James was the author of The King's Quhair [Quire or Book], and perhaps also of some other poems, the authorship of which is disputed.

History of James. - James, while yet a boy of ten, was taken captive by the English monarch, and kept for nineteen years in captivity in England. He was there instructed in all the polite learning and accomplishments of the age, and appears to have been particularly conversant with the writings of Chaucer. While living in Windscr Castle, a prisoner of state, he met with a characteristic incident, which is the subject of his chief poem already named. The royal prisoner, now in the prime of manhood, glowing with honorable sentiments, and excluded from the means of giving them expression, sees from his palace-prison a fair and noble lady walking in the adjacent garden. He becomes enamored of the lady, and writes the poem in her honor.

The Poem.-The King's Quhair is a serious poem, of the allegorical kind, celebrating the love of the royal poet for the Lady Joanna Beaufort, who afterwards became his wife. It is in the Rhythm-Royal,* or seven-line stanza, introduced by Chaucer, and contains one hundred and ninety-seven stanzas; and it displays a degree of grace, beauty, and sweetness that makes us regret that the author was doomed to the doubtful honors of royalty.

James's End. - This graceful and polished monarch was suited to a more advanced stage of civilization than that which prevailed in Scotland in the fifteenth century. Though not lacking in strength or courage, he was unequal to the task of curbing those fierce Scottish nobles, by a party of whom he was finally assassinated in 1437, at the age of forty-two. When the assassins were trying to break into his apartments, a staple or bar being wanted to fasten the door, Catherine Douglas, a lady attendant upon the queen, thrust her arm into the bolt-hole, and so kept it, until the limb was entirely crushed by the bloody miscreants. The queen herself rushed between them and the object of their vengeance, vainly endeavoring to receive upon her own person the multiplied wounds that were inflicted upon his. Such was the end of the ill-fated James. He was a true poet and a true man. He deserved well of woman's love, and he was rewarded with a true and heroic constancy.

Blind Harry.

Henry the Minstrel, or Blind Harry, a wandering Scotch minstrel, was the author of a poem called Sir William Wallace, in twelve books, supposed to have been written about the year 1470.

NOTE. - A paraphrase of the poem, in modern Scotch, by William Hamilton, has long been a popular work in Scotland.

Character. As a poet, Blind Harry cannot be rated very high, and his Wallace was supposed at one time to be untrustworthy; but recent investigations have shown that its author must have been in possession of valuable authentic materials. Many incidents unknown to other Scottish authors are corroborated by English aunalists and by records published only recently.

*See Hart's Rhetoric, p. 229.

Form and Size. - Blind Harry's Wallace is in ten-syllable rhyming couplets, and contains about twelve thousand lines.

Henryson.

Robert Henryson was an early Scottish poet of some celebrity, of whose personal history little is known except that he was schoolmaster at Dunfermline, and that he died before 1508.

Henryson's Works. - Henryson wrote The Testament of Fair Creseide, as a sequel to Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide; and a translation of Esop's Fables. One of these fables, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, is often referred to for its humor and spirit. Henryson wrote also a pastoral, Robin and Makyne.

Dunbar.

William Dunbar, 1465-1530, is the most illustrious of Scotch poets, except Scott and Burns. Prof. Craik calls Dunbar "The Chaucer of Scotland," and Sir Walter Scott pronounces him to be, without exception, "a poet unrivalled by any that Scotland has ever produced."

NOTE. Dunbar's works, with a small exception, remained in manuscript, unknown to the world for more than two centuries, and it is only within the memory of persons still living that full justice has been done to his merits. His poems began to attract attention about the middle of the last century, and since that time his fame has been steadily rising; and it became at length so great that in 1834 a complete edition of his works was printed.

Dunbar's History.— Dunbar was educated at the University of St. Andrew's, and became a friar of the Franciscan Order. In this capacity he spent several years as a travelling preacher, living on the alms of the pious, through Scotland, England, and France. He was also employed on various occasions in conducting negotiations for King James IV. with foreign courts, and in this capacity he visited Germany, Spain, and Italy, as well as France and England. By these means he acquired a knowledge of men and of affairs which aided him in the composition of his works. He lived at court the latter part of his life, a dependent upon the royal bounty, and was not a little saddened and humiliated by the feeling of his dependence.

His Works. - Dunbar was master of almost every kind of verse. His poems are divided into three classes: The Allegorical, the Moral, and the Comic. His chief allegorical poems are The Thistle and the Rose, a nuptial song, celebrating the union of King James and the Princess Margaret of England; The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins through Hell; The Golden Terge, a profane parody on some of the ancient litanies. One of the best specimens of his Moral pieces is The Merle and the Nightingale, in which these two rival songsters debate in alternate stanzas the merits of Earthly and Heav

enly Love. Of the Comic pieces, the most famous are Twa Married Women and the Widow, in which three gay ladies discuss in no very delicate terms the merits of their husbands; The Friars of Berwick, a licentious tale, full of the broadest farce; The Souter and the Tuilor, an imaginary tournament between a shoemaker and a tailor, in the same region where the Seven Deadly Sins held their dance.

"Burns is certainly the only name among the Scottish poets that can be placed in the same line with that of Dunbar; and even the inspired ploughman, though the equal of Dunbar in comic power and his superior in depth of passion, is not to be compared with the elder poet either in strength, or in general fertility of imagination."- Craik.

Gawin Douglas.

Gawin Douglas, 1475-1522, Bishop of Dunkeld, has the special honor of being the first to translate into English verse any ancient classic, Greek or Latin.

Douglas translated Virgil's Eneid in an elegant and scholarly manner, and wrote several original poems possessing considerable merit.

History.-Gawin Douglas was son of Archibald, fifth Earl of Angus, surnamed Bell-the-Cat. Unlike most of the members of that fierce and haughty family, Gawin was trained to letters instead of arms. He studied at the University of Paris, entered the Church, and rose to the bishopric. He was noted in that rude age for his refinement and scholarly tastes, and for "his moderation and peacefulness." He wrote The Palace of Honor, an allegory reminding one of Pilgrim's Progress, and another poem, King Hart, giving an allegorical view of human life. But the work by which he is best known is his Translation of Virgil's Eneid, already mentioned.

Sir Walter Scott, in one of the most striking scenes in Marmion, has drawn a beautiful picture of Gawin Douglas. It is the celebrated midnight scene in the chapel of Tantallon tower:

"A Bishop by the altar stood,

A noble lord of Douglas blood,

With mitre sheen, and rocquet white.

Yet showed his meek and thoughtful eye

But little pride of prelacy;

More pleased that, in a barbarous age,
He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page,
Than that beneath his rule he held
The bishopric of fair Dunkeld.
Beside him ancient Angus stood,

Doffed his furred gown, and sable hood;
O'er his huge form, and visage pale,
He wore a cap and shirt of mail;

And leaned his large and wrinkled hand
Upon the huge and sweeping brand
Which wont of yore, in battle fray
His foeman's limbs to shred away,
As wood-knife lops the sapling spray.
He seemed as, from the tombs around,
Rising at judgment-day,

Some giant Douglas may be found
In all his old array;

So pale his face, so huge his limb,

So old his arms, his look so grim."

Lindsay.

Sir David Lindsay, 1490-1555, a satiric poet, and a fit successor to Dunbar and Gawin Douglas, closes the line of early Scotch poets.

History. Lindsay's personal history, as well as his poetry, is intimately mingled with the affairs of the Scottish Court, and particularly with those of his sovereign, James V. While James was a boy, Lindsay was his attendant, carver, cup-bearer, purse-master, chief-cubicular, in short his man Friday, bearing the little fellow on his back, dancing antics for his amusement. James, on coming to the throne, did not forget the poet, but gave him the valuable office of King-at-arms.

His Poetry. Lindsay's poems are entirely satirical, and have many of the characteristics of Dunbar's satires. They are vituperative and wanting in refinement, yet bold, vigorous, and biting. The chief objects of his satire were the clergy, whom he lashed without mercy. One of his pieces, The Play of the Three Estates, is a pungent satire upon the three great political orders - monarch, barons, and clergy. Strange to say, it was acted before the Court.

Other Poems. His other poems are The Dream, The Complaint of the King's Papingo, Kittie's Confession, The History of Squire Meldrum, and The Monarchy.

THE authors brought together in the present Chapter are in the main connected with the long and memorable reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547, or the first half of the sixteenth century.

This period is known in history as the age of the Reformation. The great names most conspicuously associated with it are Henry VIII., Francis I., Charles V., Leo X., Michael Angelo, Raphael, Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, Wolsey, More, and Cranmer.

NOTE. Some of the authors named in this Chapter run back into the reign of Henry VII., and some go forward into the reign of Edward VI., 1547-1553, and of Mary, 1553-1558, and even into that of Elizabeth. Such a lapping over from one reign to another is a necessary incident, history being not a succession of pools, but a continuous stream. It will be found on examination, however, that those writers here named, whose works run back or forward into the contiguous reigns, yet belong in the main to the reign of Henry VIII.

The Art of Printing. The invention of the art of printing, about the middle of the fifteenth century, gave a new impulse to authorship, as to every other art and enterprise.

Effect of Printing on Authorship. - The writings of Chaucer, Wyckliffe, and other early authors, were in a certain sense published among their contemporaries. That is, copies of these works were made and circulated in manuscript by friends and admirers, and were read to select circles in the halls of the nobility and the gentry, at stalls in churches and monasteries, at fairs and other public places, or by stealth at the private meetings of guilds and sectaries. To such an extent a book was published. But publication, in the sense of the word now understood, was first made possible by the invention of the art of printing, and it has added enormously to the growth of authorship. So great has been the effect of this and of other causes