them for several days in Edinburgh, gave them over to the executioner.

While a prisoner in Windsor Castle James had seen and admired the beautiful Lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. Few royal attachments have been so romantic and so happy. His poem entitled 'The Quair,'* in which he pathetically laments his captivity, was devoted to the celebration of this lady, whom he obtained at last in marriage, together with his liberty, as Henry conceived that his union with the granddaughter of the Duke of Lancaster might bind the Scottish monarch to the interests of England. of his age,

year

James perished by assassination in the 42nd leaving behind him the example of a patriot king, and of a man of genius universally accomplished.

ROBERT HENRYSONE.

[Born, 1425. Died, 1495.]

NOTHING is known of the life of Henrysone but that he was a schoolmaster at Dunfermline. Lord Hailes supposes his office to have been preceptor of youth in the Benedictine convent of that place. Besides a continuation of Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseide,' he wrote a number of fables, of which MS. copies are preserved in the Scotch Advocates' Library.

WILLIAM DUNBAR.

[Born, 1460? Died, 1520?]

THE little that is known of Dunbar has been gleaned from the complaints in his own poetry, and from the abuse of his contemporary Kennedy, which is chiefly directed against his poverty. From the colophon of one of his poems, dated at Oxford, it has been suggested, as a conjecture, that he studied at that university.† * Quair is the old Scotch word for a book.

t[Dunbar in 1477 was entered among the Determinantes, or Bachelors of Arts, at Salvator's College, St. Andrew's, and in 1479 he took his degree there of Master of Arts. (See Laing's Dunbar,' vol. i. p. 9.) That he studied at Oxford at any time is highly improbable.]

By his own account, he travelled through France and England as a novice of the Franciscan order; and, in that capacity, confesses that he was guilty of sins, probably professional frauds, from the stain of which the holy water could not cleanse him. On his return to Scotland he commemorated the nuptials of James IV. with Margaret Tudor, in his poem of 'The Thistle and Rose; but we find that James turned a deaf ear to his remonstrances for a benefice, and that the queen exerted her influence in his behalf ineffectually.* Yet, from the verses on his dancing in the queen's chamber, it appears that he was received at court on familiar terms.

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY.

[Born, 1490? Died, 1557.]

David Lyndsay, according to the conjecture of his latest editor,† was born in 1490. He was educated at St. Andrew's, and, leaving that university, probably about the age of nineteen, became the page and companion of James V. during the prince's childhood, not his tutor, as has been sometimes inaccurately stated. When the young king burst from the faction which had oppressed himself and his people, Lyndsay published his 'Dream,' a poem on the miseries which Scotland had suffered during the minority. In 1530 the king appointed him Lyon King at Arms, and a grant of knighthood, as usual, accompanied the office. In that capacity he went several times abroad, and was one of those who were sent to demand a princess of the Imperial line for the Scottish sovereign. James having, however, changed his mind to a connexion with France, and having at length fixed his choice on the Princess Magdalene, Lyndsay was sent to attend upon her to Scotland; but her death, happening six weeks after her arrival, occasioned another poem from our author, entitled 'The Deploracion.' On the arrival of Mary of Guise, to supply her

*[In 1500 he received a yearly pension of ten pounds from King James, "to be pait to him for al the dais of his life, or quĥil he be promovit be our Souerane Lord to a benefice of xl li. or aboue." The pension was raised to xx li, in 1507, and to lxxx li. in 1510, the latter to be paid till such time as he should receive a benefice of one hundred pounds or upwards.]

+ Mr. G. Chalmers.

place, he superintended the ceremony of her triumphant entry into Edinburgh; and, blending the fancy of a poet with the godliness of a reformer, he so constructed the pageant, that a lady like an angel, who came out of an artificial cloud, exhorted her Majesty to serve God, obey her husband, and keep her body pure, according to God's commandments.

On the 14th of December, 1542, Lyndsay witnessed the decease of James V., at his palace of Falkland, after a connexion between them which had subsisted since the earliest days of the prince. If the death of James (as some of his biographers have asserted) occasioned our poet's banishment from court, it is certain that his retirement was not of long continuance; since he was sent, in 1543, by the Regent of Scotland, as Lyon King, to the Emperor of Germany. Before this period the principles of the reformed religion had begun to take a general root in the minds of his countrymen; and Lyndsay, who had already written a drama in the style of the old moralities, with a view to ridicule the corruptions of the Popish clergy, returned from the Continent to devote his pen and his personal influence to the cause of the new faith. In the parliaments which met at Edinburgh and Linlithgow, in 1544, 45, and 46, he represented the county of Cupar in Fife; and in 1547 he is recorded among the champions of the Reformation who counselled the ordination of John Knox.

The death of Cardinal Beaton drew from him a poem on the subject, entitled 'A Tragedy,' (the term tragedy was not then confined to the drama,) in which he has been charged with drawing together all the worst things that could be said of the murdered prelate. It is incumbent, however, on those who blame him for so doing, to prove that those worst things were not atrocious. Beaton's principal failing was a disposition to burn with fire those who opposed his ambition, or who differed from his creed; and if Lyndsay was malignant in exposing one tyrant, what a libeller must Tacitus be accounted!

His last embassy was to Denmark, in order to negotiate for a free trade with Scotland, and to solicit ships to protect the Scottish coasts against the English. It was not till after returning from this business that he published 'Squyre Meldrum,' the last and the liveliest of his works.

SIR THOMAS WYAT,

[Born, 1503. Died, Oct. 1542.]

CALLED the Elder, to distinguish him from his son, who suffered in the reign of Queen Mary, was born at Allington Castle, in Kent, in 1503, and was educated at Cambridge. He married early in life, and was still earlier distinguished at the court of Henry VIII., with whom his interest and favour were so great as to be proverbial. His person was majestic and beautiful, his visage (according to Surrey's interesting description) was "stern and mild :" he sang and played the lute with remarkable sweetness, spoke foreign languages with grace and fluency, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of wit. At the death of Wolsey he could not be more than 19; yet he is said to have contributed to that minister's downfall by a humorous story, and to have promoted the Reformation by a seasonable jest. At the coronation of Anne Boleyn he officiated for his father as ewerer, and possibly witnessed the ceremony not with the most festive emotions, as there is reason to suspect that he was secretly attached to the royal bride. When the tragic end of that princess was approaching, one of the calumnies circulated against her was, that Sir Thomas Wyat had confessed having had an illicit intimacy with her. The scandal was certainly false; but that it arose from a tender partiality really believed to exist between them, seems to be no overstrained conjecture. His poetical mistress's name is Anna; and in one of his sonnets he complains of being obliged to desist from the pursuit of a beloved object on account of its being the king's. The perusal of his poetry was one of the unfortunate queen's last consolations in prison. A tradition of Wyat's attachment to her was long preserved in his family. She retained his sister to the last about her person; and, as she was about to lay her head on the block, gave her weeping attendant a small prayer-book, as a token of remembrance, with a smile of which the sweetness was not effaced by the horrors of approaching death. Wyat's favour at court, however, continued undiminished; and notwithstanding a quarrel with the Duke of Suffolk, which

occasioned his being committed to the Tower, he was, immediately on his liberation, appointed to a command under the Duke of Norfolk, in the army that was to act against the rebels. He was also knighted, and, in the following year, made high sheriff of Kent.

When the Emperor Charles V., after the death of Anne Boleyn, apparently forgetting the disgrace of his aunt in the sacrifice of her successor, showed a more conciliatory disposition towards England, Wyat was, in 1537, selected to go as ambassador to the Spanish court. His situation there was rendered exceedingly difficult, by the mutual insincerity of the negotiating powers, and by his religion, which exposed him to prejudice, and even at one time to danger from the Inquisition. He had to invest Henry's bullying remonstrances with the graces of moderate diplomacy, and to keep terms with a bigoted court while he questioned the Pope's supremacy. In spite of those obstacles, the dignity and discernment of Wyat gave him such weight in negotiation, that he succeeded in expelling from Spain his master's most dreaded enemy, Cardinal Pole, who was so ill received at Madrid that the haughty legate quitted it with indignation. The records of his different embassies exhibit not only personal activity in following the Emperor Charles to his most important interviews with Francis, but sagacity in foreseeing consequences and in giving advice to his own sovereign. Neither the dark policy nor the immoveable countenance of Charles eluded his penetration. When the Emperor, on the death of Lady Jane Seymour, offered the King of England the Duchess of Milan in marriage, Henry's avidity caught at the offer of her duchy, and Heynes and Bonner were sent out to Spain as special commissioners on the business; but it fell off, as Wyat had predicted, from the Spanish monarch's insincerity.

Bonner, who had done no good to the English mission, and who had felt himself lowered at the Spanish court by the superior ascendancy of Wyat, on his return home sought to indemnify himself for the mortification by calumniating his late colleague. In order to answer those calumnies, Wyat was obliged to obtain his recall from Spain; and Bonner's charges, on being investigated, fell to the ground. But the Emperor's journey through France having raised another crisis of expectation, Wyat was