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GLUTTONY brings up the rear; whose insatiable rout are inceffantly calling out for meat and drink, and although they are drenched by the devils with draughts of melted. lead, they still ask for more.

Than the fowll monfter GLUTTONY,
Of wame" unfafiable and gredy,

To daunce fyn did him dress:
Him followit mony fowll drunckhart,
With can and collop, cóp" and quart,
In furfett and excess.

Full many a waiftlefs wally-drag,
With waimis unweildable did furth wag,
In creische that did increfs:

Drink, ay thay cryit with mony a gaip',
The feynds gave them hait leid to lap'
Thair lovery' was na less ".

At this infernal dance no minstrels plaid. No GLEEMAN,, or minstrel, ever went to hell; except one who committed murder, and was admitted to an inheritance in hell by brief of richt, that is, per breve de recto". This circumftancè seems an allufion to fome real fact.

The concluding ftanza is entirely a fatire on the highlanders. Dunbar, as I have already obferved, was born in Lothian, a county of the Saxons. The mutual antipathy between the Scottish Saxons and the Highlanders was exceffive, and is not yet quite eradicated. Mahoun, or Mahomet, having a defire to fee a highland pageant, a fiend is commiffioned to fetch Macfadyan; an unmeaning name, chosen for its harshness. As foon as the infernal meffenger begins.

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to publish his fummons, he gathers about him a prodigious crowd of Erfche men, who foon took up great room in hell. Thefe loquacious termagants began to chatter like rooks and ravens, in their own barbarous language and the devil is fo stunned with their horrid yell, that he throws them down to his deepest abyss, and fmothers them with smoke.

Than cryd Mahoun for a heleand padyane,
Syn ran a feynd to fetch Makfadayne

Far northwart in a nuke *:

Be he the correnoth had done fchout,
Erfche men fo gadderit him about,

In hell grit rume thay tuke:'
Thae turmagantis' with tag and tatter
Full loud in Erfche begout to clatter,
And rowp lyk revin and ruke.
The devil fa devit" wes with thair yell
That in the deepest pot of hell

He fmorit them with smoke “.

..i

I have been prolix in my citations and explanations of this poem, because I am of opinion, that the imagination of

x Nook.

y As foon as he had made the cry of diftrefs, what the French call a l'aide. Some fuppofe, that the correnoth, or corynoch, is a highland tune. In MAK-GREGOR'S TESTAMENT, [MS. infr. citat.] the author fpeaks of being out-lawed by the CORRINOCH, V. 51.

The loud CORRINOCH then did me exile, Throw Lorne, Argyle, Monteith, and Braidalbane, &c.

That is, The Hue and Cry. I prefume, what this writer, in another place, calls the KING'S-HORN, is the fame thing, v. 382.

Quhen I have beine aft at the KINGIS

HORNE.

Perhaps the poet does not mean the common idea annexed to termagant. The context seems to fhew, that he alludes to a fpecies of wild-fowl, well known in the highlands, and called in the Scotch statutebook termigant. Thus he compares the highlanders to a flock of their country birds. For many illuftrations of this poem, I am obliged to the learned and elegant editor of ANTIENT SCOTTISH POEMS, lately publifhed from Lord Hyndford's manufcript: and to whom I recommend a task, for which he is well qualified, The History of Scotch Poetry.

a Chattered hoarfely.

b Deafened.

* ST. xi.

Dunbar

Dunbar is not less suited to satirical than to sublime allegory : and that he is the first poet who has appeared with any degree of fpirit in this way of writing fince Pierce Plowman. His THISTLE AND ROSE, and GOLDEN TERGE, are generally and justly mentioned as his capital works: but the natural complexion of his genius is of the moral and didactic caft. The measure of this poem is partly that of Sir THOPAS in Chaucer and hence we may gather by the way, that Sir THOPAS was antiently viewed in the light of a ludicrous compofition. It is certain that the pageants and interludes. of Dunbar's age must have quickened his invention to form thofe grotefque groupes. The exhibition of MORALITIES was now in high vogue among the Scotch. A Morality was played at the marriage of James the fourth and the princess Margaret. Mummeries, which they call GYSARTS, compofed of moral perfonifications, are ftill known in Scotland: and even till the beginning of this century, efpecially among the feftivities of Chriftias, itinerant mafkers were admitted into the houses of the Scotch nobility.

4 MEMOIR, ut fupr. p. 300.

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i

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SECT.

A

SECT. XIII.

Nother of the distinguished luminaries, that marked the restoration of letters in Scotland at the commencement of the fixteenth century, not only by a general eminence in elegant erudition, but by a cultivation of the vernacular poetry of his country, is Gawen Douglass. He was defcended from a noble family, and born in the year 1475°. According to the practice of that age, especially in Scotland, his education perhaps commenced in a grammar-school of one of the monafteries: there is undoubted proof, that it was finished at the university of Paris. It is probable, as he was intended for the facred function, that, he was fent to Paris. for the purpose of studying the canon law: in consequence of a decree promulged by James the firft, which tended in fome degree to reform the illiteracy of the clergy, as it injoined, that no ecclefiaftic of Scotland fhould be preferred to a prebend of any value without a competent skill in that science'. Among other high promotions in the church, which his very fingular accomplishments obtained, he was provost of the collegiate church of faint Giles at Edinburgh, abbot of the opulent convent of Abberbrothrock, and bishop of Dunkeld. He appears alfo to have been nominated by the queen regent to the archbishoprick, either of Glafgow, or of faint Andrew's: but the appointment was repudiated by the pope. In the year 1513, to avoid the perfecutions of the duke of Albany, he fled from Scotland into England, and was moft graciously received by king Henry the eighth, who, in confideration of his literary merit, al

Hume, HIST. DOUGL. p. 219.
Lefl. REB. GEST. Scor. Lib. ix.

455.

Thynne, CONTINUAT. HIST. SCOT. lowed

lowed him a liberal pension". In England he contracted a friendship with Polydore Virgil, one of the claffical scholars of Henry's court'. He died of the plague in London, and was buried in the Savoy church, in the year 1521 *.

In his early years he tranflated Ovid's ART OF Love, the favorite Latin system of the science of gallantry, into Scottish metre, which is now loft'. In the year 1513, and in the space of fixteen months", he tranflated into Scotch heroics the Eneid of Virgil, with the additional thirteenth book by Mapheus Vegius, at the request of his noble patron Henry earl of Sinclair". But it was projected fo early as the year 1501. For in one of his poems written that year, he promises to Venus a translation of Virgil, in attonement for a ballad he had published against her court: and when the work was finished, he tells Lord Sinclair, that he had now made his peace with Venus, by tranflating the poem which celebrated the actions of her fon Eneas". No metrical version of a claffic had yet appeared in English; except of Boethius, who scarcely deferves that appellation. Virgil was hitherto commonly known, only by Caxton's romance on the subject of the Eneid; which, our author fays, no more resembles Virgil, than the devil is like faint Austin '.

This tranflation is executed with equal spirit and fidelity: and is a proof, that the lowland Scotch and English languages were now nearly the fame. I mean the style of com

h Hollinfh. SCOT. 307.-iii. 872. i Bale, xiv. 58.

* Weever, FUN. MON. p. 446. And Stillingfl. ORIG. BRIT. p. 54.

See edit. Edinb. fol. 1710. p. 483. In the EPISTLE, or EPILOGUE, to Lord Sinclair. I believe the editor's name is ROBERT FREE BAIRN, a Scotchman. This tranflation was firft printed at London, 1553. 4to. bl. lett.

Lell. REB. GEST. SCOT. lib. ix. p. 379. Rom. 1675.

EPILOGUE, ut fupr.

• The PALICE OF HONOUR. ad calcem. Vol. II.

PEPIL. ut fupr.

q PROLOGUE to the Translation, p. 5 The manufcript notes written in the mar gin of a copy of the old quarto edition of this tranflation, by Patrick Junius, which bishop Nicolfon (HIST. LIBR. p. 99.) declares to be excellent, are of no confequence, Bibl. Bodl. ARCHIV. SELD. B. 54. 4to. The fame may be faid of Junius's Index of obfolete words in this tranflation, Cod. MSS. Jun. 114. (5225.) Sce alfo Muf. Afhmol. Diverfe Scotch words, &C. COD. ASHM. 846. 13.

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