Gavin Douglas, one of the most eminent of the early Scottish poets, was a son of Archibald, the fifth Earl of Angus, and was born about the year 1475. His father was one of the most notable of the Scottish nobility, and was generally known by the name of Archibald Bellthe-cat. According to several historians he was every way accomplished both in body and mind; of colossal stature, his countenance full of majesty, eloquent of speech, terrible in battle, upright and honest, loving and kind to his friends, reverenced and respected by all rightthinking men.

It may be readily imagined that such a father took care to give his children a liberal education. Gavin was the bright boy of the family. He went to St. Andrew's and, like his predecessor, Durbar, he took holy orders. He was some time in France. Every Scot who could afford it seemed to think that a sojourn in France was essential to a complete education at that time. There were other reasons also, as the perpetual war with England rendered it necessary that a friendly alliance with France should be kept up, and thither all the promising sons of Scottish nobility sojourned for a time.

When Gavin came back at the age of 22 he was appointed to a benefice at Hawick and in a few years was advanced to the office of dean of St. Giles. At Hawick he began writing verses, first some translations of Ovid and then a

fine original work entitled "The Palace of Honour." In this poem the author's design is, under the similitude of a vision, to represent the vanity and inconstancy of all worldly pomp and glory; and to show that a constant and inflexible course of virtue and goodness is the only way to true honor and felicity, which he allegorically describes as a magnificent palace, situated on the top of a very high mountain, of a most difficult access.

The general opinion of the best critics is that John Bunyan must have adopted his idea of "The Pilgrim's Progress" from "The Palace of Honour." There is a very marked resemblance between the two works. Both are represented as dreams. Both represent a journey towards a place superior to the nature of this world. In the one the pilgrim of Honor, in the other, the pilgrim of Christianity, are the heroes; and both are conducted by supernatural beings on a march represented as somewhat trying to human strength. to human strength. Douglas's is the more scholarly and ornate and symmetrical in structure, but in intense realism and portraiture of character it is nowhere comparable to Bunyan's marvelous work. Both works end in a place full of celestial glories, and in both cases, a limbo, or hades, by the wayside, a little before the ultimate end is reached. The poet's work has the charm of the medieval romance; the Bedford tinker's work has the breath of the life that is everlasting.

In 1512 Douglas began his greatest work, a translation of the Aeneid of Virgil into Scottish verse. It was the first translation of a Roman classic into a British tongue, and while it is not generally looked upon as the best translation of that noble work, it is not only the work of a bold and energetic writer eminently qualified for the task, but exhibits a rich and varied fancy in the introduction of the different books where the poet presents original interludes descriptive of Scottish life and scenery and from which admirable idea, doubtless, Walter Scott has given the fine interludes in his poem of "Marmion" and other similar work. A brief specimen of Douglas's translation may be given of the well-known passage of Virgil describing a descent into the dwelling of Pluto. The Latin poet thus describes the journey:

"Facilis descensus Averni, Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis; Sed revocare, gradum, superasque, evadere ad auras,

Hoc opus, hic labor est; pauci quos æquus amavit

Jupiter, aut ardens evexit ad æthera virtus,

Dis geniti, potuere. Tenent media omnia silvæ,

Cocytusque sinu labens circumfluit atro."

The following is Douglas's translation slightly modernized:

"It is richt easy I thee tell

For to descend down into hell,
Black Pluto's gates and that dark way
Stands ever open nicht and day,
But therefrom to return again
Is frought with care and muckle pain;
There weary wark and labour lies,
For few there be beneath the skies
Whose ardent virtues so excel
To match with Jupiter himsel',

They born of gods may upward press
Through all the weary wilderness
Of pathless forests wildly rude
And Cocytus whose raging flood
Flows midway in the troubled space
Forever 'round that awful place."

The interludes written by Douglas between the several parts of the translation of Virgil's work form, perhaps, the most interesting portion of Douglas's poetical work. It has been claimed by eminent authorities that the first poems describing scenery were the two exquisite poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, written by John Milton. The following is a sample of Douglas's work written at least a century before the English poet. It describes an evening in June, in the prelude to the seventh book:

"On every pile and pickle of the crops The dew-drops hang, like burning beryl drops,

And on the halesome herbs, and eke the weeds,

Like crystal gems or little silver beads, The light begins to fail, the mists to rise, And here and there grim shades o'erspread the skies,

The bald and leathern bat commenced her flight

The lark descended from her airy height, Mists sweep the vale before the lazy wind,

And night unfolds her cloak with sable lined,

Swaddling the beauty of the fruitful ground

With cloth of shade, obscurity profound. Each thing that roves the meadow or the wood,

Each thing that flies through air, or dives in flood,

Each thing that nestles in the bosky bank Or loves to rustle in the marshes dank, All beasts, or wild or tame, or great or

small,

God's peace and blessing rests serene o'er all."