Also, it semis1 nocht your celsitude2,
Quhilk usis daylie meittis delitious,
To syle your teith, or lippis, with my blude,
Quhilk to your stomok is contagious :
Unhailsum meit is of ane sairie3 Mous,
And that namelie untill ane strang Lyoun
Wont till be fed with gentill vennisoun.

'My lyfe is lytill worth, my deith is less,
Yet and I leif, I may peradventure
Supple your Hienes beand in destres;

For oft is sene, ane man of small stature
Reskewit hes ane Lord of hie honour,
Keipit that wes in point to be ouerthrawin*,
Throw misfortune. Sie cace may be your awin.'
Quhen this was said, the Lyoun his language
Paissit, and thocht according to ressoun,
And gart mercie his cruell yre asswage,
And to the Mous grantit remissioun,

Opinnit his pow, and scho on kneis fell doun,
And baith his handis unto the hevin upheld,
Cryand 'Almychtie God, mot you foryeild !?

Quhen scho wes gone, the Lyoun held to hunt,
For he had nocht, bot levit on his pray,

And slew baith tayme and wylde, as he wes wont,
And in the cuntrie maid ane greit deray';

Till at the last, the pepill fand the way

This cruell Lyoun how that they mycht tak,

Of hempyn cordis strang nettis couth thay mak.

And in ane rod, quhair he wes wont to ryn,
With raipis rude fra tre to tre it band:
Syne kest ane range on raw the wod within,
With hornis blast, and kennettis9 fast calland:
The Lyoun fled, and throw the rone rynnand,

1 it does not become.

just upon the point of being overthrown.

God reward you.

9 hounds.

10

2 highness.

7 disorder.

10 scrub.

✦ that was

6 Almighty

8 i. e. they drove the wood.

5

10

1

Fell in the nett, and hankit1 fute and heid,
For all his strenth he couth mak na remeid,
Welterand about with hiddeous rummissing2,

Quhyles to, quhyles fra, gif he mycht succour get;
Bot all in vane, it vailyeit him na thing,

The mair he flang3, the safter wes the net ;

The raipis rude wes sa about him plet*,
On everilk syde, that succour saw he none,
Bot still lyand, and murnand maid his mone.
'O lamit Lyoun! liggand heir sa law,

5

Quhair is the mycht of magnificence?

Of quhome all brutall beistes in eird stude aw,
And dreid to luke upon thy excellence!

6

But hoip or help, but succour or defence,

In bandis strang heir mon I ly, allace!

Till I be slane-I see nane uther grace.
'Thair is na wy' that will my harmis wreck,
Nor creature do confort to my croun;

Quha sall me bute? quha sall my bandis brek?
Quha sall me put fra pane of this presoun ?'—
Be he had mide this lamentatioun,
Throw aventure 10 the lytill Mous come neir,
And of the Lyoun hard the pietuous beir 11.
And suddandlie it come in till hir mynd

That it suld be the Lyoun did hir grace,
And said, 'Now ever I fals, and richt unkynd,
But gif I quit sum part of thy gentrace
Thow did to me:' and on this way scho gais

12

To hir fellowis, and on thame fast can cry,
'Cum help, cum help;' and they come all in hy 13.

'Lo!' quod the Mous, 'this is the samin Lyoun
That grantit grace to me quhen I wes tane;
And now is fast heir bundin in presoun,

Brekand his heart, with sair murning and mane;
Bot we him help of succour wait 1 he nane;

entangled.

lying.
By chance.

VOL. I.

Cum help to quyte ane gude turne for ane uther;
Go, louse him sone;'—and they said, 'Yea, gude brother.'

They tuke na knyfe, their teith wes scharp aneuch :
To se that sicht, forsuith it wes greit wonder,
How that thay ran amang the raipis teuch

Befoir, behind, sum yeild1about, sum under,
And schuir2 the raipis of the nett in schunder;
Syne bad him ryse, and he start up anone,
And thankit thame, syne on his way is gone.

1 went.

2 cut.

WILLIAM DUNBAR.

[Born 145-, died 1513 (?).]

M. TAINE, in his History of English Literature, leaps from Chaucer to Surrey with the remark, 'Must we quote all these good people who speak without having anything to say?.. dozens of translators, importing the poverties of French poetry, rhyming chroniclers, most commonplace of men.' Of this period he mentions only and merely names Gower and Lydgate and Skelton. The more genuine successors of Chaucer were the Scotch poets, who, almost alone in our island, lit up the dusk of the 15th century with some flashes of native power. Neither James I nor Henryson was commonplace, and Dunbar, the most conspicuous of the group, displays in his best work a distinct original genius.

William Dunbar was born, probably in East Lothian, between 1450 and 1460. He entered the University of St. Andrews in 1475, and took his full degree in 1479. In early life, according to his own account, he went about from Berwick to Dover, and passed over to Calais and Picardy, preaching and alms-gathering as a Franciscan noviciate; but he became dissatisfied with this life and does not seem to have taken the vows of the order. It has been inferred from allusions in his verse that he was for some years employed in connection with foreign embassies. Toward the close of the century we find him in attendance on the Scotch Court, a poet with an established reputation, and a continual suitor for place. In 1500 he received from the king (James IV) a pension of £10, raised by degrees, during the next ten years to £80-then a respectable annuity: but he never obtained the Church promotion, to which on somewhat irrelevant grounds he constantly laid claim.

Dunbar revisited England in 1501, when the king's marriage with the Princess Margaret was being negotiated. The Thistle and the Rose in commemoration of that event was composed on the 9th of May, 1503. The Golden Targe and the Lament for the

Makars were issued from Chepman's-the first Scotch-press in 1508. The poet must have accompanied the Queen, in whose favour he stood fast, to the north in 1511; for he celebrates her reception at Aberdeen. There is a record of an instalment of his pension being paid in August, 1513: the rest is a blank, and it has been plausibly conjectured that he may, a month later, have fallen at Flodden with the King. If he lived to write the Orison on the passing of Albany to France (doubtfully attributed to him) the absence of any other reference to the great national disaster is remarkable. We are, however, only certain from an allusion in Lyndesay's Papyngo that he must have been dead in 1530.

The writings of Dunbar-on the whole the most considerable poet of our island in the interval between Chaucer and Spenserare mainly Allegorical, Satirical, and Occasional. Allegory, a disease of the middle ages infecting most poets down to the end of the 16th century, was rife in our old Scotch verse, much of which is cast on the model of The Romaunt of the Rose and The Flower and the Leaf. In The Golden Targe the influence of those works is conspicuous, though much of the imitation is indirect, through The King's Quair. Like the royal minstrel, the poet represents himself as being roused from his slumbers by the morning, and led to the bank of a stream where presently a ship lands a hundred ladies (v. the 'world of ladies' in The Flower and the Leaf) in green kirtles: among them are Nature, Dame Venus, the fresh Aurora, Latona, Proserpine, &c. Then Cupid appears, leading a troop of gods to dance with the goddesses. Love detecting the poet orders his arrest. Reason defends him with the Golden Targe, till Presence comes and throws dust into the eyes of Reason and leaves Venus victrix. The plot is no more barren than those of Chaucer's own contributions to the literature of the Courts of Love: but the Targe is farther beset by an unusual number of the 'aureate' terms or affected Latinisms with which the Scotch poets of the century disfigured their language, planting them, as Campbell says, like children's flowers in a mock garden. The merit of the piece almost wholly consists in its riches of description; but this is enough to preserve it: the ship 'like a blossom on the spray,' the skies that 'rang with shouting of the larks,' recall Chaucer's Orient and anticipate Burns. The Thistle and the Rose has the same pictorial charm, with the added merit of being inspired by a genuine national enthusiasm. It is perhaps the happiest political allegory in our tongue. Heraldry has never