testify." But portions of the "Parson's Tale" are inconsistent with this supposition, which, indeed, other facts do not seem to corroborate. Chaucer was not a man to hold very pronounced religious views. Like many other people of his time, he was disgusted with the insolence and avarice of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, and, with his genuine appreciation of human excellence, could not look but with sympathy and admiration on the faithful pastors like the "Poor Parson," whom he saw amid discouragement and poverty striving to do their duty, and animated by a genuine religious spirit. But it is not likely that he ever desired or looked for an overthrow of the power of the Church of Rome in England: he was not the stuff of which reformers are made. Though Chaucer was always a popular poet, as is proved by the many existing manuscripts of the "Canterbury Tales,” by the fact that Caxton (who declares that "in all his works he excelleth, in mine opinion, all other writers in our English") issued two editions of his works, and by the numerous respectful allusions made to him by the poets of succeeding generations, his versification was a puzzle to his readers when the language had become fixed in substantially its present form. "The verse of Chaucer," wrote Dryden, "I confess is not harmonious to us. They who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical, and it continues so, even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries: there is a rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing." went further: “Chaucer his sense can only boast, The glory of his numbers lost! Years have defaced his matchless strain, And yet he did not sing in vain." Waller Chaucer himself perceived that he lived at a period when the language was in a state of transition. of "Troilus and Cresside" he says: Towards the close "And since there is so great diversity In English, and in writing of our tongue, James I. of Scotland. I pray to God that none may miswrite thee, 37 He was, however, "mismetred" till the publication, in 1778, of Tyrwhitt's "Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer," which paved the way for what has been done since for the restoration of the text of Chaucer and the accurate knowledge of his language. The student may now, with very little trouble, acquaint himself with rules which regulate Chaucer's versification and grammar, and so be able to read him with a much fuller and clearer appreciation than such a man as Dryden could have done. The small expenditure of time necessary in order to do so will be recompensed a hundredfold by the pleasure derived from the study of the first English. classic. The appearance of Chaucer in our literature was compared by Warton to a premature day in an English spring, after which the gloom of winter returns, and the buds and blossoms which have been called forth by a transient sunshine are nipped by frosts and scattered by storms. The fifteenth cen tury was a period of the deepest gloom, morally, materially, and intellectually. The wretched civil wars which devastated. the country proved fatal to the muse: no great English poet arose within the period; no poet worthy even of a high place in the second rank. It is to Scotland, bleak, wild, barren, but full of men of high spirit and indomitable tenacity of purpose, that we must turn if we wish to find a writer who inherited the I genius of Chaucer in any tolerable measure. James I. of Scotland, who has been styled the best king among poets and the best poet among kings, during his long captivity in England, which extended from 1405 to 1424, had the advantage of receiving an excellent education and of familiarising himself with the works of the best English poets. Though poems of a humorous nature, "Peebles to the Play" and 1 Here and elsewhere the extracts from Chauce have been modernised. "Christ's Kirk of the Green," are generally supposed to have been written by him, his fame mainly rests on his "King's Quhair" [Book], a poem in six cantos, in which the influence of Chaucer is very apparent. It describes, in allegorical fashion, the attachment which, while a prisoner in Windsor Castle, he formed to a young English princess whom he saw walking in an adjacent garden. This lady is supposed to have been Lady Jane Beaufort, whom he afterwards married; but more probably the account given of her appearance is a pure poetical fancy. If rather deficient in originality-for it is impossible to believe that the "King's Quhair" would ever have been written if the works of Chaucer had not been already in existence-James I. had a fine poetical spirit, and were it not for the many difficulties of dialect which it presents, his poem would be much more generally read than it is. The unfortunate author, who was born in 1394, affords a bright example of the union of a poetical temperament with great practical powers. When he came to his kingdom, he found it in a state of anarchy through the lawless conduct of those turbulent nobles who were for many generations the curse of Scotland. "Let God but grant me life," he is reported to have said, "and throughout my dominions I shall make the key keep the castle and the furze-bush the cow, though I should lead the life of a dog to accomplish it." He was in a fair way to redeem his promise when he perished by assassination in 1437. A poet of less tender and grateful fancy than the royal bard, but of more original genius, was William Dunbar, who has been called the Scotch Chaucer, a designation which recalls Coleridge's remark on hearing Klopstock styled the German Milton, "A very German Milton indeed." Dunbar, who was born in 1460, was educated at the University of St. Andrews, and in early life became a Franciscan friar-not a particularly suitable calling for him, if one may judge from the frequent license of his muse. By James IV. he was employed as a clerk to foreign embassies, and received numerous gratuities from the king in response to numerous supplications, for Dunbar was not a man to want money if it could be got for the asking. Gawain Douglas. 39 His principal poems are the "Golden Targe," the target being Reason as a protection against the assaults of Desire, and his "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins," a poem which, in its wild, reckless spirit, may be compared to the "Jolly Beggars" of Burns. The poetry of Dunbar has been described by Irving in his "Lives of the Scottish Poets" with something of a Scotchman's partiality to his countryman. "In the poetry of Dunbar," he says, "we recognise the emanations of a mind adequate to splendid and varied exertion-a mind equally capable of soaring into the higher regions of fiction, and of descending into the humble walk of the familiar and ludicrous. He was endowed with a vigorous and well-regulated imagination, and to it was superadded that conformation of the intel·lectual faculties which constitutes the quality of good sense. In his allegorical poems we discover originality and even sublimity of invention, while those of a satirical kind present us with striking images of real life and manners. As a descriptive poet he has received superlative praise. In the mechanism of poetry he evinces a wonderful degree of skill. He has employed a great variety of metres; and his versification, when opposed to that of his most eminent contemporaries, will appear highly ornamental and varied." The date of Dunbar's death is uncertain, but is supposed to have occurred about 1520. The "Golden Targe" was printed in 1508. Gawain Douglas (1475-1522), Bishop of Dunkeld, is memorable as having been the author of the first metrical translation into English of a Latin author. He translated, with spirit and felicity, but with great diffuseness, the "Æneid" of Vergil in 1513. To each book he prefixed a prologue, and these prologues are commonly considered the most favourable specimens of his genius. His chief original poem is the "Palace of Honour," an allegory in which he maintains the theses that virtue is the only true chivalry. Like all the old Scottish poets, Douglas was permeated with a love for nature, which constitutes one of the great sources of his inspiration. The last of the old school of Scottish poets was Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, whose name is familiar to many who know nothing of his works by the ringing lines about him in Scott's "Marmion: " 'He was a man of middle age; In aspect manly, grave, and sage, Expression found its home; And broke the keys of Rome. Still is thy name in high account, Lyndsay of the Mount (his family estate in Scotland) was no less a man of action than a poet: indeed it is mainly because he devoted his poetical talent to practical ends that his verses attained the wide popularity they long enjoyed among his countrymen. He was born in 1490, and rose to high office in the court of James V., with whom he was a great favourite. He had acted as gentleman-usher to that King in his youthful. days, and the relations between master and pupil seem to have been unusually affectionate. Three of his poems, the "Dream," the "Complaint to the King," and the "Testament of the King's Papyngo," have for their purpose the exposure of abuses prevalent in church and state. Most of his works to a greater or less degree point in the same direction. His "Satire of the Three Estates," which was represented before the King at Linlithgow in 1539, having been first acted in 1535, is a morality play, having for its motif the fall of Cardinal Beaton, and stigmatising the crimes which led to that fall. In his last work, the "Monarchie" (1553), he continued in a graver tone than had been adopted in his earlier performances to protest against the abuses which had crept into the state. Different though their characters were, Lyndsay shares with Knox the |
