Aberdeen." deservedly popular as his effusions are. "The we find little more than a disgusting picture Wallace" cannot certainly be compared to of revenge, hatred, and blood." This critic the great poem of the learned Archdeacon of errs in underrating, as the writer first quoted does in overrating, the merits of Blind Harry. The assertion that any portion of his "Wallace" is disgusting only exhibits an ignorance of the work on which the criticism is passed. The poem is in ten-syllable lines, the epic verse of a later period, and it is not deficient in poetical effect or elevated sentiment. A modern paraphrase of the poem, by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, has long been a favourite book amongst the peasantry of Scotland, and it was the reading of this volume which had so great an effect in kindling the genius and patriotic ardour of Robert Burns. The only MS. of Blind Harry's heroic poem is preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and bears date "The Bruce' is evidently the work of a politician as well as a poet. The characters of the king, of his brother, of Douglas, and of the Earl of Moray are discriminated, and their separate talents always employed with judgment, so that every event is prepared and rendered probable by the means to which it is attributed; whereas the Life of Wallace' is a mere romance, in which the hero hews down whole squadrons with his single arm, and is indebted for every victory to his own muscular strength. Both poems are filled with descriptions of battles, but in those of Barbour our attention is successively directed to the cool intrepidity of King Robert, to the brilliant 1488. rashness of Edward Bruce, or to the enterpris ing stratagems of Douglas; while in Henry The first edition of the work was published in 1570; the latest and most correct, with notes and glossary by Dr. Jamieson, in 1820. THE DEATH OF WALLACE.' (FROM SIR WILLIAM WALLACE.) On Wednysday the fals Sotheroun furth brocht, | The sacrement off kyrk I sall him geiff; Till martyr him as thai befor had wrocht. A He has rong lang in contrar my hienace." A blyst byschop sone, present in that place, Syn tak thi chos, to sterwe or lat him leiff. And thou throu force will stop me off this thing, His leyff he tuk, and to West monastyr raid. I wow to God, quhilk is my rychtwyss king, That all Ingland I sall her enterdyt, And mak it knawin thou art ane herretyk. Warton, in his History of English Poetry, notices Barbour and Henry the Minstrel in these words:Although this work is professedly confined to England, yet I cannot pass over two Scotch poets of this period who have adorned the English language by a train of versification, expression, and poetical imagery far superior to their age; and who consequently deserve The lokmen than thai bur Wallace but baid On till a place, his martyrdom to tak; For till his ded he wald na forthyr mak. Fra the fyrst nycht he was tane in Scotland, Thai kepyt him in to that sammyn band. Na thing he had at suld haiff doyn him gud; Bot Inglissmen him seruit off carnaill fud. Hys warldly lyff desyrd the sustenance, Thocht he it gat in contrar off plesance. Thai thretty dayis his band thai durst nocht slaik, to be mentioned in a general review of our national Quhill he was bundyn on a skamyll off ayk, poetry." With irn chenyeis that was bath stark and keyn. A clerk thai set to her quhat he wald meyn. Had I lestyt, and gottyn my rychtwyss king, I thocht haiff maid Ingland at his bandoun. Off wykkydness thow has a felloun thocht. ass. A Psaltyr buk Wallace had on him euir; JAMES THE FIRST. BORN 1394- DIED 1437. act of gross injustice completed the calam of the infirm King Robert, who sank u the blow, and it led to the captivity of Ja for more than eighteen years. JAMES THE FIRST, one of the most chivalric, | ried prisoner to the Tower of London. and certainly the most accomplished of the ancient Scottish kings, was born at Dunfermline in 1394. His elder brother having fallen a victim to the ambition of his uncle the Duke of Albany, Robert III., filled with anxiety for the safety of his only remaining son, and in order to place him beyond the reach of a faithless kindred until he should attain to manhood, resolved to send him to the court of France to complete his education, | which had been begun under the learned prelate Walter Wardlaw, archbishop of St. Andrews. Accordingly, in 1405, the young prince sailed from his native country under the care of the Earl of Orkney, but the vessel being captured by an English squadron, in violation of a treaty of peace which then existed between the two nations, he was ear After a confinement of two years in Tower the young prince was removed to tingham Castle. In 1413 he was taken to the Tower, but in the course of the year was transferred to Windsor Castle. 1414 the English king, Henry IV., took J with him in his second expedition into Fri but on his return committed him and Windsor Castle, where he remained til final liberation. Though kept in close finement he was instructed in every bran knowledge which that age afforded, and be also eminently expert in all athletic exer Hector Boece tells us that he was a prof in every branch of polite literature, in grammar, oratory, Latin and English poetry, music, jurisprudence, and the philosophy of the times; and Drummond says "that there was nothing wherein the commendation of wit consisted, or any shadow of the liberal arts did appear, that he had not applied his mind to, seeming rather born to letters than instructed." Philosophy and poetry were the sources from which the unfortunate young prince drew the||riage to the dauphin. The year following a consolation he so much needed. Speaking of his determination to write the "King's Quhair," his greatest work, he says— it he exclaimed, “ By the help of God, though I should myself lead the life of a dog, I shall make the key keep the castle, and the bush secure the cow." The sentiment was worthy a prince, and he set himself vigorously at work to curb his lawless nobles, and to better the condition of his distracted kingdom. "And in my tyme more ink and paper spent and that he did not seek the consolations of "Bewailling in my chamber thus allone, Despeired of all joye and remedye; In 1436 James renewed the allegiance with France, giving his daughter Margaret in mar conspiracy was formed against him, and on the night of February 20 he was assassinated at Perth by a band of ruffians led by Sir Robert Graham of Strathearn. His death was universally bewailed by the nation, and his inhuman murderers were put to death by the horrible tortures practised in that age. Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Eugene IV., who was in Scotland as legate at the time of this catastrophe, in giving an account of it, said that he "was at a loss which most to applaud, the universal grief which overspread the nation on the death of the king, or the resentment to which it was roused, and the just vengeance with which his murderers were pursued; who, being all of them traced and dragged from their lurking retreats, were, by the most lingering tortures that human invention could suggest, put to death." "A cruel crime rewarded cruellie." Margaret, dauphiness of France, eldest daughter of the murdered king, inherited not a little of her father's gallant spirit and poetic ability. It is of her that the familiar story is related that, walking in the gallery of the palace, and finding Alain Chartier, the poet, asleep there, she reverently kissed him. "How could you kiss one so ugly?" exclaimed one of her maids of honour. "I do not," answered the princess, At length James was restored, when in his thirtieth year, to his kingdom, returning to Scotland in April, 1424, having espoused the Lady Joanna Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset, and grand-daughter of John, duke of Gaunt. His descriptions of the small garden, once the moat of Windsor Castle, which was seen from his place of confinement, and the first glimpse he there obtained of his future queen, are among the most beautiful and touching passages in the poem. Proceeding first to Edinburgh he was received by his people with a degree of affectionate enthusiasm which could scarcely have been expected from their former indifference to his fate; he after-"kiss the man, but the lips that have uttered wards went to Scone, accompanied by his queen, where they were both solemnly crowned. When first informed on his arrival in the kingdom of the lawlessness which prevailed in He was well lernit to fecht with the sword, to just, to turnay, to worsyle, to sing and dance, was an expert so many beautiful thoughts"-a kiss which Menage says will immortalize her. Of the king's principal poetical work Pinkerton, a writer extremely penurious of praise, says that it "equals anything Chaucer has written;" and Ellis remarks that "it is not inferior in poetical merit to any similar production" of the father of English poetry. It is most undoubtedly true that neither Chaucer nor any contemporary poet of either England or Scotland is characterized by that delicacy which distinguishes the productions of King | ments, and to him accord the honour of introJames. Considering the rude age in which ducing a new kind of music, plaintive and he wrote, and that Chaucer and Gower, with melancholy, different from all others," to quote whose writings he was well acquainted, and the language of Tassoni, an Italian writer who whom indeed he acknowledges in one of his flourished in the early part of the sixteenth stanzas for his masters, were so distinguished, century. James is known, from contemporary as well as Dunbar, for an opposite character, authorities, to have cultivated music with it is certainly one of the greatest phenomena more than usual ardour, and under circumin the annals of poetry. The "King's Quhair" stances of long imprisonment and solitude, sinwas for centuries lost to the world, the only gularly calculated to give to his compositions MS. copy in existence, at the Bodleian Library, that "plaintive and melancholy" style which having been discovered by Lord Woodhouse- the Italian writer tells us was regarded as the lee, who in 1783 first published it to the characteristic of the kind of music which the world, with explanatory notes and a critical king invented, and which we know to be the dissertation. The subject is the royal poet's characteristic of the national music of Scotlove for his future queen, described in the land as existing during the past four and a allegorical style of the age, but with much half centuries. fine description, sentiment, and poetical fancy. To King James is likewise ascribed two humorous poems entitled "Christis Kirk on the Grene" and "Peblis to the Play," descriptive of the rural manners and pastimes of that age. These poems are great favourites. To the former allusion is made by Pope, who writes "One likes no language but the Fairy Queen: Or Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green." Dyer said of this accomplished prince "Amid the bards whom Scotia holds to fame, She boasts, nor vainly boasts, her James's naine; And less, sweet bard! a crown thy glory shows, Than the fair laurel that adorns thy brows;" and Washington Irving, in the article entitled "A Royal Poet," in the Sketch Book, has given us a charming description of the king and his Quhair (Book), consisting of 197 seven-lined stanzas, declared by Lockhart to be "infinitely more graceful than any piece of American writing that ever came from any other hand, and well entitled to be classed with the best English writings of our day." Mr. Irving, after a visit to Windsor Castle, remarks, “I have been particularly interested by those parts of the poem which breathe his immediate thoughts concerning his situation, or which are connected with the apartment in the Tower. They have thus a personal and local charm, and are given with such circumstantial truth as to make the reader present with the captive in his prison, and the companion of his meditations. As an amatory poem it is edifying, in these days of coarser thinking, to notice the nature, refinement, and exquisite delicacy which pervade it, banishing every gross thought or immodest expression, and presenting female loveliness Historians relate that the king was a skilful clothed in all its chivalrous attributes of musician, playing on eight different instru- | almost supernatural purity and grace.” His claim to either has been disputed, but Allan Ramsay, Sir Walter Scott, and others unhesitatingly ascribe Christis Kirk on the Grene to the royal poet, while authorities equally entitled to credit entertain the same feelings of certainty as respects the authorship of his other poem, "Peblis to the Play.' The poems of the royal poet were first collected and published at Perth in 1786, and are also to be found in Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish | Poetry. In 1873 was published an edition of "The Poetical Remains of King James the First of Scotland, with a Memoir by the Rev. Dr. Rogers," containing, in addition to the compositions previously mentioned, a song on "Absence" and a sacred poem entitled "Divine Trust," the latter included among our selections. THE KING'S QUHAIR.1 Than wold I say, Giff God me had devisit (EXTRACT.) To lyve my lyf in thraldom thus and pyne, Quhat was the cause that he more me comprisit, Than othir folk to lyve in such ruyne? I suffere alone amang the figuris nyne, Ane wofull wrache that to no wight may spede, And yit of every lyvis help has nede. The long dayes and the nyghtis eke, I wold bewaille my fortune in this wise. By the come I to joye out of turment! Bewailling in my chamber thus allone, Now was there maid fast by the Touris wall So thick the beuis and the leves grene Beschadit all the allyes that there were, And myddis every herbere mycht be sene The scharp grene suete jenepere, Growing so fair with branches here and there, That, as it semyt to a lyf without, The bewis spred the herbere all about. And on the small grene twistis sat The lytil suete nygtingale, and song Kest I doun myn eye ageyne, 1 The King's Quhair" is a long allegory, polished and imaginative, but with some of the tediousness usual m such productions - Henry Hallam. The author of our first serious and purely imaginative poem, the King's Qubair,” and our earliest truly comic and homely poem, "Peblis to the Play."-Allan Cunningham. Full secretely, new cumyn hir to pleyne, And though I stood abaisit then a lyte, No wonder was, for quhy? my wittis all Were so ouercome with plesance and delyte, Only through latting of myn eyen fall, That sudaynly my hert become hir thrall For ever; of free wyll, for of manace There was no takyn in hir suete face. And in my hede I drew ryght hastily, Ah suete! are ye a warldly creature, Or ar ye god Cupidis owin princesse, That have depayntit with your hevinly hand, This gardyn full of flouris, as they stand? Quhat sall I think, allace! quhat reverence Sall I mester to your excellence? Giff ye a goddesse be, and that ye like That lufis you all, and wote of noucht but wo, Quhen I a lytill thrawe had maid my mone, My hert, my will, my nature, and my mynd, Of hir array the form gif I sal write, Toward her goldin haire, and rich atyre, In fretwise couchit with perlis quhite, And grete balas lemyng as the fyre, Full of quaking spangis brycht as gold, |