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for his rank was not large. one occasion a friend was dissuading her from making some particularly unreasonable request for one of these servants; Lady Falkland listened patiently to his arguments, and then naïvely observed, "I warrant you for all this, I will obtain it of my lord; it will cost me but the expense of a few tears."*

Left a widow at an early age, she devoted her life henceforth to pious duties, the education of her children, and works of charity. She constantly visited her poorer neighbours in their cottages, when she read to them whilst they spun. † So she passed a long life, a disconsolate widow and the most devout, pious, and virtuous lady of the time she lived in. ‡

Equal to any of those already mentioned in domestic virtues, but of a firmer, bolder character, was Alice Osborne, Mrs. Wandesforde. Her husband was a needy Yorkshire squire, who, according to the fashion of the time, married an heir

ess.

Alice had a marked character, an inflexible will, and was patient, pious, clever, and slightly dogmatic. Beneath her sway, poor, weak, virtuous Christopher Wandesforde speedily succumbed; and under the just but iron rule of his wife the old manor and estate of Kirkling ton throve exceedingly. Punctual and rigid, "she looked well to the ways of her household, and ate not the bread of idleness." The brain and soul of that well-ordered, grim household was Alice Wandesforde. Nor was she ungenerous or uncharitable. To the poor she rendered valuable assistance-help practical and hard certainly, and with no emotional feminine tender

* 66

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Aubrey's Minutes of Lives."

+ Granger's Biographical History."

ness. To her husband's relatives she was just and even generous; but of all the members of the human race (herself excepted) good Mistress Alice was somewhat distrustful. She wrote many prayers and meditations. Her piety was of the stern, introspective type of the Puritans, and yet perhaps, after all, Mistress Alice was better than her creed.§

The daughter of this excellent matron inherited her mother's piety and good sense; but tender, loving, childlike in faith and life was gentle Mrs. Alice Thornton. Her lot was cast in the dark and evil times of the civil wars. Her home was a sorrowful one-poverty, the coldness of friends, a foolish husband, a flock of sickly children, and her own constant ill-health. For one who had been a beauty during her maidenhood, these were not sunny surroundings; but sorrow and care had no power to stain a soul so pure and guileless as that of Alice Thornton. Though her autobiography contains few events, except the sorrowful chronicle of many deaths, constant poverty, and her own ill-health, yet throughout the narrative breathes a spirit of cheerful piety, a love of all things human and divine, and patient resignation to her hard fate. As to the literary merits of the autobiography, they are not great; but it is at least as well written as it would be by ninety-nine out a hundred English gentlewomen of the nineteenth century.

One more instance must close this hurried sketch. A Puritan was Margaret Tyndale, wife of John Winthrop, the founder of the New England colony. Tender piety

"Athena Oxonienses," by Anthony Wood.

"Memoirs of the Right Hon. Christopher Wandesford," by Thomas Comber, LL.D. Life of Mrs. Alice Thornton," published by the Surtees Society.

marked all Margaret's thoughts, words, and deeds. Not the stern introspective religion of Alice Wandesforde, but a love of God, that spread as naturally as the sunshine and the dew does to all living creatures. A loving wife, a kind mother, a tender stepmother, a gentle mistress, her letters reflect all her tender, brave, hopeful spirit, giving (what, unfortunately, all letters do not give) a vivid picture of the writer's mind. As for the orthography, that in the seventeenth century was a lost art, every one speiled as seemed good in his or her own eyes, in the dark age when, as yet, dictionaries were not. In all her husband's trials in his own land, and through the long years of his self-imposed exile, Margaret Winthrop was the good angel of his life; and when she died she well merited her husband's eulogium: "A woman of singular virtue, prudence, modesty, and piety, and specially beloved and bonoured of all the country."*

With Margaret Winthrop I close this slight record of women's lives two centuries ago. Gentlewomen in the seventeenth century were certainly not as learned as the ladies of the sixteenth; but neither

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are gentlewomen of the nineteenth. As to what girls commonly were taught in the seventeenth century, we are told by Lady Halkett,† they learned to write, to read, to dance, to speak French, to play on the lute and on the virginals, and to execute all manner of needlework, and above all they cultivated those lovely graces of womanhood-piety, obedience, industry, patience. The women of that age lived in the seclusion and modest quietness that best befits their sex. Domestic life was their sphere, and in the old moated granges and secluded manorhouses they led lives as removed from the glare and the bustle of the world as nuns in a convent.

I have gathered these stories in the silent, seldom-trodden byepaths of history. Culled thus out of obscurity, they may, like a tuft of violets pulled in the greenwood, please by their modest beauty an eye wearied with the flaunting brightness of more gaudy blossoms. If they succeed in thus instructing my readers, I shall not have gathered them in vain, since all that tends to exalt and ennoble women in any age, in any clime, is part of the poetry of the world.

"Life and Letters of John Winthrop," by Robert C. Winthrop.

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+ Autobiography of Anne Murray, Lady Halkett," published by the Camden Society.

STUDIES IN SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

No. I.'

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY.

SONG writers were comparatively, if not entirely, unknown in Scotland at the time of Sir David Lyndsay. The Scottish poets who preceded him were destitute of the lyric impulse; and we may search the works of Henryson, Douglas, and Dunbar in vain for a song. Such popular effusions were first written when the populace began to attract notice, and for a lengthened period there was an insurmountable barrier between the poets and the people in education and position. It was only on the appearance of Burns that the poets were not confined to the learned, her ministers, teachers, Court retainers, whose poetry bears unmistakable marks of their professions. With the exception of Dunbar and Lyndsay, they possessed no divine inspiration. Their poems are simply beautiful and truthful sketches of the manners of the time in rhyme, and but occasionally do they rise into the realms of poetry proper. Their verses contain little heat to warm one's feelings, and a living poet could hardly tune his lyre from their stiff, cold melody. The smallness of the nation contracted their genius, and to contrast them with Chaucer and Spenser would be to make painfully evident the absence of their surging melody and sweeping fulness. A stray ballad or a coarse humorous ditty nearly comprised the popular

poems that floated about. For a very considerable period the clergy looked upon minstrelsy as clandestine, it being more coarse than elevating. Until Burns appeared, the people had not made their own songs; thereafter they became intensely lyrical, charged with deep human interest. The gush of new song was long in travelling northwards; but when it came it flooded the land. Rough voices were tuned to sweetest song. Weird ballads, the legacies of centuries, corrupted and mangled, were thrown aside for thrilling lyrics. There then quickly sprang up many passionate poets from the ranks of the people-from the shepherds on the hills, the ploughmen on the dales, the artizans in the towns. It was the advent of a new school, which through all its subsequent windings and eddyings yet bears most prominently its leading original features given by Burns. They sing for the love of singing, as the old poets sung for the love of writing. Burns was the first peasant poet that caught the attention of the nation.

The works of Sir David Lyndsay were, many years ago, to be found in nearly every house in Scotland, and they were read in the schools as class-books; now his name is fast fading into shadowy tradition, his power is gone for

ever; but his poems are of considerable beauty and interest. He stood between the two great eras of Scottish life, a connecting link between ancient and modern history. He was an early advocate of mild reform; and although his writings were unmistakable attempts to expose the abuses of the Church of Rome, it nowhere appears that he renounced his adherence to the Church. His works prepared the way, in a very great measure, for the Reformers. He was romantic and gay after a fashion of his own. He observed characters, noted their difference, studied their similarities, and evinced an aptitude for seeing beneath the surface. After the lapse of four centuries, his poems are yet individualized and typical. He has given us a good gallery of pictures, but the artist was only a medium colourist.

Of that period we have many writers, yet in truth we have little substantial information of the real manners and lives of the people and state of the country. The lights that then shone only lit up odd corners and retired nooks. From very foggy outlines and misty views the spirit of romance has drawn many fantastic sketches, notable for their poetic beauties on the one hand, and their utter want of truth on the other. Until the brightness of the Reformation dawned, Scotland was as one dark morass. Prior to that event, and notwithstanding some valuable researches, the Scottish historians present to us the merest skeletons of the real history. The time has too far gone for life to be infused into these dry records; the rust of ages has eaten away the heart and core of steel, and no substance exists. Many of the coarsest features are most prominent, as the walls of a burnt building. The vices and follies, the chivalry and martial spirit, are to us chiefly familiar. The time was

harsh, and the poetry was coarse; generous feelings prompted base actions; noble sentiments lay alongside selfish desires. Man stands out from the midst of this surrounding mist and mire as encased in a steel cuirass, his visage concealed from mortal ken. Nations, as well as individuals, were then engaged in self-preservation. Scotland was struggling hard against its southern neighbour to keep in its own life-blood. Over its rough heather hills, in its stretching vales, on its storm-beaten, rocky shores, along its moody, wooded lochs, were scattered monasteries, nunneries, chapels, and occasionally magnificent cathedrals. In remote districts priests were spreading the faith. Their legends and traditions are still being cast up to light by the industrious students as they dig in this old ground. Learning and the art of war were greatly cultivated; soldiers and priests formed the rulers of the nation, and commerce languished, not being encouraged. The bishop was the patron and the head, as well as the founder, of the Universities.

But alongside such rugged, stern facts as these, we meet sometimes with glimpses of real life, which, were we to follow to the extent they often point, we would be following will-o'-the-wisps, which would land us into a miry bog. It would no doubt be a matter of wonder were the poetry of the period not to breathe, however faintly, the spirit which animated that age. The sad and gloomy verses portray the sad and gloomy times. The coarse, riotous poems depict to a nicety the age of pleasure and corrupt living. The poems are veritable chronicles, authentic records. "The scholastic system," says M. Taine, "had enthroned the dead letter, and peopled the world with dead understandings." While England, about the same period, had

strolling players, holiday pageants, May-poles, and Christmas festivities, Scotland had only occasional fairs and trysts. To theatrical representations it did not even then take kindly.

The ruins of Linlithgow Palace, grim and grey alongside the loch, are associated with our thoughts of that period. The roofless halls, the decaying walls, the empty square, the exquisite masonry, are all as annotations of our Scotch poems. Their power and life have long ago departed. The poems and the ruins are closely associated; the one recalls the other. Yet what a space is between them and us! The vivifying imagination of a poet or a novelist can alone bridge over that chasm. The long arms of many years have fallen since then, and the darkness of night still envelops Lyndsay's life; and one has to be cautious and slow in movements as he gropes in the dark through the once-tenanted halls, but now deserted, ruinous walls.

Lyndsay's life is enshrouded in vagueness. His own verses give us fuller glimpses of the man than are anywhere to be found. Little or no importance is attached to his life; all the interest revolves round his writings. It is not exactly known where he was born, or where he died; but it would seem his birthplace is Garmylton, now Garleton, about two miles north of Haddington. There yet remain in ruins the walls of a castellated manor-house of the fifteenth century, surrounded by a large farm steading. The place lies at the bottom of a hill, in the midst of fertile, well-cultivated land. About a mile eastward, on the open plain, is the village of Athelstaneford, which in a later period possessed two minister poets, Blair and Home, whose poems form part of the Scottish classics. Across the Firth

of Forth is seen the coast of Fife, with teeming landscape and farstretching hills and pleasant towns lying along its shores. In this ancestral home he passed his childhood and youth, with daily rides or walks to the grammar-school in the ancient burgh, lying in Tyne Valley, where he received his early education. Within sight there was the metropolis, partly concealed behind Arthur's Seat, with the king, nobles, and gentry of the land clustering round the royal Court at Holyrood, to which, doubtless, the ripening youth cast lingering looks. His name is found among the incorporated students of St. Salvador's College, St. Andrews, for the year 1508 or 1509, and by a strange coincidence the following name on the register is that of David Betone, the future Archbishop and Cardinal. Several late writers, from allusions and references in Lyndsay's works, have arrived at the unwarranted conclusion that he had visited the Continent, but the truth is that nothing is known of his youth. No great interest seems to have centred round him at any time, and our records and private papers contain no insight into his youthful days. The historian or biographer cannot invent statements, but each one's imagination can fill in the outline of the picture as may seem to him appropriate.

From out this vagueness he appears in 1511, having reached the position he occupied until his latter end. James the Fourth of Scotland was then in his fame. While he promoted all industries and public enterprise, he held out a helping hand to everything connected with art and literature. Around him gathered a motley group; persons. of talent crowded about him. His jovial disposition, easily approached and socially inclined, attracted storyrelaters, stage-players, buffoons, and

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