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XXV. — On the Rimes in the Authentic Poems of William Dunbar. 

 By Henry Bellyse Baildon, M.A. Cantab., F.R.S.E. 



(Read April 3, 1899.) 



Introduction. 



It may well be thought that, in a field that has been so carefully reaped and 

 garnered and gleaned by so many learned workers as have the works of the great 

 Scottish poet, William Dunbar, there remained nothing still to be accomplished. Where 

 such erudite students of Scottish literature as Laing, Small, Greg or, and .ZEneas 

 Mackay, and such an illustrious scholar as Professor Sohipper have laboured, and 

 where even the poet's metrical forms have been the subject of careful investigation by 

 Mr M'Neill, it might be thought alike vain and presumptuous to attempt to follow. 

 Yet it so happens, nevertheless, that there has never been a thorough investigation made 

 of Dunbar's rimes with a view of throwing light on the phonology or, in more popular 

 phrase, the pronunciation of his day. And yet, perhaps, no more suitable, interesting, 

 and instructive subject could be found for such treatment than just this same William 

 Dunbar. 



In the first place, Dunbar is nothing if not a conscientious artist, — a man with a 

 thorough appreciation of the value of technique, and with an excellent ear both for metric 

 and phonetic effects. Without such an ear a man cannot be a poetic artist of the first 

 rank, and it is marvellous how these gifts secure a man immortality, even when his 

 thought is neither important nor original. And, on the other hand, the want of, or the 

 occasional neglect to use, these gifts threaten the immortality of some of the greatest 

 names. In Wordsworth, for instance, how often are we jarred by the toneless, musicless 

 quality of his lines ! and in Byron's dramas how are we repelled by the harsh, dry timbre 

 of his blank verse ! Even the least cultured are sensitive on this point, as we gather 

 from the felicitous cadence and clang of popular proverbs and sayings, and other 

 evidences of the sensuous pleasure given to the young and uneducated by song and 

 verse. At any rate, no one can read Dunbar at all without feeling convinced that he 

 took a real pleasure, — perhaps the purest pleasure he had in his grumbling, mendicant 

 existence (even as perhaps did his predecessor and model, the scamp Villon) — in the 

 rhythm and sonorous melody of his verses ; and, at a time in his disreputable early 

 career, when he would have unscrupulously robbed hen-roosts or pocketed spoons, or 

 used the pulpit, like Chaucer's Pardoner, for the most sordid ends, he was in his art a 

 purist of the first water. This quality is naturally an invaluable one for our purpose ; 

 and, if we except his very latest verse, where the instruction of his flock and not the 

 production of poetry is his main object, one may safely rely on the conscientious work 



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