would have been proud. Although driven at Like many of the young Scottish nobles of the first by poverty, and afterwards by the perse-period, he studied at the university of Paris, and cutions of the Romish clergy, into an unsettled finished his education by tour on the Continent. life, his diligence in literature was such as few His works were a translation of Ovid's "Remedy scholars could have equalled; and of this, his of Love," finished about the close of the fifteenth miscellaneous poems, his Latin paraphrase of the century; and the "Palace of Honour," an instrucPsalms of David, his tragedy of "Jephthes," his tive and admonitory poem, addressed to his youthphilosophical poem "De Sphera,” and his transla- ful sovereign James IV. But his best known work tion of the "Alcestes" of Euripides, are full evi- was a poetical version of Virgil's Eneid, the first dence. When he returned home, he became translation of a Roman classic into the English preceptor and poet of Queen Mary: afterwards, tongue. His version, while executed with reunder the regency of Moray, he was appointed markable spirit and fidelity, is something more principal of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews, than a mere translation, for to each book he has and, subsequently, tutor to the boy-king, James attached a prologue of his own, full of striking VI. His last, as well as most distinguished work, sentiments and rich poetical description. Auwas the History of Scotland, that was passing other poem of Gawin Douglas, entitled "King through the press at the period of his death, which Hart" (or Heart), is characterized by an eminent occurred in 1582, when he was now in his seventy-modern Scottish critic, as "a most ingenious adseventh year. While Buchanan has been wholly unrivalled in his wondrous mastery of Latin, vhich he used as if he had been born in it, the richness and variety of his mind as philosopher, political writer, poet, and historian, was such, as in each department to distance every competitor. No other fitting place could be found for him, than that which contains the honoured names of Cicero, Horace, and Livy. But it was in poetry that the revival of learning was distinguished in Scotland, as well as England; and while in the latter country there had been a long gap from Chaucer till near the close of the reign of Henry VIII., that interval had been nobly filled by the Scottish poets, James I., Barbour, Henry the Minstrel, and Henryson. Other poets succeeded; and of these northern bards who graced the present period of our history, the first in order of time was William Dunbar. He was born at Salton, in East Lothian, about the year 1465. Little is known of him, except that in his youth he was a travelling noviciate of the Franciscan order, in which capacity he travelled through England and France. His chief productions were the "Thistle and the Rose," an allegorical epithalamium on the marriage of James IV. with Margaret of England; the "Golden Targe," a moral allegory, illustrating the predominance of love over reason; and the "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins." The music of his language and versification, and the vivid colouring of his pictures, which in many cases fall little short of Spenser himself, have procured for him from Ellis the character of the "greatest poet that Scotland has produced." The next poet was one of a race that had furnished as yet none else than matchless men-atarms and formidable conspirators. This was Gawin or Gavin Douglas, third son of the formidable Earl of Angus, usually known by the name of Bell-the-cat. He was born in 1474. umbration of the progress of human life." It is unfortunate for the works of this distinguished Scottish poet, as well as those of his contemporaries, that their antiquated style makes them almost wholly unintelligible to ordinary readers of the present day. Another poet more widely known, was Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. He was born in Fife in 1490; and after having finished his education at St. Andrews, he became an attendant of James IV., and a sort of governor, or rather dry. nurse of the young prince, afterwards James V. More honourable and important offices, however, awaited him, and in 1530 he was knighted, and appointed Lyon King-at-Arms. His sagacious spirit, stirred up by the Reformation, and his satirical powers that found ample scope in the vices of the clergy, made him so formidable, that he probably would have shared the fate of Patrick Hamilton and Wishart, but for causes still unexplained; it is possible, indeed, that James V., who could keenly relish the jokes of his early companion, especially when levelled against the church dignitaries, may have interposed between the poet and his relentless enemies. They burned his works, however, during the regency of Mary of Guise, thus showing what they would have done to the author himself, who probably had retired to the quiet seclusion of the Mount, while John Knox and the Lords of the Congregation were preparing to avail themselves of the effects of his writings. These effects, indeed, by which the people were prepared for the preaching of the Reformation, it would be difficult to estimate: it is enough to state, that his poems were everywhere welcomed, and that in every dwelling the name of "Davie Lindsay" was an endeared household word. The principal works of Sir David are "The Dreme," the "Complaynt," the "Complaynt of the King's Papingo," the "Satyre on the Thrie Estaitis," the "Historie of Squire Meldrum," and the "Monarchie." While his poetry was neither elevated nor refined, and often of startling coarseness, the universal interest of his subjects, the keenness of his satire, and the vigorous though homely language in which his sentiments were expressed, sufficiently explain the preference that selected him as the favourite national poet, when those of equal, or even higher poetical merit, were overlooked and neglected. which they came to colonize. A wholesale and simultaneous conquest of the island would have materially abated these evils; but England, occupied as she was with the wars of Scotland and France, was inadequate to such an effort; and, therefore, the scanty successive supplies of her population which she could afford for Ireland, were rather reinforcements to a chain of garrisons, than masters of the country, and cultivators of the soil. In this case the likelihood was, that instead of absorbing, they would be absorbed by the native population, and thus lose their national individuality in the mass into which they were melted. Such was the case; and not only English civilization and its improve Hitherto, we have not spoken of the manners, customs, and modes of living that obtained among the Irish people, although their country had formed part of the English monarchy since the reign of Henry 11. This, however, was the less necessary, as their Celtic origin and enslaved condition had tended to stereotype the form of Irishments were thus successively swallowed up, as life from the period of their conquest downwards, so that the natives, at the close of this period, were nearly in the same state as Strongbow and his Normans had originally found hem, with the miseries of bondage superadded. This we can easily perceive by a comparison of the statements of Giraldus Cainbrensis about Ireland, written in the reign of Henry II., and those of the author of the "Faerie Queene," and of Sir John Davies, the poet and statesman, written during that of Elizabeth. The same accounts, indeed, hold good of the Irish during the whole period of the Stuarts, and in too many cases are still applicable to those of the present day. if they had disappeared in the native bogs, but a race grew and multiplied, Anglo-Irish in blood, but wholly Irish in character. This necessity, also, was further increased by the policy of the victors. Perceiving the smallness of their numbers, and conscious of their weakness, they adopted the expedient of the Tartars towards the Chinese in similar circumstances, by assuming the speech, manners, and dress of the Irish, in the hope that not only their feebleness might be concealed, but their conquered subjects conciliated. Hence it was, that during this period, so many of the new English comers into Ireland were scandalized to find men wearing the names of an honoured Saxon and Norman lineage, converted in In reading the history of Ireland, we can per- every respect into a wild Irish chieftainry. The ceive at once how its conquest was unfitted to difficulty of governing such a country was well civilize it. When England was conquered by set forth by the Earl of Kildare, viceroy or dethe Normans, the victors were not only in great puty under Henry VIII., when he was taunted numbers, but were of the same race with the van- by Cardinal Wolsey at the council board, with quished, and the effect in the first instance was the nickname of King of Ireland. "As for my mutual improvement, and afterwards complete kingdom, my lord," replied the stout old earl, incorporation. But in the case of Ireland, the "I would you and I had exchanged kingdoms conquerors were but a handful; while the dis-one month; I would trust to gather up more parity between them and the vanquished in the crumbs in that space, than twice the revenues of rts of life was so great, that no kindly ap my poor earldom. But you are well and warm; proximation could be expected. This was differ-so hold you, and upbraid me not after so odious ent from the almost entire equality that originally i form. I sleep in a cabin, when you lie soft in existed between the Saxon and the Norman. vour bed of down; and serve under the cope of Then, again, there was not only the difference of heaven, when you are served under a canopy. civilization and language between the invaders I drink water out of my steel cap, when ye and the invaded, but also of lineage, habits, and drink wine out of golden cups. My courser is feelings, which tended to keep them for ever trained to the field, when your jennet is taught apart, and the man of Milesian or Celtic origin to amble. When you are be-graced and becontinued to hate the descendant of the Norman lorded, and crouched and kneeled unto, then find or Saxon with a hatred which time has failed to I small grace from our Irish borderers unless I extinguish. The barbarism of the Irish was cut them short by the knees." further deepened and confirmed by the very necessity which their own position entailed upon the conquerors. They were but a small community, obliged to maintain by the sword what they had won with the sword, and thus they remained a besieged encampment in the country In this way, the superiority of the English over Ireland was little more than nominal, while the subjection of the natives was a constant rebellion. The former, who occupied but a portion of the country, commonly called the English Pale, built towns more for the purposes of safety quited these annoyances with formal battles and than civilization; while the latter, who regarded | with ambuscades and surprises, the latter reevery Englishman as an oppressor, and every town as a prison, fled to their woods and morasses, where the blessings of freedom only the more endeared to them that barbarism which such a life naturally cherished. In this way, also, the bulk of the native population consisted of hordes called Boolies, who subsisted upon their cattle; wandered from place to place in quest of pasturage; and were ready to receive with welcome and protection, not only every malefactor pursued by English law, but every political intriguer, whether native or foreigner, who sought to stir them up against their rulers. In this state, the character attributed to these Celts was the same as that which the Roman writers attributed to the Gauls under the dominion of Rome. Alive to every rumour (and with too much cause), their continual inquiry was "What is the news?" for which they were laughed at by the English. They were also addicted so keenly to gambling, that even modern fashionable life could not equal them in the desperation of their throws. Thus Spenser, in describing a class of Irishmen called Carrows, whose sole occupation was gambling, tells us, "They wander up and down living upon cards and dice; the which, though they have little or nothing of their own, yet they will play for much money, which if they win, they waste most lightly; and if they lose, they pay as slenderly." Campion is more particular, when he informs us of these Carrows-"They play away mantle and all, to the bare skin, and then truss themselves in straw or in leaves-they wait for passengers in the highway, invite them to a game upon the green, and ask no more but companions to hold them sport." Were we not aware of the enthusiastic intrepidity of gamesters in general, we could scarcely believe what follows. Campion adds, "For default of other stuff they pawn portions of their glib, the nails of their fingers and toes, and their privy members, which they lose or redeem at the courtesy of the winner." All this love of news-hearing and gambling, as well as buoyancy of spirit, and excitability of temper, that hurried the Irish from one extreme to another-their superstitious credulity, that made them put faith in spells and omens— and their impatience of restraint, combined with their continual blunders in attempting to be free-most populous and plentiful country suddenly only complete their resemblance to the Gauls, as delineated by Cæsar and other Roman historians. Not only was war inevitable between a people so dissimilar, who stood in the relationship of rulers and ruled, but it was conducted with a rancour which nothing short of extermination could satisfy. It was also carried on upon either side with a reference to their condition, so that, while the Irish harassed their English enemies left void of man and beast; yet sure, in all that war, there perished not many by the sword, but all by the extremity of famine, which they themselves had wrought." In passing from this account of the general condition of Ireland, to the several classes of which its population was composed, and the characteristics by which they were distinguished, we begin with the Irish chieftainry. And here we find the law of Tanist succession prevailing among | barisin had only been indurated and confirmed them, as among the Highlanders of Scotland, by by conquest. Even the mightiest of them all, which, on the death of a chief, his son, if a minor, called the "Great O'Neil,” Earl of Tyrone, who was set aside for the present, and a brother, or for years held Elizabeth and the whole English near relative of the deceased, of mature age, called power at defiance, on being visited by Sir John to the captainship of the clan. By this simple Harrington, the translator of Ariosto, during expedient, which seems to have been peculiar to a time of truce, was found dining in the open air the Celtic race, a tribe exposed to frequent war- off tables of fern, while his attendants, "for the fare was able to avoid the hazards of a minority, most part, were beardless boys without shirts, and secure a competent leader. The ceremonies who, in the frost, wade as familiarly through used in the election of this deputy-chieftain are rivers as water spaniels." But the same O'Neil thus described by Campion:-"They use to place knew what was due to his rank and office, and him that shall be their captain upon a stone al- could magnify them sufficiently on great state ways reserved to that purpose, and placed com- occasions, as was the case on his visit to London, monly upon a hill. In some of which I have when he repaired to the court of Elizabeth in the seen formed and engraven a foot, which, they say, style of a great feudal sovereign. On his arrival was the measure of their first captain's foot; he marched in stately procession through the whereon he, standing, receives an oath to preserve streets, attended by a throng of gallowglasses, all their ancient former customs inviolate, and to arrayed in the long flowing saffron and partideliver up the succession peaceably to his Tanist; coloured costume of their country, with heads and then hath a wand delivered to him by some uncovered and their long hair streaming in the whose proper office that is; after which, descend- wind, having chain armour on their breasts and ing from the stone, he turneth himself round battle-axes on their shoulders. As a match to thrice forwards and thrice backwards." When the home life of O'Neil was that of O'Kane, a the Tanist, or legitimate heir, succeeded to the great chieftain of Ulster, according to the derule, Spenser informs us that, at his installa-scription of a Bohemian nobleman, given by tion, he set only one foot on the stone, and had the same oath of government prescribed to him as the captain. Having thus a ruler chosen after their own fashion, and whom they were ready to obey implicitly, the natives were not likely to trouble the English law courts with cases of litigation. Their own Brehon law, by which their chief administered justice, was fully sufficient to content them. By this simple patriarchal system, the brehon, or judge, held his court in the open air, a green bank was his tribunal, and his decisions, which were prompt, were followed by instant action. It is to be observed, also, that in this system of native jurisprudence, only a step was made in advance of the original lex talionis, | which exacted an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, as in every crime whatever a full expiation was supposed to be made by a fine called the eric; and as each offence had its prescribed price, every offender knew how far he might go, and every judge what penalty to impose. Even a murderer, on paying the eric, was dismissed from the court without further punishment, being completely absolved according to Brehon law. How he was to escape the consequences of his feud from the relatives of the victim, was a question for his own adjustment, as the law made no provision on that head, so that he might be murdered in requital as soon as he left the court, by any avenger who was rich enough to pay his eric. The style of living among these native Irish chiefs, was characteristic of a people whose bar Fynes Moryson, who, on visiting him, tells us "he was met at the door with sixteen women, all naked, except their loose mantles, whereof eight or ten were very fair, and two seemed very nymphs; with which strange sight his (the nobleman's) eyes being dazzled, they led him into the house, and there sitting down by the fire, with crossed legs like tailors, and so low as could not but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. Soon after, O'Kane, the lord of the country, came in, all naked, excepting a loose mantle and shoes, which he put off as soon as he came in, and entertaining the baron after his best manner in the Latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burden to him, and to sit naked by the fire with this naked company." It is surely unnecessary to add, that the astounded Bohemian excused himself from complying. If power the most unlimited, and a devotedness on the part of his people the most unbounded, could satisfy human ambition for the want of the common comforts of life, an Irish chief had abundant compensation. Speaking of his followers, Sir John Harrington says-"With what a charm such a master makes them love him, I know not; but if he bids them come, they come; if go, they do go; if he say do this, they do it." This clannish devotedness to their chief, so natural to the whole Celtic race, was troublesome to the conquerors, who found it all but impossible to apprehend the leader of a conspiracy, or convict him when apprehended. Even when a chief condescended to litigate any claim about property or rights in an | therefore, that the same jealousy of the law, Anglo-Irish law court, he entered with great advantage, for he had witnesses in abundance to confirm whatever he alleged. He had but to announce his pleasure to his vassals, and they not only swore accordingly, but made good their testimony by such cunning and fluent speech as sufficed to nonplus both judge and jury. Such is the account of Campion, and other jurisconsults of the day, who had made full proof of the nature of Irish testimony. which attempted to restrain the native rulers, bore with still greater severity against this Norman aristocracy, who were so difficult to be reached; and, accordingly, the laws of the Tudors against the right of coign and livery were both numerous and stringent. But the proud nobility of Ireland refused to submit, alleging that thus only they could avail themselves of the services of their tenantry who had no money, and travel in a country where there were no inns; and having enjoyed the privilege so long, and found it so pleasant, they continued their man's meat and horse-meat journeys as before, although the penalties of high treason were denounced upon the practice. In an Irish clan the early patriarchal system prevailed, and every one was a relative more or less of the chief, though it might be by a hun source, may be traced the devotedness of all the members to their head. From this also arose a great portion of their scorn towards their Saxon and Norman neighbours, who could elect at pleasure a leader for the nonce, and follow him only as long as it suited their own convenience. In this, the Irishman and the Highlander showed their common origin, by a mutual sympathy. Both also being so nobly descended, thought it foul scorn to follow a mechanical profession, and preferred a life of war or robbery, even though it should lead to the gallows. In either country, also, a closer relationship to the chief than that of common consanguinity could be obtained, through the institution of fostership. By this practice, as soon as the son of a chief was born, instead of being reared in the paternal home, he was consigned to the paternal care of a vassal of the clan, by whose wife he was suckled, and with whose sons and daughters he was brought up. On this account, the future chief was more closely connected with his foster relatives, than with the members of his own family, and his adopted father and brothers from this connection became the chief men of the clan. As the office of fosterfather was attended with such distinction, it became the great mark of ambition, so that no price was thought too high to purchase it. As the rental of an Irish chief was little more than nominal, derived, as it was, from an uncultivated territory and proscribed people, it had to be chiefly collected in kind, and then, too, only where it could be found. His principal remedy, therefore, was to quarter himself, with his attendants, upon such of his vassals as possessed a good larder, and take up the value of the land they held in fee, in the shape of eating and drink-dred steps of removal; and to this, as the primary ing. These rounds for the collection of rents were called cosherings; and happy occasions they doubtless were, not only to the chief, who was certain of the best of entertainment, but to the clansman who was honoured by such an august visit. In this way an Irish magnate might cosher over the extent of a whole county, from one's year end to another, both giving and receiving pleasure from the practice. This, however, was an offence in the eyes of the English rulers, who denounced it as unlawful, and endeavoured to suppress it--forgetting, the while, that Elizabeth, in her royal progresses, used the same liberty with the richest of her English nobles, although she had not the same show of right, and thus dried up those resources of her over-great courtiers that might otherwise have been employed in feud and rebellion. The danger, however, of these Irish cosherings, arose from the close personal connection it established between the chieftainry and their vassals, by which the English rule was continually menaced. A similar practice, not, however, by right of possession, but conquest, was used by the Anglo-Irish nobility, under the name of coign and livery, or horse-meat and man's meat. This pretended right of nobility, which had been established in England at the Norman conquest, had also been introduced into Ireland by the successors of Earl' Strongbow; but although, in the former country, it expired with the decay of feudal despotism, in the latter it had continued to flourish in full vigour. By this usage of coign and livery, a rich nobleman might live at free quarters at pleasure over the whole extent of his possessions, exhausting his tenantry, and aggravating the general discontent by his extortions, or strengthening his feudal influence against the government by his popular conciliatory visits. It was no wonder, Next to the chief in influence and importance among the native Irish, was the filea or bard The Celt of all countries, whether French, Irish, Highland, or Welsh, has always been of a poetic temperament; and hence the account in which the poet has been held among them, espe cially in the earlier stages of society. He was their teacher and historian, the chronicler of great deeds and dispenser of fame, upon whose voice it depended whether a man should be elevated into renown, condemned to infamy, or |