The third member of this Scottish pléiade was Gawin or Gavin Douglas, born at Tantallon Castle about 1474, third son of Archibald, Earl of Angus, who figures so prominently in Marmion as Bell-the-Cat. After education at St. Andrews and Paris he rose into high office, on the strength of his family interest; was nominated to the See of Dunkeld, and promised the Archbishopric of St. Andrews; but when the Douglas party was overthrown in 1520, Gavin fled to England, and died in exile at the court of Henry VIII. in September, 1522. Douglas's chief work was his translation of the Eneid of Virgil, completed on July 22nd, 1513. The obvious faults of his version are many. He frequently expands one line into six or more, and is almost always very diffuse. He deliberately paraphrases and transforms the text-as, for instance, where he makes the sibyl in the sixth book a nun. His diction, moreover, is much more archaic even than that of Dunbar, and he (1899). Eight of Dunbar's poems were printed by Chepman & Myllar at Edinburgh in 1508. A mutilated copy of this unique book is in the Advocates' Library. The Poems were printed by Pinkerton in his Ancient Scottish Poems (vol. i., 1786), and were collected, with a brief memoir, by J. Paterson (Edinburgh, 1860). They were first adequately edited, with a memoir and notes, by David Laing * (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1834-5), with supplement, 1866. The best edition now, however, is that of the Scottish Text Society (in 2 vols.), edited by J. Small, to which an excellent study by Sheriff Æneas Mackay is prefixed in a separate volume (1889). There are selections of Dunbar, with modernised spelling, by G. Eyre Todd, in Mediæval Scottish Poetry (vol. ii., 1892), and by Hugh Haliburton (adapted to present-day Lowland Scots), 1895. Some of the best poems are well modernised in H. M. Fitzgibbon's Early English Poetry (1887). There is a first-rate article on Dunbar in Blackwood (February, 1835), and a slighter one by F. R. Oliphant in the same magazine (September, 1893). makes up a number of new words from the Latin. With all its faults, however, it was largely imitated by Surrey and other translators. The best poetry is in the independent prologues. These are free creations, descriptions of Scots landscape, not wholly unconventional or free from the missal-picture style of ornamentation, yet frequently rising above this to a sincerely felt interpretation of the moods and harmonies of Nature. His Winter Peece, his May Day, his Welcum to the Lamp of Day are still good to gladden the heart.1 The fourth poet in this remarkable group is Sir David Lyndsay. Born about 1490 at Monimail, Fifeshire, he was educated at St. Andrews, and became the companion, playfellow, and whipping-boy of the brilliant James V. In 1529 he was knighted and made Lyon King of Arms, or chief of the Scots heralds. He went on several embassies, sat in the Scots Parliament for Cupar, and died at Monimail early in 1555. A satirist keen and racy-rude in every sense of the word Lyndsay was highly popular with his fellowcountrymen. Repeated editions came out between 1558 and 1776; and of anything not worth saying, "Ye'll no find that in Davie Lyndsay " became proverbial. Still is thy name in high account 1 The XIII Bukes of Eneados, translated into Scotch Metir was printed in 1553 (4to), and carefully reprinted by the Bannatyne Club in 1839. Select works of Douglas were printed by Pinkerton in Ancient Scottish Poems (1786), and separately at Perth in the following year; again together with Dunbar by J. Sibbald in his Chronicle of Scottish Poetry (1802). The best edition of to-day, with memoir, notes, and glossary, is that by J. Small (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1874); but a full critical edition of Douglas is still a desideratum. His Nor His caustic censure lashed the monks and friars as freely as Butler scorched the pseudo-saints in Hudibras or Burns the Ower Gude in Holy Willie. He lays his grasp upon the bridle-rein of the sleek prelate and upbraids him with his secret sins in words ill-fitted for modern ears. Nor does he spare the King and his advisers, or the meanness of the merchant class, or the extravagance of court ladies, whose long skirts he devotes a lay to ridiculing. breadth and licence are those of a chartered libertine. can he have failed to smooth the way for the reformers, though he avoided a direct breach with the Roman Church. Ecclesiastical corruption was rife, and he probed it shrewdly. Many a man has been burnt for less; for though he did not attack theological mysteries and said. nothing of the Mass, his demands squared well with those of the early Protestant martyrs. He insisted on the use of the vulgar tongue in the Liturgy, protested against the mumbling of prayers in half-understood Latin,1 and jeered in the freest manner at pilgrimages, processions, relics, and pardons; yet he managed to avoid the semblance of cutting deeply by an affectation of grotesque clownage which disarmed a serious resentment. The very indecencies of his humour would have made a solemn prosecution for heresy seem ludicrous; and there is little doubt that, as with 1 In Kittie's Confession a demure-looking curate confesses (and would have kissed) a personable wench: "Said he, have ye na wrongous gear? Said she, I stole a peck of beir. Said he, that should restored be, Therefore, deliver it to me! And mekil Latyne did he mummill I heard nothing but hummil bummill." Such dramatic scenes as this, and several in The Satire of the Three Estates, serve to justify the description of Lyndsay as a rude Scots Aristophanes. Rabelais, the expedient of indecorum was deliberately adopted to embarrass clerical interference.1 1 A full bibliography of Lyndsay's works, with facsimiles of the title-pages of the chief editions, is given in David Laing's Complete Edition (Edinburgh, 1871). For the four Scots poets dealt with in this chapter, see T. F. Henderson's studious monograph on Scottish Vernacular Literature (1898). CHAPTER V EARLY TUDOR POETRY "In Henry VIII.'s reign sprang up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat the elder, and Henry, Earle of Surrey, were the two chieftains."—PUTTENHAM, Arte of English Poesie. "That Time's best makers and the authors were Of songs and sonnets."-Drayton. Stephen Hawes-Alexander Barclay-John Skelton-His pictures of low life-Skeltonic verse-Sir Thomas Wyatt-His metrical innovations-Earl of Surrey-His use of decasyllabic blank verse. THE early Tudor kings, Henry VII. and Henry VIII., imported their court painters, Mabuse and Holbein, from abroad. It seems a pity that they could not have imported, say from Scotland, their court poets; for of the tribe of courtly makers Stephen Hawes and John Skelton can scarcely be described as brilliant representatives. An Oxford man of reputed Suffolk origin, Hawes was commended to Henry VII. as a scholar formed by travel, a complete gentleman, and a master of languages. His chief poem, The Passetyme of Pleasure, was written about 1505-6, and printed by Wynkyn de Worde about 1512. In form it is one of the old-fashioned allegories; through Hawes, in fact, mediæval allegory sang its last courtly note. A swan-song of which one note at any rate still vibrates in the couplet: For though the day be never so long, |