On the whole, Lindsay certainly wanted that creative power of genius, which would have entitled him to the name adopted, in the golden age of Scottish poetry, by the masters of the art. Dunbar and his contemporaries called themselves Makers; and this was also an English use of the term till the close of Elizabeth's reign. The poet of the Reformation in Scotland was not a poetic maker: he was only a man of great robustness, both of thought and will, who acted powerfully on a rude and fierce generation.

11. Down to the end of the last period in which we examined the intellectual progress of Scotland, we did not discover any application of the ving tongue in the shape of original Prose to uses that can be called literary. This great step was now taken. Still, however, the most distinguished relics of Scottish prose that belong to the first half of the sixteenth century are not original. They were versions from the Latin by John Bellenden, archdeacon of Moray, who had also contemporary fame as a poet. He translated, with more neatness and variety of phrase than might have been expected, and with evidence of highly competent scholarship, the first Five Books of Livy, and the History of Scotland recently written by Boece. In the year 1548 there was printed, at Saint Andrews, a monument of Scottish prose which is still more curious. This piece, "The Complaint of Scotland," is a series of satirical reflections on the state of the country, enlivened by a great deal of quaint fancy; and it possesses much value for the antiquary, not only through its minute illustrations of manners and sentiment, but as abounding in characteristically provincial words and phrases. The promise of further progress is held out by the title of a later book, the Chronicles of Scotland, written by Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, and extending from the accession of James the Second to the middle of the reign of Mary. But the literary pretensions of this prolix, credulous, and undigested record, are not higher than those of the poorest English chronicles of the middle ages. There is quoted from it, in one of the notes to Marmion, a passage where the writer relates, with implicit belief, the story of the apparition which, in the church of Linlithgow, warned James the . Fourth before the fatal battle of Flodden.

The few other names which have to be selected from the annals of Scottish prose, belong to the celebrated men who acted in the great struggles of the Reformation; and the position which these held, requires us to note the state of erudition in the country from the beginning of the century.

Scotland possessed, in this period, two men very eminent in the history of scholastic learning. Probably there was not then in England any speculative philosopher comparable to Major: there

was certainly no classical scholar accomplished so variously and so exactly as Buchanan. Yet the general progress of Scottish erudition was slower than in the south; and its benefits were much less widely diffused. The most learned men were partly or altogether educated abroad.

The honour of having been the first Scotsman who wrote Latin tolerably, has been assigned to Hector Boece, who, about the year 1590, resigned an academical appointment in France to become principal of the college newly founded at Aberdeen. His most famous work, the "History of the Scots," is good, though not faultless, as a specimen of Latinity; the student of antiquity now remembers it only as a receptacle for the wildest of the fables which used to be authoritatively current as the earliest sections in our national annals.

Much inferior to Boece's writings in correctness of Latinity, inb. ab. 1470. deed painfully clumsy and inelegant, are those of John d. ab. 1550. Mair or Major, who, however, was one of the most vigorous thinkers of his time. Educated in England and Paris, and teaching for some time in France, he became the head of one of the colleges in Saint Andrews. His greatest works are metaphysical and these, now utterly neglected, like others of their times and kind, fully vindicate the fame which he enjoyed, as one of the most acute and original of those who taught and defended, in its last stages, the scholastic philosophy of the middle ages. His "History of the Nation of the Scots" has little reputation among modern historical students: but, both there and elsewhere, he exhibits an independence and liberality of opinion, which, it has been believed, were not without influence on his most famous pupils. He was the teacher of Knox and Buchanan.

12. The first of these great names is not to be forgotten in the record of Scottish learning and talent. But the stern apostle of the northern Reformation had his mind fixed steadfastly on objects infinitely more sacred than either fame or knowledge: b. 1505. Į and Knox's few published writings, although plainly ind. 1572. dicating both his force of character and his vigour of intellect, are chiefly valuable in their bearing on the questions of his time. The most elaborate of them, and the only one that can be described as any thing more than a controversial or religious tract, is his "History of the Reformation of Religion within the Realm of Scotland." Those who now read this interesting chronicle, and who think that its language is peculiarly Scottish, may be amused by knowing, that Knox's style was reproached by one of his controversial opponents with being affectedly and unpatriotically English.

b. 1506.

George Buchanan, less deeply immersed in the vor d. 1582.tex of the times, and enjoying, in more than one stage of his life, the benefits of academical seclusion, found time to earn for himself a fame which can never be lost, unless the revival of learning in Europe should be followed by a total loss of all preceding memorials of civilisation. He is admitted, by those who most keenly dislike his ecclesiastical and political opinions, to have been not only a man of eminent and versatile genius, but one of the finest and most correct classical scholars that ever appeared in Christendom. There have been Latinists more deeply versed in the philosophy of the language, and others more widely informed in the knowledge to which it is the clue; but hardly, perhaps, has there been, since the fall of Rome, any one who has written Latin with an excellence so complete and uniform. The chief of his Prose Works are his History of Scotland, and his Treatise on the Constitution of the Kingdom. The former, certainly the work of a partisan, is nevertheless historically important; the latter is remarkable for the manly independence of its opinions and both of them tell their tale with an antique dignity and purity, which the Roman tongue has seldom been made to wear by a modern pen. The merit of his Latin Poems is yet higher. They are justly declared to unite, more than any other compositions of their kind, originality of matter with classic elegance of style. The most famous of them is his Translation of the Psalms; besides which, the list includes satires, didactic verses, and lyrics, one of these being the exquisite Ode on the month of May.

After the great name of Buchanan, a poor show is made by that of Bishop Lesley, the friend and defender of the unfortunate and misguided queen: yet he, too, was no mean scholar, and no bad Latin writer. Much more learned, probably, was Ninian Winzet, another advocate of the old creed, who had to seek refuge in the southern regions of the continent. A scholar more distinguished than either of them withdrew himself very soon from innovation and turmoil, and closed his days peacefully as a teacher in France. This was Florence Wilson, who translates his name into Volusenus in the Latin treatise, "On Tranquillity of Mind," which has preserved his name with high honour among those who take interest in classical studies.

In closing our separate record of northern literature, we must go forward a little to notice, as having been really eminent both for scholarship and talent, the energetic and restless Andrew Melville, the founder of the Presbyterian polity of the Scottish Church.

We must also mark how, the University of Saint Andrews having been established first of all, the other academical institutions of the country arose before the close of the sixteenth century. That of Glasgow dates from 1450; King's College in Aberdeen, from 1494; the University of Edinburgh was founded by King James in 1582, and Marischal College of Aberdeen in 1593. Still more important, perhaps, was the foundation which was now laid for a system of popular education in Scotland. There had long been, in the towns, grammar-schools where Latin was taught. The establishment of schools throughout the country was proposed by the Reformed clergy in 1560, the very year in which Parliament sanctioned the Reformation; and the principle was again laid down, a few years later, in the Second Book of Discipline. A considerable number of parochial schools were founded before King James's removal to England; and the setting down of a school in each parish, if it were possible, was ordered for the first time by an Act of the Privy Council, issued in 1616, and ratified by Parliament in 1633.

CHAPTER III.

THE AGE OF SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE, BACON, AND MILTON.

INTRODUCTION. 1. The Early Years of Elizabeth's Reign-Summary of their Literature.-2. Literary Greatness of the next Eighty Years-Division into Four Eras.REIGN OF ELIZABETH FROM 1580. 3. Social Character of the Time-Its Religious Aspect-Effects on Literature.-4.-Minor Elizabethan Writers-Their Literary Importance-The Three Great Names.-5. The Poetry of Spenser and ShakspeareThe Eloquence of Hooker.-REIGN OF JAMES. 6. Its Social and Literary Character -Distinguished Names-Bacon-Theologians-Poets.-THE TWO FOLLOWING ERAS. 7. Political and Ecclesiastical Changes-Effects on Thinking-Effects on PoetryMilton's Youth.-8. Moral Aspect of the Time-Effects on Literature.-REIGN OF CHARLES. 9. Literary Events-Poetry-Eloquence-Theologians-Erudition.-THE COMMONWEALTH AND PROTECTORATE.-10. Literary Events-Poetry CheckedModern Symptoms-Philosophy-Hobbes-Theology-Hall, Taylor, and Baxter.11. Eloquence-Milton's Prose Works-Modern Symptoms-Style of the Old English Prose Writers.

INTRODUCTION.

1. THE era which is now to open on our view, is the most brilliant in the literary history of England. Thought, and imagination, and eloquence, combine to illuminate it with their most · dazzling light; its literature assumes the most various forms, and expatiates over the most distant regions of speculation and invention; and its intellectual chiefs, while they breathe the spirit of modern knowledge and freedom, speak to us in tones which borrow an irregular stateliness from the chivalrous past. But the magnificent panorama does not meet the eye at once, as a scenic spectacle is displayed on the rising of the curtain. Standing at the point which we have now reached, we must wait for the unveiling of its features, as we should watch while the mists of dawn, shrouding a beautiful landscape, melt away before the morning sun.

Our period covers a century. But the first quarter of it was very unproductive in all departments of literature: it was much more so than the age that had just closed. Of the poets, and philosophers, and theologians, who have immortalized the name