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Then is he decked as poete laureate,

When stinking Thais made him her graduate :-
If they have smelled the artes triviall,

They count them poets bye and heroicall®.

The TOWRE OF VERTUE AND HONOUR, introduced as a fong of one of the shepherds into these pastorals, exhibits no very masterly strokes of a fublime and inventive fancy. It has much of the trite imagery usually applied in the fabrication of these ideal edifices. It, however, fhews our author in a new walk of poetry. This magnificent tower, or castle, is built on inacceffible cliffs of flint: the walls are of gold, bright as the fun, and decorated with olde historyes and pictures manyfolde: the turrets are beautifully fhaped. Among its heroic inhabitants are king Henry the eighth, Howard duke of Norfolk, and the earl of Shrewsbury. LABOUR is the porter at the gate, and VIRTUE governs the house. LABOUR is thus pictured, with fome degree of spirit.

Fearfull is LABOUR, without favour at all,
Dreadfull of visage, a monster intractable;
Like Cerberus lying at gates infernall;
To fome men his looke is halfe intollerable,
His shoulders large for burden ftrong and able,
His bodie bristled, his necke mightie and stiffe;
By sturdie finewes his joynts strong and stable,
Like marble stones his handès be as ftiffe.

Here must man vanquish the dragon of Cadmus,
Gainst the Chimere here ftoutly must he fight;
Here must he vanquish the fearfull Pegasus,
For the golden flece here must he fhewe his might:
If LABOUR gainsay, he can nothing be right:
This monster LABOUR oft changeth his figure,
Sometime an oxe, a bore, or lion wight,
Playnely he seemeth thus changeth his nature.

Like as Protheus ofte changeth his stature.

* * *

Under his browes he dreadfully doth lowre
With glistering eyes, and fide-dependant beard,
For thirst and hunger alway his chere is foure,
His horned forehead doth make faynt hearts afeard.

Alway he drinketh, and yet alway is drye,

The sweat distilling with droppes abundant, &c.

The poet adds, that when the noble Howard had long boldly contended with this hideous monfter, had broken the bars and doors of the castle, had bound the porter, and was now preparing to afcend the tower of Virtue and Honour, FORTUNE and DEATH appeared, and interrupted his progress'.

The first modern Latin Bucolics are thofe of Petrarch, in number twelve, written about the year 1350. The Eclogues of Mantuan, our author's model, appeared about the year 1400, and were followed by many others. Their number multiplied fo foon, that a collection of thirty-eight modern bucolic poets in Latin was printed at Bafil, in the year 1546 h. These writers judged this indirect and difguifed mode of dialogue, confifting of fimple characters which spoke freely and plainly, the most safe and convenient vehicle for abusing

• EGL. iv.

f lbid.

& BUCOLICORUM ECLOGA XII,

› Viz. xxxviii. AUTHORES BUCOLICI, Bafil. 1546. 8vo.

the

the corruptions of the church. Mantuan became fo popular, as to acquire the estimation of a claffic, and to be taught in fchools. Nothing better proves the reputation in which this writer was held, than a fpeech of Shakespeare's pedant, the pedagogue Holofernes. Faufte, precor, gelida quando pecus omne fub ulmo1, and fo forth. Ah, good old MANTUAN ! may speak of thee, as the traveller doth of Venice, Vinegia, Vinegia, chi non te vedi, ei non te pregia. Old Manર TUAN! Old MANTUAN! Who understandeth thee not, "loveth thee not." But although Barklay copies Mantuan, the recent and separate publication in England of Virgil's bucolics, by Wynkyn de Worde', might partly suggest the new idea of this kind of poetry.

With what avidity the Italian and French poets, in their respective languages, entered into this fpecies of compofition, when the rage of Latin verfification had subsided, and for the purposes above-mentioned, is an inquiry reserved for a future period. I fhall only add here, that before the close of the fifteenth century, Virgil's bucolics were translated into Italian", by Bernardo Pulci, Foffa de Cremona, Benivieni, and Fiorini Buoninfegni.

i One of Mantuan's lines. Farnaby in his Preface to Martial fays, that Faufte precor gelida, was too often preferred to Arma virumque cano. I think there is an

old black letter translation of Mantuan into English. Another tranflation appeared by one Thomas Harvey, 1656. Mantuan was three times printed in England before the year 1600. Viz. B. Mantuani Carmelita theologi ADOLESCENTIA feu BucoLICA. With the commentary of Jodocus Badius. Excud. G. Dewes and H. Marshe, 1584. 12mo. Again, for the fame, the fame year, 12mo. Again, for Robert Dexter, 1598. 12mo. With Arguments to the Eclogues, and Notes by John Murmelius, &c.

* LOVE'S LAB. L. ACT iv. Sc. 3.

1 BUCOLICA VIRGILII cum commento

familiari. At the end, Ad juvenes hujus

Maroniani operis commendatio. Die vero viii Aprilis. 4to. And they were reprinted by the fame, 1514, and 1516.

m Viz. LA BUCOLICA DI VIRGILIO per Fratrem Evangeliftam Fossa de Cremona ord. fervorum. In Venezia, 1494. 4to. But thirteen years earlier we find, Bernardo PULCI nella BUCOLICA di Virgilio di Jeronimo BENIVIENI, Jacopo FIORINO Buoninfegni de Sienna: Epistole di Luca Pulci. In Firenze, per Bartolomeo Mifcomini, 1484. A dedication is perfixed, by which it appears, that Buoninfegni wrote a PISCATORY ECLOGUE, the first ever written in Italy, in the year 1468. There was a fecond edition of Pulci's verfion, La BucOLICA di VIRGILIO tradotta per Bernardo PULCI con l'Elegie. In Fiorenza, 1494.

SECT.

IT

T is not the plan of this work to comprehend the Scotch poetry. But when I confider the close and national connection between England and Scotland in the progress of manners and literature, I am fenfible I should be guilty of a partial and defective reprefentation of the poetry of the former, was I to omit in my series a few Scotch writers, who have adorned the present period, with a degree of sentiment and spirit, a command of phraseology, and a fertility of imagination, not to be found in any English poet fince Chaucer and Lydgate: more especially as they have left ftriking fpecimens cf allegorical invention, a fpecies of compofition which appears to have been for fome time almost totally extinguished in England.

The first I fhall mention is William Dunbar, a native of Salton in East Lothian, about the year 1470. His most celebrated poems are The THISTLE AND THE ROSE, and THE GOLDEN TERGE.

The THISTLE AND THE ROSE was occafioned by the marriage of James the fourth, king of Scotland, with Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry the feventh, king of England: an event, in which the whole future political state of both nations was vitally interested, and which ultimately produced the union of the two crowns and kingdoms. It was finished on the ninth day of May in the year 1503, nearly three months before the arrival of the queen in Scotland: whofe progrefs from Richmond to Edinburgh was attended with a greater magnificence of parade, proceffions, and fpectacles, than I ever remember to have seen on any fimilar occafion", It may be pertinent to premise, that Mar

a See a memoir, cited above, in Leland's COLL. tom. iii. APPEND. edit. 1770. p. 265. It is worthy of particular notice, Vol. II.

that during this expedition there was in the magnificent fuite of the princefs a company of players, under the direction of one John L1 Inglish,

garet was a fingular patronefs of the Scotch poetry, now beginning to flourish. Her bounty is thus celebrated by Stewart of Lorne, in a Scotch poem, called LERGES OF THIS. NEW YEIR DAY, written in the year 1527.

Grit god relief' MARGARET our quene!

d

For and fcho war and fchò has bene
Scho wold be larger of lufray
Than all the laif that I of mene,

For lerges of this new-yeir day.

C

Dunbar's THISTLE AND ROSE is opened with the following ftanzas, which are remarkable for their defcriptive and picturesque beauties.

Quhen Merche was with variand windis past,
And Apperyll had with her filver shouris

i

Tane leif of Nature, with ane orient blast,
And lufty May, that muddir * is of flouris
Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris',

Inglish, who is fometimes called Johannes.

Amonge the faide lordes and the qweene "was in order, Johannes and his com

panye, the menftrells of muficke, &c." P 267. See alfo, p. 299. 300. 280. 289. In the midst of a moft fplendid proceffion, the princess rode on horfe-back behind the king into the city of Edinburgh, p. 287. Afterwards the ceremonies of this stately marriage are described; which yet is not equal, in magnificence and expence, to that of Richard the fecond with Isabell of France, at Calais, in the year 1397. This laft-mentioned marriage is recorded with. the most minute circumftances, the dresses of the king and the new queen, the names of the French and English nobility who attended, the prefents, one of which is a golden cup ftudded with jewels, and worth three thousand pounds, given on both fides, the banquets, entertainments, and a variety of other curious particulars, in five large vellum pages, in an antient Regifter of

Merton priory in Surrey, in old French. MSS. LAUD, E. 54. fol. 105. b. Bibl.. Bodl. Oxon. Froiffart, who is moft commonly prolix in defcribing pompous ceremonies, might have greatly enriched his account of the fame royal wedding, from this valuable and authentic record. See his CRON. tom. iv. p. 226. ch. 78. B. penult. Paris, 1574. fol. Or lord Berners's Tranflation, vol. ii. f. 275. cap. ccxvi. edit. Pinfan, 1523. fol.

b Great god help, &c.

• If the continues to do as fhe has done.