What mortall man hath bene promoted so,
In worldly wealth or uncertayne dignitie,
That ever, of life, had houre of certaintie.

In stormy windes, lowest trees are most sure,
And houses surest which are not builded hye,
Whereas hye buildinges may no tempest endure,
Without they be founded sure and stedfastly:
So greatest men have most feare and jeopardie,
Better is povertie though it be hard to beare,
Then is a high degree in jeopardie and feare.

The hills are hye, the valleys are but lowe,
In valleys is corne, the hills are barrayne,
On highest places most gras doth not ay growe:
A mery thing is measure and easy to sustayne,
The hyest in great feare, the lowest live in payne.
Yet better lye on grounde, having no name at all,
Then hye on a cliffering, always to fall.

Nor is the comparative elegance of the style the sole merit of this curious work. Its satire is, generally, as just as it is poignant; and the purpose of the author appears uniformly to be, to do good by his exposures. The work, it is true, claims only to be a compound translation from the Latin, French, and Dutch; but it is a translation, made with great freedom, and enriched with considerable additions of Barclay's own. The ground-work of the translation was a book under the same title, written by Sebastian Brandt, a German, better known as the reputed discoverer of phosphorus.

The "Ship of Fools" was first printed at London, by Richard Pynson, in 1509, in small folio; again, in the same size, in 1519; and in quarto, in 1570. The

parent edition, which is adorned with a variety of curious wood cuts, bears a high price; no less than one hundred guineas, being about ten times more than any of the other old editions sell for. A copious description of it may be found in Dibdin's edition of Ames, vol. ii. p. 431.*

The "Eclogues" of Barclay are ranked, by Warton, as among the earliest pastoral productions in the

* In Messrs. Longman and Co's. Bib. Ang. Poet. the mention of the Ship of Fools is very ingenuously accompanied with the following quotation from the work, which hits with some smartness the folly which confers such an inordinate value on works, merely on account of their antiquity, and not of what they contain.

That in this shyp, the chief place I gouerne,
By this wide sea, with foles wanderinge.
The cause is playne and easy to dyscerne,
Styll am I besy bok assemblynge,
For to have plenty it is a pleasant thynge,
In my conceyt, and to have them ay in hande,
But what they mene do I not understande.

But yet I have them in great reverence
And honoure, savynge them from filth and ordure,
By often brushynge, and moche diligence;
Full goodly bounde in pleasant couverture
Of damas, satyn, or els of velvet pure,

I kepe them sure, feryng lest they shoulde be lost,
For in them is the cunnynge wherein I me boast.

A.S.

English language. They were also translations, freely made; five of them from Mantuanus, and three from Eneas Silvius..

The "Castle of Labour" was another work, by Barclay, translated from the French; the purpose of which is to shew

"That Idleness, mother of all adversity,

Her subjects bringeth to extreme poverty."

At the request of Sir Giles Alyngton, Barclay also translated, from the Latin of Dominicke Mancini, "The Mirrour of Good Manners," which he styles "a Right Fruitful Treatise” on the four cardinal virtues.

The Duke of Norfolk, another of Barclay's patrons, employed him to make a translation of Sallust's Jugurthine War, which he executed, not only with accuracy, but with considerable elegance.

Barclay was also the author of several "Lives of Saints;" a book, entitled "The figure of our Mother Holy Church oppressed by the French King;" and a Treatise against Skelton, the Poet Laureate, a great enemy to the priesthood, a circumstance which is supposed to have turned his brother satirist's pen against him.* T. B.

In consequence of a satire, which Skelton wrote against the "cankered Cardinal Wolsey," he was obliged to take refuge, from his vengeance, in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. It was a spirited reprobation of the barons of England for their mean compliances with the arrogance of that haughty prelate; and does a degree of honor to the courage of the poet, which the sa

tire of even so able a writer as Barclay cannot diminish. A few lines will shew the nerve with which it was written.

ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY.

FEW of our Scottish poets have been treated more unkindly or more unjustly by the critics, than Alexander Montgomery. Men who have been unbounded in their praise of Allan Ramsay, have been able to discover no merit in a poet whom Ramsay both admired and studied; and one writer, indeed, who represents Ramsay's Vision as one of the finest antient Scottish poems extant, thinks" The Cherry and the Slae," Montgomery's chief production, absolutely "beneath contempt;" although it is a fact, that the Vision was formed on the model of the Cherry and the Slae, and is indebted to it for whole lines and couplets of some of its most striking stanzas. The description of the Genius of Caledonia in the Vision, which has been particularly admired † by all critics, is, after all, no more than a very literal, though undoubtedly happy, paraphrase of the following description of Cupid, by Montgomery.

Sae myld lyke and chyld lyke,
With bow three quarters scant,
Sae moylie and coylie,

He lukit lyk ane sanct.

* Pinkerton.

+ See Life of Ramsay.