100 



SCOTLAND (LITERATURE) 



bftirtx tke Tailteour and the Smrtar as those which 

 best exhibit hi- |H<wer. Of Dunbar it lias to lie 

 tided that he i- the first S.-..ui-li writer in 1mm 

 are unmistakably present the distinctive trail- of 

 the national genius as it has expressed itself in 

 literature. AH the translator of the .Jtnriit, (avin 

 Douglas ( 1475-1522) must always remain an inter 

 eating figure ; and it U on his traiiHlation that his 

 claims as a poet mainly rest. In tln> opinion of 

 tin- very latest critics Douglas has rendered his 

 author with a sympathetic in-ight and frequent 

 felicity of interpretation \vhicli have not been sur- 

 paneo by any sulieequent translator. Without 

 natural inspiration, however, he fails when left to 

 hi* own resources. His Police of Honour and 

 King Hart are purely conventional productions, 

 without individual stamp, in the tedious allegor- 

 ical fashion of the time. Like his three prede- 

 cenors. Sir David Lyndsay (1490-1555) regarded 

 Chaucer as his great exemplar in poetry, and in 

 his early poem The Dreme he is directly inspired 

 by his model. Yet no two minds could be more 

 essentially unlike than Chaucer and Lyndsay. 

 Chaucer's view of life was essentially that of a 

 poet : for Lyndsay the world around him was 

 a fight which he regarded not through the 

 medium of the poetic imagination, but with the 

 direct feeling of one moved to the heart by the 

 strivings and Bufferings of his fellow-men. The 

 ]>eri<>d in which he lived, also, was more proper to 

 men of his type than to men of the purely poetic 

 temper. By the time he reached manhood the 

 great religious revolution of the 16th century had 

 broken u|xin western Europe, and was begetting 

 universal discontent with existing conditions, and 

 specially with the clergy of the ancient church, 

 who were mainly responsible for the state to which 

 society had come. With the majority of the men 

 of letters of his time, therefore, Lyndsay found 

 scope for his talent as the critic and censor of the 

 social order around him. Hy the vigour and effect 

 \\ ith which he accomplished this task in such poems 

 as The Testament of the Paj>yngo, The Satyre of the 

 Thrie Ettaitis, and The Dialog concerning the 

 HtmttHt he did for Scotland what Erasmus did 

 for Europe, preparing the way for Knox as Erasmus 

 did for l.uther. As poet and champion of the 

 people Lyndsay came to hold a place in the hearts 

 of his countrymen from which Burns alone was 

 able to dislodge him. 



The very success which the four poets just 

 named achieved in their art U proof of a cul- 

 tivated opinion which made their development 

 possible. It is but what we should expect, there- 

 tore, that these four poets are only the brilliant 

 survivors of a numerous race who were their rivals 

 for poetic distinction. The list of such given by 

 Diinbar in his Lament for the Makars leaves us 

 with a lively impression of the intellectual activ- 

 ity of an age which many things might persuade 

 n- w.i- one in whit-h tin- liner play of the human 

 spirit was hardly lit be looked for. In this con- 

 nection reference should also lie made to that 

 ballad poetry of which Scotland has produced such 

 splendid n|>ecinicnH in their kind. Though their 

 dale and authorship cannot be definitely fixed, it 

 seems unquestionable that nmiiv of the best of 

 tin- Ullads In-long to the 15th an.f IC.tli centuries. 



It wa in vernacular jioetry that the Scottish 

 gcniim found its highest expression during the 

 JMTIIK! of which we are shaking; but along other 

 .ine, of expansion there was no lack of well- 

 din-rti-d etl'ort. Then? is conclusive evidence that 

 the intellect of Scotland had already taken that 

 In-iit which it II.M. kept ever since --that In-nt for 

 the dialectic tieatnii'nt of abstract questions which 

 cicMtiiallv produced Scottish theology and Scottish 

 philosophy. At the close of the 16th century 



nms notes as a generally recognised fact the 

 affinity of the Scots for abstract thinking, and 

 about the middle of the 16th the younger Scaliger 

 made a similar remark in somewhat different 

 terms. According to Itenau, Michael Scott was tin- 

 first (1230) to introduce the Aristotelian Com- 

 mentaries of A verrhoes into the western schools 

 an event of the first importance in the intellectual 

 history of Europe. To Duns Scotus ( who accord- 

 ing to the best authority, John Major, .i- 

 iindoiibtedly a Scotsman I belongs the credit of 

 leading the way by his remorseless logic to the 

 emancipation of men's minds from the scholastic 

 philosophy after it had done its work of discipline 

 on the mind of Europe. The foundation ot the 

 three universities of St Andrews (1411), Glasgow 

 (1451), and Aberdeen (1494) is another proof of 

 what has been already said, that in spite of chronic 

 strife and confusion there was a section of the 

 community who had steadily at heart the highest 

 interests of the country. 



Like other countries of Europe, Scotland had 

 also during this period its succession of chroniclers 

 of varying degrees of merit. The first of these was 

 John of Fordun, who between 1384 and 1387 wrote 

 his Latin chronicle of the Scottish nation (Si-nti- 

 chronicon), afterwards unscrupulously interpolated 

 and continued by Walter Bower (died 1449). With 

 these, though he wrote in vernacular verse, may 

 be mentioned Andrew of Wyntoun, who towards 

 the end of the 14th century composed his Orygynaie 

 Cronycle, or story of the world from its creation. 

 Of much higher merit as being the product of a 

 time when the Revival of Learning had extended 

 knowledge and raised the level of thought are the 

 Latin histories of Hector Boece (died 1536) and 

 John Major (died 1550). The translation of Boece 's 

 history into Scots by John Bellenden is the work 

 of a writer who consciously uses language both with 

 knowledge and skill. An interesting anonymous 

 tract in the Scottish dialect, The Compla'ynt of 

 Scotland ( 1548), is a curious example of that super- 

 fine writing which among the humanists of the 

 time was known as Ciceronianism. 



During the latter half of the 16th century the 

 mind and heart of Scotland were engrossed in the 

 task of adjusting its social and political system to 

 the religious settlement accepted by the country- in 

 1560. The time was therefore in the highest degree 

 unfavourable to the growth of imaginative litera- 

 ture. Such production- as the Gwde and Godly 

 Itallades, interesting as the deepest utterance of 

 the time, show the dominant note even of poetic 

 feeling. When every explanation bos been 

 suggested, however, it is a strange fact that 

 Scotland, which during the 15th century hod so 

 distinctly the advantage of Kngland in the qualitv 

 of its poetic literature, for tliis period can only 

 show against the Elizabethan galaxy such name's 

 as Sir Richard Maitland, Alexander Montgomery. 

 Alexander Hume, and King James VI. In veV 

 nacular pros.- the most notable production of 

 the period is John Knox's History of the Refornm- 

 linn in Si-ni!iiiiil t a work of national importance 

 to his own country, and by the imprint it liears 

 of a commanding personality holding a unique 

 place in its literature. The History of ,v 

 /inn/ by Bishop Lesley (afterwards translated into 

 Latin), the Memoirs of Sir James Melville, 

 and the Tractates of Ninian Win/.et, though of 

 no special literary excellence, are all the works 

 of men alive to the great questions that moved 

 the world of their time. Of all the Scotsmen 

 of this jieriod, however, the greatest literary 

 genius was George Buchanan, who by the grace 

 of liis Latin poetry and his equal skill in prose 

 gained a reputation second to no writer in Europe. 

 In Buchanan's vernacular writings also, the Admoni 



