Page images
PDF
EPUB

While still a prisoner of Henry in the Round Tower of Windsor, he had converted the castle-yard into a court of martial exercise, and his chamber into a study. Out of doors, he became a horseman and a runner; indoors, a musician, a lawyer, and, studying "his maisters dear," himself a poet.'1 It was during his captivity (1405-24), during which he grew up from a young boy into the prime of manhood, that he wrote The King's Quair, (The King's Book'), a sort of allegorical poem descriptive of his feelings, and mainly inspired by his love for Lady Jane Somerset, first cousin of Henry V., whom he afterwards married. Like many other writers of that age, he has mixed together very incongruously Scripture and mythology-Christian images and pagan ones. quote two stanzas from his poem, not by any means as being the best samples of his style, but as verses which express some of his graver and more devotional thoughts:

Take Him before in all thy governance,

That in His hand holdeth the helm of all ;
And pray unto His ruling Providence

Thy love to guide, and on Him trust and call,
That cornerstone and ground is of the wall,
That faileth not; and trust, withouten dread,
Unto His purpose soon He shall thee lead.
For lo! the work that first is founded sure,
May better bear apace and higher be
Than otherwise, and longer shall endure
By manifold-this may thy reason see—
And stronger to foreward adversity;

Ground therefore all thy work upon the stone,

And thy desire shall forthward with thee go'en.2

I

Robert Henryson was a schoolmaster of Dunfermline, probably in the Benedictine convent there, and lived

1 J. Nichols' Sketch of Scottish Poetry, E.E.T.S. 47, xviii.

2 The Quair, maid be King James of Scotland, in Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, vol. i. :

Tak him before in all thy governance,

That in his hand the stere has of you all,
And pray unto his hye purveyance,

Thy lufe to gye, and on him traist and call.'
Stanzas, cvi. -cvii.

during the latter half of the fifteenth century. The following is from The Abbay Walk:

Alone as I walked up and down
In an abbey was fair to see,
Thinking what consolatioun
Was best in all adversity,
By chance I cast aside mine eye,
And saw this written on a wall,
In what estate man that thou be,
Obey, and thank thy God for all.
Thy kingdom and thy great empire,
Thy royalty and rich array,
Shall not endure at thy desire,

But as the wind shall wend away,
Thy goods and all thy goods so gay,
When fortune list, shall from thee fall;
Since thou such samples seest each day,
Obey, and thank thy God for all.

Blame not thy Lord; so is his will;
Spurn not thy foot against the wall;
But with meek heart and prayer, still
Obey, and thank thy God for all.

This changing, and great variance,
Of earthly states or up or down,

Comes neither through fortúne nor chance,
As some men say without reasoún;
But by the great provisioún

Of God above that rule thee shall:
Therefore, man, ever make thee boun [bound]
To obey, and thank thy God for all.

In wealth be meek, vaunt not thyself;
Be glad in woful poverty;

Thy power and thy wordly pelf

Is naught but very vanity.

Remember Him that died on tree,

For thy sake tasted bitter gall;

What His laws bid and set on hé [high]

Obey, and thank thy God for all.

1 Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, vol. i. p. 183; Henryson's

Abbay Walk:

Allone as I went up and doun,

In ane abbay was fair to sé,
Thinkand quhat consolatioun
Was best in all adversitie.

Some time in the fifteenth century an unknown writer, who says he was neither monk nor friar, wrote a poem in Lowland Scotch of over 2000 lines under the outlandish title of Ratis Raving, i.e. Raving or Mad Counsels.' He explains why he gave it this name.

[ocr errors]

For now is endyt this matere
The quhilk is ratis raving call'd
But for no raving I it hald,

But for richt wis and gud teching.

It is an elaborate religious and moral essay in verse. First, of the temptations through the five senses. Then of fortitude, honesty, prudence, and temperance. Then of faith, hope, and charity. Then of the seven deadly sins. Then precepts in morals and manner. Then of

the seven ages. Then of the virtues of good women, and so forth. I quote a few lines :

:

The seven gifts of the Holy Ghost

Are things which God hath blessed most,

For they reach up right to the heaven;

And all that cometh of the seven

Love, loyalty, and chastity,

And all goodness, and all bounty,

Spring up from them and from their place,

As the divisions are of grace:

That place stands true in all blitheness,

And full of grace and all goodness.1

He had a very ill opinion of the moral state of his country at that time:—

For wit is turned to ill ingene [disposition],

And falsehood comes in floods, I ween,
And godliness is all foryet [forgotten],
And malice porter at the gate;

And great lordship and seigniory
Is all o'erta'en with tyranny,

That aye with justice is a fed [at feud],
And fosters felony in its stead.

And kingship, that should have no peer,

And kings of lands right broad and fair,

1 Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, 649: 'The sevyne giftis of the haly gaist.'

[[guard; cf.

Just as they like, or as they deem,
O'erturn the right they have to yeme, yeoman
So right and law is laid to sleep.
Is there no king these things to keep,
Who will the good hold to the end,
And so will all his lifetime spend ? 1

William Dunbar (c. 1460-c. 1513) was educated at St. Andrews, and then entered the Franciscan Order. For a time he was a mendicant friar, and wandered England through 'from Berwick to Dover.' Between 1490 and 1500 he was much employed on the Continent on political errands. He was a sort of unconscious precursor of the Reformation, pelting freely and coarsely not only the general vices of his time, but in particular the abuses in the Church. Nor did he always discriminate whether ridicule were just or not. His poems are vigorous, and at one time were very popular, and some of them appeared in the first volume which issued from the Scottish press in 1508. Every copy, however, of that work was lost until a decayed and mutilated portion of it was discovered in 1788. The following is from Vanitas Vanitatum :

Walk forth, thou pilgrim, while thou hast day-light,
Haste from the desert, draw to thy dwelling-place;
Speed home, for now anon cometh the night,

Which doth thee follow with unswerving chase!
Bend up thy sail, and win thy port of grace;
Ere that sure death o'ertake thee in trespass.2

The following four lines are from his Now cometh Age where Youth has been :

Is none so true a love as He,

That for true love of us did dé;

He should be lov'd again, think me,

That would to fain our love obtain.3

1 Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poets, 1482: For wyt is twrnyt in mail engyne,' etc.

2 Poems of William Dunbar, ed. by J. Small, p. 244: 'Walk furth, pilgrame, quhile thow hes dayis lycht.

Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, i. 23: 'Is none so trew a luve as he.'

Gavin Douglas, third son of Archibald, fifth Earl of Angus, 'the most learned and amiable of his illustrious race,' was born in 1474, educated at St. Andrews and Paris, became Bishop of Dunkeld in 1515, and, getting involved in the civil war, retired to England, where he died in 1522. He is best known by his translation of Virgil; but he also wrote, after the fashion of the poets of that age, a long allegory entitled The Palace of Honour, finished in 1501, which is so far a religious poem that it has been in some respects compared to, or rather contrasted with, The Pilgrim's Progress. In either case the pilgrim is conducted under supernatural guidance to a glorious celestial city where bliss and goodness dwell, and many fail to reach it. But the resemblance does not go much further. In Douglas's poem there is the most extraordinary mixture of Christian ideas and personages, and of others taken from the old classical mythology. It is enough to say that the Muse Calliope, by the appointment of Venus, is represented as setting forth the Christian doctrines of faith, baptism, and redemption. I may quote the lines in which the nymph describes how virtue alone abides in lasting honour :To popes and bishops, prelates and primates, To emperors, kings, princes and potentates, Death sets the term and end of all their height; They go, and then see ye what on them waits! Nought else on earth but fame of their estates, And nought besides but virtuous works and right Shall with them wend, neither their pomp nor might. Virtue lives aye in lasting honour clear: Remember then that virtue hath no peer. For virtue is a thing so precious, Whereof the end is so delicious, The world can not consider what it is. It maketh folk perfect and glorious;

It maketh saints of people vicious;
It causeth folk live aye in lasting bliss;

It is the way to honour high, I wis;

It daunteth death and every vice with might;
Without virtue, woe to each worldly wight.

Virtue is eke the sure and perfect way,
And nothing else, to honour lasting aye.

H

« PreviousContinue »