For warldly honour lestis1 but a cry. EARTHLY JOY RETURNS IN PAIN. * HAVE mind that eild ay follows youth; Wealth, warldly gloir, and rich array, O'er cowered with flowers laid in a train: Freedom returns in wretchedness, With feigned words to make men fain: Virtue returns into vice, With covetyce is conscience slain : Since earthly joy abideth never, GAWAIN DOUGLAS, BISHOP OF DUNKeld. (1474-1522.) THIS amiable prelate was the son of Archibald, the fifth Earl of Angus, surnamed Bell-the-cat, from his share in the conspiracy against James Third's ministers at Lauder. Destined for the church, Gawain was liberally educated. The stormy factions that ensued in Scotland after the defeat of James IV. at Flodden, and his relationship to the house of Angus, involved him in the political movements of the period. During these troubles the influence of the queen mother, Margaret, and her husband, Angus, Gawain's nephew, raised him to the see of Dunkeld in 1516. He seems to have de voted himself with great earnestness, while the turbulence of the times permitted, to the temporal and spiritual interests of his bishopric. Five or six years after, the power of the Regent Albany expelled the Douglases from Scotland, and the Bishop of Dunkeld died in London of the plague in 1522. The largest work of Douglas is his translation of Virgil's Eneid into Scottish heroic verse. It is said to be executed with great spirit and fidelity; and, with his earlier translation of Ovid's "Remedy of Love," forms the first instance of the rendering of a classic into any of the British tongues. The several books are prefaced by prologues, some of which are remarkably beautiful. His "Palace of Honour" is an allegory constructed somewhat on the plan of Dunbar's "Golden Targe." As appropriate to the instruction of a king, he dedicates it to James IV. "King Hart" (i. e. Heart, the sovereign of the body,) is another allegorical poem illustrative of the accidents, temptations, and decline of human life. Douglas, as a writer, is inferior to Dunbar in nerve and in naturalness of conception. In many passages of the "Palace of Honour" his language is more obsolete and obscure. His descriptions are often magnificent, though too much overlaid by the Latinised phraseology which overspread our literature after the "revival of learning." 66 [THE Poet, in a dream, had joined a procession of allegorical personages in a pilgrimage to the Palace of Honour; he was committed by the muse Calliope to the charge of a nymph, who performs for him the part of the Sybil to Eneas, or of Virgil to Dante. From the hill of the Palace he sees among other things the following vision.] THE SHIPWRECK OF THE CARAVEL OF GRACE. PART III. STANZA VII. As we bene on the high hill situate, "Look down," quoth she, "conceive in what estate Of stormy sea whilk might nae manner 'suage. VIII. That terrible tempest's hideous wallís huge 1 Or wat, knows. * Contr. for blenkit, the past tense and particip, of blenk or blink, to look: used by Chaucer. 3 Shudder; commonly written grew or grue; hence gruesome, causing shuddering; dreadful. 4 Fragile, from break. To praise; hence to permit; from Fr. allouer; Lat. adlaudare. • Waves. 7 Terrible; Ang.-Sax. grislic; verb agrisan, to be horrified. To agrise is used by Chaucer, Spencer, and Drayton: grisly is a favourite adjective with the poets." So spake the grisly terror."-Milton, Par. Lost, ii. 704. Where neither rest nor quiet might appear; Ouresets with seas and many a stormy charge. 4 IX. This goodly Carwell, taiklit traist on raw,5 X. It was a piteous thing,-alaik, alaik! To hear the doleful cry when that she straik; XI. Tho16 at my nymph briefly I did enquire, Fluttering. 2 War. 3 Severely beset. Or caravel, a Spanish or Portuguese merchant-ship. Another form is carack; both probably connected with the word cargo. "He hath boarded a land-carack."-Shakesp. alluding to Othello's having carried off Desdemona. Tackled trustily all along. Traist (trust) is a verb, noun, and adjective. The adjec tive has also the sense of bold, secure, safe. "We gave him ansuëre not traist ynouch, Astonyst with the word he backward dreuch."-Doug. Virg. Traist, (Fr. tresteau, a three-legged stool,) is the frame of a table; hence trestle; tress in Scotch. 7 Protected. 6 Sure. 10 Drave. Scolding, insolent, impetuous; probably from the idea attached to the verb to beard. Blasts. 12 Wearied. 13 Tackling. 15 Fled, escaped. Fley, in Scotch also means to affright. 14 Beam. 16 Then. 17 Several. 11 Clave. 18 This relative often adds the plural sign in agreeing in number with the antecedent. Lost. PROLOGUE TO THE TWELFTH BOOK OF THE ENEID. In whom yon people made ane perilous race, XII. Ye bene all born the sons of ire, I guess, Oft stormésted with this warld's bruckleness, FROM THE PROLOGUE TO THE TWELFTH BOOK OF THE ENEID. Diònea, night-herd and watch of day, Went under covert, for gone was the night; 37 1 Was called. Term in English, hight; past tense and participle of Ang.-Sax. haetan, to say, to name; behight, to promise; "And behighten to give him money."-Mark xiv. 11, Wyclif. Hence hest and behest, a command. Hecht in Scotch is used in the sense of of promised. "They hecht him some fine braw ane."-Burns, Hallowe'en. 2 Till. The planet Venus, the morning and evening star. The goddess was said to be the daughter of Jupiter and the nymph Dione. 4 See note 8, p. 25. 5 This is a singular use of the cave of Maia on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, where Mercury was born, and from which he derives the name Cyllenius. Withdrew. Um is here an intensive prefix, as un in unloose; um in various forms in northern languages, means around, sometimes back.-See Jamieson's Scot. Dict. Saturn, in the judicial astrology, is an ill omened planet. If this be an acknowledgment of the Copernican astronomy it is singular in a churchman of the sixteenth century. The owl-Ovid. Met. ii. 590-595. 10 The legend of Tithonus, the son of Laomedon of Troy, and Aurora, is well known. These thirteen lines contain a singular confusion of astronomy and mythology. 11 Crimson. 12 The minutiae of the tailor's art seem to have been somewhat favourite pieces of scenery with our earlier poets. Our ancestors were curious in the elaborateness of their ap parel. Were the poets in this particular "abstract and brief chroniclers of the time?" "That turned your wit the seamy side without." Shakesp. Othello, Act iv. Sc. 11. "There does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining to the night." Milton, Comus, 223. Unshut the windows of her largé hall, 2 Shed purpour spraings, with gold and azure ment;3 Beat down the skyés cloudy mantle wall. * Forth of his palace royal issuèd Phœbùs, * 6 * The auriate phanis, of his throne sovràn, Welcome, the lord of light, and lamp of day! 1 Upwarps is a metaphor from a portcullis. The confused yet vigorous splendour of this passage is very characteristic of a period when the poetical art was struggling into civilization. 2 Purple streaks; Ang. Sax. spraengan, to sprinkle. Warton has "phanis, fans or vanes of gold." 3 Mingled. 5 See note 5, p. 11. 9 Sea. (Fretum, Lat.) 10 Sprout, from being fed by vein-like organs.-Jamieson. 11 Shelter. 12 Husbandmen-ploughs. 13 Boughs. The English poets have been fond of the use of the verb repair, as found in the Latin poetry. See Hor. Sat. ii. 5, 2. Odes iv. 7, 13. “And yet anon repairs his drooping head."-Milton; Lycidas. "Now heaven repairs thy rural seat."-Logan. 14 De is used intensively; so that depaint is perfectly distinct from the modern verb depict; depaint is used by James I., see p. 27. This passage of Douglas forms a good illustration of the flood of Latinised terms that overflowed the language after the "revival of learning." |