If it be assumed that the North Briton is, to an appreciable extent, a
different creature from the Englishman, the assumption is not likely to
provoke dispute. No one will deny us the prominence of our cheek-bones,
and our pride in the same. How far the difference extends, whether it
involves merit or demerit, are questions not now sought to be settled.
Nor is it important to discover how the difference arose; how far chiller
climate and sourer soil, centuries of unequal yet not inglorious
conflict, a separate race of kings, a body of separate traditions, and a
peculiar crisis of reformation issuing in peculiar forms of religious
worship, confirmed and strengthened the national idiosyncrasy. If a
difference between the races be allowed, it is sufficient for the present
purpose. _That_ allowed, and Scot and Southern being fecund in literary
genius, it becomes an interesting inquiry to what extent the great
literary men of the one race have influenced the great literary men of
the other. On the whole, perhaps, the two races may fairly cry quits.
Not unfrequently, indeed, have literary influences arisen in the north
and travelled southwards. There were the Scottish ballads, for instance,
there was Burns, there was Sir Walter Scott, there is Mr. Carlyle. The
literary influence represented by each of these arose in Scotland, and
has either passed or is passing "in music out of sight" in England. The
energy of the northern wave has rolled into the southern waters. On the
other hand, we can mark the literary influences travelling from the south
northward. The English Chaucer rises, and the current of his influence
is long afterwards visible in the Scottish King James, and the Scottish
poet Dunbar. That which was Prior and Gay in London, became Allan Ramsay
when it reached Edinburgh. Inspiration, not unfrequently, has travelled,
like summer, from the south northwards; just as, when the day is over,
and the lamps are lighted in London, the radiance of the setting sun is
lingering on the splintered peaks and rosy friths of the Hebrides. All
this, however, is a matter of the past; literary influence can no longer
be expected to travel leisurely from south to north, or from north to
south. In times of literary activity, as at the beginning of the present
century, the atmosphere of passion or speculation envelop the entire
island, and Scottish and English writers simultaneously draw from it what
their peculiar natures prompt--just as in the same garden the rose drinks
crimson and the convolvulus azure from the superincumbent air.
Chaucer must always remain a name in British literary history. He
appeared at a time when the Saxon and Norman races had become fused, and
when ancient bitternesses were lost in the proud title of Englishman. He
was the first great poet the island produced; and he wrote for the most
part in the language of the people, with just the slightest infusion of
the courtlier Norman element, which gives to his writings something of
the high-bred air that the short upper-lip gives to the human
countenance. In his earlier poems he was under the influence of the
Provençal Troubadours, and in his "Flower and the Leaf," and other works
of a similar class, he riots in allegory; he represents the cardinal
virtues walking about in human shape; his forests are full of beautiful
ladies with coronals on their heads; courts of love are held beneath the
spreading elm, and metaphysical goldfinches and nightingales, perched
among the branches green, wrangle melodiously about the tender passion.
In these poems he is fresh, charming, fanciful as the spring-time itself:
ever picturesque, ever musical, and with a homely touch and stroke of
irony here and there, suggesting a depth of serious matter in him which
it needed years only to develop. He lived in a brilliant and stirring
time; he was connected with the court; he served in armies; he visited
the Continent; and, although a silent man, he carried with him, wherever
he went, and into whatever company he was thrown, the most observant eyes
perhaps that ever looked curiously out upon the world. There was nothing
too mean or too trivial for his regard. After parting with a man, one
fancies that he knew every line and wrinkle of his face, had marked the
travel-stains on his boots, and had counted the slashes of his doublet.
And so it was that, after mixing in kings' courts, and sitting with
friars in taverns, and talking with people on country roads, and
travelling in France and Italy, and making himself master of the
literature, science, and theology of his time, and when perhaps touched
with misfortune and sorrow, he came to see the depth of interest that
resides in actual life,--that the rudest clown even, with his sordid
humours and coarse speech, is intrinsically more valuable than a whole
forest full of goddesses, or innumerable processions of cardinal virtues,
however well mounted and splendidly attired. It was in some such mood of
mind that Chaucer penned those unparalleled pictures of contemporary life
that delight yet, after five centuries have come and gone. It is
difficult to define Chaucer's charm. He does not indulge in fine
sentiment; he has no bravura passages; he is ever master of himself and
of his subject. The light upon his page is the light of common day.
Although powerful delineations of passion may be found in his "Tales,"
and wonderful descriptions of nature, and although certain of the
passages relating to Constance and Griselda in their deep distresses are
unrivalled in tenderness, neither passion, nor natural description, nor
pathos, are his striking characteristics. It is his shrewdness, his
conciseness, his ever-present humour, his frequent irony, and his short,
homely line--effective as the play of the short Roman sword--which
strikes the reader most. In the "Prologue to the Canterbury Tales"--by
far the ripest thing he has done--he seems to be writing the easiest,
most idiomatic prose, but it is poetry all the while. He is a poet of
natural manner, dealing with out-door life. Perhaps, on the whole, the
writer who most resembles him--superficial differences apart--is
Fielding. In both there is constant shrewdness and common-sense, a
constant feeling of the comic side of things, a moral instinct which
escapes in irony, never in denunciation or fanaticism; no remarkable
spirituality of feeling, an acceptance of the world as a pleasant enough
place, provided good dinners and a sufficiency of cash are to be had, and
that healthy relish for fact and reality, and scorn of humbug of all
kinds, especially of that particular phase of it which makes one appear
better than one is, which--for want of a better term--we are accustomed
to call _English_. Chaucer was a Conservative in all his feelings; he
liked to poke his fun at the clergy, but he was not of the stuff of which
martyrs are made. He loved good eating and drinking, and studious
leisure and peace; and although in his ordinary moods shrewd, and
observant, and satirical, his higher genius would now and then splendidly
assert itself--and behold the tournament at Athens, where kings are
combatants and Emily the prize; or the little boat, containing the
brain-bewildered Constance and her child, wandering hither and thither on
the friendly sea.
Chaucer was born about 1328, and died about 1380; and although he had,
both in Scotland and England, contemporaries and immediate successors, no
one of them can be compared with him for a moment. The "Moral Gower" was
his friend, and inherited his tediousness and pedantry without a sparkle
of his fancy, passion, humour, wisdom, and good spirits. Occleve and
Lydgate followed in the next generation; and although their names are
retained in literary histories, no line or sentence of theirs has found a
place in human memory. The Scottish contemporary of Chaucer was Barbour,
who although deficient in tenderness and imagination, deserves praise for
his sinewy and occasionally picturesque verse. "The Bruce" is really a
fine poem. The hero is noble, resolute, and wise. Sir James Douglas is
a very perfect, gentle knight. The old Churchman had the true poetic
fire in him. He rises into eloquence in an apostrophe to Freedom, and he
fights the battle of Bannockburn over again with great valour, shouting,
and flapping of standards. In England, nature seemed to have exhausted
herself in Chaucer, and she lay quiescent till Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas
Wyatt came, the immediate precursors of Spenser, Shakspeare, and their
companions.
While in England the note of the nightingale suddenly ceased, to be
succeeded by the mere chirping of the barn-door sparrows, the divine and
melancholy voice began to be heard further north. It was during that
most barren period of English poetry--extending from Chaucer's death till
the beginning of Elizabeth's reign--that Scottish poetry arose, suddenly,
splendidly--to be matched only by that other uprising nearer our own
time, equally unexpected and splendid, of Burns and Scott. And it is
curious to notice in this brilliant outburst of northern genius how much
is owing to Chaucer; the cast of language is identical, the literary form
is the same, there is the same way of looking at nature, the same
allegorical forests, the troops of ladies, the same processions of
cardinal virtues. James I., whose long captivity in England made him
acquainted with Chaucer's works was the leader of the poetic movement
which culminated in Dunbar, and died away in Sir David Lindsay just
before the noise and turmoil of the Reformation set in. In the
concluding stanza of the "Quair," James records his obligation to those--
"Masters dear,
Gower and Chaucer, that on the steppes sate
Of retorick, while they were livand here,
Superlative as poets laureate
Of morality and eloquence ornate."
But while, during the reigns of the Jameses, Scottish genius was being
acted upon by the broader and deeper genius of England, Scotland, quite
unconsciously to herself, was preparing a liquidation in full of all
spiritual obligations. For even then, in obscure nooks and corners, the
Scottish ballads were growing up, quite uncontrolled by critical rules,
rude in structure and expression, yet, at the same time, full of
vitality, retaining in all their keenness the mirth of rustic festivals,
and the piteousness of domestic tragedies. The stormy feudal time out of
which they arose crumbled by process of gradual decay, but they remained,
made brighter by each succeeding summer, like the wildflowers that blow
in the chinks of ruins. And when English poetry had become artificial
and cold, the lucubrations of forgotten Scottish minstrels, full of the
touches that make the whole world kin, brought new life with them.
Scotland had invaded England more than once, but the blue bonnets never
went over the border so triumphantly as when they did so in the shape of
songs and ballads.
James IV., if not the wisest, was certainly the most brilliant monarch of
his name; and he was fortunate beyond the later Stuarts in this, that
during his lifetime no new popular tide had set in which it behooved him
to oppose or to float upon. For him in all its essentials to-day had
flowed quietly out of yesterday, and he lived unperplexed by fear of
change. With something of a Southern gaiety of spirit, he was a merrier
monarch than his dark-featured and saturnine descendant who bore the
appellation. He was fond of martial sports, he loved to glitter at
tournaments, his court was crowded with singing men and singing women.
Yet he had his gloomy moods and superstitious despondencies. He could
not forget that he had appeared in arms against his father; even while he
whispered in the ear of beauty the iron belt of penance was fretting his
side, and he alternated the splendid revel with the cell of the monk. In
these days, and for long after, the Borders were disturbed, and the
Highland clans, setting royal authority at defiance, were throttling each
other in their mists. The Catholic religion was yet unsapped, and the
wealth of the country resided in the hands of the nobles and the
churchmen. Edinburgh towered high on the ridge between Holyrood and the
Castle, its streets reddened with feud at intervals, and its merchants
clustering round the Cathedral of St. Giles like bees in a honeycomb; and
the king, when he looked across the faint azure of the Forth, beheld the
long coast of Fife dotted with little towns, where ships were moored that
traded with France and Holland, and brought with them cargoes of silk and
wines. James was a popular monarch; he was beloved by the nobles and by
the people. He loved justice, he cultivated his marine, and he built the
_Great Michael_--the _Great Eastern_ of that day. He had valiant seamen,
and more than once Barton sailed into Leith with a string of English
prizes. When he fell with all his nobility at Flodden, there came upon
Scotland the woe with which she was so familiar--
"Woe to that realme that haith an ower young king."
A long regency followed; disturbing elements of religion entered into the
life of the nation, and the historical stream which had flowed smoothly
for a series of years became all at once convulsed and turbulent, as if
it had entered upon a gorge of rapids. It was in this pleasant
interregnum of the reign of the fourth James, when ancient disorders had
to a certain extent been repressed, and when religious difficulties ahead
were yet undreamed of, that the poet Dunbar flourished--a nightingale
singing in a sunny lull of the Scottish historical storm.
Modern readers are acquainted with Dunbar chiefly through the medium of
Mr. David Laing's beautiful edition of his works published in 1834, and
by good Dr. Irving's intelligent and admirable compacted "History of
Scottish Poetry," published the other day. Irving's work, if deficient
somewhat in fluency and grace of style, is characterised by
conscientiousness of statement and by the ripest knowledge. Yet, despite
the researches of these competent writers, of the events of the poet's
life not much is known. He was born about 1460, and from an unquotable
allusion in one of his poems, he is supposed to have been a native of the
Lothians. His name occurs in the register of the University of St.
Andrews as a Bachelor of Arts. With the exception of these entries in
the college register, there is nothing authentically known of his early
life. We have no portrait of him, and cannot by that means decipher him.
We do not know with certainty from what family he sprang. Beyond what
light his poems may throw on them, we have no knowledge of his habits and
personal tastes. He exists for the most part in rumour, and the vague
shadows of things. It appears that in early life he became a friar of
the order of St. Francis; and in the capacity of a travelling priest
tells us that "he preached in Derntown kirk and in Canterbury;" that he
"passed at Dover across the Channel, and went through Picardy teaching
the people." He does not seem to have taken kindly to his profession.
His works are full of sarcastic allusions to the clergy, and in no
measured terms he denounces their luxury, their worldly-mindedness, and
their desire for high place and fat livings. Yet these denunciations
have no very spiritual origin. His rage is the rage of a disappointed
candidate, rather than of a prophet; and, to the last, he seems to have
expected preferment in the Church. Not without a certain pathos he
writes, when he had become familiar with disappointment, and the sickness
of hope deferred--
"I wes in youth an nureiss knee,
Dandely! bischop, dandely!
And quhen that age now dois me greif,
Ane sempill vicar I can nocht be."
It is not known when he entered the service of King James. From his
poems it appears that he was employed as a clerk or secretary in several
of the missions despatched to foreign courts. It is difficult to guess
in what capacity Dunbar served at Holyrood. He was all his life a
priest, and expected preferment from his royal patron. We know that he
performed mass in the presence. Yet when the king in one of his dark
moods had withdrawn from the gaieties of the capital to the religious
gloom of the convent of Franciscans at Stirling, we find the poet
inditing a parody on the machinery of the Church, calling on Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, and on all the saints of the calendar, to transport the
princely penitent from Stirling, "where ale is thin and small," to
Edinburgh, where there is abundance of swans, cranes, and plovers, and
the fragrant clarets of France. And in another of his poems, he
describes himself as dancing in the queen's chamber so zealously that he
lost one of his slippers, a mishap which provoked her Majesty to great
mirth. Probably, as the king was possessed of considerable literary
taste, and could appreciate Dunbar's fancy and satire, he kept him
attached to his person, with the intention of conferring a benefice on
him when one fell vacant; and when a benefice _did_ fall vacant, felt
compelled to bestow it on the cadet of some powerful family in the
state,--for it was always the policy of James to stand well with his
nobles. He remembered too well the deaths of his father and
great-grandfather to give unnecessary offense to his great barons. From
his connexion with the court, the poet's life may be briefly epitomised.
In August, 1500, his royal master granted Dunbar an annual pension of 10
pounds for life, or till such time as he should be promoted to a benefice
of the annual value of 40 pounds. In 1501, he visited England in the
train of the ambassadors sent thither to negotiate the king's marriage.
The marriage took place in May, 1503, on which occasion the high-piled
capital wore holiday attire, balconies blazed with scarlet cloth, and the
loyal multitude shouted as bride and bridegroom rode past, with the
chivalry of two kingdoms in their train. Early in May, Dunbar composed
his most celebrated poem in honour of the event. Next year he said mass
in the king's presence for the first time, and received a liberal reward.
In 1505, he received a sum in addition to his stated pension, and two
years thereafter his pension was doubled. In August, 1510, his pension
was increased to 80 pounds per annum, until he became possessed of a
benefice of the annual value of 10 pounds or upwards. In 1513, Flodden
was fought, and in the confusion consequent on the king's death, Dunbar
and his slowly-increasing pensions disappear from the records of things.
We do not know whether he received his benefice; we do not know the date
of his death, and to this day his grave is secret as the grave of Moses.
Knowing but little of Dunbar's life, our interest is naturally
concentrated on what of his writings remain to us. And to modern eyes
the old poet is a singular spectacle. His language is different than
ours; his mental structure and modes of thought are unfamiliar; in his
intellectual world, as we map it out to ourselves, it is difficult to
conceive how a comfortable existence could be attained. Times, manners,
and ideas have changed, and we look upon Dunbar with a certain
reverential wonder and curiosity as we look upon Tantallon, standing up,
grim and gray, in the midst of the modern landscape. The grand old
fortress is a remnant of a state of things which have utterly passed
away. Curiously, as we walk beside it, we think of the actual human life
its walls contained. In those great fire-places logs actually burned
once, and in winter nights men-at-arms spread out big palms against the
grateful heat. In those empty apartments was laughter, and feasting, and
serious talk enough in troublous times, and births, and deaths, and the
bringing home of brides in their blushes. This empty moat was filled
with water, to keep at bay long-forgotten enemies, and yonder loop-hole
was made narrow, as a protection from long-moulded arrows. In Tantallon
we know the Douglasses lived in state, and bearded kings, and hung out
banners to the breeze; but a sense of wonder is mingled with our
knowledge, for the bothy of the Lothian farmer is even more in accordance
with our methods of conducting life. Dunbar affects us similarly. We
know that he possessed a keen intellect, a blossoming fancy, a satiric
touch that blistered, a melody that enchanted Northern ears; but then we
have lost the story of his life, and from his poems, with their wonderful
contrasts, the delicacy and spring-like flush of feeling, the piety, the
freedom of speech, the irreverent use of the sacredest names, the
"Flyting" and the "Lament for the Makars," there is difficulty in making
one's ideas of him cohere. He is present to the imagination, and yet
remote. Like Tantallon, he is a portion of the past. We are separated
from him by centuries, and that chasm we are unable to bridge properly.
The first thing that strikes the reader of these poems is their variety
and intellectual range. It may be said that--partly from constitutional
turn of thought, partly from the turbulent and chaotic time in which he
lived, when families rose to splendour and as suddenly collapsed, when
the steed that bore his rider at morning to the hunting-field returned at
evening masterless to the castle-gate--Dunbar's prevailing mood of mind
is melancholy; that he, with a certain fondness for the subject, as if it
gave him actual relief, moralised over the sandy foundations of mortal
prosperity, the advance of age putting out the lights of youth, and
cancelling the rapture of the lover, and the certainty of death. This is
a favourite path of contemplation with him, and he pursues it with a
gloomy sedateness of acquiescence, which is more affecting than if he
raved and foamed against the inevitable. But he has the mobility of the
poetic nature, and the sad ground-tone is often drowned in the ecstasy of
lighter notes. All at once the "bare ruined choirs" are covered with the
glad light-green of spring. His genius combined the excellencies of many
masters. His "Golden Targe" and "The Thistle and the Rose" are
allegorical poems, full of colour, fancy, and music. His "Two Married
Women and the Widow" has a good deal of Chaucer's slyness and humour.
"The Dance of the Deadly Sins," with its fiery bursts of imaginative
energy, its pictures finished at a stroke, is a prophecy of Spenser and
Collins, and as fine as anything they have accomplished; while his
"Flytings" are torrents of the coarsest vituperation. And there are
whole flights of occasional poems, many of them sombre-coloured enough,
with an ever-recurring mournful refrain, others satirical, but all flung
off, one can see, at a sitting; in the few verses the mood is exhausted,
and while the result remains, the cause is forgotten even by himself.
Several of these short poems are almost perfect in feeling and execution.
The melancholy ones are full of a serious grace, while in the satirical a
laughing devil of glee and malice sparkles in every line. Some of these
latter are dangerous to touch as a thistle--all bristling and angry with
the spikes of satiric scorn.
In his allegorical poems--"The Golden Targe," "The Merle and the
Nightingale," "The Thistle and the Rose"--Dunbar's fancy has full scope.
As allegories, they are, perhaps, not worth much; at all events, modern
readers do not care for the adventures of "Quaking Dread and Humble
Obedience"; nor are they affected by descriptions of Beauty, attended by
her fair damsels, Fair Having, Fine Portraiture, Pleasance, and Lusty
Cheer. The whole conduct and machinery of such things are too artificial
and stilted for modern tastes. Stately masques are no longer performed
in earls' mansions; and when a sovereign enters a city, a fair lady, with
wings, representing Loyalty, does not burst out of a pasteboard cloud and
recite a poetical address to Majesty. In our theatres the pantomime,
which was originally an adumbration of human life, has become degraded.
Symbolism has departed from the boards, and burlesque reigns in its
stead. The Lord Mavor's Show, the last remnant of the antique
spectacular taste, does not move us now; it is held a public nuisance; it
provokes the rude "chaff" of the streets. Our very mobs have become
critical. Gog and Magog are dethroned. The knight feels the satiric
comments through his armour. The very steeds are uneasy, as if ashamed.
But in Dunbar the allegorical machinery is saved from contempt by colour,
poetry, and music.
Quick surprises of beauty, and a rapid succession of pictures, keep the
attention awake. Now it is--
"May, of mirthful monethis queen,
Betwixt April and June, her sisters sheen,
Within the garden walking up and down."