Sir

Chaucerian poets, and with some reason; the old Scottish revelry in words, whether native and indecorous, or foreign and dignified, was nothing to be ashamed of. The taste descends from the contemporaries of Dunbar and Douglas to their successors. Thomas Urquhart's translation of Rabelais may be taken as one of the last achievements of this exuberant spirit, and there are many things in the Complaint that suggest both Urquhart and his original. This is more particularly the case in the interlude ("Ane Monolog of the Actor") that comes between the prefatory matter and the vision and complaint of Dame Scotia. There the author has indulged his genius to the fullest. He leaves the wrongs and distresses of his country; he leaves the English, those "boreaus" (headsmen, bourreaux) and hangmen, for the utter extinction, "furth of remembrance," of which "false seed and incredule generation" he has fervently prayed. He loses himself in an ornate description of a summer day-a summer evening and morning-after the fashion of the poets, borrowing their alliteration and a good deal of their rhythm. He gives

all the cries of all the birds, and, as though he had known of Ronsard's advice to poets to get up the terms of every trade, he espies a ship at anchor, equipped for war-" Ane galliasse gayly grathit for the veyr”—and squanders a page or two of sea terms to reproduce the shouts of master, boatswain, and mariners as they weigh the anchor and set sail, and follows this up with terms of artillery. This irrelevance is something different from the "prolixt❞ astronomy that follows: it is a humorous eccentricity, and proceeds, not from the medieval love of edification, but from a Rabelaisian passion for stringing things together, which is a passion for copious phrasing and vivid details. The comic and imaginative value of details is fortunately recognised in the Complaint of Scotland, and the pastoral interlude is diversified by one or two catalogues that form the most interesting part of the book-catalogues of the songs sung and the stories told by the shepherds, a medley of northern and classical stories, in which the Red Etin, the Three-footed Dog of Norroway, and the Well of the World's End are accompanied by the fables of the Metamorphoses; quhou that dedalus maid the laborynth to keip the monster minotaurus," and "quhou Kyng midas gat tua asse luggis on his hede, be cause of his auereis."

W P. KER.

ANE MONOLOGUE OF THE ACTOR

THE solicitous and attentive labours that I took to write the passages before rehearsed, gart all my body become imbecile and weary, and my spirit become sopit in sadness, through the long continuation of study, whilk did fatigue my reason, and gart all my members become impotent. Then, to escape the evil accidents that succeed from the unnatural day-sleep, as catarrhs, head works, and indigestion, I thought it necessary to exercise me with some active recreation, to hold my spirits waking from dulness. Then, to execute this purpose, I passed to the green wholesome fields, situate most commodiously from distempered air and corrupt infection, to receive the sweet fragrant smell of tender grasses, and of wholesome balmy flowers most odoriferant. Beside the foot of ane little mountain, there ran ane fresh river as clear as beryl, where I beheld the pretty fish wantonly darting with their red vermillion fins, and their scales like the bright silver. On the tother side of that river, there was ane green bank full of rammel green trees, where there was many small birds hopping from bush to twist, singing melodious reports of natural music in accords of measure of diapason, prolations, triple and dyatesseron. That heavenly harmony appeared to be artificial music. In this gladful recreation I continued till Phoebus was descended under the west north west oblique horizon, whilk was entered that same day in the xxv. degree of the sign of gemini, distant five degrees from our summer solstice, called the boreal tropic of cancer, the whilk, by astrological computation, accords with the sixth day of June. Thereafter I entered in ane green forest, to contemplate the tender young fruits of green trees, because the boreal blasts of the three borrowing days of March had chased the fragrant flowers of every fruit tree far athwart the fields. Of this sort I did pace up and down but sleep, the most part of the mirk night. Instantly thereafter I perceived the messengers of the red aurora, whilk through the VOL. I 241

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might of Titan had pierced the crepuscle line matutine of the north north east horizon, whilk was occasion that the stars and planets, the dominators of the night, absented them, and durst not be seen in our hemisphere for dread of his awful golden face. And also fair Diana, the lantern of the night, became dim and pale when Titan had extinct the light of her lamp on the clear day. For from time that his lustrant beams were elevated four degrees above our oblique horizon, every planet of our hemisphere became obscure, and also all corrupt humidities and caliginous fumes and infected vapours that had been generated in the second region of the air when Titan was visiand antipodes. They consumed for sorrow when they saw ane sight of his golden shape. The green fields, for great drought, drank up the drops of the fresh dew, whilk of before had made dykes and dales very dank. Thereafter I heard the rumour of ramage fowls and of beasts that made great beir, whilk passed beside burns and bogs, on green banks to seek their sustentation. Their brutal sound did redound to the high skies, while the deep how caverns of cleuchs and rocky crags answered with a high note of that same sound as they beasts had blown. It appeared by presuming and supposing, that blabbering Echo had been hid in a how hole, crying her half answer, when Narcissus right sorry sought for his servants, when he was in a forest far from any folks, and thereafter for love of Echo he drowned in a draw-well,

GEORGE CAVENDISH

c. 1500. 1561

[Cavendish was made gentleman usher to Cardinal Wolsey in 1526 or 1527, and kept his post till Wolsey's death in 1530, remaining always in close attendance on his master. After an examination before the Privy Council in regard to the last days of Wolsey's life, Cavendish retired to his own house at Glansford in Suffolk, and kept out of the way of politics. The Life of Wolsey was written in 1557.]

He was

CAVENDISH in his Life of Wolsey did not misuse the great opportunities presented to him for writing a notable book. not a trained man of letters, but he had a natural gift for telling a story a literary gift which is closely connected with his straightforward and simple character. He is the "loyal servitor," wholly interested in the great man who gave employment for the busiest and fullest years of his life. His mind is possessed with his subject, and as his mind is sound, strong, and very little corrupted by any rhetoric, he reproduces in his story exactly what one wants. He tells how people behaved and what they said to one another, not reducing the lively details into the abstract language of the dignified historian. King Henry appears in Cavendish's narrative with the aspect and manner that he had to those who saw him with their own eyes, and knew him in a different way from ours, who in some ways know so much more about him than they did. He comes and finds Cavendish leaning against a tree "in a study," and claps him on the shoulder and calls him by his name, and then goes back to his shooting. talks to Cavendish for an hour or more within the garden postern gate of Hampton Court, and we hear what they talked about, and learn how familiar the great king's manner was with his servants when he chose. "Three may," quoth he, "keep

He

counsel if two be away, and if I thought that my cap knew my counsel, I would cast it into the fire and burn it."

Cavendish acknowledges his constant desire "to see and be acquainted with strangers, in especial with men in honour and authority,” which is one of the foundations of his strength as a writer of memoirs; and from almost every page of his book we may draw evidence of the keenness of his impressions. He shares in the taste of the age for all sorts of pageantry and splendour, and is never tired of describing the state kept by his patron. He has an eye for dress; in the critical moment of his interview with the king he does not omit to notice his nightgown of russet velvet furred with sables. One of the best of all his sketches is that belonging to the embassy in France, where he describes the interior of the great house that afforded him courteous entertainment. It is an admirable passage, rendering with absolute fidelity a vivid hour of Cavendish's experience-a pleasant, accidental meeting with high-bred and high-spirited people in a French castle, where there was enough to look at “in bower and hall." The courtesy and humanity of this passage from true history recall one of the most memorable episodes in chivalrous romance-the entertainment of Geraint by the father and mother of Enid.

The style of Cavendish's book, which at its best is a good narrative style, is occasionally injured by various laxities of syntax on the one hand, and on the other by somewhat incongruous efforts of rhetoric. There is some mythological ornament: "Wherefore she (Fortune) procured Venus, the insatiate goddess, to be her instrument"; there are some appeals and outcries: "O wavering to newfangled multitude! is it not a wonder to consider the inconstant mutability of this uncertain world?" But these things do not really take away the freshness of his portrait of the great minister.

W. P. KER.