We wish we had room for some extracts from this interesting document. It seems to bear indisputable testimony to the King's remarkable attainments as a linguist, to his habits of reading and reflection, his religious feelings, his truthfulness, his humanity, his activity, and his temperance. It speaks, not with certainty, but perhaps too sanguinely, of his having given up his love-making, as well from fear of God, as from fear of scandal in this world.' But it too truly depicts his military qualities: He is courageous, even more so, than a king should be.' He is not a good captain, because he begins to fight before he has given his orders.' 'He loves war so much that I fear, judging by the provocation he receives, the peace (with England) will not last long.' It is not our intention here to descant on the poetical character of Dunbar, which may be regarded as peculiarly the product of the Court of James Iv. His merits are known to all his countrymen who have any knowledge of their native literature. But those who may wish to see the theme done ample justice to, may refer back, in connexion with the subject we are now discussing, to an admirable criticism on the greatest of early Scottish poets, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, on occasion of the publication of Mr. Laing's edition of Dunbar, and which no one can fail to ascribe to the only writer who was capable of producing it. Henryson, though contemporary with Dunbar during a considerable part of their lives, may be held to have preceded him in his career as a poet by about a quarter of a century. The dates of his birth and death are alike unknown; but we may assign the first of these events to the reign of James I., and the second to that of James IV. The only authentic particulars of his personal history are these-1st, That in September 1462 he was admitted a member of the newly founded University of Glasgow, being then described as Master Robert Henryson, Licentiate in Arts and Batchelor in Decrees; a fact now for the first time brought to light by Mr. Laing, and serving to fix an important date and landmark in Henryson's life;1 2d, That he was a notary-public, being so designed in three deeds dated at Dunfermline in 1478, and recorded in the Chartulary of that town; 3d, That he died shortly before 1506, as Dunbar in his 'Lament for the Death of the Makaris,' composed in that year, 1 It seems worthy of being here mentioned that Bishop Elphinstone, so distinguished afterwards in the ecclesiastical history of his country, seems to have taken his Master's degree at Glasgow in the same year (1462), and it is to be hoped that these two excellent men were acquainted with each other. Elphinstone, who survived Henryson, died in 1514, and thus lived to lament the issue of that war with England which he had endeavoured by his counsels to prevent.-Innes's Sketches, p. 262. speaks of him as recently dead in Dunfermline, with which place he thus appears to have been permanently connected. All the other allegations or suggestions that have been made regarding him are apocryphal. Even the supposition that he was a schoolmaster rests on no other evidence than his being so described in the edition of his Fables, printed in 1570. Any further information connected with his character or history must be derived from his own writings, and can only be of a very general kind. But we may thence gather that he was a man of learning and taste, that he had a love for nature, and a sense of humour, and that, in all probability, he was, what we should wish him to be, of a patriotic spirit, a kindly heart, and a gentle disposition. It is pleasant to think of him, with these qualities, passing a useful and quiet life in the romantic neighbourhood of what had been the occasional residence and the frequent buryingplace of Scotland's kings; studying and meditating under the shadow of that magnificent monastery, of which the noble remains are still standing, to tell of its ancient wealth and grandeur, and which, we trust, contributed in its better days to the diffusion of piety and learning throughout the fertile district in which it was set down. We see not a few proofs in Henryson's poems that he drew inspiration both from the religio loci that hallowed the spot, and from the beauty of the natural scenery that there surrounded him. The middle and later periods of Henryson's life may in some degree have been clouded by the public calamities which discoloured the reign of James III., and which terminated the life of that monarch, while contending with a rebellion in which his own son stood in arms against him; and the poems now before us seem in several parts to have received a melancholy tinge from the social disorders which such events must have tended to produce. But we hope that he lived to see, in the evening of his days, a brighter sky opening under the new reign, and to look forward with confidence to the progress of national improvement, of which the foundations were laid in his time, though the finishing of the work was for an interval delayed. It is worth while to remember some of the great changes which took place in Henryson's lifetime, both abroad and at home. The invention of printing was matured in Germany about the time when he was admitted a member of the University of Glasgow; and considering the peace that prevailed with England, and the intercourse that was maintained with France and the Low Countries, it is scarcely conceivable that he should not, before he died, have enjoyed the new pleasure of reading some printed books. In the early part of his life under the reign of James II., that great charter of the tenant-farmers was made the law of the land, to which there is little doubt that the agricultural prosperity of Scotland has since been eminently indebted. The Act of Parliament 1449, c. 18, ordained, 'for the safetie and favour of the puir people that labouris the ground,' (we borrow the words and spelling of the little Scots Acts), 'that they and all utheris that hes taken, or sall take landes, in time to come fra Lordes, and hes termes and zeires thereof, that, suppose the Lordes sell or annaly that land or landes, the takers sall remaine with their tackes, unto the ischew of their termes, quhais handes that ever thay landes cum to, for siklike maill as they tooke them for.' In a later period of the century, the fifth Parliament of James IV. (1494, c. 54) ordered, 'throw all the realme, that all Baronnes and Free-halders that ar of substance put their eldest sonnes and aires to the schules, fra they be sex or nine zeires of age, and till remaine at the grammar schules, quhill they be competentlie founded and have perfite Latine; and thereafter to remaine three zeirs at the schules of Art and jure, swa that they may have knawledge and understanding of the lawes: Throw the quhilks justice may remaine universally throw all the realme: Swa that they that ar Schireffes and Judges Ordinares under the Kingis Hienesse may have knawledge to doe justice, that the puir people sulde have na neede to seek our Soveraine Lordis principal Auditour for ilk small injurie: And quhat Baronne or Free-halder of substance that haldis not his sonne at the schules as said is, havand na lauchful essoinzie, bot failzies herein, fra knawledge may be gotten thereof, he sall pay to the King the summe of twentie pound.' This Act must be considered as laying the foundation of a national education in one most essential point; for if the education of the poor be important, it is of at least equal importance that there be an adequate education of the rich, and this not only for their own good, but for the good of their poorer neighbours, whose character and welfare cannot fail to be influenced by those above them, and to suffer from their ignorance and vice. If Henryson was a schoolmaster, and if, as we suppose, he survived to see the inauguration of a system under which the nobility and landed men were likely to be best reclaimed from a state of rude and lawless violence, the change must have been regarded by him with peculiar satisfaction, and with the best hopes for the future fate of his native land. It should perhaps be kept in view, as illustrating Henryson's position, that the part of the country in which he lived, the shire of Fife, was exempt from some evils to which other districts were exposed. Inaccessible to a foreign foe, except under circumstances of the utmost national prostration, and protected by interposed tracts of land from those constant inroads which disturbed and impoverished the more immediate neighbours of the Northern and Western Highlands on the one side, and the English border on the other, the county, or, as it came to be called, the Kingdom of Fife, flourished abundantly both in agriculture and in commerce. It would appear that some Celtic mountaineers still lingered, in the fifteenth century, among the Ochils; but this remnant of an ancient race were not near enough, and are not likely to have been strong enough, to do much harm either to the lands or boroughs of Fife, where there was no want of a manly and warlike population, or of the strong hand of authority, both civil and ecclesiastical. We may therefore infer that Henryson's life was passed amidst a comparative degree of peace and local prosperity, from which he might look out with calmer feelings on the disorders that prevailed elsewhere. He possessed, it is clear, sufficient means to save him from the degradation of complaining to any patron of inadequate support, and soliciting a more competent provision; and he enjoyed at the same time sufficient leisure from professional or official duties to be able to find pleasure for himself and his friends in the composition of those poems which now for the first time have had justice done them, by being presented to his countrymen in a suitable and accessible shape. Some of Henryson's works are so well known that they need no introduction or recommendation here. His Robene and Makyne,' a pretty and pleasing commentary on the old adage, 'He that will not when he may,' etc., is included by Campbell in his Specimens of the British Poets, and is described by him as the first known pastoral, and one of the best, in a dialect rich with the favours of the pastoral muse.' His 'Testament of Cresseid,' written as a continuation of Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseid,' has been often printed along with the works of the English poet, and has been mistaken, even by modern critics of taste, for the production of Chaucer himself. Godwin, who has fully examined both of the poems, does justice to Henryson's merits, and in some respects gives him even the preference over his master. But his disapprobation and disgust are excited by the catastrophe of Henryson's addition, in which Cresseid, having been smitten with leprosy, is represented as seeking aid, like a common beggar, and receiving an 'almous' from her old lover, along with the other lipper folk.' Though there may be some truth in this criticism, yet it seems to border on an excess of fastidiousness. Cresseid, as painted by Chaucer, is an odious character, and we do not grudge that she should be deprived of that beauty of which she had made so evil a use. But the kind of poetical justice which Henryson was here tempted to inflict on her might naturally be suggested by the times and circumstances in which he wrote. Leprosy, we know, prevailed extensively in Henryson's day, and Leper or Spittall Houses were erected on the outskirts of several of the principal towns in Scotland and England. There is reason to believe,' as Mr. Laing observes, that a spitall-house existed in Dunfermline, which may have afforded Henryson an opportunity of personally witnessing the victims of this frightful malady.' The most noted of those who suffered from the disease in Scotland was Robert the Bruce, who was buried at Dunfermline, and the memory of whose fate must have been fresh in that place in Henryson's time. The poet might thus be led to think it not undignified that the foreign wanton should be struck down with that visitation which had not spared the best and greatest of Scotland's sovereigns. The manner of Troilus' meeting with Cresseid, and his shadowy reminiscence of her features, though without a recognition of her identity, as well as the state of his feelings when he afterwards learns who she is, are described by Henryson with delicacy and tenderness : 'Seeing that companie they come all with ane stevin, And with ane blenk it come into his thocht, And sa appeiris in forme and lyke estate 'Ane spark of lufe than till his heart culd spring, |