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

  [p122]

An epitaph for James Lindsay, who died at Geneva on 15 June 1580

As a great love of virtue, and a burning passion for high heaven leads you on, so you take your leave of your fatherland, your brothers, sisters, and mother who is struggling on the threshold of approaching death. Eventually you safely navigate the billows of the Ocean, vicious storms, and all the misfortunes suffered by land, and the downpours of heaven, although three times you ventured forth, and were, o fates, three times repelled. And you leave behind too the blessed, though still not entirely welcoming fields of Anglo-Britannia, and the not uncruel kingdom of the Celts,   [p123] and at last the kingdom wicked with the dark deceits of the Italians. And during the recent slaughter, the shame of the dreadful butchers (where the Seine turns in winding bends, where the Marne brings its water to the Belgians: and the Loire alters the savage people, and the Garonne the gloomy: and where the Saone joins itself to the Rhone, mixing in its bloody stream, turning its waters blood-red: and flowing with dead bodies, and the mangled limbs of both mothers and babies, with no distinction of age or sex, it flushes out into the vast ocean, becoming food for the hungry fish and monsters of the sea), undaunted in your course you prevail, certain of salvation. Victoriously exulting in a great omen you now proceed to Geneva, Geneva the daughter of true piety, flourishing in heavenly studies. And now you have received a portion of your desires: the sweet conversation of Beza, a the very essence of Persuasion, both ambrosia's heavenly juice, and a stream of nectar; and then you were fully instructed in the immortal words of Daneau, and Corneille's Hebrew Muses, and Porteau's Greek ones: then de la Faye's twin Apollonian disciplines with their Serranian torch, and the bright star of Perrot, and the brilliance of Goulart, and the light of Pinault, and the numerous talents and works of Estienne, and not forgetting the remarkable utterances of the remarkable Calvin, and also the great, mindful longing for Keith and the wise Gillespie, and holy Collace. b Not now do you hope to see Scottish cities and men anymore, nor to visit your fatherland again or your dear parents, nor your brothers nor sweet sisters: but your soul burns with love to behold heaven, and heaven's inhabitants, and the parent of heaven face to face (both boundless god and true man). For him the high threshold of the gods opens up; and he passionately hastens to embrace the one whom every army of the hellish underworld trembles before, the spring of life, and sea of salvation, and the sun of everlasting light: and he hastens to give kisses to the stainless soles of His feet.

45Without delay, with all the grime of this dark prison washed away, both the filth and dirt, he hastens   [p124] to strip off his clothes covered in brittle clay and ruddy earth, and now on swift wings he passes through the heights: and in rapid flight above the regions of heaven he flies, blessed by his prayed-for final end. But with us hoping for your happy return, and you rather, my dear James, seeking out heaven and the everlasting fatherland, you leave behind, alas, tears and sadness in the disagreeable dirt of bitter death and oppressive decay and filth. The white-topped Alps wept for you, and they seemed to weep by pale Lake Geneva. Father Geneva himself and the Rhone seemed to join the lament under their flowing waves.