"_Uxor._ What are all these two and two in a table. Oh it is trim. _Civis._
These are old frendes, it is well handled and workemanly. Willyam Boswell
in Pater noster rowe, painted them. Here is Christ, and Sathan, Sainct
Peter, and Symon Magus, Paule, and Alexader the Coppersmith, Trace, and
Becket, Martin Luther, and the Pope ... bishop Cramer, and bishop Gardiner.
Boner wepyng, Bartlet, grene breche ... Salomon, and Will Sommer. The cocke
and the lyon, the wolfe and the lambe." This passage also necessarily
implies that Barclay's fame at that time was second to none in England.
Alas! for fame:
"What is the end of fame? 'Tis but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper."
In the seventeenth century Barclay still held a place in the first rank of
satirists, if we accept the evidence of the learned Catholic poet of that
time, Sir Aston Cokaine. He thus alludes to him in an address "To my
learned friend, Mr Thomas Bancroft, upon his Book of Satires. By Sir Aston
Cokayne."
"After a many works of divers kinds
Your muse to tread th' Aruncan path designs:
'Tis hard to write but Satires in these days,
And yet to write good Satires merits praise:
. . . . . .
So old Petronius Arbiter appli'd
Corsives unto the age he did deride:
So Horace, Persius, Juvenal, (among
Those ancient Romans) scourg'd the impious throng;
So Ariosto (in these later times)
Reprov'd his Italy for many crimes;
So learned Barclay let his lashes fall
Heavy on some to bring a cure to all."
In concluding this imperfect notice of one of the most remarkable of our
early writers, we cannot but echo the regret expressed by one of his
biographers, that "What ought most to be lamented is, that we are able to
say so very little of one in his own time so famous, and whose works ought
to have transmitted him to posterity with much greater honour."
* * * * *