FROM THE GARLAND OF LAUREL.1 TO ISABELL. My maiden Isabell, The sovereign rosemary, Is, like the daisy-flower, Of womanhood the lure! 1 This poem was written about 1520, at Sheriff-Hutton Castle in Yorkshire, the residence of the Duke of Norfolk. The son of this duke, Lord Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, afterwards third Duke of Norfolk, married, in 1513, Elizabeth Stafford, eldest daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, and of the five children born of this marriage one was Henry Howard the poet. It was in the early childhood of this poet-son, therefore, and probably when on a visit to her father-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, that the Countess of Surrey entertained the aged Skelton as her guest, or took him with her in her suite. The Countess was a patron of literature and of Skelton, and the poem called The Garland of Laurel, consisting of a long series of seven-lined stanzas, with brief interspersed lyrics, is an account of how she and her ladies wove for him, in many-coloured needle-work, a chaplet or garland of honour, while he in his turn occupied himself in composing songs in their praise. The present piece is one of the lyrics. 2 Odorous. 3 Fair rose. 4 Rose-bush. 5 Cats-mint or nept, a sweet herb. 6 Formerly the name for the whole class of carnations, pinks, etc. 8 Morning. 7 Neat, pretty GAVIN DOUGLAS. (1475-1522.) CONTEMPORARY with Dunbar in the Court of James IV. of Scotland, but about fifteen years younger, was the poet Douglas, third son of the famous Archibald, fifth Earl of Angus. He was educated at St. Andrews for the church, and was made by James IV., in 1501, Provost or Dean of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles in Edinburgh, at that time the chief post of ecclesiastical dignity in the city. In the same year he wrote and dedicated to James IV. The Palace of Honour, a long allegorical poem in nine-lined stanzas. During the period of his Provostship he also wrote King Hart, another allegory, and a fragment called Conscience. His most important and latest work was the translation into Scottish verse of Virgil's Eneid. This large undertaking was begun in Edinburgh early in 1512, and finished there on July 22d, 1513. His entire literary life dates, therefore, before the battle of Flodden, which took place on September 9th of that year. It was not until 1516 that he was made Bishop of Dunkeld, by which title he is usually known. In the meantime, only a few months after the King's death at Flodden, the young widowed Queen, sister of Henry VIII., had become the wife of the Earl of Angus, nephew of the poet. Henceforward, in virtue of his close relationship by marriage to the Queen and the infant King, Douglas was constantly and intimately concerned with affairs of state. During the troubled period of the King's minority, he devoted himself wholly to the business of politics, exerting his influence from first to last in the interest of "the English Party," as it may be called, whose aim was to promote a friendly alliance between England and Scotland. Opposed to this party was "the Party of the French alliance;" and, this party having come into the ascendency, the close of Douglas's life was spent in exile at the English Court of Henry VIII. Some of his private letters upon state matters, written during the period of his political activity, are still extant, and are remarkable for their statesmanlike wisdom and integrity. He died of the plague in London in 1522, and was buried in the church of the Savoy, in the Strand. The translation of the Eneid was considered, in the age when it was written, to be a masterpiece of scholarship, no such complete and correct translation of Virgil having yet been achieved. Philologically, the book is very interesting yet; but the portions of it of most direct and poetical interest for modern readers are the Prologues which precede the several books into which the epic is divided. These contain passages of astonishing beauty. Some of the Prologues are humorously autobiographic, and exhibit a joyous contentment of spirit, a constitutional purity and high-mindedness, while now and again there are revelations of a sadder and higher mood; and it may be specially noticed of Douglas that his descriptions of nature are not merely Chaucerian echoes, like most English poetry after Chaucer, but are the result of independent observation. His pictures, both within and without doors, are therefore faithfully Scottish. It is true that wild geese no longer fly clacking round about the city of Edinburgh in winter nights, disturbing the slumber of poets, but other facts described by Douglas are as familiar to Scotchmen to-day as they were to him three centuries and a half ago. The wizzened mossy hue of the brown moors, the "gurll weather," and the wind that "made wave the red weed on the dyke," are still characteristic facts in many a Scottish landscape. The high poetic merits of Douglas have probably been obscured, for modern readers, by the difficulty of his language. It is unusually full of momentary formations from the Latin, as well as of genuine old Teutonic words that have fallen out of use in more recent Scotch. FROM THE PALACE OF HONOUR. DREAM OF THE LOATHLY LANDSCAPE. Yet, at the last, I n'ot1 how lang a space, Whilk had tofore 2 been pale and void of blood: 1 Know not (ne-wot). 2 Before. 3 Then. 4 Dream, swoon 5 Wonderful accident. I thocht me set within a desert place My ravished spreit,2 in that desért terrible, With vile water whilk made a hideous trible,3 With braès 5 bare, raif rockès like to fall, 8 This laithly Flood, rumbland as thunder, routit ;9 17 Wherefore myselven was richt sair aghast. THE WELL OF THE MUSES. We passed the floods of Tigris and Phison, The facund well and hill of Helicon, We passed the hill and desert of Libane, O'er mount Cinthús where God Apollo shone, Beside that crystal Well, sweet and digest,2 Thrang to the Well to drink, whilk ran south-west, 8 To drink; but sae the great press me opprest Our horses pastured in ane pleasant plain, 15 12 The Ladies fair on divers instruments 10 1 The "Caballine Fountain," literally Horse Fountain (Lat. Fons Caballinus), was Hippocrene in Mount Helicon. It was fabled to have been produced by the stroke of the hoofs of the horse Pegasus; hence the name. 3 Alighted down. 4 These. 5 Wholly. 8 Crowd. 9 Drop. 10 Choose. 12 Gravelly (stony) steps (degrees). 14 Grassy ground. 18 Behaviour. 15 Sound. 19 Bound, captivated. 6 Thronged. 11 Running. 2 Wholesome. 7 Rest. 13 Wood resounded (dinned). 16 Imprints. 17 Appearance. 21 Below. |