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We have before seen, that our author and Skelton were rivals. He alludes to Skelton, who had been laureated at Oxford, in the following lines.

Then is he decked as poete laureate,

When stinking Thais made him her graduate:

If they have smelled the artes triviall,

They count them poets hye and heroicall.

The TowRE OF VERTUE AND HONOUR, introduced as a

At a feast at court, ibid.

Slowe be the sewers in serving in alway, But swift be they after, taking the meate away:

A speciall custom is used them amonge, No good dishe to suffer on borde to be long:

If the dishe be pleasaunt, eyther fleshe
or fishe,

Ten handes at once swarme in the dishe:
And if it be fleshe ten knives shall thou

see

Mangling the fleshe, and in the platter
flee:

To put there thy handes is perill without
fayle,
Without a gauntlet or els a glove of
mayle.

The two last lines remind us of a saying of Quin, who declared it was not safe to sit down to a turtle-feast in one of the city-halls, without a basket-hilted knife and fork. Not that I suppose Quin borrowed his bons mots from black letter books.

The following lines point out some of the festive tales of our ancestors. EGL. iv.

Yet would I gladly heare some mery

FIT

Of Mayde Marian, or els of Robin
Hood;

Or Bentley's Ale which chafeth well the
blood,

Of Perte of Norwich, or sauce of Wilberton,

Or buckish Toby well-stuffed as a ton. He mentions Bentley's Ale, which maketh me to winke, EGL. ii.

Some of our antient domestic pastimes and amusements are recorded, EGL. iv.

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want:

The bagpipe or fiddle to us is delectable, &c.

And the mercantile commodities of different countries and cities, EGL. iv. England hath cloth, Bordeus hath store of wine,

Cornwalle hath tinne, and Lymster woolès fine.

London hath scarlet, and Bristowe pleasaunt red, &c.

Of songs at feasts, EGL. iv. When your fat dishes smoke hot upon your table,

Then laude ye songes and balades mag-
nifie,

If they be merry, or written craftely,
Ye clappe your handes and to the ma-
kinge harke,

And one say to another, lo here a pro-
per warke.

He says that minstrels and singers are highly favoured at court, especially those of the French gise. EGL. ii. Also jugglers and pipers, EGL. iv. e EGL. iv.

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song of one of the shepherds into these pastorals, exhibits no very masterly strokes of a sublime and inventive fancy. It has much of the trite imagery usually applied in the fabrication of these ideal edifices. It, however, shews our author in a new walk of poetry. This magnificent tower, or castle, is built on inaccessible cliffs of flint: the walls are of gold, bright as the sun, and decorated with olde historyes and pictures many folde: the turrets are beautifully shaped. Among its heroic inhabitants are king Henry the Eighth, Howard duke of Norfolk, and the earl of Shrewsbury. LABOUR is the porter at the gate, and VIRTUE governs the house. LABOUR is thus pictured, with some degree of spirit.

Fearfull is LABOUR, without favour at all,
Dreadfull of visage, a monster intractable;
Like Cerberus lying at gates infernall;
To some men his looke is halfe intollerable,
His shoulders large for burden strong and able,
His bodie bristled, his necke mightie and stiffe;
By sturdie sinewes his joynts strong and stable,
Like marble stones his handès be as stiffe.
Here must man vanquish the dragon of Cadmus,
Gainst the Chimere here stoutly must he fight;
Here must he vanquish the fearfull Pegasus,
For the golden flece here must he shewe his might:
If LABOUR gainsay, he can nothing be right:
This monster LABOUR oft changeth his figure,
Sometime an oxe, a bore, or lion wight,
Playnely he seemeth thus changeth his nature.
Like as Protheus ofte changeth his stature.

Under his browes he dreadfully doth lowre
With glistering eyes, and side-dependant beard,
For thirst and hunger alway his chere is soure,
His horned forehead doth make faynt hearts afeard.

Alway he drinketh, and yet alway is drye,

The sweat distilling with droppes abundant, &c.

The poet adds, that when the noble Howard had long boldly contended with this hideous monster, had broken the bars and doors of the castle, had bound the porter, and was now preparing to ascend the tower of Virtue and Honour, FORTUNE and DEATH appeared, and interrupted his progress.

The first modern Latin Bucolics are those of Petrarch, in number twelve, written about the year 13505. The Eclogues of Mantuan, our author's model, appeared about the year 1400, and were followed by many others. Their number multiplied so soon, that a collection of thirty-eight modern bucolic poets in Latin was printed at Basil, in the year 1546". These writers judged this indirect and disguised mode of dialogue, consisting of simple characters which spoke freely and plainly, the most safe and convenient vehicle for abusing the corruptions of the church. Mantuan became so popular, as to acquire the estimation of a classic, and to be taught in schools. Nothing better proves the reputation in which this writer was held, than a speech of Shakespeare's pedant, the pedagogue Holofernes. "Fauste, precor, gelida quando pecus omne sub ulmo, and so forth. Ah, good old MANTUAN! I may speak of thee, as the traveller doth of Venice, Vinegia, Vinegia, chi non te vedi, ei non te pregia. Old MANTUAN! Old MANTUAN! Who understandeth thee not, loveth thee not." But although Barklay copies Mantuan, the recent and separate publication in

f EGL. iv.

BUCOLICORUM ECLOGA XII. h Viz, xxxviii. AUTHORES BUCOLICI, Basil. 1546. 8vo.

i One of Mantuan's lines. Farnaby in his Preface to Martial says, that Fauste precor gelida, was too often preferred to Arma virumque cano. I think there is an old black letter translation of Mantuan into English. Another translation appeared by one Thomas Harvey, 1656. Mantuan was three times

printed in England before the year 1600. Viz. B. Mantuani Carmelitæ theologi ADOLESCENTIA seu BUCOLICA. With the commentary of Jodocus Badius. Excud. G. Dewes and H. Marshe, 1584. 12mo. Again, for the same, the same year, 12mo. Again, for Robert Dexter, 1598. 12mo. With Arguments to the Eclogues, and Notes by John Murmelius, &c.

* LOVE'S LAB. L. Activ. Sc. 3,

England of Virgil's bucolics, by Wynkyn de Worde', might partly suggest the new idea of this kind of poetry.

With what avidity the Italian and French poets, in their respective languages, entered into this species of composition, when the rage of Latin versification had subsided, and for the purposes above mentioned, is an inquiry reserved for a future period. I shall only add here, that before the close of the fifteenth century, Virgil's bucolics were translated into Italian", by Bernardo Pulci, Fossa de Cremona, Benivieni, and Fiorini Buoninsegni.

1 BUCOLICA VIRGILII cum commento familiari. At the end, Ad juvenes hujus Maroniani operis commendatio. Die vero viii Aprilis. 4to. And they were reprinted by the same, 1514 and 1516.

"Viz. LA BUCOLICA DI VIRGILIO per Fratrem Evangelistam Fossa de Cremona ord. servorum. In Venezia, 1494. 4to. But thirteen years earlier we find, Bernardo PULCI nella BUCOLICA di Virgilio di Jeronimo BENIVIENI, Jacopo

FIORINO Buoninsegni de Sienna: Epistole di Luca Pulci. In Firenze, per Bartolomeo Miscomini, 1484. A dedication is prefixed, by which it appears, that Buoninsegni wrote a PISCATORY ECLOGUE, the first ever written in Italy, in the year 1468. There was a second edition of Pulci's version, LA BUCOLICA di VIRGILIO tradotta per Bernardo PULCI con l'Elegie. In Fiorenza, 1494,

SECTION XXX.

IT is not the plan of this work to comprehend the Scotch poetry. But when I consider the close and national connection between England and Scotland in the progress of manners and literature, I am sensible I should be guilty of a partial and defective representation of the poetry of the former, was I to omit in my series a few Scotch writers, who have adorned the present period, with a degree of sentiment and spirit, a command of phraseology, and a fertility of imagination, not to be found in any English poet since Chaucer and Lydgate: more especially as they have left striking specimens of allegorical invention, a species of composition which appears to have been for some time almost totally extinguished in England.

The first I shall mention is William Dunbar, a native of Salton in East Lothian, about the year 1470. His most celebrated poems are The THISTLE AND THE ROSE, and THE GOLDEN TERGE.

The THISTLE AND THE ROSE was occasioned by the marriage of James the Fourth, king of Scotland, with Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry the Seventh, king of England: an event, in which the whole future political state of both nations was vitally interested, and which ultimately produced the union of the two crowns and kingdoms. It was finished on the ninth day of May in the year 1503, nearly three months before the arrival of the queen in Scotland: whose progress from Richmond to Edinburgh was attended with a greater magnificence of parade, processions, and spectacles, than I ever remember to have seen on any similar occasion. It may be

a See a memoir, cited above, in Leland's COLL. tom. iii. APPEND. edit. 1770. p. 265. It is worthy of particular

notice, that during this expedition there was in the magnificent suite of the princess a company of players, under the

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