allowed to have given the first impulse to the practice of reading in both parts of the island, and to have been one of the causes of the flourishing literary era which followed.

SIR JOHN CHEKE.

SIR JOHN CHEKE (1514-1557) was professor of Greek at Cambridge, and one of the preceptors of the prince, afterwards Edward VI. He is chiefly distinguished for his exertions in introducing the study of the Greek language and literature into England. Having dictated to his pupils a certain mode of pronouncing Greek words, he was violently assailed on that account by Bishop Gardiner, then chancellor of the university; but, notwithstanding the fulminations of this severe prelate, the system of Cheke prevailed, and still prevails. At his death, which was supposed to be occasioned by remorse for recanting Protestantism under the terror of the Marian persecution, he left several works in manuscript, amongst which was a translation of Matthew's Gospel, intended to exemplify a plan which he had conceived of reforming the English language by eradicating all words except those derived from Saxon roots. He also contemplated a reform in the spelling of English, an idea which has occurred to several learned men, but seems to be amongst the most hopeless ever entertained by the learned. The only original work of Cheke in English is a pamphlet, published in 1549, under the title of The Hurt of Sedition, how Grievous it is to a Commonwealth, being designed to admonish the people who had risen under Ket the tanner. Of this, a specimen is subjoined :

Remonstrance with Levellers.

men's children come honestly up, and are great succour to all their stock, so should none be hereafter holpen by you. But because you seek equality, whereby all cannot be rich, ye would that belike, whereby every man should be poor. And think beside, that riches and inheritance be God's providence, and given to whom of his wisdom he thinketh good.

SIR THOMAS WILSON.

THOMAS WILSON, originally a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and who rose to be Dean of under Elizabeth, published, in 1553, a System of Durham, and to various high state employments Rhetoric and of Logic, in which the principles of eloquence and composition are laid down with considerable ability. He strongly advocates, in this treatise, simplicity of language, condemning those who 'powdered their talk with over-seas language.' So great and dangerous an innovation were his doctrines considered, that, happening to visit Rome, he was imprisoned as a heretic. Amongst other false styles censured by Wilson is that of alliteration, of which he gives the following caricatured example: 'Pitiful poverty prayeth for a penny, but puffed presumption passeth not a point, pampering his paunch with pestilent pleasure, procuring his passport to post it to hell-pit, there to be punished with pains perpetual.' Wilson died in 1581.

Simplicity of Style Recommended.

Among other lessons, this should first be learned, that we never affect any strange inkhorn terms, but to speak as is commonly received; neither seeking to be over fine, nor yet living over careless; using our speech as most men do, and ordering our wits as the fewest have done. Some seek so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mother's language. And I Ye pretend to a commonwealth. How amend ye it dare swear this, if some of their mothers were alive, by killing of gentlemen, by spoiling of gentlemen, by they were not able to tell what they say, and yet these imprisoning of gentlemen? A marvellous tanned fine English clerks will say they speak in their mother commonwealth. Why should ye hate them for their tongue, if a man should charge them with counterfeiting riches, or for their rule? Rule, they never took so much the king's English. Some far journeyed gentlemen, at in hand as ye do now. They never resisted the king, their return home, like as they love to go in foreign never withstood his council, be faithful at this day, when apparel, so they will ponder their talk with over-sea ye be faithless, not only to the king, whose subjects ye language. He that cometh lately out of France will be, but also to your lords, whose tenants ye be. Is this talk French-English, and never blush at the matter. your true duty-in some of homage, in most of fealty, Another chops in with English Italianated, and applieth in all of allegiance to leave your duties, go back from the Italian phrase to our English speaking; the which your promises, fall from your faith, and, contrary to law is, as if an oration that professeth to utter his mind in and truth, to make unlawful assemblies, ungodly com- plain Latin, would needs speak poetry, and far-fetched panies, wicked and detestable camps, to disobey your colours of strange antiquity. The lawyer will store his betters, and to obey your tanners, to change your obe-stomach with the prating of pedlers. The auditor, in dience from a king to a Ket, to submit yourselves to making his account and reckoning, cometh in with sise traitors, and break your faith to your true king and sould, et cater denere, for 6s. and 4d. The fine courtier lords? will talk nothing but Chaucer. The mystical wise men, and poetical clerks, will speak nothing but quaint proverbs and blind allegories; delighting much in their own darkness, especially when none can tell what they do say. The unlearned or foolish fantastical, that smells but of learning (such fellows as have seen learned men in their days), will so Latin their tongues, that the simple cannot but wonder at their talk, and think surely they speak by some revelation. I know them that think rhetoric to stand wholly upon dark words; and he that can catch an inkhorn term by the tail, him they count to be a fine Englishman and a good rhetorician.

If riches offend you, because ye would have the like, then think that to be no commonwealth, but envy to the commonwealth. Envy it is to appair another man's estate, without the amendment of your own; and to have no gentlemen, because ye be none yourselves, is to bring down an estate, and to mend none. Would ye have all alike rich? That is the overthrow of all labour, and utter decay of work in this realm. For who will labour more, if, when he hath gotten more, the idle shall by lust, without right, take what him list from him, under pretence of equality with him? This is the bringing in of idleness, which destroyeth the commonwealth, and not the amendment of labour, which maintaineth the commonwealth. If there should be such equality, then ye take all hope away from yours, to come to any better estate than you now leave them. And as many mean 1 Alluding to the profession of the ringleader.

2 Impair.

trim, both for pleasure and profit; the other is a lugge slow of cast, following the string, more sure for to last than pleasant for to use. Now, sir, it chanced this other night, one in my chamber would needs bend them to prove their strength, but (I cannot tell how) they were both left bent till the next day after dinner; and when I came to them, purposing to have gone on shooting, I found my good bow clean cast on the one side, and as weak as water, that surely, if I were a rich man, I had rather have spent a crown; and as for my lugge, it was not one whit the worse, but shot by and by as well and as far as ever it did. And even so, I am sure that good wits, except they be let down like a treble string, and unbent like a good casting bow, they will never last and be able to continue in study. And I know where I speak this, Philologe, for I would not say thus much afore young men, for they will take soon occasion to study little enough. But I say it, therefore, because I know, as little study getteth little learning, or none at all, so the most study getteth not the most learning of all. For a man's wit, fore-occupied in earnest study, must be as well recreated with some honest pastime, as the body, fore-laboured, must be refreshed with sleep and quietness, or else it cannot endure very long, as the noble poet [Ovid] saith:

or rather better, if better can be gotten, for such an high administration, which is most properly appointed to God's own matters and businesses.

This perverse judgment of fathers, as concerning the fitness and unfitness of their children, causeth the commonwealth have many unfit ministers: and seeing that ministers be, as a man would say, instruments wherewith the commonwealth doth work all her matters withal, I marvel how it chanceth that a poor shoemaker hath so much wit, that he will prepare no instrument for his science, neither knife nor awl, nor nothing else, which is not very fit for him. The commonwealth can be content to take at a fond father's hand the riffraff of the world, to make those instruments of wherewithal she should work the highest matters under heaven. And surely an awl of lead is not so unprofitable in a shoemaker's shop, as an unfit minister made of gross metal is unseemly in the commonwealth. Fathers in old time, among the noble Persians, might not do with their children as they thought good, but as the judgment of the commonwealth always thought best. This fault of fathers bringeth many a blot with it, to the great deformity of the commonwealth: and here surely I can praise gentlewomen, which have always at hand their glasses, to see if anything be amiss, and so will amend it; yet the commonwealth, having the glass of knowledge in every man's hand, doth see such

What thing wants quiet and merry rest, endures but a small uncomeliness in it, and yet winketh at it. This fault,

while.

Occupations should be chosen suitable to the Natural

Faculties.

If men would go about matters which they should do, and be fit for, and not such things which wilfully they desire, and yet be unfit for, verily greater matters in the commonwealth than shooting should be in better case than they be. This ignorance in men, which know not for what time and to what thing they be fit, causeth some wish to be rich, for whom it were better a great deal to be poor; other to be meddling in every man's matter, for whom it were more honesty to be quiet and still; some to desire to be in the court, which be born and be fitter rather for the cart; some to be masters and rule other, which never yet began to rule themselves; some always to jangle and talk, which rather should hear and keep silence; some to teach, which rather should learn; some to be priests, which were fitter to be clerks. And this perverse judgment of the world, when men measure themselves amiss, bringeth much disorder and great unseemliness to the whole body of the commonwealth, as if a man should wear his hose upon his head, or a woman go with a sword and a buckler, every man would take it as a great uncomeliness, although it be but a trifle in respect of the other.

This perverse judgment of men hindereth nothing so much as learning, because commonly those that be unfittest for learning, be chiefly set to learning. As if a man now-a-days have two sons, the one impotent, weak. sickly, lisping, stuttering, and stammering, or having any mis-shape in his body; what doth the father of such one commonly say? This boy is fit for nothing else but to set to learning and make a priest of, as who would say, the outcasts of the world, having neither countenance, tongue, or wit (for of a perverse body cometh commonly a perverse mind), be good enough to make those men of, which shall be appointed to preach God's holy word, and minister his blessed sacraments, besides other most weighty matters in the commonwealth; put oft times, and worthily, to learned men's discretion and charge; when rather such an office so high in dignity, so goodly in administration, should be committed to no man, which should not have a countenance full of comeliness, to allure good men, a body full of manly authority to fear ill men, a wit apt for all learning, with tongue and voice able to persuade all men. And although few such men as these can be found in a commonwealth, yet surely a goodly disposed man will both in his mind think fit, and with all his study labour to get such men as I speak of,

and many such like, might be soon wiped away, if fathers would bestow their children always on that thing whereunto nature hath ordained them most apt and fit. For if youth be grafted straight and not awry, the whole commonwealth will flourish thereafter. When this is done, then must every man begin to be more ready to amend himself, than to check another, measuring their matters with that wise proverb of Apollo, Know thyself: that is to say, learn to know what thou art able, fit, and apt unto, and follow that.

Two Scottish authors may be noted. Barbour and Wynton had shewn the use of the northern language in literature, and it had become common in correspondence. The Earl of Dunbar, writing to the king of England (Henry IV.), excuses himself for preferring it to either Latin or Frenchthe language of business and the language of the English court.* It was, however, more than a century after this period ere we had any prose work in the Scottish vernacular.

JOHN BELLENDEN.

JOHN BELLENDEN, archdean of Moray, was a favourite of James V. of Scotland, and one of the lords of session in the reign of Queen Mary. Besides writing a topography of Scotland, epistles to James V. and some poems, he translated, by the king's command, Hector Boece's History of translation of Boece was published in 1536, and Scotland, and the first five books of Livy. The constitutes the earliest existing specimen of Scottish literary prose. The first original work in that language was one entitled The Complaynt of Scotland, which was published at St Andrews in 1548, by an unknown author, and consists of a meditation on the distracted state of the kingdom. The difference between the language of these works and that employed by the English writers of the preceding century is not great. Bellenden's translation of Boece is rather a free one, and additions

*And, noble prince, mervaile yhe nocht that I write my lettres in English, for that ys mare clere to myne understandyng than Latyne or Fraunch. Excellent, mychty, and noble prince, the of Dunbarr, the 18th day of Feverer [1400]. See Scotland in the Haly Trinity hafe you evirmar in kepyng. Written at my castell Middle Ages, by Professor Cosmo Innes.

are sometimes made by the translator. Another translation, published by Holinshed, an English chronicler, in the reign of Elizabeth, was the source from which Shakspeare derived the historical materials of his tragedy of Macbeth. An extract from Bellenden's version, in the original spelling, is here subjoined:

Part of the Story of Macbeth.

and otheris his freindis, he slew King Duncane, the vii yeir of his regne. His body was buryit in Elgin, and eftir tane up and brocht to Colmekill, quhare it remanis yit, amang the sepulturis of uthir kingis; fra redemption, MXLVI yeris.

Our

It

The Complaynt of Scotland is a rare work. was published at St Andrews in 1548 or 1549, and seems to have been formed on the plan of the Decameron. A party of shepherds sing songs or tell tales, after which they join in a dance: 'evyrie ald scheiphird led his vyfe be the hand, and

best.'

The names of the songs and dances are given, but the greater part of the former is now lost or unknown. The author of the Complaynt is also unknown, and it has been variously ascribed to Sir James Inglis, abbot of Culross (a poet mentioned by Sir David Lyndsay, but whose works have almost entirely perished); to one of the Wedderburns of Dundee; and to Sir David Lyndsay himself. The last of these conjectures seems improbable. Dr Leyden edited the Complaynt (1801), and added an introduction and a glossary. The orthography of the work is very irregular and uncouth.

Extract from the Complaynt of Scotland.

Nocht lang eftir, hapnit ane uncouth and wounderfull thing, be quhilk followit, sone, ane gret alteration in the realme. Be aventure, Makbeth and Banquho wer pass-evyrie yong scheiphird led hyr quhome he luffit and to Fores, quhair King Duncane hapnit to be for the time, and met be the gait thre wemen, clothit in elrage and uncouth weid. Thay wer jugit, be the pepill, to be weird sisteris. The first of thaim said to Makbeth: 'Hale, Thane of Glammis!' the second said: 'Hale, Thane of Cawder!' and the third said: 'Hale, King of Scotland!' Than said Banquho: Quhat wemen be ye, sa unmercifull to me, and sa favorable to my companyeon? For ye gaif to him nocht onlie landis and gret rentis, bot gret lordschippis and kingdomes; and gevis me nocht. To this answerit the first of thir weird sisteris: 'We schaw more felicite apparing to thee than to him; for thoucht he happin to be ane king, his empire sall end unhappelie, and nane of his blude sall eftir him succeid; be contrar, thow sall nevir be king, bot of the sal cum mony kingis, quhilkis, with lang progressioun, sall rejose the croun of Scotland.' Als sone as thir wourdis wer said, thay suddanlie evanist out of sicht. This prophecy and divinatioun wes haldin mony dayis in derision to Banquho and Makbeth. For sum time, Banquho wald call Makbeth, King of Scottis, for derisioun; and he, on the samin maner, wald call Banquho the fader of mony kingis. Yit, becaus al thingis succedit as thir wemen devinit, the pepill traistit and jugit thaim to be weird sisteris. Not lang eftir, it hapnit that the Thane of Cawder wes disherist and forfaltit of his landis, for certane crimes of lese majeste; and his landis wer gevin be King Duncane to Makbeth. It hapnit in the next nicht, that Banquho and Makbeth wer sportand togidder at thair supper. Than said Banquho: Thow hes gottin all that the first two weird sisteris hecht. Restis nocht bot the croun, quhilk wes hecht be the thrid sister.' Makbeth, revolving all thingis as thay wer said be thir weird sisteris, began to covat the croun; and yit he concludit to abide quhil he saw the time ganand thairto, fermelie beleving that the thrid weird suld cum, as the first two did afore.

In the mene time, King Duncane maid his son Malcolme Prince of Cumbir, to signify that he suld regne eftir him. Quhilk wes gret displeseir to Makbeth; for it maid plane derogatioun to the thrid weird, promittit afore to him be thir weird sisteris. Nochtheles, he thocht, gif Duncane wer slane, he had maist richt to the croun, becaus he wes nerest of blud thairto, be tennour of the auld lawis maid eftir the deith of King Fergus, "Quhen young children wer unabil to govern the croun, the nerrest of thair blude sall regne.' Als, the respons of thir weird sisteris put him in beleif, that the thrid weird suld cum als weill as the first two. Attour, his wife, impacient of lang tary, as al wemen ar, specially quhare thay ar desirus of ony purpos, gaif him gret artation to persew the thrid weird, that scho micht be ane quene; calland him, oft timis, febil cowart, and nocht desirus of honouris; sen he durst not assailye the thing with manheid and curage, quhilk is offerit to him be benivolence of fortoun; howbeit sindry otheris hes assailyeit sic thingis afore, with maist terribil jeopardyis, quhen thay had not sic sickernes to succeid in the end of thair laubouris as he had.

Makbeth, be persuasion of his wife, gaderit his freindis to ane counsall at Innernes, quhare King Duncane happinit to be for the time. And because he fand sufficient oportunite, be support of Banquho

There eftir I heard the rumour of rammasche 1 foulis and of beystis that made grite beir, quhilk past beside burnis and boggis on green bankis to seek their sustentation. Their brutal sound did redond to the high skyis, quhil the deep hou cauernis of cleuchis3 and rotche craggis ansuert vitht ane high note of that samyn sound as thay beystis hed blauen. It aperit be presumyng and presuposing, that blaberand Eccho had been hid in ane hou hole, cryand hyr half ansueir, quhen Narcissus rycht sorry socht for his saruandis, quhen he was in ane forrest, far fra ony folkis, and there efter for love of Eccho he drounit in ane drau vel. Nou to tel treutht of the beystis that made sic beir, and of the dyn that the foulis did, ther syndry soundis hed nothir temperance nor tune. For fyrst furtht on the fresche fieldis the nolt maid noyis vitht mony loud lou. Baytht horse and meyris did fast nee, and the folis neckyr. The bullis began to bullir, quhen the scheip began to blait, because the calfis began till mo, quhen the doggis berkit. Than the suyne began to quhryne quhen thai herd the asse rair, quhilk gart the hennis kekkyl quhen the cokis creu. The chekyns began to peu quhen the gled quhissillit. The fox follouit the fed geise and gart them cry claik. The gayslingis cryit quhilk quhilk, and the dukis cryit quaik. The ropeen of the rauynis gart the cras crope. The huddit crauis cryit varrok varrok, quhen the suannis murnit, because the gray goul mau pronosticat ane storme. The turtil began for to greit, quhen the cuschet zoulit. The titlene followit the goilk, and gart hyr sing guk guk. The dou croutit hyr sad sang that soundit lyik sorrou. Robeen and the litil oran var hamely in vyntir. The jargolyne of the suallou gart the jay angil, than the meveis maid myrtht, for to mok the merle. The laverok maid melody up hie in the skyis. The nychtingal al the nycht sang sueit notis. The tuechitis cryit theuis nek, quhen the piettis clattrit. The garruling of the stirlene gart the sparrou cheip. The lyntquhit sang counterpoint quhen the oszil zelpit. The grene serene sang sueit, quhen the gold spynk chantit. The rede schank cryit my fut my fut, and the oxee cryit tueit. The herrons gaif ane vyild skrech as the kyl hed bene in fyir, quhilk gart the quhapis for flevitnes fle far fra

hame.

1 Singing (Fr. ramage).

3 Hollow ravines or deep glens.
5 Jangle.
6 The tu-wit, lapwing.
8 The small hedge-sparrow.

6

? Or birr, noise.
4 The cuckoo.
7 The fieldfare.
• Curlew.