James IV., if not the wisest, was certainly the most brilliant monarch of his name; and he was fortunate beyond the later Stuarts in this, that during his lifetime no new popular tide had set in which it behooved him to oppose or to float upon. For him in all its essentials to-day had flowed quietly out of yesterday, and he lived unperplexed by fear of change. With something of a Southern gaiety of spirit, he was a merrier monarch than his dark-featured and saturnine descendant who bore the appellation. He was fond of martial sports, he loved to glitter at tournaments, his court was crowded with singing men and singing women.

Yet he had his gloomy moods and superst.i.tious despondencies. He could not forget that he had appeared in arms against his father; even while he whispered in the ear of beauty the iron belt of penance was fretting his side, and he alternated the splendid revel with the cell of the monk. In these days, and for long after, the Borders were disturbed, and the Highland clans, setting royal authority at defiance, were throttling each other in their mists. The Catholic religion was yet unsapped, and the wealth of the country resided in the hands of the n.o.bles and the churchmen. Edinburgh towered high on the ridge between Holyrood and the Castle, its streets reddened with feud at intervals, and its merchants cl.u.s.tering round the Cathedral of St. Giles like bees in a honeycomb; and the king, when he looked across the faint azure of the Forth, beheld the long coast of Fife dotted with little towns, where ships were moored that traded with France and Holland, and brought with them cargoes of silk and wines. James was a popular monarch; he was beloved by the n.o.bles and by the people. He loved justice, he cultivated his marine, and he built the _Great Michael_--the _Great Eastern_ of that day. He had valiant seamen, and more than once Barton sailed into Leith with a string of English prizes. When he fell with all his n.o.bility at Flodden, there came upon Scotland the woe with which she was so familiar--

"Woe to that realme that haith an ower young king."

A long regency followed; disturbing elements of religion entered into the life of the nation, and the historical stream which had flowed smoothly for a series of years became all at once convulsed and turbulent, as if it had entered upon a gorge of rapids. It was in this pleasant interregnum of the reign of the fourth James, when ancient disorders had to a certain extent been repressed, and when religious difficulties ahead were yet undreamed of, that the poet Dunbar flourished--a nightingale singing in a sunny lull of the Scottish historical storm.

Modern readers are acquainted with Dunbar chiefly through the medium of Mr. David Laing's beautiful edition of his works published in 1834, and by good Dr. Irving's intelligent and admirable compacted "History of Scottish Poetry," published the other day. Irving's work, if deficient somewhat in fluency and grace of style, is characterised by conscientiousness of statement and by the ripest knowledge. Yet, despite the researches of these competent writers, of the events of the poet's life not much is known. He was born about 1460, and from an unquotable allusion in one of his poems, he is supposed to have been a native of the Lothians. His name occurs in the register of the University of St.

Andrews as a Bachelor of Arts. With the exception of these entries in the college register, there is nothing authentically known of his early life. We have no portrait of him, and cannot by that means decipher him.

We do not know with certainty from what family he sprang. Beyond what light his poems may throw on them, we have no knowledge of his habits and personal tastes. He exists for the most part in rumour, and the vague shadows of things. It appears that in early life he became a friar of the order of St. Francis; and in the capacity of a travelling priest tells us that "he preached in Derntown kirk and in Canterbury;" that he "pa.s.sed at Dover across the Channel, and went through Picardy teaching the people." He does not seem to have taken kindly to his profession.

His works are full of sarcastic allusions to the clergy, and in no measured terms he denounces their luxury, their worldly-mindedness, and their desire for high place and fat livings. Yet these denunciations have no very spiritual origin. His rage is the rage of a disappointed candidate, rather than of a prophet; and, to the last, he seems to have expected preferment in the Church. Not without a certain pathos he writes, when he had become familiar with disappointment, and the sickness of hope deferred--

"I wes in youth an nureiss knee, Dandely! bischop, dandely!

And quhen that age now dois me greif, Ane sempill vicar I can nocht be."

It is not known when he entered the service of King James. From his poems it appears that he was employed as a clerk or secretary in several of the missions despatched to foreign courts. It is difficult to guess in what capacity Dunbar served at Holyrood. He was all his life a priest, and expected preferment from his royal patron. We know that he performed ma.s.s in the presence. Yet when the king in one of his dark moods had withdrawn from the gaieties of the capital to the religious gloom of the convent of Franciscans at Stirling, we find the poet inditing a parody on the machinery of the Church, calling on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and on all the saints of the calendar, to transport the princely penitent from Stirling, "where ale is thin and small," to Edinburgh, where there is abundance of swans, cranes, and plovers, and the fragrant clarets of France. And in another of his poems, he describes himself as dancing in the queen's chamber so zealously that he lost one of his slippers, a mishap which provoked her Majesty to great mirth. Probably, as the king was possessed of considerable literary taste, and could appreciate Dunbar's fancy and satire, he kept him attached to his person, with the intention of conferring a benefice on him when one fell vacant; and when a benefice _did_ fall vacant, felt compelled to bestow it on the cadet of some powerful family in the state,--for it was always the policy of James to stand well with his n.o.bles. He remembered too well the deaths of his father and great-grandfather to give unnecessary offense to his great barons. From his connexion with the court, the poet's life may be briefly epitomised.

In August, 1500, his royal master granted Dunbar an annual pension of 10 pounds for life, or till such time as he should be promoted to a benefice of the annual value of 40 pounds. In 1501, he visited England in the train of the amba.s.sadors sent thither to negotiate the king's marriage.

The marriage took place in May, 1503, on which occasion the high-piled capital wore holiday attire, balconies blazed with scarlet cloth, and the loyal mult.i.tude shouted as bride and bridegroom rode past, with the chivalry of two kingdoms in their train. Early in May, Dunbar composed his most celebrated poem in honour of the event. Next year he said ma.s.s in the king's presence for the first time, and received a liberal reward.

In 1505, he received a sum in addition to his stated pension, and two years thereafter his pension was doubled. In August, 1510, his pension was increased to 80 pounds per annum, until he became possessed of a benefice of the annual value of 10 pounds or upwards. In 1513, Flodden was fought, and in the confusion consequent on the king's death, Dunbar and his slowly-increasing pensions disappear from the records of things.

We do not know whether he received his benefice; we do not know the date of his death, and to this day his grave is secret as the grave of Moses.

Knowing but little of Dunbar's life, our interest is naturally concentrated on what of his writings remain to us. And to modern eyes the old poet is a singular spectacle. His language is different than ours; his mental structure and modes of thought are unfamiliar; in his intellectual world, as we map it out to ourselves, it is difficult to conceive how a comfortable existence could be attained. Times, manners, and ideas have changed, and we look upon Dunbar with a certain reverential wonder and curiosity as we look upon Tantallon, standing up, grim and gray, in the midst of the modern landscape. The grand old fortress is a remnant of a state of things which have utterly pa.s.sed away. Curiously, as we walk beside it, we think of the actual human life its walls contained. In those great fire-places logs actually burned once, and in winter nights men-at-arms spread out big palms against the grateful heat. In those empty apartments was laughter, and feasting, and serious talk enough in troublous times, and births, and deaths, and the bringing home of brides in their blushes. This empty moat was filled with water, to keep at bay long-forgotten enemies, and yonder loop-hole was made narrow, as a protection from long-moulded arrows. In Tantallon we know the Dougla.s.ses lived in state, and bearded kings, and hung out banners to the breeze; but a sense of wonder is mingled with our knowledge, for the bothy of the Lothian farmer is even more in accordance with our methods of conducting life. Dunbar affects us similarly. We know that he possessed a keen intellect, a blossoming fancy, a satiric touch that blistered, a melody that enchanted Northern ears; but then we have lost the story of his life, and from his poems, with their wonderful contrasts, the delicacy and spring-like flush of feeling, the piety, the freedom of speech, the irreverent use of the sacredest names, the "Flyting" and the "Lament for the Makars," there is difficulty in making one's ideas of him cohere. He is present to the imagination, and yet remote. Like Tantallon, he is a portion of the past. We are separated from him by centuries, and that chasm we are unable to bridge properly.

The first thing that strikes the reader of these poems is their variety and intellectual range. It may be said that--partly from const.i.tutional turn of thought, partly from the turbulent and chaotic time in which he lived, when families rose to splendour and as suddenly collapsed, when the steed that bore his rider at morning to the hunting-field returned at evening masterless to the castle-gate--Dunbar's prevailing mood of mind is melancholy; that he, with a certain fondness for the subject, as if it gave him actual relief, moralised over the sandy foundations of mortal prosperity, the advance of age putting out the lights of youth, and cancelling the rapture of the lover, and the certainty of death. This is a favourite path of contemplation with him, and he pursues it with a gloomy sedateness of acquiescence, which is more affecting than if he raved and foamed against the inevitable. But he has the mobility of the poetic nature, and the sad ground-tone is often drowned in the ecstasy of lighter notes. All at once the "bare ruined choirs" are covered with the glad light-green of spring. His genius combined the excellencies of many masters. His "Golden Targe" and "The Thistle and the Rose" are allegorical poems, full of colour, fancy, and music. His "Two Married Women and the Widow" has a good deal of Chaucer's slyness and humour.

"The Dance of the Deadly Sins," with its fiery bursts of imaginative energy, its pictures finished at a stroke, is a prophecy of Spenser and Collins, and as fine as anything they have accomplished; while his "Flytings" are torrents of the coa.r.s.est vituperation. And there are whole flights of occasional poems, many of them sombre-coloured enough, with an ever-recurring mournful refrain, others satirical, but all flung off, one can see, at a sitting; in the few verses the mood is exhausted, and while the result remains, the cause is forgotten even by himself.

Several of these short poems are almost perfect in feeling and execution.

The melancholy ones are full of a serious grace, while in the satirical a laughing devil of glee and malice sparkles in every line. Some of these latter are dangerous to touch as a thistle--all bristling and angry with the spikes of satiric scorn.

In his allegorical poems--"The Golden Targe," "The Merle and the Nightingale," "The Thistle and the Rose"--Dunbar's fancy has full scope.

As allegories, they are, perhaps, not worth much; at all events, modern readers do not care for the adventures of "Quaking Dread and Humble Obedience"; nor are they affected by descriptions of Beauty, attended by her fair damsels, Fair Having, Fine Portraiture, Pleasance, and l.u.s.ty Cheer. The whole conduct and machinery of such things are too artificial and stilted for modern tastes. Stately masques are no longer performed in earls' mansions; and when a sovereign enters a city, a fair lady, with wings, representing Loyalty, does not burst out of a pasteboard cloud and recite a poetical address to Majesty. In our theatres the pantomime, which was originally an adumbration of human life, has become degraded.

Symbolism has departed from the boards, and burlesque reigns in its stead. The Lord Mavor's Show, the last remnant of the antique spectacular taste, does not move us now; it is held a public nuisance; it provokes the rude "chaff" of the streets. Our very mobs have become critical. Gog and Magog are dethroned. The knight feels the satiric comments through his armour. The very steeds are uneasy, as if ashamed.

But in Dunbar the allegorical machinery is saved from contempt by colour, poetry, and music.

Quick surprises of beauty, and a rapid succession of pictures, keep the attention awake. Now it is--

"May, of mirthful monethis queen, Betwixt April and June, her sisters sheen, Within the garden walking up and down."

Now--

"The G.o.d of windis, Eolus, With variand look, richt like a lord unstable."

Now the nightingale--

"Never sweeter noise was heard with livin' man, Nor made this merry, gentle nightingale; Her sound went with the river as it ran Out throw the fresh and flourished l.u.s.ty vale."

And now a spring morning--

"Ere Phoebus was in purple cape revest, Up raise the lark, the heaven's minstrel fine In May, in till a morrow mirthfullest.

"Full angel-like thir birdis sang their hours Within their curtains green, in to their hours Apparelled white and red with bloomes sweet; Enamelled was the field with all colours, The pearly droppis shook in silver shours; While all in balm did branch and leavis fleet.

To part fra Phoebus did Aurora greet, Her crystal tears I saw hing on the flours, Whilk he for love all drank up with his heat.

"For mirth of May, with skippis and with hops, The birdis sang upon the tender crops, With curious notes, as Venus' chapel clerks; The roses young, new spreading of their knops, Were powderit bricht with heavenly beriall drops, Through beams red, burning as ruby sparks; The skies rang for shouting of the larks, The purple heaven once scal't in silver slops, Oure gilt the trees, branches, leaves, and barks."

The finest of Dunbar's poems in this style is "The Thistle and the Rose."

It was written in celebration of the marriage of James with the Princess Margaret of England, and the royal pair are happily represented as the national emblems. It, of course, opens with a description of a spring morning. Dame Nature resolves that every bird, beast, and flower should compeer before her highness; the roe is commanded to summon the animals, the restless swallow the birds, and the "conjured" yarrow the herbs and flowers. In the twinkling of an eye they stand before the queen. The lion and the eagle are crowned, and are instructed to be humble and just, and to exercise their powers mercifully:--

"Then callit she all flouris that grew in field, Discerning all their seasons and effeirs, Upon the awful thistle she beheld And saw him keepit with a bush of spears: Consid'ring him so able for the weirs, A radius crown of rubies she him gave, And said, 'In field, go forth and fend the lave.'"

The rose, also, is crowned, and the poet gives utterance to the universal joy on occasion of the marriage--type of peace between two kingdoms.

Listen to the rich music of according voices:--

"Then all the birds sang with voice on hicht, Whose mirthful soun' was marvellous to hear; The mavis sang, Hail Rose, most rich and richt, That does up flourish under Phoebus' sphere, Hail, plant of youth, hail Princess, dochter dear; Hail blosom breaking out of the bluid royal, Whose precious virtue is imperial.

"The merle she sang, Hail, Rose of most delight, Hail, of all floris queen an' sovereign!

The lark she sang, Hail, Rose both red and white; Most pleasant flower, of michty colours twane: The nichtingale sang, Hail, Nature's suffragane, In beauty, nurture, and every n.o.bleness, In rich array, renown, and gentleness.

"The common voice up raise of birdes small, Upon this wise, Oh, blessit be the hour That thou was chosen to be our princ.i.p.al!

Welcome to be our Princess of honour, Our pearl, our pleasance, and our paramour, Our peace, our play, our plain felicity; Christ thee comfort from all adversity."

But beautiful as these poems are, it is as a satirist that Dunbar has performed his greatest feats. He was by nature "dowered with the scorn of scorn," and its edge was whetted by life-long disappointment. Like Spenser, he knew--

"What h.e.l.l it is in suing long to bide."

And even in poems where the mood is melancholy, where the burden is the shortness of life and the unpermanence of felicity, his satiric rage breaks out in single lines of fire. And although his satire is often almost inconceivably coa.r.s.e, the prompting instinct is healthy at bottom.

He hates Vice, although his hand is too often in the kennel to pelt her withal. He lays his grasp on the bridle-rein of the sleek prelate, and upbraids him with his secret sins in language unsuited to modern ears.

His greater satires have a wild sheen of imagination about them. They are far from being cold, moral homilies. His wrath or his contempt breaks through the bounds of time and s.p.a.ce, and brings the spiritual world on the stage. He wishes to rebuke the citizens of Edinburgh for their habits of profane swearing, and the result is a poem, which probably gave Coleridge the hint of his "Devil's Walk." Dunbar's satire is ent.i.tled the "Devil's Inquest." He represents the Fiend pa.s.sing up through the market, and chuckling as he listens to the strange oaths of cobbler, maltman, tailor, courtier, and minstrel. He comments on what he hears and sees with great pleasantry and satisfaction. Here is the conclusion of the piece:--

"Ane thief said, G.o.d that ever I chaip, Nor ane stark widdy gar me gaip, But I in h.e.l.l for geir wald be.

The Devil said, 'Welcome in a raip: Renounce thy G.o.d, and c.u.m to me.'

"The fishwives net and swore with granes, And to the Fiend saul flesh and banes; They gave them, with ane shout on hie.

The Devil said, 'Welcome all at anes; Renounce your G.o.d, and c.u.m to me.'

"The rest of craftis great aiths swair, Their wark and craft had nae compair, Ilk ane unto their qualitie.

The Devil said then, withouten mair, 'Renounce your G.o.d, and c.u.m to me.'"

But the greatest of Dunbar's satires--in fact, the greatest of all his poems--is that ent.i.tled "The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins." It is short, but within its compa.s.s most swift, vivid, and weird. The pictures rise on the reader's eye, and fade at once. It is a singular compound of farce and earnest. It is Spenser and Hogarth combined--the wildest grotesquerie wrought on a background of penal flame. The poet conceives himself in a dream, on the evening preceding Lent, and in his vision he heard Mahoun command that the wretched who "had ne'er been shriven"

should dance before him. Immediately a hideous rout present themselves; "holy harlots" appear in their finery, and never a smile wrinkles the faces of the onlookers; but when a string of "priests with their shaven necks" come in, the arches of the unnameable place shakes with the laughter of all the fiends. Then "The Seven Deadly Sins" begin to leap at once:--

"And first of all the dance was Pride, With hair wyld back and bonnet on side."

He, with all his train, came skipping through the fire.