Than the fowll monstir Gluttony To Dance he did him dress : Full mony a waistless wally-drag 2, 3 Drynk! ay thay cryit with many a gaip, Na menstrallis playit to thame but dowt, And enterit by breif of richt. Than cryd Mahoun for a Heleand Padyane3: Far northwart in a nuke; Be he the Correnoch had done schout, 6 The Devil sa devt wes with thair yell, FROM 'THE LAMENT FOR THE MAKARIS QUHEN I that in heill1 wes and glaidness, Timor Mortis conturbat me. Our plesance heir is all vane glory The flesche is brukle 2, the Feynd is slé; The stait of Man dois change and vary Timor Mortis conturbat me. No Stait in Erd heir standis sicker, Timor Mortis conturbat me. Unto the Deid gois all Estaitis He takis the knychtis in to feild, Timor Mortis conturbat me. I see that Makaris amang the laif1 Playis heir thair padyanis, syne gois to graif; Spairit is nocht thair faculté ; Timor Mortis conturbat me. 1 health. brittle. 3 osier. 4 poets among the rest. He hes done peteouslie devour The noble Chawcer of makaris flouir He hes Blind Hary, and Sandy Traill He hes reft Merseir his endyte, So schort, so quyk, of sentence hie; He hes tane Roull of Abirdene, In Dumfermelyne he hes tane Brown And he hes now tane, last of aw, Gud Maister Walter Kennedy, Sen he has all my Brether tane, Timor Mortis conturbat me. GAWAIN DOUGLAS. [GAWAIN DOUGLAS (born 1474-75) was a younger son of the famous Earl of Angus, called 'Bell the Cat.' Though even elementary education was rare in his noble family, (Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine, Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line,') Gawain devoted himself to study, matriculated at the University of St. Andrews in 1489, and took his degree in 1494. He published his Palice of Honour in 1501, and finished his translation of the Aeneid in 1513. He seems now to have abandoned poetry, and after many stormy intrigues, was consecrated Bishop of Dunkeld in 1515. He was carried down the 'drumly' stream of Scotch politics, and died in exile in London in 1522. The date of his unpublished poem King Hart is uncertain; it was probably composed between 1501 and 1512. An admirable edition of Douglas' works has lately been made, in four volumes, by Mr. John Small of Edinburgh.] GAWAIN DOUGLAS attempted the poet's art amidst the clash of arms; he was learned in an age and among a people that despised literature. The revival of letters, when it reached Scotland, was crushed out by the nobles, who hated dominies and Italians. Classical literature and Erasmus had a pupil in the young Archbishop of St. Andrews, a Stuart who fell under the English arrows, when 'groom fought like noble, squire like knight' around the king at Flodden. Gawain Douglas, noble by birth and ambitious of nature, ceased to court poetry, after poetry had done her best for him,—had helped the recommendations of the English Court to win him a bishopric from Leo X. The lilies and laurels of Italy, the sweet Virgilian measures, were soon blighted and silenced by the wind and hail of Scotland, by clerical austerity, and the storms of war that in those days beat round even episcopal palaces. Among all the poets beheld by Douglas in vision (in the Palice of Honour), but two or three were countrymen of his own. The chief original poem of Douglas, The Palice of Honour, is an allegory of the sort which had long been in fashion. Moral ideas in allegorical disguises, descriptions of spring, and scraps of mediaeval learning were the staple of such compositions. Like the other poets, French and English, of the last two centuries, Douglas woke on a morning of May, wandered in a garden, and beheld various masques or revels of the goddesses, heroes, poets, virtues, vices (such as 'Busteousness'), and classical and Biblical worthies. In his vision he characteristically confused all that he happened to know of the past, made Sinon and Achitophel comrades in guilt and misfortune, while Penthesilea and Jeptha's daughter ranged together in Diana's company, and 'irrepreuabill Susane' rode about in the troop of 'Cleopatra and worthie Mark Anthone.' The diverting and pathetic combinations of this sort still render Douglas's poems rich in surprises, and he occasionally does poetical justice on the wicked men of antiquity, as when he makes Cicero knock down Catiline with a folio. To modern readers his allegory seems to possess but few original qualities. His poem, indeed, is rich with descriptions of flowers and stately palaces, his style, like Venus's throne, is 'with stones rich over fret and cloth of gold,' his pictures have the quaint gorgeousness and untarnished hues that we admire in the paintings of Crivelli. But these qualities he shares with so many other poets of the century which preceded his own, that we find him most original when he is describing some scene he knew too well, some hour of storm and surly weather, the bleakness of a Scotch winter, or a 'desert terribill,' like that through which 'Childe Roland to the dark tower came.' (See extracts 1 and 2.) A poem of Douglas's which was not printed during his lifetime, King Hart, is also allegorical. King Hart, or the heart of man, dwells in a kind of city of Mansoul; he is attended by five servants-the five senses,-besieged and defeated by Dame Pleasance, visited by Age, deserted by Youthhead, Disport, and Fresh Delight. There is nothing particularly original in an allegory of which the form was common before, and not unfrequently employed after the age of Douglas. (Compare 'the Bewitching Mistress Heart' in The Legal Proceedings against Sin in Man-shire, 1640.) The little piece of verse called Conscience is not bad in its quibbling way. When the Church was young and flourishing, Conscience ruled her. Men wearied of Conscience, and cut off the Con, leaving Science. Then came an age of ecclesiastical learning, |