finish my cours with joy, to his glory, and comfort of his Kirk, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to quhome with the Father and the Halie Gaist be all honour, praise and glorie for now and ever. Amen.

There is an anonymous Historie and Life of King James the Sixt; an anonymous Diurnal of Remarkable Occurrents in Scotland from the time of James IV. to 1575, scrappy but highly entertaining; The Diarie of Robert Birrel, Burges of Edinburgh, from 1532 to 1605; David Moysie's Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland from 1577 to 1603; and from Richard Bannatyne, John Knox's secretary, we have a Memoriale of Transactions in Scotland from 1569 to 1573, which, though it records interesting facts, is, like most of the rest, lacking in almost all the graces of style. Dr Gilbert Skene left Ane Briefe Description of the Pest; The Sea Law of Scotland was expounded ‘for the reddy use of seafaring men ;' and John Skene prepared an Exposition of the Termes and Difficill Words in some collections of old Scots laws. Most of these have been reprinted by the Bannatyne Club or the Scottish Text Society. The Rolment of Courtis, by Abakuk Bysset, written in the reign of Charles I., remains in MS., and is, according to Dr J. A. H. Murray, 'perhaps the latest specimen of literary Middle Scotch prose existing.'

Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, now Lennoxlove, near Haddington (1496–1586), father of the more famous Secretary Lethington, was educated at St Andrews and Paris, and served James V., the Queen-Regent, Mary, and James VI. as judge, privy-councillor, and Keeper of the Great Seal, and as commissioner for dealing with Border troubles. After he had become blind (before 1560) he filled in his spare time by writing a Historie of the House of Seaton; by writing a large number of poems, notable chiefly for shrewdness, sense, wit, and good feeling; and by making a very valuable MS. collection of Early Scottish poems by various authors, his daughter serving as amanuensis. Many of his own poems, largely occasional-On the New Yeir, On the Quenis Maryage, On the Assemblie of the Congregatioun, &c.-beseech the factions which rent the country to be reconciled in the public interest. His record proves that in that time of fierce party conflict he was little of a partisan; but on the whole he favoured the Reforming party. His facetious verses have something in common with Lyndsay's. The following is from his

Satire on the Toun Ladyes.

Sum wyfis of the burrows-toun
Sa wondir vane ar, and wantoun,
In warld they watt not quhat to weir
On claythis thay wair monye a croun;
And all for newfangilnes of geir.
And of fyne silk thair furrit cloikis,
With hingand sleivis, lyk geill poikis ;
Na preiching will gar thame foirbeir
To weir all thing that sinne provoikis ;
And all for newfangilnes of geir.

wot

spend attire

jelly-bags

petticoats

lace

displayed

Thair wylecots man weill be hewit,
Broudirit richt braid, with pasmentis sewit :
I trow, quha wald the matter speir,
That thair gudmen had caus to rew it,
That evir thair wyfis weir sic geir.
Thair wovin hois of silk ar schawin,
Barrit abone with tasteis drawin;
With gartens of ane new maneir;
To gar thair courtlines be knawin;
And all for newfangilnes of geir.
Sumtyme thay will beir up thair gown,
To schaw thair wylecot hingeand down;

And sumtyme bayth thay will upbeir,
To schaw thair hois of blak or broun;

And all for newfangilnes of geir.

Thair collars, carcats, and hals beidis ;
With velvet hats heicht on thair heidis,
Coirdit with gold lyik ane younkeir,
Brouderit about with goldin threidis ;
And all for newfangilnes of geir.

carcanets and necklaces

may suit

As be thair cleithing may appeir ; Werand gayer nor thame may gain; On ouir vaine claythis waistand geir. Maitland's own poems were many of them printed by Pinkerton (1786) and by Sibbald (1807); and all of them by the Maitland Club (1830), so called in honour of the collector of the MSS.

Alexander Scott (1525?-1584?) is on slender evidence conjectured to have been the son of a (Catholic) prebendary of the Chapel - Royal at Stirling, and seems to have spent most of his life in Edinburgh, in what office or profession is not known. He left thirty-six short poems, of which the most notable is Ane New Yeir Gift to Quene Mary, which gives a rather melancholy picture of social conditions at the time; and a satire on the tournament, called Justing at the Drum, written obviously on the model of Chrystis Kirk of the Grene, The others are mainly love poems (some

Sen in zour garth the lilly quhyte
May not remane amang the laif,
Adew the flour of haill delyte;
Adew the succour that ma me saif;
Adew the fragrant balme suaif,
And lamp of ladeis lustiest !

My faithful hairt scho sall it haif,
To byd with hir it luvis best.

Deploir, se ladeis cleir of hew,

Hir absence, sen scho most departe, And specialy ze luvaris trew,

That woundit bene with luvis darte; Ffor sum of 30w sall want ane harte Als weill as I thairfoir at last

:

Do go with myn, with mynd inwart, And byd with hir thow luvis best.

rest

may

sweet

Some of Scott's poems were printed by Allan Ramsay, Lord Hailes, and others; the whole of them were edited by D. Laing (1821), in the Hunterian Club's transcript of the Bannatyne MS. in which alone they were preserved (1874-81), and for the Scottish Text Society by Cranstoun (1895).

Robert Sempill (1530?-95), author of The Sempill Ballates, was the most considerable versesatirist in the period immediately following the Scottish Reformation. He has been-absurdly enough-identified with both the third and the fourth Lords Sempill, but was probably an illegitimate member of that noble house. Either as combatant or as spectator he was present at the siege of Leith in 1559-60. He was in Paris before 1572, whence he escaped at the massacre of St Bartholomew, and there is record of his having been paid for some service to the Scottish Government. A violent partisan of the ultra-Reforming party, he in his verses reviled Mary, Bothwell, Lethington, Kirkaldy of Grange, and the episcopal ("Tulchan') dignitaries, and treated their opponents as glorious and spotless heroes. His earlier pieces (three of which are in the Bannatyne MS.) are highly indecorous; his principal satires are rather lampoons coarse, rude, but pithy and clever; his most decorous 'deplorations' of deaths and disasters are dismal diatribes, not poems. Yet he is doubtless the representative spirit of a party that has left no equally vivid picture of the temper of the times. The Regentes Tragedy was a lament for the Earl of Moray's death; Ane Complaint upon Fortoun records his regret for the fall of Morton; the Legend of the Bischop of St Androis Lyfe is a scurrilous invective against Archbishop Adamson, and opens thus:

How little descriptive poetry was Sempill's forte will be seen from these verses from The Sege of the Castil of Edinburgh in 1572:

The vehement schot zeid in at ather syde,
By threttie Cannonis plasit at partis seuin,
Quhill thay thair in mycht not thair heidis hyde
For Pot Gun pellettis falland from the heuin.
The Bumbard stanis derect lie fell sa euin,
That in to dykis by dint it deidly dang thame,
Quhill all the housis in the place wes reuin :
The bullatis brak sa in to bladis amang thame. fragments

Continewand this ane dosand of dayis or mair,
Quhill tyme apointit, neuer man durst steir;
The larum rang, the Regent self wes thair,
My Lord Ambassat, to, stuid uerry neir;
The manlie Generall, lyke the god of weir,
Not vsit to sleip quhen sic thingis ar a do;
Our Cronall als, quha is ane freik bot feir,
With all his Capitanes reddie to ga to.

colonel, champion

Allan Ramsay printed in the Evergreen three of Sempill's poems given in Bannatyne's MS.; T. G. Stevenson printed them all (with many not by him) in The Sempill Ballates (1873); and of the forty-eight pieces in Cranstoun's Satirical Poems of the Refor mation (Scot. Hist. Soc. 1889-93) those certainly by Sempill are twelve in number, and a good many of the twenty-seven that are anonymous or pseudonymous were by the editor regarded as probably Sempill's.

Alexander Montgomerie (c. 1545-c. 1610), born probably at Hessilhead Castle near Beith, was in the service of the Regent Morton and James VI., travelled in France, Flanders, and Spain, and, having lost favour and retired from court, became devout in his later years. His pasquinades are coarse and savage without being strong, his amatory poems laboured, and his devotional pieces poor. His fame rests on The Cherrie and the Slae (1597), which is an allegorical poem representing virtue and vice, and was possibly written in Compstone Castle, on Tarff Water, above Kirkcudbright (seven of the stanzas were recast shortly before his death). The allegory is poorly managed, and is both obscure and incoherent; some of the descriptions are lively and vigorous, but there is more sound sense than poetry in the reflections suggested. The metre, partly at least his own invention, seems to have been first developed in his poem, The Bankis of Helicon. Here he follows a poetic but non-classical convention which, in speaking of the Muses, opposes a well or stream called Helicon to the mountain of Parnassus-a convention followed also by Chaucer (‘By Elicon the clere well'), Caxton, Gavin Douglas, Skelton, Davie Lyndsay, Spenser, the academic Pilgrimage

to Parnassus, and even Ben Jonson, as well as by Burns. Mount Helicon was sacred to the Muses, and on it were the hallowed fountains Aganippe and Hippocrene (also called Fons Caballinus); and though there was a spring named Helicon near Parnassus and a river so called in Sicily, there is no classical authority for associating either with the Muses. The stanza is made up of a common enough ten-line verse followed by four short lines having double rhymes analogous to those of some Latin hymns. It has not usually been noted that Turberville (see page 265) uses a stave which in the matter of these double rhymes and other essentials is very similar. Maitland adopted this stanza, Ramsay revived it, and Burns often used it; but, like several of Montgomerie's rhythms, this is rather complicated for his metrical skill or poetic gift. He was influenced by Alexander Scott and the English lyrists; and it has been pointed out that several of his seventy sonnets are translations from Ronsard. The Flyting with Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth is as coarse as that of Dunbar with Kennedy. Like Dunbar, Holland, and other old Scottish poets, he wrote bitterly and contemptuously against 'Hielandmen.' The first verse of the Bankis of Helicon (which Dr Cranstoun accepted as certainly Montgomerie's) is: Declair, ze bankis of Helicon, Parnassus hillis and daillis ilk on,

And fontaine Caballein,
Gif ony of 3our Muses all
Or nymphis may be peregall

Vnto my lady schein.
Or if the ladyis that did lave

Their bodyis by your brim So seimlie war or zit so suave, So bewtiful or trim. Contempill, exempill

Tak be hir proper port, Gif onye sa bonye

Amang zou did resort.

each one Hippocrene

(Fons Caballinus)

equal bright

Consider

Take example by

This is one of Montgomerie's sonnets to the king, begging for his pension :

greatest

without

tined, lost

If lose of guids, if gritest grudge or grief,
If povertie, imprisonmont, or pane,
If for guid will ingratitude agane,
If lauguishing in langour but relief,
If det, if dolour, and to become deif,
If travell tint and labour lost in vane
Do properly to poets appertane,
Of all that craft my chance is to be chief,
With August Virgill wantit his reuard,
And Ovids lote as lukless as the lave,
Quhill Homer livd his hap was wery hard,
Get vhen he died, sevin cities for him strave;
Thoght I am not lyk one of thame in arte
I pingle thame all perfytlie in that parte.

lot

surpass

From the recast of the 'Cherrie and the Slae.'

About an bank with balmy bewis,
Quhair nychtingales thair notis renewis,
With gallant goldspinks gay,

T is growing to be more and more difficult, as knowledge becomes more exact, to find a general term by which to distinguish the magnificent literature of England at the close of the sixteenth and the opening of the seventeenth centuries. It was customary in earlier times to call everything from Sackville to Shirley Elizabethan, and in common parlance the entire period of sixty or seventy years is still laxly termed the Elizabethan age. In point of fact, the adjectives Elizabethan' and 'Jacobean,' though convenient, are misleading; and the literary movement from 1558 to 1625 cannot be regarded with reference to political events. The date of Elizabeth's death, 1603, is a particularly inconvenient one to the student of literature, and divides the epoch of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson in a meaningless way. Nor is there anything which properly connects a writer like Gascoigne with a writer like Quarles. The proper way of regarding this intensely vivid and various age is, perhaps, to divide it into four periods of unequal length and value.

But

before we define these stages in the evolution of the Elizabethan-Jacobean history, we must see where England stood among the peoples of Europe in 1558.

Italy at that moment was still at the summit of the intellectual world, easily first among the

nations for learning and literary accomplishment. But she was already closely pursued by France, and before the age we are considering ended she was to be passed in the race by Spain and England. This, then, is to be noted, that we find Italian literature the first in Europe, and that we leave it the fourth; the rapid, steady decline of Italy being a phenomenon of highest import in our general survey. But prestige lingers long after the creative faculty has passed away; and the nations of Western Europe were still dazzled by the splendours of Italian poetry long after Italy had ceased to deserve homage. The chivalrous epic of Italy, with its tales of ladies dead and lovely knights,' whether entirely serious with Boiardo (1434-1494) and Ariosto (1474-1533), or tinged with burlesque humour with Pulci (1432-1487) and Berni (1497–1535), had been the last great gift of Italy to literature before she sank into her decline. The Orlando Furioso and the Morgante Maggiore set their stamp on European literature, and most of all on that of England. To note the influence of Ariosto on Spenser, in particular, is of the first critical importance.

All these Italian poets, it will be observed, were dead when Elizabeth came to the throne. There succeeded to these great names nothing better than those of serio-comic poets of the third class, such as Tassoni and Bracciolini, although, during our own great age, the light of Italian poetry made another flicker in the