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James the First of Scotland

respects these his work is of considerable historical value. It has no poetical recommendation, except a manly strenuousness of expression. The author cannot invent or embellish, but a good story does not lose in his hands. His pithy style is well illustrated by his account of the vision of Macbeth:

A night he thought in his dreaming
That sitting he was beside the king
At a seat in hunting, so

In a leash he had grey-hounds two.
He thought while he was so sitting
He saw three women by ganging:
And those women well thought he
The weird sisters most like to be.
The first he heard say ganging by,
“Lo, yonder the Thane of Cromarty!”
The other woman said again,

"Of Moray yonder I see the Thane !"

The third then said, "I see the King!"

All this he heard in his dreaming.

Macbeth's crime does not prevent the poet from rendering him justice as good ruler:

Seventeen winters full regnand,
As King he was in till Scotland.
All his time was great plenty
Abounding both in land and sea.
He was in justice right lawful,
And to his lieges all awful.

When Leo X [IX] was Pope of Rome,
As pilgrim to the court he come ;
And in his alms he sent silver

To all poor folk that had myster: 1

And all time used he to work
Profitably for Holy Kirk.

Nearly at the same time as Wyntoun wrote, the literature of Scotland, according at least to the general belief, was enriched with a much more important poem. Kings have frequently distinguished themselves in prose authorship, but have so rarely excelled in poetry that if James the First of SCOTLAND be indeed the author of The Kingis Quair (Quire-book) he may perhaps claim the second place in royal song after David. The interest of the poetry would be still further enhanced by the romantic circumstances of the monarch's life. Born in 1394, he was sent to France for his education in 1406, but his ship was taken by the English, then at war with Scotland, and he spent eighteen years in captivity in England, receiving however ample means of support and an excellent bringing up, and twice accompanying Henry V. in expeditions against France. He had become King of Scotland. by his father's death shortly after his captivity, and his ambitious uncle, the Regent Albany, probably took no steps to hasten his return. In 1424, after the deaths of Albany and Henry V., James was ransomed, and returned to Scotland,

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bringing with him an English bride, daughter of the Earl of Somerset. His wooing is supposed to be the subject of The Kingis Quair, which, if his, cannot well be of later date. Upon

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his return he threw himself into public business, proved himself an efficient legislator by the number of excellent laws which he caused to be enacted, and a ruthless antagonist by the destruction of the disaffected house of Albany. Like all the able sovereigns of his age, he made it his principal object to beat down the great nobles by the aid of the petty barons, the

The ruins of St. Andrew's Cathedral
From Slezer's "Theatrum Scotia," 1693

people and the clergy. This policy was carried out with great success until the catastrophe which terminated his life in 1437, a tragedy made additionally

memorable by the
the heroism of

Catherine Douglas, and the grand
ballad epic of Rossetti.

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Quair"

It is difficult absolutely to deter- "The Kings mine the authorship of The Kingis Quair, inasmuch as we lack sufficient materials for deciding whether James was or was not by poetic temperament and literary skill capable of the composition of so fine a work. A few private letters, a few characteristic anecdotes, might guide us, but these are not forthcoming. Though other poems have been published as the work of James, only one of them can be his; and this is too short and insignificant to afford any clue to the extent of his poetical powers. The subject, his romantic attachment in captivity to the lady who subsequently became his queen, is one From "Inscriptiones Historica Regum Scotorum," 1602 upon which, supposing him endowed with the poetical gift, he might very well write, but which might also furnish an attractive theme for another poet. The authorship is most distinctly claimed for him, his captivity and imprisonment in England being related as actual experiences of the author's; but this only proves that the poem was intended

James I. of Scotland

to pass for his. The internal evidence, however, alleged against the poem's authenticity seems very weak; and the external testimony, though late, when it does come is clear and decided. It is certainly surprising that there should be no evidence of the existence of a poem of such merit by so illustrious an author for sixty years after the period at which, if genuine, it must have been written, and it would seem no unfair inference that it was composed by some later minstrel in the character of the King. Yet the fraud would hardly have been attempted if the King did not already enjoy the character of a poet, and nothing but The Kingis Quair appears upon which this character could be based. It may be added that the peculiar character of the diction, a mixture of the Northern and the Southern dialects, is such as might be expected from a Scotchman long resident in England. On the whole, the literary historian will at present see no sufficient reason for erasing King James's name from the roll of poets. If he was the author, it will be possible to concur with Professor Skeat in attributing to him the pseudoChaucerian second part of the Romaunt of the Rose, written in a very similar dialect.

Whoever the author, The Kingis Quair is a great advance upon all preceding Scotch poetry. The new departure, however, is in no respect national, but arises from the poet's subjection to English influences, and the affection for Chaucer and Gower which he acknowledges with touching warmth:

Unto ympenis1 of my maisteres dere,

Gowere and Chaucere that on the steppès sat

Of rhetorike, quhill they were living here,
Superlative as poets laureate,

In moraltye and eloquence ornate,
I recommend my book in linès seven,

And eke their souls unto the bliss of heaven.

The poem belongs, like Lydgate's better productions, and The Flower and the Leaf, to the Chaucerian school then flourishing, which may be compared to the Tennysonian school of our own age. Chaucer, like Tennyson, had set a pattern of excellence not to be rivalled without an entirely new departure, of which the unimaginative fifteenth century was incapable. Nor did the talent of the poets of the age, until we come to Henryson, in any way qualify them to emulate Chaucer's style in the later Canterbury Tales; they consequently wrote in the manner of Troylus and Cryseide, and approved themselves, if not masters, very worthy scholars. Like The Flower and the Leaf, The Kingis Quair is a kind of allegorical vision, not unlike the nearly contemporary Quadriregio of the Italian poet Frezzi. The lover finds himself successively in the realms of Venus, Minerva and Fortune, but all ends well. It is a charming poem, elegant in diction, melodious in versification, inspired by true feeling, and full of beautiful descriptive passages, of which the following may serve as an example :

1 Hymns

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VOL. I.

Æneas Silvius (afterwards Pope Pius II.) before James I. of Scotland

After the picture by Pintoricchio

66

Now there was made fast by the tower's wall

A garden fair, and in the corners set

An arbour green, with wandis long and small
Railed about, and so with trëës set

Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That lyfe was none walking there forby,
That might within scarce any wight espy.

So thick the bewys1 and the levès green

Beschedit all the alleys that there were ;
And middis every arbour might be seen
The sharpè swetè grenè junipere,

Growing so fair with branches here and there
That, as it seemed to a lyf without,
The bewys spread the arbour all about.

And on the smale grene tuftis 2 sat

The little swetè nightingale, and sang
So loud and clear, the ympnis3 consecrat
Of Lufis use, now soft, now loud among,
That all the garden and the wallis rong
Right of their song, and on the copill1 next
Of their sweet harmony, and lo the text:

Worship ye, that loveris bene, this May,

For of your bliss the kalends are begun,

And sing with us, away winter, away!

Come, summer, come, the sweet season and sun;
Awake for shame, that have your heavens won,
And amorously lift up your heades all,

Thank Love that list you to his merry call.'

When they this song had sung a little thraw,

They stent awhile, and therewith unafraid

As I beheld and cast mine eyne a-lawe,

From bough to bough they hoppèd and they played,

And freshly in their birdis kinde arrayed

Their feathers new, and fret them on the sun,

And thanked Love that had their matis won.

It is an additional argument in favour of James's authorship of The Kingis Quair that poetry flourished greatly during his reign.

How literary [says Mr. G. Neilson in Scottish History and Art, p. ix. 1902] the Court of King James was may be surmised not only from chronicles, but also from the probably correct ascription to his confessor David Rate [see Mr. J. T. T. Brown's article in the Scottish Antiquary for April 1897] of a variety of poems. The processes of identification are slender, yet in harmony with facts. What somewhat heightens the interest of this is a possible companion identification not hitherto advanced. Two obscure "makaris" named by Dunbar in his Lament were Roull of Aberdeen and Roull of Corstorphin. It the words "Quod Rate” imply that the poetic utterance was that of David Rate, confessor of King James, one of the Roulls may well have been Master Thomas Roull, clerk and chaplain of the same monarch. The propositions for a missing Christian name in each case are equally legitimate, although the proofs for each are equally incomplete. They are on the lines of the general fact that in the fifteenth century the official circles of the Court were literary. Among the "makaris" mourned by Dunbar, Quintin Schaw was a Court 3 Hymns. 4 Couplet.

1 Boughs.

2 Twigs.

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