KENNEDY TO DUNBAR. Thou luvis nane Erische, elf I undirstand, thin, Throw his tressoun brocht Inglis rumpillis in, So wald thy self, mycht thou to him succeid. That this extraordinary specimen of mutual invective was nothing more than playful pastime, is placed beyond doubt by the kindly reference to Kennedy in Dunbar's "Lament," as "Gud Maister Walter Kennedy," who appears to have been still living, though "at the point of death" when the "Lament" was written. The same conclusion may be inferred from the fact of the poet's contributions being always found together, as if they were common property, being printed as such so early as 1508, while both were probably living. Connecting the name of the shipthe Katherine-mentioned in the "Flyting," in which Dunbar is said to have embarked for France, with an entry in the Treasurer's Accounts for July 1491, Dr Laing concludes that the piece, or pieces, was written about that date, while Dunbar was in Paris, whither he had gone in the train of the Earl of Bothwell. He does not appear to have returned with the ambassadors in November, but to have remained in France over the winter, with the purpose of crossing the Alps in spring, on some errand for his royal master. The next notice we find of him is from the register of the Privy Seal, where, on the 15th August 1500, it is ordained that he be paid a pension of ten pounds a year for all the days of his life, or "untill he be promoted by our sovereign Lord to a benefice of the value of forty pounds or more yearly." The reason for granting the pension is not specified. To the entry in the Treasurer's Accounts, 20th December 1501, on which day Dunbar was paid the instalment of his pension due at Martinmas, it is added, by way of explanation of the payment being made so long after, "on his return from England." Ambassadors having been sent in October to negotiate the terms of the king's marriage with the Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., Dunbar's name is entered in the safe-conduct as one of their attendants. On Christmas week they were entertained at dinner by the Lord Mayor, and Dunbar is mentioned in a contemporary chronicle as a Prothonotary of Scotland, and servant of a bishop ambassador, as having made a ballad on the occasion. The ballad referred to is "In honour of the City of London," and might pass for a translation of an ode by a poet in the suite of the Shah of Persia. If an entry in the Privy Purse Accounts of Henry VII. of £6, 13s. 4d., on the 31st December, with a similar payment on the 7th January following, to the "Rhymer of of Scotland," refers, as is most likely, to Dunbar, he must have returned to England to witness the ceremony of affiancing the princess, which was observed with great splendour at St Paul's Cross, on 25th January 1502. His poem of "The Thistle and the Rose," which is an epithalamium on the mar- a benefice of £100 or above." In May Notwithstanding his unrestrained familiarity at the court, a great many of his short poems are vain appeals, in every variety of ingenious pleading, to the king for promotion to some benefice. If these did not produce the effect desired, they were not altogether fruitless, for, besides many special presents from the king, his pension was increased in 1507 to the sum of twenty pounds per annum. An entry in the Treasurer's books of 17th March 1504, records the fact of his having performed his first mass before the king, when he was presented with the sum of £4, 18s. od. Scots, a sum larger than the customary offering on such occasions. It appears from his "Lament for the Makaris”—which, from the fact of its being printed in 1508 along with the "Golden Terge" and "The Flyting," must have been written shortly before then that his health had given way about this time, and the poem bears the impress of the despondency incident to such a condition; yet he soon after recovered, and resumed his usual place in the gaieties of the court circle. On the 26th August 1510, his pension was increased from twenty to eighty pounds "during life, or until promoted to | The next event affecting the circumstances of Dunbar, was the national calamity of the defeat of Flodden. With the disintegration of the court consequent on this sad disaster, his name disappears from the Treasurer's Accounts; and we have no information as to what may have been the condition of his declining years; for although, as has been shown, he was in high favour with the queen, yet owing to the distracted state of the kingdom, she herself and her second husband, the Earl of Angus, were obliged in 1815 to seek refuge for a time at the court of her brother, Henry VIII. We are therefore left in unpleasant suspense as to how he may have fared. His poem of "Ane Orisoun when the Governour passed into France," which is supposed to refer to the first retirement of John Duke of Albany in 1517, shows him to have been alive then, and though sorely grieved for the troubled state of the country, he makes no allusion to personal circumstances. His fine poem "Meditation in Winter," which must be referred to this period of his life, and in which, with all the ease and firmness of touch of his best days, he personifies age as saying :- -"Cum bruder by the hand me tak ;" and death as casting up his gates wide, has been supposed to reflect a somewhat lurid light upon the circumstances of his latter years; yet we For fear of this all day I droop : How glad that ever I dine or sup. The application of the last line is sufficiently indefinite to have given rise to the unfavourable surmises that have been based upon the passage; yet unsupported as it is by anything else, pointing to causes of disquietude beyond those sombre reflections incident to the poetical temperament as age advances, we may hope that his last years were sufficiently provided for; and if, as is most likely, those religious pieces, of which "Love Earthly and Divine" may be taken as a specimen, be the production of the evening of his life, we have sufficient reason for concluding, though information on the point is altogether awanting, that his sun set in a cloudless sky. Dr Laing supposes him to have died about 1520. The natural leaning of the biographer is, as a rule, towards the moral integrity of his subject, yet the first impressions communicated by the writings of Dunbar militate against this disposition. His genius is so much beyond the range and compass of any of his predecessorsis so many sided, both in its instinctive and artificially cultivated powers-that it requires much greater study and | observation from such a number of points, and under such a variety of conditions, before his poetic and moral character can be justly estimated, that if viewed, so to speak, with the same focus with which ordinary mortals are observed, we are at first apt to be repelled by the coarseness, as well as appalled by the power of some of his sketches. A first view brings all that is worst into prominence. We concur seriously in the inference ironically suggested by himself, that the fiend made him a friar; and we conclude, besides, that the same evil divinity sent him to court as the best school to perfect him in those arts of which he is the promoter and patron. We see in him the chief buffoon among a host of clowns; a hanger on for a benefice for no ultimate end, save its worldly emoluments; a profligate reveller, familiar with, if not a proficient in, all the vices that imagination can conjure up. But on a second view, and with an enlarged focus, what at first repelled fades into the background, and we begin to see that there never was a priest with so little cant and hypocrisy, or one who exposed the vices of his order with a more truthful pen; never a courtier less given to flatter, or more faithful in pointing out the consequences of evil courses-never an expectant who was less of a sycophant, or whose bluntness and candour were less subservient to his self interest. We wonder by what unperceived arts he retained his place at court, and what attractions the court can have had for such a character. But these are questions, considering the little we know of his circumstances, and the impossibility of our estimating fairly the forces of every kind that influenced him-socially, morally, and religiously-in an age so far removed, and so different in every sense from our own, that we feel quite incapable of answering satisfactorily. The difficulty of estimating him as a poet, and as a personage of historical significance a character in which he has hitherto been overlooked-arises from the greatness and variety of the subject. Nature produces no perfect parallels in any of her provinces, and therefore comparisons are not only misleading but proverbially odious; yet a reference to acknowledged characters may help in estimating the force or amount of their specialties in others. Dunbar has been compared to Burns; and so far as the comparison is not competitive, but simply illustrative, it is advantageous. It enables us to define him the more readily, when we can say that, like Burns, he was possessed of a lofty imagination, wonderful descriptive and sarcastic powers, and, what is common to all great poets, an instinctive philosophic sense which enabled him to seize the essentials of his subject with an ease and brevity that no amount of mere artificial training could communicate. In the bold and free handling, and sharply defined features of some of his pictures, he resembles Hogarth, and like that true but grim and graphic delineator of character, preferred to portray the human heart, and human conduct, through an exhibition of their vices and follies. He was a consummate artist, and no one ever showed more clearly how much more severe the satire of truth is than that of caricature. We have left little space to refer to his historical significance. While the coarseness of David Lindsay has been condoned on the not very consistent plea that it greatly aided the Reformation in Scotland, Dunbar's coarse and free handling of the lives of the clergy was the earliest attack upon the corruptions of the Church. But what he was, as much as what he did, constitutes his historical significance. How ill fitted was such a transparent and honest character to form a member of the Roman priesthood, and what a light from within does his works throw upon the rottenness of that mighty fabric on the eve of its greatest downfall! In the "Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins," a bevy of proud harlots is followed by a company of shaven-headed priests, upon which all the fiends in hell laugh and make gikks. That such a picture could be drawn by a priest, seemingly without any remonstrance, speaks volumes for the corruption of the institution; and though celibacy is no where condemned by Dunbar, or even directly referred to, no one who can read between the lines but sees the unnatural fruits of the unnatural prohibition. It would be a breach of the conditions on which this book is projected, to give illustrations of the full extent of Dunbar's genius, or to farther extend this imperfect survey of it. One of his most powerful and longest pieces can only be read with closed doors, yet the specimens given will at least justify most of what is above stated. The rank here assigned him as the greatest of our ancient poets, has been awarded by all our literary historians and critical writers. His poems have When March was with variand windis Whose heart some time has glad and past, And Aperil had, with her silver showers, Tane leave at Nature with ane orient blast, And lusty May, that mother is of flowers, blissful been, Sangis to make under the leavis green." V. Had made the birdis to begin their 'Whereto,' quoth I, 'sall I uprise at hours Among the tender odours red and white, Whose harmony to hear it was delight, II. In bed, at morrow, sleeping as I lay, On whois hand a lark sang fro the spleen 3 "Awake, lovers, out of your slumbering! See how the lusty morrow4 does upspring." morrow, For in this May few birdis heard I sing; They have more cause to weep and plane their sorrow; Thy air it is not wholesome nor bening; Lord Eolus dois in thy season ring :3 So busteous are the blastis of his horn, Among thy boughs to walk I have forborne' VI. With that this Lady soberly did smile, And said, "Uprise, and do thy obser vance; 1 Matins, orisons. 2 Hailed, saluted. 3 The heart. 4 Beautiful morning. I Dress coloured. 2 Rays, brightness. 3 Reign. 4 Boisterous. |
