to foreign parts, and do his work-teaching what he could communicate, or learning what he desired to know, according to the condition of his means and motives. This gave to the Scots, cut off as they were from the natural brotherhood of their close neighbours of the same family, privileges of citizenship and community over Europe, the breadth and fulness of which it is difficult now to realise.

408

CHAPTER XL.

CONDITION OF THE NATION FROM THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE TO THE REFORMATION.

(Continued.)

SCOTS SCHOLARS -THEIR EARLY FAME

ABROAD-COMMENCEMENT

OF NATIONAL LITERATURE-THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN-RISE AND PECULIAR CONDITIONS OF A PATRIOTIC LITERATURE-BARBOUR, BLIND HARRY, WYNTOUN, FORDUN, BOWER, BOECE, MAJOR, BUCHANAN, LESLIE 'THE COMPLAYNT OF SCOTLAND'—INFLUENCE OF THE PATRIOTIC LITERATURE-DUNBAR, MONTGOMERY, AND THE OTHER POETS-LANGUAGE OF SCOTS LITERATURE VESTIGES OF CELTIC LITERATURE-PRINTING-THE ARTS-SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL AND BARONIAL REMAINS SHOW THE POVERTY FOLLOWING THE WAR, AND THE INFLUENCE OF FRANCE-MATERIAL CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY-EXPORTS AND IMPORTS-MINING -GOLD, SILVER, LEAD, AND COAL-A SPANISH AMBASSADOR'S ACCOUNT OF SCOTLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

IT was among the many misfortunes brought to Scotland by her ceaseless struggle for national existence, that an excessive proportion of her intellectual affluence was given to foreign lands. This sacrifice was, no doubt, obvious to the founders of the universities, who thought there might be a fairer balance of trade in the matter of scholarship if their own country could command quiet retreats for learned leisure, amid comfort, the luxuries of the age, libraries, and good society. The earliest native of Scotland to gain a lasting fame in letters was John Duns, commonly called Scot or Scotus. At the time when

Robert Bruce was fighting at the head of the national party, John the Scot was teaching divinity and metaphysics in Paris and Cologne, and making to himself so brilliant a reputation that it might be a fair question for discussion whether or not he was the most illustrious intellectual leader of his day. In the religious world, he was the leader of the Franciscans; in the philosophical world, he was so much the author of Realism that the school who opposed the Nominalists got from him the name of Scotists.

Scotland at that time had work all too serious at home to participate in the intellectual treasures which her illustrious son was bestowing on the world. To trace in detail his history, and that of his countrymen who afterwards signalised themselves in the great republic of letters, would be away from the present purpose. Having taken note of him as foremost in the rank of a great body of men who made their country famous abroad, let us turn to such Scots literature as had a home influence. Of this, even, there can be no room here for a full critical examination. It must suffice that the conspicuous specialties, and chiefly those which had a peculiar national character or exercised a strong influence on national feeling, be noticed.

Whether the metrical tale of Sir Tristrem-belonging to the romance school which dealt with King Arthur and his knights was written by a Scotsman, is a question that has been discussed in a great critical contest. The author to whom Scott and others, who maintain its Scots origin, trace it, is Thomas of Ercildoun, or Thomas the Rhymer. His name was popular in Scotland, and is still remembered. He had the fame not only of an epic poet or bard, but of a prophet, occupying in his own country somewhat of the position held by Merlin in England, and afterwards by Nostradamus in France. All great national events-all national calamities, especially such as the English invasions-were reputed to have been prophesied by him in rhymes repeated by the people. When compared with the corresponding events, it was ever the fate of the prophecies of "True Thomas" that

they had been uttered in vain to a careless and unbelieving people, who culpably neglected the warning thrown out by the patriotic seer; yet it is hardly consistent with the logic of prophecy that it should preclude its own fulfilment. His fame was founded in other shapes. The wildest and strangest of the fairy ballads of Scotland are devoted to True Thomas, and his dealings in fairyland with the Queen of Elfin and other persons in authority there. It is, indeed, around his name that the great bulk of the fairy lore of Scotland is found to cluster.

Thomas of Ercildoun was a real man; his name was Learmonth, and his property of Ercildoun has been traced in charters. He died a very old man, about the time when Edward I. was shaping his projects against Scotland, leaving by repute, as a legacy to his countrymen, a prophetic warning of the destiny in preparation for them. His name became known abroad as that of a rhymer or poet.1

At the opening of the romance of Sir Tristrem there is mention of Ercildoun and Thomas. Some boy, or mischievous trifler, has, however, mutilated the passage, by cutting out of it an illuminated letter on its reverse, little conscious, no doubt, of the exciting difficulty which the mutilation was to launch into the literary world, in the decision of the question, whether Thomas was referred to as the author of the romance, or in some other capacity.2 It may be said, however, of Sir Tristrem, and of the romance of Launcelot of the Lake, also attributed to a native of Scotland, that they cannot be counted national literature, in the more interesting shape in which we shall find it growing in later times. There is nothing of a national tone and there are no local allusions in Sir Tris

1 In the Epitome Bibliothecæ Conradi Gesneri, published in 1555, we have "Thomas Leirmont vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus, edidit rhythmica quædam, et ob id Rhythmicus apud Anglos cognominatus est. Vixit anno 1286." This, with many other valuable notices, is not to be found in the Bibliotheca itself, only in the Epitome.

2 The substance of the discussion will be best read in Scott's edition of the romance, and in Price's edition of Warton's History of English Poetry.

trem, to give help to the argument that it was written by a Scotsman. King Arthur and his chivalry were the materials of a romance literature common to all Europe. To Thomas Learmonth it would have made no perceptible difference in language and tone of feeling, had he lived on the south instead of the north side of the Tweed. It would be known to him only, if he was the prophet he was afterwards held to be, that a time would come when the people inhabiting his Ercildoun and the neighbouring glens would hate, with the deepest feelings of national hatred, their neighbours on the other side of the river.

In the next stage of Scots literature we find it animated by that hatred. On this account it is a literature coming especially under the notice of the historian, who, when he deals with it, has to regret that its coming was so long delayed. There is, indeed, a great gap in the home sources of Scots history. It was about the year 660 that Adamnan wrote his Life of St Columba. Adamnan was not a native of Scotland, but he lived in Iona, where he was abbot; and what he gives us of Scots history, or national peculiarities, comes from one who was living in Scotland. We have nothing else written about the annals of the country, by one dwelling in it, until we come to John of Fordun, who wrote about the year 1350-six hundred years later. There is the Chronicle of Mailros, supposed to have been kept by the monks of that great Cistercian abbey. But during the period it covers, which is before the War of Independence, these churchmen were to be considered as Englishmen rather than Scotsmen, owing their spiritual allegiance to the successors of St Cuthbert. The history of Scotland does not preponderate in the chronicle; it receives little more notice there than from the ordinary chronicles of the English monks.

Our excessive poverty in this kind of literature is shown in the greed with which we seize on every crumb that reaches us from the affluent collection of English chronicles. We have first the help to be found in the writings of Bede, exceedingly precious, although they profess only to bear on ecclesiastical matters. They carry their value in their own internal evidence, and it is certified by the