Part 11

For more than a hundred years it has been the delight of all who care for the poetry of the past, and the story it tells, and tells so pathetically, is now among the “consecrated legends” which every one cherishes. “The best poet among kings, and the best king among poets,” the name of the author of the _Kingis Quair_ heads the list of royal authors. The stanza which he employed, though invented or adopted by Chaucer, takes its title from the King, and “the rime royal” will be in perpetual evidence of his services to poetry, as the University of St. Andrews will be of his services to learning and education. No generation has passed, from Sir Walter Scott to Mrs. Browning, and from Mrs. Browning to Gabriel Rossetti, which has not been lavish of honour and homage to him.

But, it seems, we have all been under a delusion. Our simple ancestors believed that James was the author of _Peebles to the Play_ and _Christ’s Kirk on the Green_; but _Peebles to the Play_ and _Christ’s Kirk on the Green_ “are now”--Mr. J. T. T. Brown is speaking--“relegated to the anonymous poetry of the sixteenth century, inexorably deposed by the internal evidence”; and Mr. Brown aspires to send the _Kingis Quair_ the same way. His fell purpose is “to deprive James of his singing garment, and reduce him to the humbler rank of a King of Scots.” There is something almost terrible in the exultation with which Mr. Brown assumes that--the King’s claim to every other poem attributed to him having been completely demolished--it only remains to deprive him of the _Kingis Quair_, to make his poetical bankruptcy complete. And to the demolition of the King’s claim to the “Quair” Mr. Brown ruthlessly proceeds. Now we have no intention of entering into the question of the authenticity of the minor poems to which Mr. Brown refers; but we shall certainly break a lance with this destructive critic in defence of James’s claim to the _Kingis Quair_.

Mr. Brown contends, first, that there is no satisfactory external evidence in favour of the King’s authorship of the poem; and, secondly, that the internal evidence is almost conclusive against him. What are the facts? In the Bodleian Library is a MS. the date of which is uncertain, but it cannot be assigned to an earlier period than 1488. This MS. contains certain poems of Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate, and others, together with the _Kingis Quair_. Of the _Kingis Quair_ it is, so far as is known, the only MS., and to it alone we owe the preservation of the poem. Both title and colophon assign the work to James I., the words being: “Heireefter followis the quair Maid be King James of Scotland ye first, callit ye Kingis quair, and Maid quhen his Ma. wes in Ingland,” the colophon running, “Explicit, &c., &c., quod Jacobus primus scotorum rex Illustrissimus.” This is surely precise enough; but Mr. Brown insists that the statement carries very little weight, being no more than the _ipse dixit_ of not merely an irresponsible, but of an unusually reckless copyist. The recklessness of this copyist Mr. Brown deduces from the fact that, of ten poems attributed to Chaucer in the same MS., five undoubtedly do not belong to him. On this we shall only remark that it would be interesting to know whether these poems have been attributed to Chaucer in other MSS. In any case, Mr. Brown must surely know that it is a very different thing for a copyist to miss-assign a few short poems and to make a statement so explicit as the statement here made with regard to the _Kingis Quair_. He must either have been guilty of deliberate fraud--and what right have we to assume this?--or he must have been misled, an hypothesis which is equally unwarrantable, unless it be adequately supported. And how does Mr. Brown proceed to support it? He contends that we have no satisfactory evidence from other sources that James was the author of the poem. Walter Bower, the one contemporary historian, though he gives in his _Scotichronicon_ an elaborate account of the King’s accomplishments, is silent, Mr. Brown triumphantly observes, about his poetry. This may be conceded. But Weldon is equally silent about the poetry of James VI., and Buchanan about the poetry of Mary. And what says the next historian, John Major? “In the vernacular”--we give the passage in Mr. Brown’s own version--“he was a most skilful composer.... He wrote a clever little book about the Queen before he took her to wife and while he was a prisoner,” a plain reference to the _Kingis Quair_. Testimony to his poetical ability is also given by Hector Boyes in his _History of Scotland_, “In linguâ vernaculâ tam ornata faciebat carmina, ut poetam natum credidisses.” So say John Bellenden, John Leslie, and George Buchanan. Of these witnesses Mr. Brown coolly observes that they carry little or no weight, because they only echo each other and Major. Major, Mr. Brown insists, is “the sole authority for the ascription to James of the vernacular poems.” Certainly fame in the face of such critics as Mr. Brown is held on a very precarious tenure. Dunbar, in his _Lament of the Makaris_, enumerates, continues our critic, twenty-one Scottish poets, but passes James over in silence, therefore James’s title to being a poet was unknown to him. Possibly; but that Dunbar’s list was not meant to be exhaustive is proved by the fact that he makes no mention of a poet, and of a considerable poet, who must have been well known to him, Thomas of Ercildoune. Nothing can be more misleading than deductions like these. Ovid has given us an elaborate catalogue of the poets of his time, but makes no mention of Manilius. Heywood and Taylor have given elaborate catalogues of the contemporary Elizabethan dramatists and make no mention of Cyril Tourneur. Addison has given us an account of the principal English poets, and makes no mention of Shakespeare. If Dante’s and Chaucer’s acquaintance with their distinguished brethren is to be estimated by those whom they noticed, it must have been far more limited than we know it, by other evidence, to have been. Lyndsay, again, is cited as testimony of ignorance of James’s title to rank among poets; but in the list, in which he is silent about James, he is silent about poets so famous as Barbour, Blind Harry, Wyntown, Kennedy, and Douglas.

Mr. Brown next proceeds to the question of internal evidence. He cannot understand how it could come to pass, that a Scotchman, who left his native country when he was under twelve years of age, and who was educated by English tutors in England, should, after eighteen years of exile, employ “the Lowland Scottish dialect.” This is surely not very difficult to explain. Nothing so much endears his country to a man as exile, and nothing is more cherished by a patriot than his native language. Ten years’ exile among the Getæ did not corrupt the Latinity of Ovid, and more than twenty years’ exile did not impair the purity of Thucydides’ Attic. The King may have had English tutors, but Wyntown distinctly tells us that he was allowed to retain, as his companions, four of his countrymen. When he served in France he had a Scottish bodyguard. The document in the King’s own handwriting, printed by Chalmers, proves that in 1412 he was conversant with the Lowland dialect. In all probability, therefore, he carefully cherished his native language. The consensus of tradition places it beyond all doubt that he composed poetry in the vernacular, and as he wrote the _Kingis Quair_ when he knew that he was about to return to Scotland as its king, it was surely the most natural thing in the world that he should compose a poem which told the story of himself and his young bride, whom he was introducing to his subjects as their queen, in the language of the country. But, says Mr. Brown, it is the Lowland dialect, with inflexions peculiar to Midland English, with many Chaucerian inflections engrafted on it. And what more natural? The Midland dialect was the dialect of his English teachers. The poems of Chaucer he probably had by heart.

Mr. Brown’s object in all this is to relegate the _Kingis Quair_ to that group of poems which are represented by the _Romaunt of the Rose_, _The Court of Love_, and _Lancelot of the Lak_, which appeared late in the fifteenth century, and in which all these peculiarities are very pronounced. Into philological details we have not space to enter, but this we will say. We will admit that _ane_ before a consonant, the past participle in _yt_ or _it_, the pronouns _thaire_ and _thame_, the plural form _quhilkis_, the employment of the verb _to do_ in the emphatic conjugation and the like, are peculiarities which belong to a period not earlier than about 1440, and that all these peculiarities are to be found in the poem. But, we contend that these are just as likely to be due to the transcriber as they are to the author. Nothing was so common with copyists as to import into their texts the peculiarities of their own dialects, indeed it was habitual with them. Thus Hampole’s _Pricke of Conscience_ was greatly altered by southern scribes. Thus, in the Bannatyne MS., Chaucer’s minor poems were similarly altered by northern scribes. It is, in truth, the very height of rashness to dispute the genuineness of an original, in consequence of the presence of peculiarities which might quite well have been imported into it by a copyist. The resemblances between this poem and the _Court of Love_ are, we admit, not likely to have been mere coincidences, and we are quite ready to admit that the _Court of Love_ in the form in which we have it now, must be assigned to a much later date, more than a century later, than the date (1423) assigned to the _Kingis Quair_. But this is certain--that many, and very many, of the resemblances between the two poems are to be attributed to the fact that the writers were saturated with the influence of Chaucer, and delighted in imitating and recalling his poetry. If, again, it be assumed that one poem was the exemplar of the other, this is indisputable, that the _Court of Love_ was modelled on the _Kingis Quair_, and not the _Kingis Quair_ on the _Court of Love_. For, setting aside peculiarities which may be assigned to transcribers, there can be little doubt that the _Court of Love_ belongs to the sixteenth century at the very earliest, while Mr. Brown himself admits that the MS. of the _Kingis Quair_ may be approximately fixed at 1488.

Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than Mr. Brown’s attempt to show that the poem breaks down in autobiographical details, and that it derives these details from Wyntown’s _Chronicle_. James does not mention the exact year in which he was taken prisoner. He tells us that he commenced his voyage when the sun had begun to drive his course upward in the sign of Aries, that is, on or about the 12th of March--and that he had not far passed the state of innocence, “bot nere about the nowmer of zeris thre”--in other words, that he was about ten years of age. Hereupon Mr. Brown, assuming that Wyntown gives the date of the King’s birth correctly, proceeds to point out that the King was not at this time “about ten,” but that he was about eleven and a half; and then asks triumphantly whether James would have been likely to forget his own age. Again, he contends that the King’s capture could not have taken place in March, because it is highly probable that at the end of February, or at the beginning of March, the King was in the Tower. For the fact that he was in the Tower at that date there is not an iota of proof, or even of tolerably satisfactory presumptive evidence. How the author of the _Kingis Quair_ could have been indebted to Wyntown’s _Chronicle_ for the autobiographical details it is, indeed, difficult to see. The poem gives March as the date of the capture; the _Chronicle_ gives April. According to the poem, the King’s age at the time of his capture was about ten; according to the _Chronicle_, about eleven and a half. The _Chronicle_ gives the year of the capture; the poem does not. The _Chronicle_ gives details not to be found in the poem; the poem details not to be found in the _Chronicle_. Mr. Brown has no authority whatever for asserting that Book IX. chap. xxv. of the _Chronicle_ was certainly written years before James returned to Scotland. All we know about the _Chronicle_ is that it was finished between the 3rd of September, 1420, and the return of James in April, 1424.

Mr. Brown must forgive us for expressing regret that he should have wasted so much time and learning, in attempting to support a paradox which can only serve to perplex and mislead. Scholars, especially in these days, would do well to remember, that nothing can justify destructive criticism but a conscientious desire, on the part of those who apply it, to correct error and to discover truth. And they would also do well to ponder over Bacon’s weighty words: “Like as many substances in Nature which are solid do putrify and corrupt into worms, so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrify and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and, as I may term them, vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter nor goodness of substance.”

WILLIAM DUNBAR[24]

[Footnote 24: _William Dunbar._ By Oliphant Smeaton. Edinburgh: Oliphant.]

Boswell tells us that he once offered to teach Dr. Johnson the Scotch dialect, that the sage might enjoy the beauties of a certain Scotch pastoral poem, and received for his reply, “No, sir; I will not learn it. You shall retain your superiority by my not knowing it.” It would not be true to say that Dr. Johnson’s indifference to the Scotch language and to Scotch poetry has been shared by all cultivated Englishmen, but it has certainly been shared by a very large majority in every generation. The superb merit of many of the Scotch ballads, the lyrics of Burns and the novels of Scott have practically done little to diminish this majority and to induce English readers to acquire the knowledge which Dr. Johnson disdained. Nine Englishmen out of ten read Burns, either with an eye uneasily fishing the glossary at the bottom of the page, or _ad sensum_, that is, in contented ignorance of about three words in every nine. And this is, perhaps, all that can reasonably be expected of the Southerner. Life is short; the world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion and Scotch manners is not, as Matthew Arnold observed, a lovely one, and the time which such an accomplishment would require would be far more profitably spent in acquiring, say, the language of Dante and Ariosto, or even the language of the _Romancero General_ and of Cervantes. A modern reader may stumble, with more or less intelligence, through a poem of Burns, catching the general sense, enjoying the lilt, and even appreciating the niceties of rhythm. But this is not the case with the Scotch of the fifteenth century--the golden age of the vernacular poetry, the age when poets were writing thus:--

“Catyvis, wrechis, and ockeraris, Hud-pykis, hurdaris, and gadderaris, All with that warlo went; Out of thair throttis thay schot on udder Hett moltin gold, me thocht, a fudder As fyre-flawcht, maist fervent, Ay as thay tumit them of schot, Feyndis fild thame new up to the thrott With gold of allkin prent.”

The usual consequences have been the result of this ignorance. The Scotch have had it all their own way in estimating the merits of their vernacular classics, and the few outsiders, whether English or German, who have made the Scotch language and literature a special subject of study, have very naturally not been willing to underestimate the value of what it has cost them labour to acquire, and so have supported the exaggerated estimates of the Scotch themselves. What Voltaire so absurdly said of Dante, that his reputation was safe because no intelligent people read him, is literally true of such poets as Henryson, Douglas, and Dunbar. We simply take them on trust, and, as with most other things which are taken on trust, we seldom trouble ourselves about the titles and guarantees. It may be accepted as an uncontrolled truth that the world is always right, and very exactly right, in the long run. That mysterious tribunal which, resolved into the individuals which compose it, seems resolved into every conceivable source of ignorance, error, and folly, is ultimately infallible. There are no mismeasurements in the reputation of authors with whom readers of every class have been familiar for a hundred years. But, in the case of minor writers who appeal only to a minority, critical literature is the record of the most preposterous estimates. The history of the building up of these pseudo-reputations is generally the same in all cases. First we have the _obiter dictum_ of some famous man whose opinion naturally carries authority, uttered, it may be, carelessly in conversation, or committed, without deliberation, to paper, in a letter or occasional trifle. Then comes some little man, who takes up in deadly seriousness what the great man has said, and out comes, it may be, an essay or article. This wakes up some dreary pedant, who follows with an “edition” or “Study,” which naturally elicits from some kindred spirit a sympathetic review. Thus the ball is set rolling, or, to change the figure, bray swells bray, echo answers to echo, and the thing is done. Meanwhile, all that is of real interest and importance in the author thus resuscitated is lost sight of; in advocating his factitious claims to attention his real claims are ignored. For the true point of view is substituted a false, and the whole focus of criticism, so to speak, is deranged. The first requisite in estimating the work and relative position of a particular author is the last thing which these enthusiasts seem to consider, that is, the application of standards and touchstones derived not simply from the study of the author himself, but from acquaintance with the principles of criticism, and with what is excellent in universal literature.

All this has been illustrated in the case of the poet who is the subject of the volume before us. As Mr. Ruskin has pronounced _Aurora Leigh_ to be the greatest poem of this century, so Sir Walter Scott, who has, by the way, been singularly unjust to Lydgate and Hawes, pronounced Dunbar to be “a poet unrivalled by any that Scotland has ever produced.” a reckless judgment which he could never have expressed deliberately. Ellis followed suit, and in Ellis’ notice Dunbar is “the greatest poet Scotland has produced.” These judgments have, in effect, been reverberated by successive writers and editors. In due time, some fourteen years ago, appeared the inevitable German monograph, “William Dunbar: sein Leben und seine Gedichte,” by Dr. J. Schipper, to whom Mr. Oliphant Smeaton appropriately and reverently inscribes the present monograph.

In Mr. Oliphant Smeaton’s work Dunbar assumes the proportions which might be expected--he is a “mighty genius.” “The peer, if not in a few qualities, the superior of Chaucer and Spenser. By the indefeasible passport of the supreme genius he has an indisputable title to the apostolic succession of British poetry to that place between Chaucer and Spenser, that place which can only be claimed by one whose genius was co-ordinate with theirs.” As probably eight out of every ten of Mr. Smeaton’s readers will know nothing more of Dunbar than what Mr. Smeaton chooses to tell them, and as we, considering the space at our disposal, cannot refute him by a detailed examination of Dunbar’s works, it is fortunate that he has given us a succinct illustration of the value of his critical judgment. The following are four typical stanzas of a poem which Mr. Smeaton ranks with Milton’s _Lycidas_ and Shelley’s _Adonais_; we give them as Mr. Smeaton gives them, modernised:--

“I that in health was and gladness Am troubled now with great sickness. Enfeebled with infirmity, _Timor mortis conturbat me._

“Our pleasure here is all vain glory, This false world is but transitory, The flesh is brittle, the fiend is slee, _Timor mortis conturbat me._

“The state of man doth change and vary, Now sound, now sick, now blyth, now sary Now dancing merry, now like to dee, _Timor mortis conturbat me._

“No state on earth here stands sicker, As with the wind waves the wicker, So waves this world’s vanity, _Timor mortis conturbat me._”

As the following is pronounced to be one of the finest stanzas Dunbar ever penned, it is interesting as illustrating what is, in Mr. Smeaton’s opinion, the best work of this rival of Chaucer and Spenser:--

“Have mercy, love, have mercy, lady bright; What have I wrought against your womankeid, That you should murder me a sackless wight, Trespassing on you nor in word nor deed? That ye consent thereto, O God forbid; Leave cruelty and save your man for shame, Or through the world quite losëd is your name.”

It may be added that what are by far the finest passages in Dunbar’s poems are passed unnoticed and unquoted by Mr. Smeaton. Indeed, his acquaintance with Dunbar, or, at all events, his taste in selection, is exactly on a par with that of Ned Softley’s with Waller. “As that admirable writer has the best and worst verses among our English poets, Ned,” says Addison, “has got all the bad ones by heart, which he repeats upon occasion to show his reading.” Should Mr. Smeaton ever meet his idol in Hades, we would in all kindness advise him to avoid an encounter; let him remember that the fulsome eulogy is his own, but that the verses quoted are the poet’s. Attempted murder--so the irate shade might argue--is less serious than compulsory suicide.

Dunbar was undoubtedly a man of genius, but a reference to the poets who immediately preceded him will make large deductions from the praises lavished on him by his eulogists. He struck no new notes. _The Thistle and the Rose_ and _The Golden Terge_ are mere echoes of Chaucer and Lydgate, and, in some degree, of the author of _The King’s Quair_, and are indeed full of plagiarisms from them. _The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins_ is probably little more than a faithful description of a popular mummery. His moral and religious poems had their prototypes, even in Scotland, in such poets as Johnston and Henryson. His most remarkable characteristic is his versatility, which ranges from the composition of such poems as _The Merle and the Nightingale_ to the _Twa Maryit Wemen and the Wedo_, from such lyrics as the _Meditation in Winter_ to such lyrics as the _Plea for Pity_. Mr. Smeaton calls him “a giant in an age of pigmies.” The author or authoress of _The Flower and the Leaf_ was infinitely superior to him in point of style, Henryson was infinitely superior to him in originality, and Gavin Douglas at least his equal in power of expression and in description.

Let us do Dunbar the justice which Mr. Smeaton has not done him, and take him at his very best. Here is part of a picture of a May morning,--

“For mirth of May, wyth skippis and wyth hoppis The birdis sang upon the tender croppis, With curiouse notis, as Venus Chapell clerkis. The rosis yong, new spreding of their knoppis, War powderit brycht with hevinly beriall droppis; Throu bemes rede, birnyng as ruby sperkis, The skyes rang for schoutyng of the larkis.”