Dunbar visits France and the Continent, 1491-1500 (?), Dunbar a priest and Court poet, 1500-12, Dunbar and the Embassy to London to negotiate the mar- riage of James IV. and Margaret Tudor, 1501-2, Estimate of Dunbar's genius-Its wide range-Its defects, Comparison of Dunbar with preceding Scottish poets, INTRODUCTION. I. MEMOIR OF DUNBAR. OBJECT OF INTRODUCTION-THE MSS. OF DUNBAR'S POEMS. WILLIAM DUNBAR is generally held in Scotland to be the best Scottish poet prior to the Reformation. Sir Walter Scott calls him "the excellent poet, unrivalled by any which Scotland ever produced." Yet either praise may appear due to patriotism, for the qualities of Dunbar require study before they are fully appreciated. An American writer gives a different verdict. "Dunbar's works were disinterred some thirty years ago by Mr Laing, and whoso is national enough to like thistles, may browse there to his heart's content. I am inclined for other pasture, having long ago satisfied myself by a good deal of dogged reading that every generation is sure enough of its own share of bores without borrowing from the. past."1 Dunbar must stand or fall on his merits, not on the opinions of any critic. His poems, always valued by a select circle, require, more than 1 Lowell. α V the works of most poets, an introduction to the reader. This is not because they are obscure. With few exceptions, they are clear in thought and language, but the dialect in which they are written is in part antiquated, and their relation to his own life, and the country and age in which he lived, must be present if we would grasp their complete meaning. It will be the aim of this Introduction to illustrate Dunbar's poems by a sketch of his life, with an outline of the history of Scotland, so far as necessary to estimate the character of his genius in itself, and in comparison with his predecessors and successors in the long and honourable line of Scottish poetry. It was to have been the work of Mr Small to whom the Society owes this edition of his writings. No one since Mr David Laing was a more diligent student of the ancient Scottish poets, or was better versed in the Scottish vernacular. His death, when a long-cherished project for the publication according to the best texts of the works of the authors who used it was at last begun, was a severe loss to all students of our early literature. "Abeunt studia in mores." Something of the shrewd humour, the warm patriotism of the old Scottish poets, passed into their interpreter. It is with deep regret that the present writer takes up a part of Mr Small's unfinished labours. It was thought that the members of the Society might reasonably wish to have their copies of Dunbar completed by an Introduction, Glossary, and Notes; and Dr Gregor having undertaken the onerous task of the Glossary and Notes, the Introduction, for which Mr Small had made some memoranda, kindly placed at the disposal of the Society by Mr Small's representa tives, has been intrusted to the writer of the Introduction by the Council. The learned researches of Mr Laing, and the admirable work of Professor Schipper of Vienna, who for the first time made Dunbar known on the Continent, and suggested an arrangement of the order of his poems which is a great aid to the understanding of his character, render the study of Dunbar much easier than it otherwise would have been. No acknowledgment can be too strong for the help received from these two writers. From other sources less assistance than might have been anticipated has been derived. Yet it would be ungrateful not to refer to the notices of Dunbar by Warton in his History of English and by Irving in that of Scottish Poetry, to the brief but instructive notes of Lord Hailes, and the valuable though not always accurate notes of Mr Pinkerton. It was the singular fortune of Dunbar, after having been recognised by his contemporary Gavin Douglas, and David Lyndsay, his immediate successor, as the master of the Scottish makers, to be almost forgotten for nearly two centuries. His fame was restored by the publication of some of his poems in the 'Evergreen' by Allan Ramsay in 1724. "Thrice fifty and six towmonds neat, From when it was collected. Let worthy poets hope good fate, Through time they'll be respected. Fashions of words and wit may change, And rob in part their fame, And make them to dull fops look strange,— But sense is still the same." "During this period," says Mr Laing, "with one solitary exception, no allusion, not even so much as the mention of |