Where as in ward full oft I would bewail
My deadly life, full of pain and penance,
Saying right thus, What have I guilt to fail a
My freedom in this world and my pleasance?
Sen b every wight has thereof suffisance
That I behold, and I a creature

Put from all this, hard is mine aventure.c
The bird, the beast, the fish eke in the sea,
They live in freedom everich in his kind,
And I a man, and lacketh liberty!

What shall I sayn, what reason may I find,
That fortune should do so? Thus in my mind
My folk I would argue;d but all for nought;
Was none that might that on my paines wrought.
Then would I say, Gif God me had devised
To live my life in thraldom thus and pine,
What was the cause that he more me comprised f
Than other folk to live in such ruine?

I suffer alone among the figures nine; g
Ane woeful wretch, that to no wight may speed,h
And yet of every lives help has need!
The longe dayes and the nightes eke.

I would bewail my fortune in this wise;
For which again distress comfort to seek
My custom was on mornes for to rise,
Early as day; O happy exercise!
By thee came I to joy out of torment:-
But now to purpose of my first intent.

a What guilt have I (what have I been guilty of) so that I should want (be deprived of).

b Since.

c Hap, lot, fate.

d According to Chalmers this means, "I would argue with my attendants-the Earl of Orkney and others of his train." We suspect the word folk to be a mistranscription-perhaps for fate.

There was no one that might do what had any effect in relieving my sufferings?-if the line be not corrupt.

Doomed, forced.

g"Of all the nine numbers mine is the most unlucky."Chalmers. To no man may do service. j Against.

¡ Living person.

Bewailing in my chamber thus alone,
Despaired of all joy and remedy,
Fortirit of my thought and woe-begone,
And to the window gan I walk in hy1
To see the world and folk that went forby,m
As, for the time though I of mirthes food
Might have no more, to look it did me good.

Now was there made, fast by the Toures wall,
A garden fair, and in the corners set

n

Ane herber green, with wandes long and small
Railed about; and so with trees set,

Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That life P was none walking there forby
That might within scarce any wight espy.

So thick the bewes and the leaves green
Beshaded all the alleys that there were,
And middes every herber might be seen
The sharpe, greene, sweete juniper,
Growing so fair with branches here and there,
That, as it seemed to a life without,
The bewes spread the herber all about.

And on the smale greene twistes sate

The little sweete nightingale, and sung
So loud and clear the hymnes consecrate
Of loves use, now soft now loud among,
That all the gardens and the walles rung
Right of their song and on the couple next
Of their sweet harmony; and lo the text :-

Tired. The termination here is Scotch. But is this the reading of the MS.? Other printed editions have Fortired. 1 Haste. m Past? "Forby" in modern Scotch means besides. Ellis says, "probably an arbour:"-Chalmers, "a garden plot set with plants and flowers-a grove with an arbour, railed with trellis-work, and close set about with trees." 1 Boughs.

• Knit.

P Living person.
Amidst.

Not understood. Tytler thinks "couple" relates to the pairing of the birds; Ellis and Chalmers, that it is a musical

term

Worshippe, ye that lovers been, this May,
For of your bliss the kalends are begun,
And sing with us, Away, winter, away!

Come, summer, come, the sweet season and sun;
Awake, for shame! that have your heavens won,t
And amorously lift up your heades all;

Hark Love, that list you to his mercy call.

The description of the lady whom he afterwards sees "walking under the Tower," at whose sudden apparition, "anon," he says,-

-"astart u

The blood of all my body to my heart”—

is exceedingly elaborate, but is too long to be quoted. Ellis has given the greater part of it in his Specimens.* Two other poems of considerable length, in a humorous style, have also been attributed to James I.-' Peebles to the Play,' and 'Christ's Kirk on the Green'-both in the Scotish dialect; but they are more probably the productions of his equally gifted and equally unfortunate descendant James V. (slain at Flodden in 1513). Chalmers, however, assigns the former to James I. As for the two famous comic ballads of 'The Gaberlunzie Man,' and 'The Jolly Beggar,' which it has been usual among recent writers to speak of as by one or other of these kings, there seems to be no reasonable ground—not even that of tradition of any antiquity-for assigning them to either.

Chaucer, we have seen, appears to have been unknown to his contemporary Barbour; but after the time of James I. the Scotish poetry for more than a century

✰ “Ye that have attained your highest bliss.”—Tytler.

u Started up.

* Vol. i. pp. 305-309.

bears evident traces of the imitation of the great English master. It was a consequence of the relative circumstances of the two countries, that, while the literature of Scotland, the poorer and ruder of the two, could exert no influence upon that of England, the literature of England could not fail powerfully to affect and modify that of its more backward neighbour. No English writer would think of studying or imitating Barbour; but every Scotish poet who arose after the fame of Chaucer had passed the border would seek, or, even if he did not seek, would still inevitably catch, some inspiration from that great example. If it could in any circumstances have happened that Chaucer should have remained unknown in Scotland, the singular fortunes of James I. were shaped as if on purpose to transfer the manner and spirit of his poetry into the literature of that country. From that time forward the native voice of the Scotish muse was mixed with this other foreign voice. One of the earliest Scotish poets after James I. is Robert Henryson, or Henderson, the author of the beautiful pastoral of Robin and Makyne,' which is popularly known from having been printed by Bishop Percy in his 'Reliques." He has left us a continuation or supplement to Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cresseide,' which is commonly printed along with the works of that poet under the title of 'The Testament of Fair Cresseide.'

*Vol. ii. pp. 73-78. It was first printed in Ramsay's 'Evergeen,' 12mo. Edin. 1724. (Or see second edition, Glasgow, 1824.) It is also in Lord Hailes's Ancient Scotish Poems' (from the Bannatyne MS.) 8vo. Edin. 1770. And an edition of this Poem and of the Testament of Cresseide, by the late George Chalmers was printed for the Bannatyne Club, in 4to. at Edinburgh, in 1824.

All that is known of the era of Henryson is that he was alive and very old about the close of the fifteenth century. He may therefore probably have been born about the time that James I. returned from England. Henryson is also the author of a translation into English or Scotish verse of Æsop's Fables, of which there is a MS. in the Harleian Collection (No. 3865), and which was printed at Edinburgh in 8vo. in 1621, under the title of 'The Moral Fables of Æsop the Phrygian, compyled into eloquent and ornamental meter, by Robert Henrison, schoolemaster of Dumferling.' A re-impression of this edition (limited to 68 copies) was executed at Edinburgh, in 4to. in 1832, for the members of the Maitland Club. To Henryson, moreover, as has been already noticed, Mr. Laing attributes the tale of 'Orpheus and Eurydice' contained in the collection of old poetry, entitled 'The Knightly Tale of Golagrus and Gawane,' &c., reprinted by him in 1827.

Contemporary, too, with Henryson, if. not perhaps rather before him, was Sir John or Sir Richard Holland, whose poem entitled 'The Buke of the Howlat,' (that is, the owl) was printed under the care of Mr. Laing, in 4to. at Edinburgh in 1823, for the Bannatyne and Abbotsford Clubs. It had been previously printed, with less correctness, by Pinkerton in his 'Scotish Poems,' 3 vols. 8vo. 1792; and also in the first volume of Sibbald's 'Chronicle of Scotish Poetry,' 4 vols. 8vo. 1802. Holland's poem, a wild and rugged effusion in alliterative metre, cannot be charged as an imitation of Chaucer, or of any other English writer of so late a date.