EDITED BY

W. J. LINTON AND R. H. STODDARD

TRANSLATIONS

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1883

B

INTRODUCTION.

THE affluent of Translation cannot be said to have added its volume to the stream of English Verse until the first quarter of the sixteenth century, although it had been preceded by two or three centuries by a flood of paraphrase of metrical romances of French origin. It was the outflow of two springs, separated by fifty generations of mankind, one rising from the heart of a pagan poet in the Rome of Augustus, the other from the heart of a Christian poet in the Scotland of James the Fourth. The Scottish poet, Gawain Douglas, was the son of Archibald Douglas, historically known as the Great Earl of Angus, and popularly known as Bell-the-Cat. Born about the beginning of 1475, Gawain Douglas was liberally educated for the church, and is thought to have made the tour of the Continent, as was then and later the fashion with the young gentlemen of England and Scotland. His first preferment on entering into holy orders was to be Provost of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles, in Edinburgh, a place

of

great dignity and revenue, and to this appointment was afterward added the rectory of Hawick, and the abbey of Aberbrothick. Abbot, rector, and provost,