two years under Pierre de Marsilliers, a Frenchman whom John Erskine of Dun had persuaded to settle at Montrose; such was Melville's proficiency that on going to the University of St Andrews he astonished the professors by using the Greek text of Aristotle, which no one else there understood. On completing his course, Melville left St Andrews with the reputation of "the best poet, philosopher, and Grecian of any young master in the land." Travels and study in Europe In 1564, at nineteen years of age, he set out for France to complete his education at the University of Paris. Having graduated at St. Andrews, he repaired to France in the autumn of 1564, reaching Paris from Dieppe after a roundabout and stormy voyage. He now attained great fluency in Greek, made acquirements in oriental languages, studied mathematics and law, and came under the direct influence of Peter Ramus, whose new methods of teaching he subsequently transplanted to Scotland. He also attended the last course of lectures delivered by Adrianus Turnebus, professor of Greek, as well as those of Petrus Ramus, whose philosophical method and plan of teaching Melville later introduced into the universities of Scotland. It was also in Paris where Melville studied Hebrew under Jean Mercier, one of the leading hebraists of that time. From Paris he went to Poitiers (1566) to study civil law, and though only twenty-one was apparently at once made a regent in the college of St Marceon. After three years, however, political troubles compelled him to leave France, and he went to Geneva, where he was welcomed by Theodore Beza, at whose instigation he was appointed to the chair of humanity in the academy of Geneva. Scottish academic In addition to teaching, Melville continued to study Oriental literature, and in particular acquired from Cornelius Bertram, one of his brother professors, a knowledge of Syriac. At Geneva as early as 1572 he met Joseph Scaliger and Francis Hottoman, who in 1572, after the massacre on St. Bartholomew's day, took up their abode in that city. While he lived at Geneva the massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572 drove immense numbers of Protestant refugees to that city, including several of the most distinguished French men of letters of the time. Among these were several men learned in civil law, and political science, and associating with them increased Melville's knowledge and enlarged his ideas of civil