This poem may have been appended to one of the many editions of Buchanan's collection of Psalm paraphrases which appeared in the course of the sixteenth century, but a dedicatory poem by Maitland is not specifically noted in any of the editions recorded by John Durkan in his Bibliography of George Buchanan (Glasgow, 1994), pp. 71-157. Like Maitland's other hendecasyllabic poems (d2_MaiT_018 and d2_MaiT_019), the vocabulary and style is noticeably Catullan. Metre: phalaecian.
In Paraphrasin Psalmorum G. Buchanani (n.d.)
[p178]
In Paraphrasin Psalmorum G. Buchanani
1En lector lepido tibi libello, 1
docto Iupiter et brevi libello,
donatos Latio nitore cantus
vatis fatidici lyrae suaves:
5tanto floridius venustiusque, 2
quanto cultior elegantiorque
Hebraeis Latia est Camœnae Musis.
Dat vates Buchananus ille princeps,
et flos Aoniae cohortis unus,
10tanto suavior omnibus Poetis,
tanto clarior omnibus Poetis:
quanto Psalmographus potentior rex
13est, et sanctior omnibus Poetis.
[p178]
On George Buchanan's Psalm Paraphrases
Look reader, Jupiter has given you a fine book, a learned and elegant book, songs given in Latin splendour, sweet lyres to the fore-knowing prophets: as much as Hebrew verse is very charming and lively, so Latin poetry is even more refined and elegant. That prince and greatest flower of the Aonian band Buchanan gives us the prophets: as much as the psalm-writing king a is more powerful and more holy than all other poets, so too is Buchanan sweeter than all other poets, and more famous than all other poets.
