Of bloomed branches, and flowers white and red, Plaiting their lusty chaplets for their head.

Some sang ring-songis,' dances, ledis,2 and rounds,
With voices shrill while all the vale resounds.
Whereso they walk into their caroling,

For amorous lays does all the roches ring.
One sang
"The ship, sails over the salt foam,
"Will bring thir3 merchants and my leman home."
Some other sings "I will be blythe and light,
"My heart is lent upon so goodly wight.
And thoughtful lovers rownis 4 to and fro
To lose their pain, and plain their jolly woe;
After their guise, now singand, now in sorrow,
With heartis pensive, the long summer's morrow.
Some, ballads list endite of his lady,
Some lives in hope, and some all utterly
Despaired is; and so, quite out of grace,
His purgatory he finds in every place, &c.

Before we proceed to take notice of the English poets of this reign, it will be necessary to mention two more Scotish writers, whom Gawin Douglas has associated with Dunbar in the "Palace of Honour."

• Rondeaux ? These, or those.

Lays; leid, cantilena. Teut. ↑ Whispers.

Of this nation I knew also anon

GREAT KENNEDY and Dunbar, yet undead,
And QUINTYN, with a huttock' on his head.

The first of these, Walter Kennedy, a native of Carrick, and the cotemporary of Dunbar, is only known to us by two satires on Dunbar in their flyting (scolding or lampooning), and by a poem "in praise of age," (p. 189 of lord Hailes's collection) consisting of five stanzas ; one of these will be sufficient to give some idea of his style, though it may not quite justify the honourable epithet bestowed on him by the bishop of Dunkeld.

This world is set for to deceive us even,
Pride is the net, and covetise the train:
For no reward (except the joy of heaven)
Would I be young into this world again!
The ship of faith, tempestuous wind and rain
Drives, in the sea of lollardry that blaws;*
My youth is gone, and I am glad and fain,
Honour, with age, to every virtue draws.

Of the second of these poets, QUINTYN SCHAW,

This word seems to be two French words in disguisehaute toque. Toque is described by Cotgrave to be a "bonnet ●r cap, somewhat like our old courtier's velvet cap."

• Blows.

one specimen only remains, which is printed by Mr. Pinkerton, from the Maitland MSS. Its title is "Advice to a Courtier," which may possibly account for the head-dress assigned to him in the Palace of Honour. Quintyn's style seems to have been easy and familiar; but having begun his poem with an idea of the resemblance between the life of a courtier and that of a mariner, he has introduced so many sea-phrases, and maritime allusions, as to render his language almost unintelligible. The concluding stanza, however, which contains the moral, is sufficiently clear.

Dread this danger, good friend and brother,
And take example before of other.'

Know, courts and wind has oftsys2 varied :
Keep well your course, and rule your rudder;
And think, with kings ye are not married!

Amongst the English contemporaries of Dunbar and Douglas, Mr. Warton enumerates these which follow. Henry Bradshaw, a miserable imitator of Lydgate, who wrote in English verse," the life of "St. Werburgh, daughter of a king of the Mercians:" Robert Fabian, the historical alderman, who is classed as a poet in consequence of the metrical Of others before you?

• Oft-sithes, i. e. oft-times,

prologues prefixed to the books of his chronicle: John Watson, a priest who wrote some miserable rhymes for the purpose of enlivening his theological tract, called "Speculum Christiani:" and Caxton, the celebrated printer, who, beside his metrical description of Wales, has left a poem of considerable length entitled "the Worke of Sapience." But the only poets who deserve any attention are, Alexander Barclay and Stephen Hawes; the first of whom is mentioned with much praise by the ingenious author of "The Muses' Library," and the second by Mr. Warton.

BARCLAY is supposed to have been a native of Somersetshire. In, or about the year 1495, he became a student at Oriel College, Oxford, where he is said to have distinguished himself by his talents and application; he afterwards travelled into Holland, Germany, Italy, and France, for the purpose of acquiring the languages of those countries, in all of which he seems to have made a considerable proficiency. He was a voluminous writer, particularly of translations, which were much admired by his contemporaries, as being distinguished by an ease and fluency which are not to be found in any other author of his age; but his poetical merit seems to have been a good deal over-rated.

His smaller pieces of poetry consist of 1. Five eclogues on the miseries of courtiers, translated from the Miseriæ Curialium of Æneas Sylvius. 2. A satire on Skelton. 3. The lives of St. George, St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Ethelreda: and 4. Five Eclogues from the Latin of Baptist Mantuan. From these, which Mr. Warton supposes to be the first eclogues written in English, he has selected a number of passages which, though they have no other merit, contain some curious particulars, relating to the manners and customs of the time. (They are to be found in a long note, Vol. I. p. 253, Hist. Eng. Poetry.)

But Barclay's principal and most popular poem was his "Ship of Foolis," a paraphrase from the German poem, written in 1494, by Sebastian Brandt, or more properly from the Latin metrical translation, published in the following year by his scholar James Loeder, or Locher. The work was intended to ridicule the vices and follies of every rank and profession, under the allegory of a ship freighted with fools of all kinds; "but it is (says "Mr. Warton) without variety of incident, or "artifice of fable." The book is now scarce though often printed; but the reader who shall turn to the extracts from it, contained in Warton's history, and in the Muses' Library, will Dd

VOL. I.