WILLIAM DUNBAR. HE most interesting period in Scottish literary history coincides with the most splendid in the history of Scottish court life. When Henry VII. was King of England, we shall find, if we look abroad over Europe, a more remarkable cluster of sovereigns than have ever ruled simultaneously since; and one of the most conspicuous of these was James IV. of Scotland, who began his reign in 1488, married the eldest daughter of Henry VII. in 1503, and was slain at Flodden in 1513. In this king, highly accomplished, handsome, courageous, and impulsive, with not a little of the traditional genius of the Stuart race, and of their power of personal fascination, we recognise precisely the kind of ruler, and in his court the kind of society, in whose presence may be expected an unusually rich outburst of poetry. Accordingly, this period in Scottish literary history corresponds in interest and importance with that of the middle of the reign of Edward III. in England, when Chaucer was the honoured friend of princes. The literatures of England and of Scotland are so closely connected in every passage of their history that it is difficult to consider them as two. The nations were, indeed, from the earliest period politically distinct,-parted, irremediably it seemed, by perpetual antagonisms. But, in the least friendly times, there was no such boundary line discernible in their literatures. What we call Scottish poetry was, in its first stage, but the perpetuation beyond the Tweed of that literature of the Anglian race, inhabiting the north country from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, of which we have a series of specimens from the seventh century onwards. Nor did the northern writers of English verse escape the influence imparted by the Norman Conquest to the literature of the south. In the universities of France and Italy, and in intercourse abroad and at home with foreigners and foreign books, Scottish students were brought into direct contact with the literature and culture of the continental cities. But it was chiefly from England that this wave of foreign literary influence reached the Scottish interior. The writings of Chaucer had an extraordinary effect upon Scottish genius in the fifteenth century. Indeed, it may be said that, from his death until the time of Spenser, the English poet met nowhere with such an enthusiastic following as among his Scottish readers and disciples north of the Tweed. The fifteenth century is cited as the period of greatest poverty in the annals of English poetry. No poet of eminence, with the exception of Lydgate, succeeded Chaucer in his own country during the first half of the century, and Skelton's is the most notable name on the English list until the middle of Henry VIII.'s reign. This poverty in England is, however, compensated by the unprecedented abundance of poetry in Scotland during the same period. James I. was born in 1394, six years before Chaucer's death. Henryson commenced his life about the time that King James returned to Scotland from his captivity in 1524, and lived on into the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the meantime, Blind Henry produced his Wallace, Dunbar was born, and with him grew up a cluster of Scottish poets whose names are recorded in Dunbar's Lament for the Makars, written in 1506. The works of these Makars, or poets, have been in many cases entirely, or almost entirely, lost; and the fragments of them that remain seem to prove that, of all the Scottish poets of that period, the most worthy are precisely those whose works have been preserved. This impression may, however, be an incorrect one; and we have the evidence of contemporary writers that some at least of Dunbar's Makars were as highly esteemed in their own age as himself. William Dunbar was born in East Lothian,1 of the family of the Earls of March. He graduated at St. Andrews in 1479; joined the mendicant order of St. Francis; travelled in England and abroad in the service of that order; and appears likewise to have performed on many occasions the office of clerk or notary in King James's foreign missions. He was pensioned by the King in 1500, and during James's life his home was almost entirely in Edinburgh, and near to the King's person. Here we may picture him in his friar's habit, living on his pension, which is augmented from time to time, and writing to the delight of the King and his courtiers no end of verses on all kinds of topics, humorous, satirical, and imaginative. Dunbar was remarkable for his habit of taking note of all that was passing in the courtly life around him. Almost everything he wrote appears to have been suggested by some incident of court or of city life. And no matter what is the incident, whether a royal marriage, a dance in the Queen's chamber, his own dangerous illness, or the gossip of old wives over their wine, his verse is always vivacious, his animal spirits prodigious. The boisterous levity of his less dignified compositions contrasts curiously at times with his sound but somewhat worldly wisdom; and, in spite of his unequivocal begging for a benefice from the King, which forms the subject of a number of his poems, there are not wanting in others of them strains of a higher and more reflective mood, with here and there luscious Chaucerian scene-painting, or an overflow of fun that is thoroughly human and pleasant. Dunbar's chief poems are The Thrissel and the Rose, and The Golden Targe. These are his works of greatest effort, and represent him very dis 1 He was probably a grandson of Sir Patrick Dunbar of Beill, in East Lothian, younger son of George, 10th Earl of March, and one of the hostages for James I., in 1426. tinctly as a student of Chaucer and of medieval literature. In his minor pieces, we come upon a great variety of metres, and some of Dunbar's lyric cadences are almost perfectly musical. With the disaster of Flodden and the death of James IV. in 1513, the records of Dunbar's life come to an abrupt end. We know nothing of him in the troubled years which followed. The date and place of his death are forgotten; and it is only from references to his memory in the writings of his contemporaries that we infer his death to have taken place about 1520. FROM THE THRISSEL AND THE ROSE.1 DAME NATURE CROWNS THE SCOTTISH LION KING OF BEASTS.' All present were in twinkling of an ee, Baith beast and bird and flower, before the Queen: And first the Lion, greatest of degree, Was callit there; and he, most fair to seen, This awful beast full terrible was of cheer,2 Red of his colour as is the ruby glance; This Lady liftit up his cluvis clear, And let him listly lean upon her knee; Of radious stones, most royal for to see; 1 This poem was written in honour of the marriage of James IV. of Scotland to Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. of England, 1503. 3 Without. 4 Encircled. 5 Hoofs. 6 Radiant. 2 Face. "Exerce1 justice with mercy and conscience; THE KING AND QUEEN OF FLowers. Then callit she all flowers that grew on field, A radious crown of rubies she him gave, "Nor hold none other flower in sic dainty 12 Then to the ROSE she turnit her visage, From the stalk royal rising fresh and ying,14 This comely Queen did on her head inclois, Wherefore, methocht, the Flowers did rejoice, 4 Plough-ox. 8 Wars. 12 Benign. 13 The English rose was of more illustrious growth than the French lily. This was in allusion to a former treaty of marriage between James IV. and a French princess. 14 Young. 17 In the act of springing. 15 Without. 16 Blemish (Latin, macula). |