4 9 5 6 of the suallou gart the iay iangil.1 than the maueis 2 maid myrht, for to mok the merle. the lauerok maid melody vp in the skyis. the nychtingal al the nycht sang sueit notis. the tuechitis cryit cheuis nek quhen the piettis' clattrit. the garruling of the stirlene 10 gart the sparrou cheip." the lyntquhit 12 sang cuntirpoint quhen the oszil 13 zelpit. the grene serene sang sueit quhen the gold spynk 15 chantit. the rede schank 16 cryit my fut my fut, and oxee 17 cryit tueit. the herrons gaif ane vyild skrech as the kyl hed bene in fier, quhilk gart the quhapis 18 for fleyitnes 19 fle far fra hame. 14 A still more ostentatious display of the wealth of the writer's native dialogue follows, in a description of a sea-scene, ending in a fight. Into this he has poured a complete dictionary of naval terms, some of which set translation or explanation at defiance, but many of which are still in familiar use among the fishing population of the sea-coast of Fife, from whom either Lyndsay or Inglis would be likely enough to learn them. Leyden describes them generally as in part of Norman, in part of Flemish origin. We will pass on, and select for our next extract a portion of the author's natural philosophy; and here we shall strip his clear and expressive style of the cumbrous and capricious old spelling, which makes it look as if it were all over bespattered with mud to the eye of a modern reader: 22 Now, to speak of the generation of the dew, it is ane humid vapour, generit in the second region of the air in ane fair calm night, and sine 20 descends in ane temperate caldness on the green erbs in small drops. The hair 21 rime is ane cald dew, the whilk falls in misty vapours, and sine it freezes on the eird.2 The mist, it is the excrement or the superfluity of the cluds, the whilk falls fra the air in ane sweet rain, whilk rain can nought be persavit be the sight of men. Hail stones is ane congealit rain, whilk falls on the eird be grit vehemence, and it falls rather on the day light nor on the night. The snaw is ane congealit rain, frozen and congealit in the second region of the air, and congeals in divers massive cluds, 28 13 The ouzle, which means sometimes the thrush, sometimes the blackbird, some times, as here, apparently a different bird from either. 14 Green Siren, or Green-finch. 17 Small hedge-sparrow. 20 Then. 28. Than. 15 Goldfinch. 18 Curlews. 21 Hoar. 16 Fieldfare. 19 Fear. 22 Earth. 5 whilk stops and empeshes the operation of the planets to exerce their natural course; than 2 the vehemence of the planets braks thay cluds, fra the force of the whilk there comes fire, and ane grit sound, whilk is terrible to be hard, and that terrible sound is the thing that we call the thunder; but or we hear the thunder, we see first the fire, howbeit that they proceed at ane instant time. The cause that we see the fire or we hear the thunder is be reason that the sight and clearness of ony thing is mair swift towart us nor is the sound. The evil that the thunder does on the eird, it is done or we hear the crack of it. Oft times we will see fireslaught, how be it there be na thunder hard. The thunder slays mony beasts on the fields; and when it slays ane man that is sleepand, he sall be funden dead and his een apen.8 The thunder is maist dangerous for man and beast when there comes na rain with it. The fire-slaught will consume the wine within ane pipe in ane deep cave, and the pipe will resave na skaith. The fire-slaught slew ane man on the fields, and it meltit the gold that was in his bag, and it meltit nought the wax of ane seal that was in that samen bag. In Rome there was ane noble princess callit Martia grit with child; she was on the fields for her recreation, where that the fire-slaught straik her, and slew her nought, but yet it slew the child in her woime. There is three things that are never in danger of thunder nor fire-slaught; that is to say, the laury tree; the second is the selch, whilk some men calls the sea wolf; the third thing is the eyrn,10 that flees sa high. The historiographers rehearses that Tiberius Caesar, empiror of Rome, had ever ane hat of laure tree on his head, and als he gart mak his pailyons,11 and tents on the fields of selch skins, to that effect that he might be furth of the danger of the thunder and fire-slaught. The best remede contrar thunder and fire-slaught is to men and women to pass in hou 12 caverns under the eird, or in deep caves, be cause the thunder does maist damage till high places. It is worthy of remark, that, although we have here unquestionably the Scottish dialect, distinctly marked by various peculiarities (indeed the author, in his prologue or preface expressly and repeatedly states that he has written in Scotch, "in our Scottis langage," as he calls it), yet one chief characteristic of the modern Scotch is still wanting-the suppression of the final after a vowel or diphthong-just as it is in Barbour and Blind Harry. This change, as we before remarked, is probably very modern. It has taken place in all likelihood since Scotch ceased to be generally used in writing; the principle of growth, which, after a language passes under the government of the pen, is to a great extent suspended, having recovered its activity on the dialect being abandoned again to the comparatively lawless liberty, or at least looser guar dianship, of the lips. ENGLISH POETS: HAWES; BARKLAY. Library. Of California. THE English poetical literature of the first half of the sixteenth century may be fairly described as the dawn of a new day. Two poetic names of some note belong to the reign of Henry VII.— Stephen Hawes and Alexander Barklay. Hawes is the author of many pieces, but is chiefly remembered for his Pastime of Pleasure, or History of Grand Amour and La Belle Pucelle, first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1517, but written about two years earlier. Warton holds this performance to be almost the only effort of imagination and invention which had appeared in our poetry since Chaucer, and eulogizes it as containing no common touches of romantic and allegoric fiction. Hawes was both a scholar and a traveller, and was perfectly familiar with the French and Italian poetry as well as with that of his own country. It speaks very little, however, for his taste, that, among the preceding English poets, he has evidently made Lydgate his model, even if it should be admitted that, as Warton affirms, he has added some new graces to the manner of that cold and wordy versifier. Lydgate and Hawes may stand together as perhaps the two writers who, in the century and a half that followed the death of Chaucer, contributed most to carry forward the regulation and modernization of the language which he began. Barklay, who did not die till 1552, when he had attained a great age, employed his pen principally in translations, in which line his most celebrated performance is his Ship of Fools, from the German of Sebastian Brandt, which was printed in 1508. Barklay, however, besides consulting both a French and a Latin version of Brandt's poem, has enlarged his original with the enumeration and description of a considerable variety of follies which he found flourishing among his own countrymen. This gives the work some value as a record of the English manners of the time; but both its poetical and its satirical pretensions are of the very humblest order. At this date most of our writers of what was called poetry seem to have been occupied with the words in which they were to clothe their ideas almost to the exclusion of all the higher objects of the poetic art. And that, perhaps, is what of necessity happens at a particular stage in the progress of a nation's literature at the stage corresponding to the transition state in the growth of the human being between the termination of free rejoicing boyhood and the full assurance of manhood begun; which is peculiarly the season not of achievement but of preparation, not of accomplishing ends, but of acquiring the use of means and instruments, and also, it may be added, of the aptitude to mistake the one of these things for the other. SKELTON. BUT the poetry with the truest life in it produced in the reign of Henry the Seventh and the earlier part of that of his son is undoubtedly that of Skelton. John Skelton may have been born about or soon after 1460; he studied at Cambridge, if not at both universities; began to write and publish compositions in verse between 1480 and 1490; was graduated as poet-laureate (a degree in grammar, including versification and rhetoric) at Oxford before 1490; was admitted ad eundem at Cambridge in 1493; in 1498 took holy orders; was probably about the same time appointed tutor to the young prince Henry, afterwards Henry the Eighth; was eventually promoted to be rector of Diss in Norfolk; and died in 1529 in the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where he had taken refuge to escape the vengeance of Cardinal Wolsey, originally his patron, but latterly the chief butt at which he had been wont to shoot his satiric shafts. As a scholar Skelton had a European reputation in his own day; and the great Erasmus has styled him Britannicarum literarum decus et lumen (the light and ornament of English letters). His Latin verses are distinguished by their purity and classical spirit. As for his English poetry, it is generally more of a mingled yarn, and of a much coarser fabric. In many of his effusions indeed, poured forth in sympathy with or in aid of some popular cry of the day, he is little better than a rhyming buffoon; much of his ribaldry is now nearly unintelligible; and it may be doubted if a considerable portion of his gro tesque and apparently incoherent jingle ever had much more than the sort of half-meaning with which a half-tipsy writer may satisfy readers as far gone as himself. Even in the most reckless of these compositions, however, he rattles along, through sense and nonsense, with a vivacity that had been a stranger to our poetry for many a weary day; and his freedom and spirit, even where most unrefined, must have been exhilarating after the long fit of somnolency in which the English muse had dozed away the last hundred years. But much even of Skelton's satiric verse is instinct with genuine poetical vigor, and a fancy alert, sparkling, and various, to a wonderful degree. It is impossible, where the style and manner are, if not, so discursive, at least so rushing and river-like, to give any complete idea of the effect by extracts; but we will transcribe a small portion of the bitterest of his attacks upon Wolsey, his satire, or "little book," as he designates it, entitled Why come ye not to court? extending in all to nearly 1300 lines: Our barons be so bold Into a mouse-hole they wold Rin Like a meiny of sheep; Dare not look out at dur For dread of the mastiff cur, To hold up their hand at the bar. For all their noble blood, He plucks them by the hood, He saith they have no brain Their estate to maintain, And maketh them to bow their knee Before his majesty. In the chancery where he sits, But such as he admits |