of St. Serf's island, in Loch-Levin, one of the most ancient religious establishments in Scotland. As he was not likely to be chosen for such an office in very early youth, and as he complains much of the infirmities of age, while occupied in his Chronicle, which appears, from internal evidence, to have been finished between the years 1420 and 1424, he was probably born, not long after the middle of the fourteenth century.

With respect to his poetical talents, the opinion of his editor is, that" his work in general partakes little

66

or nothing of the nature of poetry, unless rhyme 66 can be said to constitute poetry; yet, he now "and then throws in some touches of true poetic "description." This, indeed, seems to be as much as can be fairly expected from a metrical annalist; for dates and numerals are, of necessity, unpoetical; and, perhaps, the ablest modern versifier who should undertake to enumerate, in metre, the years of our Lord in only one century, would feel some respect for the ingenuity, with which Wyntown has contrived to vary his rhymes, thoughout such a formidable chronological series, as he has ventured to encounter. His genius is certainly inferior to that of his predecessor, Barber; but at least his versification is easy, his language pure, and his style often animated. As an historian, he is

highly valuable; but perhaps it may be more amusing to the reader, to examine him both as a narrator and as a poet, in the early and nearly fabulous part of his work, for which purpose some extracts are here selected from his history of Macbeth.

It is well known that Shakspeare's immediate model was Hollinshed, who abridged the work of Bellenden, translated from the Latin of Boyce. Wyntown's narrative is, in some respects, very different, and, in one instance at least, is much more dramatic.

This author gives the following as the popular and fabulous account of Macbeth's parentage:

But, as we find by sqme stories
Gotten he was on ferly wise,

His mother to woods made oft repair

For the delight of wholesome air.

So she past upon a day

Till a wood, her for to play;

She met of case 3 with a fair man,

(Ne'er none so fair as she thought than
Before then had she seen with sight.)

Of beauty pleasant, and of height

1 In.

3 By chance; per cas. Fr.

• Wonderful.

Proportion'd well, in all measure,
Of limb and lyth' a fair figure.
In swilk acquaintance so they fell,
That, thereof shortly for to tell.

The reader certainly has foreseen that this very beautiful man was no other than the devil, who became the father of Macbeth, as he had, some centuries before, become the father of Merlin; and who presented to his paramour a ring, in token that their future son should be a great man, and that

"No man should be born of wife

"Of power to 'reave him his life.”

Macbeth's ambition is excited, not by actually meeting the weird sisters, but by a dream.

A night he thought in his dreaming,
That sittand3 he was beside the king
At a seat in hunting: so

Intil his leash had grey-hounds two,
He thought, while he was so sittand,
He saw three women by gangand;

3 Sitting. And is the old Saxon as well as French ter

mination of the participle.

I

And they women then thought he

Three weird sisters most like to be.
The first he heard say, gangand by,
"Lo! yonder the thane of Crumbauchty!"
The 'tother woman said again,

"Of Murray yonder I see the thane."
The third then said "I see the king."
All this he heard in his dreaming.
Soon after that, in his youth-head,
Of thirthanedoms he thane was made;
Syn next he thought to be king,
Fra 3 Duncan's days had ta'en ending,
The fantasy thus of his dream
Moved him most to slay his eme
And dame Ganok his eme's wife
Took, and led with her his life,
And held her both his wife and

4

queen

The story of lady Macbeth, therefore, seems to have been afterwards added. Duncan's two legitimate sons, and Malcolm (who it seems was illegitimate) fly to England; but the enmity between the usurper and Macduff has a separate origin.

1 These, or those: in the original thai.

2 These.

8 From; from the time when; as soon as:

• Uncle. Anglo-Sax,

Macbeth, according to Wyntown, meaning to fortify the hill at Dunsinnane, pressed all the teams in the neighbourhood, and having observed some oxen, the property of Macduff, to fail in their work, he threatened, " despiteously," to put Macduff's own neck into the yoke. The subsequent conduct of the thane of Fife, is thus minutely and curiously related:

Fra the thane Macbeth heard speak,
That he would put in yoke his neck,
Of all his thought he made no song;
But, privily, out of the throng
With slight he got; and the spencer ▾
A loaf him gave till his suppér,
And as soon as he might see
His time and opportunity,

Out of the court he past, and ran,
And that loaf bare with him than
To the water of Erin. That bread
He gave the boat-wards, him to lead,
And on the south half him to set,

2

But delay, or any let.

That passage call'd was after than

Long time Port NEBARIAN;

Le dispensier; the dispenser of provisions,
Without; be-out. Sax.