Why some were ferried o'er, and some refused? "Son of Anchises! offspring of the gods! (The Sibyl said) you see the Stygian floods! The sacred streams which heaven's imperial state Attests in oaths, and fears to violate. The ghosts rejected are the unhappy crew Reprived of sepulchres and funeral due : The boatman, Charon: those, the buried host, He ferries over to the farther coast; Nor dares his transport vessel cross the waves And Hesperus in the west with beamis bright Upspringis, as forridar1 of the night. Amid the haughs and every lusty vale, The recent dew beginnis down to skail,2 To meys 3 the burning where the sun had shine, Whilk though was to the nether world decline. At every pilis 4 point and cornis crops Like crystal knoppis or small silver beads. With such whose bones are not composed The light begouth to quynkill out and fail, The day to darken, decline and devail ; in graves. A hundred years they wander on the The gummys9 rises, down fallis the donk shore ; At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er." A JUNE EVENING. Toward the even amid the summer's heat, With herbis, cornis, cattle and fruit trees, The sun enfirèd haile, 3 as to my sight, 1 Quickly. ryme Both here and there scuggis 10 and shadows dim. Uprose the bak" with her peeled leathern flight; The lark descendis from the skyis hight, Singand her compling song, after her guise, To take her rest at matin hour to rise. Out oure the swyre swymaris the sops 13 of mist, The night forth spread her cloak with sable list, That all the beauty of the fructuous field Was with the earthis umbrage clean ourheild ; 14 Both man and beast, firth, flood and woodis wild, Involved in the shadows werein sild.'s ' Precurser, forerider. 9 Mists. 2 Scatter. 3 Mitigate. 6 Shining beryl * The sky. 10 Shades. II The bat. 12 Evening. 13 Over the valleys floats the clouds. 14 Covered, concealed. 15 Surrounded. All store and cattle ceased in their lair, sea: And shortly, everything that does repair, In firth or field, flood, forest, earth or air, Or in the scroggis,3 or the bushes rank, The little midges, and the unrusum 5 flies, Whose mirthful notis longing for to hear estate: That shortly, there as I was leaned down For nightis silence, and this birdis soun On sleep I slaid; where soon I saw appear Ane aged man, and said: what does thou here? appearance is evidently suggested by Henryson's Æsop, "Lyke to some poet of the auld fassoune," informs Douglas that he is Maphæus Vegius, who added the thirteenth book to the Eneid, and demands that it be translated with the others. The poet excuses himself on the plea of having already spent too much time on such work, to the neglect of more serious studies; yet Maphæus, not heeding this excuse, adopts the undignified method of obtaining the poet's consent by the application of "Twenty rowtis upon my rigging laid," with which he awakes, and promises to fulfil the additional task. It being now morning, he describes it as follows : And now is left but Lucifer alone. And futhermore to blazon this new day, This aged man, the manner of whose Who might discrive the birdis blissful bay?? Belive 3 on wing the busy lark upsprang To salus the blithe morrow with her sang: Soon oure the fieldis shinis the light clear, Welcome to pilgrim both and labourer :- 3 Stunted shrubbery. 9 Laurel. 4 Enstabled lies. 5 Restless. Tyte on his hynis' gave the grieve a cry, The dewy green, puldered1 with daisies gay, Show on the sward a colour dapple gray; The misty vapours springand up full sweet, Maist comfortable to glad all mannis spreit; 2 Awake on foot, go till our husbandry; dawis.3 DAVID LINDSAY. 1490 (?)—1555. Considering that David Lindsay may be said to have been bred at court, it is very much to his credit that he is the most popular of Scotland's ancient poets; and this for pandering to the prejudices of no section of society, but for his strong common sense, manly courage, and transparent honesty. These are qualities that are never vulgar, nor common, and prevent Lindsay from being characterized as such, although it may be admitted that his poetry is of a lower order than that of Dunbar, or even of Douglas. He was the eldest son of David Lindsay of The Mount, a small estate about three miles north of Cupar, in Fife; and, by the general opinion of his biographers, he was born there about the year 1490. Dr David Laing states that there is no positive information bearing on the date, or the place of his birth, and considers that he may, for anything known to the contrary, have been born at Garmylton, two miles from Haddington; which estate came into the 1 Quick on the hinds. 2 The hind's wife calls. possession of his grandfather, of the same name, in 1478. It was to his mansionhouse here, that the poet, on his dismissal from court favour in 1524, retired; and here he commenced his literary career. This estate, now called Garelton, formed part of the barony of Byres, and with it passed into the possession of the Earl of Wemyss, in 1724, having previously (in 1586) passed out of the possession of the Lindsays. Little or nothing is known of his boyhood and early training; and the first notice that in all probability refers to him, is the name "Da. Lindesay," in the register of incorporated students, at St Andrews University, for 1508-9. Three years' attendance being necessary to incorporation, his entrance upon his course would take place in 1505, when he would be about fifteen years old. The name "Da. Betone," the future Cardinal of tragic memory, follows next on the register. There is nothing to show that Lindsay attended the University beyond 1509. It has been inferred, from references in his poems, that he travelled, or finished his education abroad; but the passages on which such conjectures are founded are of themselves too indirect to be sufficient evidence of the fact, without corroboration. The first notice of his appearance at the court of James IV. is supplied by the Treasurer's accounts for the year 1511, when the sum of £3, 4s. was paid for a play-coat to David Lindsay, for the play played in the Abbey of Holyrood, before the King and Queen. The probability is, that he was in the royal service a year or two previously; but the loss of the Treasurer's accounts from 1508 to 1511, deprives us of the chief means of information concerning the private concerns of the court during these years. On the birth of Prince James, afterwards James V., in April 1512, Lindsay was appointed his usher, or chief page; and a very pleasing and natural account of how he attended upon his young charge, and ministered to his youthful enjoyments, forms reminiscences in his two earliest poems, "The Dream," and "The Complaint to the King." While thus forming an intimate member of the royal household, his testimony, as an eye-witness, is said to authenticate an incident on which the tragic results of the Battle of Flodden, which closely followed, very possibly threw back a supernatural reflection, to which the superstitious and excited temper of the times attached an importance out of proportion to the reality of the occurrence. Scott, whose romantic nature loved to reanimate the weird spectres of former ages, has incorporated the incident in Marmion, and in a note quotes Lindsay of Pitscottie's account of it, which is to the following effect : The King (during the preparation for the war with England) repaired to Linlithgow, to seek such religious support and guidance as suited his circumstances, and while engaged in prayer in the church of St Michael, he was saluted by an aged man in pilgrim attire, who warned him against undertaking the war, and then disappeared in the same mysterious manner in which he came. It was the popular belief that the King's monitor was St Andrew, the titular saint of Scotland, who was thus commissioned by the Virgin to warn James of the sad issue of the war. "I know not," says Scott, "by what means St Andrew got the credit of having been the celebrated monitor of James IV., for the expression in Lindsay's narrative, My mother has sent me,' could only be used by St John, the adopted son of the Virgin Mary. The whole story," he adds, "is so well authenticated that we have only the choice between a miracle or an imposture." Buchanan, after recording the incident, remarks "that David Lindsay of The Mount, a man of unsuspected probity and veracity, attached to literature, and during life invariably opposed to falsehood; from whom, unless I had received the story as narrated vouched for truth, I had omitted to notice it as one of the commonly reported fables." After the death of James IV., Lindsay continued as master of the young King's household, for which he had a salary of £40 a-year, and had, as his associate in estate of Garmylton, near Haddington, charge of the youthful monarch, Sir and about 1528, at the age of thirtyJames Inglis, as chaplain, who was also seven, made his first essay in literature, private secretary to the Queen Dowager, by the publication of "The Dream," and a poet, to whom the Maitland MS. | which is prefaced by an "Epistle to the attributes a poem of sixteen stanzas, en- King's Grace." To this succeeded, about titled "A General Satyre," but which 1530, "The Complaint to the King," and the Bannatyne MS. ascribes to Dunbar. "The Complaint of the Papyngo." The On even less satisfactory evidence, he chief burden of these three poems is the has been credited with the authorship disorder and dishonesty that, both in of The Complaint of Scotland. John Church and State, were ruining the Bellenden was at the same time clerk country. of accounts in the King's service; and Gavin Dunbar, afterwards Archbishop | of Glasgow, and Lord Chancellor of Scotland, was James's preceptor. In 1522, Lindsay was married to Janet Douglas, a lady who was also in the King's service, as his seamstress, and which appointment she retained even after her husband's retirement from court; for the Treasurer's accounts up to 1537, contain various entries of moneys paid to her for the King's wardrobe. The quarrels of the Queen Dowager and her husband, the Earl of Angus, at length led to her having him divorced; but on the retirement of the governor, Albany, with whom she sided, to France, in 1524, Angus recovered the control of affairs, and, with the view of strengthening his party, nominally placed the King, now in his twelfth year, in supreme power, while he kept him in a state of semi-captivity, the more effectually to use him as the instrument of his own ambitious designs. Lindsay, and others of the King's early guardians, were too honest to suit the view of the Angus party; yet though dismissed from the service of the King, his pension was continued to him. He retired to his But now began to be heard the first indistinct murmurs of the storm that was to purify the polluted atmosphere in which the ecclesiastical life of Scotland maintained its unhealthy existence; and the Romish priesthood, urged by the fears that ever haunt the slaves of superstition, steeped in effeminacy, manifested the natural cruelty of their instincts, by passing an Act of Parliament, denouncing "the damnable opinions of heresy spread in divers countries by the heretic Luther and his disciples, and as this realm has ever been clean of all sic filth and vice;" and ordaining, under the severest penalties, "that nae manner of person bring with them any books of the said Luther, his disciples, or servants." Nor were they long in obtaining a victim in the person of Patrick Hamilton, who had returned from Germany, and began to proclaim the doctrines of the Refor mation to his countrymen. He was brought to the stake in 1527-8. The escape of James from the custody of the Douglases, in July 1528, again brought Lindsay into public life; and in 1529 he was appointed Chief Herald, with the title of Lyon King of Arms, |