convey it into future generations.