James Melville

“ Melvill till 1572 did not correspond with his friends in Scotland; his home letters in that year brought him successive appeals, the earliest being from his nephew, James Melville (1556–1614) [q. v.] , to devote his powers to raising the standard of education in his own country. In 1573 he published at Basle his first volume of Latin verse, and in the same year obtained his demission from the Genevan Academy. In the spring of 1574 he left Geneva, carrying a commendatory letter from Beza to the Scottish general assembly. ”

“ At the close of 1610, the English Ambassador at the French Court brought a request from the Duke de Bouillon, a leading French Protestant, to the King that he would give Melville his release, in order that he might go to Sedan to fill the collegiate Chair of Divinity in the University. After some negotiations, in which James showed his old grudging spirit towards his prisoner, the request was granted. But it was not easy for Melville to tear himself away from his native land. Writing to his nephew, he says:—
'I am in a state of suspense as to the course which I ought to take. ”

“ This dispute had caused much trouble to Andrew Melville. In a letter of James Melville written at the time to a friend, he says: 'Mr. Andro hath been a traicked [14] man since he cam hame, ryding up and doun all the countrie to see if he might move the brethren to repent and joyne together.' The Assembly had little hope of Parliament doing anything towards the repeal of the Black Acts. If the nobles now in power would not press the King to redress the Church's grievances, it was certain that he would do nothing in that direction of his own accord. James was not in a mood to oblige the Church. ”

“ T is New Year’s Eve. There is no twilight now in Mr. Melville’s cheery parlour, the light is glimmering in the polished furniture, leaping and dancing in the merry eyes that surround it, and even the grave features of the head of the house have relaxed into an unwonted smile. The young people have not forgotten the old Scottish celebration of “Hogmanay,” in all its observances, and Christian’s stores have been plundered, and James has fled blushing from their raillery,{23} pursued by the glad echo of their ringing laughter. ”

“ Upon the beach of James’s Isle, for many years, was to be seen a rude finger-post, pointing inland. And, perhaps, taking it for some signal of possible hospitality in this otherwise desolate spot—some good hermit living there with his maple dish—the stranger would follow on in the path thus indicated, till at last he would come out in a noiseless nook, and find his only welcome, a dead man—his sole greeting the inscription over a grave. Here, in 1813, fell, in a daybreak duel, a lieutenant of the U.S. frigate Essex, aged twenty-one: attaining his majority in death. ”

“ Sir James Melville, in noting that, while acting as one of the king’s preceptors, he kept the young monarch in great awe, goes on to speak of him as ‘a stoic philosopher,’ who did not act in that capacity with any view to his worldly interests. ‘A man of notable endowments for his learning and knowledge in Latin poesy,’ says this mild contemporary, ‘much honoured in other countries, pleasant in conversation, rehearsing at all occasions moralities short and instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing where he wanted. ”

“ More than they were in jeopardy of their lives; every man in the country who had been a pronounced friend of liberty had cause to fear. Lawson, Balcanquhal, and Pont fled, with many others. A warrant had been procured by Archbishop Adamson for the apprehension of James Melville, when he made his escape by open boat to Berwick. ”

“ Melville did not participate, but he assisted James to make his escape from the Earl of Gowrie, who shortly afterwards was executed. A year later Melville was appointed a privy councillor. When Queen Mary was lying under sentence of death, he was sent by James, along with the Master of Gray, to entreat Elizabeth to spare Mary's life, and he discharged his mission so fearlessly that Elizabeth threatened his own life, and but for the Master of Gray would have deprived him of his liberty. ”

“ Before his elevation to the Scottish peerage Melville had been a stout partisan of Mary, queen of Scots, whom he represented at the English court, and he had filled several important offices in Scotland under her son James VI. The fourth holder of the lordship of Melville was George (c. 1634-1707) , a son of John, the 3rd lord (d. 1643) , and a descendant of Sir John Melville. ”

“ At this time a fresh casus belli between the Church and the Crown arose through the Church's severe but well-merited handling of Archbishop Adamson. No man in the kingdom was more responsible for the recent troubles than Adamson, except Arran, whom he encouraged and supported in all his arbitrary measures. The minister of the Church who first opened fire on the Archbishop was James Melville. ”

“ At this convention, delegates were appointed to meet with the King and represent to him the necessity of taking vigorous action against the lords. The interview took place at Jedburgh, where the King had gone to repress some Border tumult. 'We war bot bauchlie [19] lukit upon,' says James Melville, who was [Pg 77] one of the delegates.—'Our Assembly of Fife was bitterly inveyit against, namlie my uncle Mr. Andro and Mr. David Black.' Before the interview closed, the King became more gracious, and he dismissed the delegates with fair promises ”

“ When Melville returned to Scotland, the artistic movement, which issued in what came to be known as the Glasgow school, had already begun. There was a certain affinity between his work and that of the young Glasgow painters. Meeting Mr. (now Sir James) Guthrie and E. A. Walton at Cockburnspath in 1883, Melville associated himself with them. He had already achieved a more individual style than they, and his strong personality helped to accelerate and mould the Glasgow movement, but he on his part was influenced by the Glasgow artists' enthusiasm and audacity in experiment. ”

“ It is the same to me whether I rot in the air or in the ground. The earth is the Lord’s. Patria est ubicunque est bene.” Another Andrew (1624-1706) among these ghostly presences was a soldier of fortune who in the preface of his Memoires de M. de Chevalier de Melville (Amsterdam, 1704) was eulogised for his valour and his protestantism.
Conspicuous in Allan’s library was a copy of the Memoirs of His Own Life by Sir James Melvil of Hallhill (London, 1683) , bearing the autograph of Allan’s great-grandfather, Thomas Melville of Scoonie. ”

“ Melville was elected an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1886, and was for some years a member of the Royal Scottish Water-Colour Society. In London he became an associate of the Royal Water Colour Society in 1889 and full member in 1900. The National Gallery of Scotland possesses 'A Moorish Procession,' one of the finest of his Tangier drawings, and 'Christmas Eve,' one of four large oil pictures illustrating Christmas carols, upon which he was engaged at his death ”

“ On the departure of James for Denmark in October 1589 to bring home his bride, Melville was deputed to act as chancellor. He was afterwards sent to pacify disorderly districts in the north and on the borders. In 1593 he again went to England to negotiate with Elizabeth about the relations of the two kingdoms with Spain. In the following year he was admitted as an extraordinary lord of session by the title of Lord Murdocairnie, the name of his seat in Fife. The same year he accompanied King James to the north against Huntly, and remained there for some time with Lennox to restore order. ”

“ On Mary’s return to Scotland in 1561 she gave Melville a pension and an appointment in her household, and she employed him as special emissary to reconcile Queen Elizabeth to her marriage with Darnley. After the murder of Darnley in February 1567, Melville joined Lord Herries in boldly warning Mary of the danger and disgrace of her projected marriage with Bothwell, and was only saved from the latter’s vengeance in consequence by the courageous resolution of the queen. ”

“ On, on, into the darkness beyond, sped the tempest of pursuit—now wedged into narrow passes and involved in a hundred confused knots, now unravelling on the open plains beyond and flowing on in currents bold and free as those that kissed the shore beneath them, now leaping brake and fell, now skirting hazardous banks, now hugging obtrusive shores, and hark! ”

“ There he was, all by himself, seated upon the broken canoe—the natives grouped around him at a distance, and eyeing him more and more fixedly. 'It is getting late: said Jimmy, who was standing behind the rest. 'Nukuheva is far off, and I cannot cross the Happar country by night. You see how it is;—if you come along with me, all will be well; if you do not, depend upon it, neither of you will ever escape.'
'There is no help for it,' said Toby, at last, with a heavy heart, 'I will have to trust you,' and he came out from the shadow of the little shrine, and cast a long look up the valley. ”

“ Let all be; it is well. Eh! but there is a grate here, I see. I will buy coals. Yes, yes—that can be easily done; a little fire of a morning—the expense will be nothing. Stay, we will have a little fire here now for a welcome. She shall always have fire.'
'Better change the pipe, Pierre,' said Isabel, 'that will be permanent, and save the coals.'
'It shall not be done, Isabel. Doth not that pipe and that warmth go into thy room? Shall I rob my wife, good Delly, even to benefit my most devoted and true-hearted cousin?'
'Oh! I should say not, sir; not at all,' said Delly hysterically. ”

“ But our soul’s arches underfit into its; and so, prevent the upper arch from falling on us with unsustainable inscrutableness. “Explain ye my deeper mystery,” said the shepherd Chaldean king, smiting his breast, lying on his back upon the plain; “and then, I will bestow all my wonderings upon ye, ye stately stars!” So, in some sort, with Pierre. Explain thou this strange integral feeling in me myself, he thought—turning upon the fancied face—and I will then renounce all other wonders, to gaze wonderingly at thee. But thou hast evoked in me profounder spells than the evoking one, thou face! ”

“ With these wild words, Pierre seized his hat, and departed the room, muttering something about bringing the key of the additional chamber.
As the door closed on him, Delly dropped on her knees. She lifted her head toward the ceiling, but dropped it again, as if tyrannically awed downward, and bent it low over, till her whole form tremulously cringed to the floor.
'God that made me, and that wast not so hard to me as wicked Delly deserved,—God that made me, I pray to Thee! ward it off from me, if it be coming to me. Be not deaf to me; these stony walls—Thou canst hear through them. Pity! ”

“ Still shuffling among the crowd, now and then he would pause, throwing back his head and, opening his mouth like an elephant for tossed apples at a menagerie; when, making a space before him, people would have a bout at a strange sort of pitch-penny game, the cripple’s mouth being at once target and purse, and he hailing each expertly-caught copper with a cracked bravura from his tambourine. To be the subject of alms-giving is trying, and to feel in duty bound to appear cheerfully grateful under the trial, must be still more so ”

“ Yet endure the smiling portrait he could not; and obeying an irresistible nameless impulse, he rose, and without unhanging it, reversed the picture on the wall.
This brought to sight the defaced and dusty back, with some wrinkled, tattered paper over the joints, which had become loosened from the paste. “Oh, symbol of thy reversed idea in my soul,” groaned Pierre; “thou shalt not hang thus. Rather cast thee utterly out, than conspicuously insult thee so. I will no more have a father.” He removed the picture wholly from the wall, and the closet ”

“ In the first impulse of the moment, Pierre stepped forward, and would have pursued him; but smiling at his own causeless curiosity and trepidation, paused again; and softly turned over the letter in his hand. What mysterious correspondent is this, thought he, circularly moving his thumb upon the seal; no one writes me but from abroad; and their letters come through the office; and as for Lucy—pooh!—when she herself is within, she would hardly have her notes delivered at her own gate. Strange! ”

“ Pierre, Isabel, and Delly were standing in the room; Isabel's eyes were fixed on the cot.
'I think it will be pretty cosy now,' said Delly, palely glancing all round, and then adjusting the pillow anew.
'There is no warmth, though,' said Isabel. 'Pierre, there is no stove in the room. She will be very cold. The pipe—can we not send it this way?' And she looked more intently at him, than the question seemed to warrant.
'Let the pipe stay where it is, Isabel,' said Pierre, answering her own pointed gaze. 'The dining-room door can stand open. She never liked sleeping in a heated room. ”

“ I told you so! they are coming for us!' exclaimed my companion the next moment, as the forms of four of the islanders were seen in bold relief against the illuminated back-ground mounting the pi-pi and approaching towards us.
They came on noiselessly, nay stealthily, and glided along through the gloom that surrounded us as if about to spring upon some object they were fearful of disturbing before they should make sure of it.—Gracious heaven! the horrible reflections which crowded upon me that moment.—A cold sweat stood upon my brow, and spell-bound with terror I awaited my fate! ”