I'me no slave to such as you be; Neither shall a snowy brest, Ever robb me of my rest. Your beauties ray To some ore-soone enamour'd swaine. Those common wiles Of sighs and smiles Are all bestowed on me in vaine. I have elsewhere vowed a dutie; Where gawdy clothes And fained othes may love obtaine. Whose looke sweares No; On her sweet brest That is the pride of Cynthia's traine. Then hold your tongues; Your mermaid songs Are all bestow'd on me in vaine. No, no; though clownes I know the best can but disdaine : So shall your love Be all bestowed on me in vaine. Yet I would not daigne embraces I gave that one, Shall come to robb me of my gaine. Your fickle hearts Makes teares, and arts, I doe scorne to vow a dutie Affoords that blisse; For which I would refuse no paine. But such as you, Fond fooles, adue; You seeke to captive me in vaine. Prowd she seem'd in the beginning, And disdaind my looking on: But that coy one in the winning, Proves a true one being wonne. What ere betide, Shee 'l nere divide The favour shee to me shall daigue. Will fickle prove : And all that trust in you are vaine. Few ayme at dare. And if perhaps some lover plaine, By placing of my love in vaine. To lead astray The heart that constant shall remaine : And I the while Will sit and smile, To see you spend your time in vaine. So now is come our joyfulst feast; Each roome with yvie leaves is drest, And every post with holly. Though some churles at our mirth repine, And let us all be merry. Now all our neighbours chimneys smoke, Without the doore let sorrow lie: And if for cold it hap to die, Weele bury't in a Christmas pye, And evermore be merry. Now every lad is wondrous trimm, And no man minds his labour. Our lasses have provided them A bag-pipe and a tabor. Young men and mayds, and girles and boyes, Give life to one anothers joyes: And you anon shall by their noyse Perceive that they are merry. Ranke misers now doe sparing shun : Their hall of musicke soundeth : The countrey-folke themselves advance; Ned Swash hath fetcht his bands from pawne, Brisk Nell hath bought a ruffe of lawne, And those that hardly all the yeare And all the day be merry. Now poore men to the justices With capons make their arrants, And if they hap to faile of these, But now they feed them with good cheere, And then they shall be merry. Good farmours in the countrey nurse Some land lords spend their money worse There the roysters they doe play; And therefore lets be merry. The clyent now his suit forbeares, Though others purses be more fat, And therefore lets be merry. Harke how the wagges abrode doe call Anon youle see them in the hall, For nutts and apples scambling. errands Harke how the roofes with laughters sound! And there they will be merry. The wenches with their wassell-bowles, The boyes are come to catch the owles, The wild-mare in is bringing. Our kitchin-boy hath broke his boxe, Our honest neighbours come by flocks, And here they will be merry. Now kings and queenes poore sheep-cotes have, The honest now may play the knave, And wise men play at noddy. Some youths will now a mumming goe Because they will be merry. Then wherefore in these merry daies, To make our mirth the fuller. And whilest thus inspir'd we sing, Beare witnesse we are merry. (From the Miscellany appended to The Mistresse of Philarete.) In Hampshire crowdy is a kind of pie; the wild-mare, a see-saw in Shakespeare, is here the Yule-log; gameboyes is gambols. A Sonnet upon a Stolne Kisse. Now gentle sleepe hath closed up those eyes, Which waking kept my boldest thoughts in awe : And free accesse unto that sweet lip lies, From whence I long the rosie breath to draw. Me thinkes no wrong it were, if I should steale From those two melting rubies one poore kisse: None sees the theft, that would the thiefe reveale, Nor rob I her of ought which she can misse: Nay, should I twenty kisses take away, There would be little signe I had done so: Why then should I this robbery delay? Oh! she may wake, and therewith angry grow, Well, if she do, Ile back restore that one, And twenty hundred thousand more for lone. (From the Miscellany appended to The Mistresse of Philarete.) The Author's Resolution in a Sonnet. Shall I, wasting in despaire Or make pale my cheeks with care, Be she fairer than the Day Shall my seely heart be pin'd Be she meeker, kinder than Shall a woman's Vertues move Be she with that Goodness blest Cause her Fortune seems too high Thinks what with them he wold do, Great, or good, or kind, or faire If she slight me when I wooe, What care I for whom she be? The principal reprints of Wither's works are those of the Spenser Society (1871-83). Professor Arber issued Philarete and Fidel in his English Garner;' and Professor Henry Morley publishes a selection from the poems in 1891. Francis Rous (1579–1659), who divides with King David the honour of being the sweet psalmist of the Scottish people, was a Cornishman, born at his father's house of Halton, near Saltash. At Oxford he was already known as a sonneteer, and before he was twenty he had published Thule or Virtues History, a poem in imitation of Spenser. He graduated at Leyden too, and entered the Temple; but, settling in the country, produced between 1616 and 1627 a series of theological and devotional works-Meditations of Instruction, The Arte of Happines, The Oyl of Scorpions, &c. He was sent up to the House of Commons by Truro in 1625, was conspicuous in Parliament, and in 1643 was made provost of Eton College. He withdrew from the Presbyterian party, became a strong Independent, was a member of Cromwell's Council of State, and a month or two before his death was by Cromwell created a Lord of Parliament. He was a strenuous opponent both of popery and of Arminianism, and continued to write theological and political pamphlets and treatiseson the Mystical Marriage of the Soul to the Saviour, the Heavenlie Academie, &c.; and a number of his most important speeches have been preserved. His translation of the Psalms (1643) was not sanctioned by the English Parliament, but after being revised by himself (1646) and altered in a good many places by a Scottish committee, was adopted both by the General Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. Like the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, also an English production, the metrical translation of the Psalms became not merely part of the most cherished spiritual inheritance of the Scottish nation, but an important element in its intellectual education for more than two centuries. It served even as a kind of model for verse-writing to those who had access to few more poetical standards, and was only gradually extruded from its supremacy as the vehicle of praise in the public worship of the chief Presbyterian communions after the middle of the nineteenth century. It is mostly in 'common' ballad metre, with some 'long' metre psalms and a few 'peculiar' metres; is literal to (often over) the verge of unintelligibility, utterly lacking the dignity of the original; and as verse is harsh, uncouth, and generally hardly better than doggerel. But it is terse, simple, sincere; has won favourable comment from critics with no predilection for things Presbyterian or Scottish; was regarded as an adequate rendering of the psalter by a nation far from illiterate; and was interwoven with the most sacred associations of many generations of earnest Christian people. Rous's version of the Psalms was printed in 1643, revised in 1646, and approved by the Long Parliament, but never came into use in England. The first metrical version used in Scotland from the Reformation till 1650 was the English 'Old Version' by Sternhold, Hopkins, and others. There was a version by King James and the Earl of Stirling (printed 1631), one by Mure of Rowallan (circulated in MS.), and one by Zachary Boyd (1646); but none of these was ever adopted for public worship. The General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, having Rous's version sent to them by the English Parliament, appointed a committee (including Zachary Boyd) to revise Rous's version for use in Scotland, taking advantage of Mure's and Boyd's versions; and in 1650 sanctioned the result of the committee's labours, still the standard version in Scotland. We give the last three verses of the Twenty-third Psalm in Rous's two versions, and that finally adopted by the Kirk of Scotland in 1650. Boyd's is given at page 515. A comparison will show how completely the so-called 'Scottish' version may still be regarded as the handiwork of the old English Roundhead. Rous's Original Version, 1643. Thou hast my table richly spread in presence of my foe; My head with oile thou dost anoint, my cup doth overflow. Thy grace and mercy all my daies shall surely follow me ; And ever in the house of God my dwelling place shall be. Rous's own Revised Version, 1646. Yea though I walk in death's dark vale I'le fear no evil thing; Thou art with me, thy rod, thy staffe to me do comfort bring. Before me thou a table fitt'st in presence of my foes: My head thou dost with oile anoint, my cup it overflowes. Goodnesse and mercy all my life shall surely follow me; And in God's house for evermore my dwelling place shall be. Rous revised by the Scottish Committee, 1650, Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale, yet will I fear none ill : For thou art with me; and thy rod and staff me comfort still. My table thou hast furnished in presence of my foes; My head thou dost with oil anoint, and my cup overflows. Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me : And in God's house for evermore my dwelling place shall be. SCOTTISH LITERATURE. WE James VI. to the Civil War. HEN the various racial and tribal elements in North Britain had been hammered into one monarchy, it was the Anglic stock of the Lowlands and not the Scotic of the West Highlands that obtained the upper hand under the Celtic line of kings; and it was their language-the Anglian, Northumbrian, or Northern English-spoken in the same form from the Forth to the Humber, that became the national language, and assisted in the process, not yet quite completed, of welding the several peoples of the north (Celtic, Anglic, Norse, and other) into one nation. The Highlander is yet very unlike the Lowlander in many points of temperament and character; but the national type is the essentially AngloSaxon, utterly un-Celtic Lowlander, hyper-English in his caution, 'dourness,' and undemonstrativeness. In Bede's mouth Scotta-land meant the land of the Irish settlers in Argyll, of the Scoti; but byand-by the Southrons naturally came to regard as Scots all the subjects of the sovereign officially styled King of Scots, and called his whole country Scotland. Inevitable, too, it was that the Lowlanders, though Anglic to the bone, should, in contradistinction to the Southern English with whom they were so often at war, at length speak of themselves as Scots. But apparently they carefully avoided speaking of their language as Scottish. Till the sixteenth century the Scottish tongue in Lowland usage meant the Scotic Erse or Irish Gaelic of Argyll. It was not till a time of special embitterment in the long wars between the northern and southern kingdoms, when north of Tweed resentment against the Southrons had reached its highest pitch, that, as we have seen, a Lowlander was moved to speak of the Lowland vernacular as Scottis (see page 164). And long before this the influence of Southern English on this Lowland tongue was quite marked. The charm and power of the poetry of Chaucer contributed very largely to make the English of the southern Midlands the literary language for the whole of the great southern kingdom, reducing alike the tongue of the northerners in Northumbria and of the southerners in Sussex and Hampshire to the rank of provincial dialects. Chaucer's power is seen in the fact that his combination of the native Midland English with the NormanFrench, which for three hundred years had been the literary language of England, was henceforth, though to a very great extent French in vocabulary, to be regarded as the 'well of English undefiled.' In Scotland French never was the literary tongue, and though some Scots writers at times affected a pedantic Gallicism, the vernacular of the Lowlands never admitted anything like the same proportion of French words as did literary English; the words for which, in reading Lowland Scots, an Englishman requires a glossary are in the vast majority of cases words of pure English stock, fallen in England into desuetude. But on the vernacular benorth the Tweed Chaucer's influence was also powerful, and southern forms became more and more frequent in Scots prose and verse. The Reformation (see page 166) gave a prodigious impulse to the Anglicising process; and the period from the first Reformation to what in Scotland is called the Second Reformation may be regarded as the last age during which the northern vernacular, the Lowland Scots, was the national tongue of the country beyond the Tweed. Of Scottish national literature in the national tongue it might at the accession of James to the crown of England have been said as a century later at the union of the kingdoms was said by the Scottish chancellor of the Scottish parliament and polity-Now there's ane end of ane old song.' For from the union of the crowns it became the ambition of educated Scotsmen to write, and to be able to speak, the literary English of the court and of the south. And when in the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a revival of Lowland Scots it was not as a national tongue but as a provincial vernacular, admitted to literary use only for certain specific purposes. For the general purposes of literature English remained the vehicle; nobody now wrote books in Scotch. Even Burns wrote many poems in English; and his letters are invariably in English, and rather florid English (save on the two or three occasions when he wrote a facetious and extravagant jargon). Scott made admirable use of an eclectic and partially Anglicised Lowland Scots for dialogue in his novels and in some of his songs; but even in writing the history of Scotland for a Scottish boy, he would have regarded as absurd any attempt to indite the work in the Lowland vernacular he knew and loved so well. If not in James's reign, then during the commotions begun under his successor the Lowland Scots ceases to be the normal literary instrument of Scotsmen. The vernacular was reserved for increasingly restricted purposes and for secondary literary uses; in conversation even the educated went on speaking at home a mixed dialect quite as much Scottish as English. But the language of the pulpit and the bar, as well as of books, approximated very closely to English, with northern words and frequent Scotticisms it might be; the transitional compounds of Scottish-English or English-Scottish are many, curious, and variously proportioned. By the middle of the seventeenth century many Scotsmen wrote passable English, though when they essayed to speak it their tongue bewrayed them--the Scottish accent' remained indefeasible; even to this day a perfectly English tongue in a Scottish mouth is sufficiently rare. But with the educated it is a matter of intonation and utterance, hardly at all of vocabulary or dialect. The outstanding fact in the history of Scottish literature (see pages 167, 168) is that, from the later part of the sixteenth century and throughout the next, notable names are in contrast with earlier profusion-sadly few in number. Against scores of famous English writers, including Spenser and Shakespeare, Sidney and Raleigh, Hooker and Bacon, it is difficult to choose a dozen Scotsmen as worth naming at all, even if one includes Montgomery and Ayton, the Earls of Stirling and Ancrum. Who but specialists read even Drummond now? Napier was a genius, but he does not belong to literature; Rutherford and Leighton are prized for their spiritual and devotional power. We set to the national credit all the Scottish authors who-like Drummond and most of the others in verse; like the amazing Sir Thomas Urquhart, the 'Bluidy Mackenzie,' and Fletcher of Saltoun in prose-wrote no longer Scotch, but as good English as they could compass. But even so, Scotland has little or nothing to set alongside the works of Hobbes, Milton, Jeremy Taylor, Bunyan, Dryden; nothing at all to give promise of a coming renascence-of Hume and Adam Smith, of Dugald Stewart, Smollett, Boswell, Henry Mackenzie, Burns, in the eighteenth century; or of Scott and Jeffrey, of Chalmers, Christopher North, Carlyle, in the nineteenth. As Professor Masson testifies, he is but a poor Scotsman who, noting the literary insignificance of Scotland in the seventeenth century, forgets that it was then precisely that Scotland exerted its most decisive influence on the general history of the British islands, or doubts that the result was largely traceable to Scotland's obstinate perseverance so long in her own peculiar politicoecclesiastical controversy, and to what had been argued or done in the course of it, on one side or the other, by such men as Andrew Melville, Alexander Henderson, Argyle, Montrose, Claverhouse, and Carstares.' The century may be roughly divided into two halves; and the barrenness of this most barren period is mitigated by the first appearance or by the redaction in something like their present shape-of many of the Scottish ballads. King James VI. and I. (1566-1625), the Scottish Solomon, would have been untrue to himself had he not even in boyhood cherished the ambition of gaining fame as an author. 'The wisest fool in Christendom' was exceptionally well educated, and had some literary aptitude: Macaulay, exaggerating antitheses as usual, affirmed that he was made up of two men-‘a nervous drivelling fool, who acted,' and 'a witty well-read scholar, who wrote, disputed, and harangued.' But his writing, like his disputing and haranguing, was mostly tedious and to little purpose. He began to publish when a boy of eighteen, and in the Scottish vernacular. Ane Schort Treatise of Scottis Poesie (1584) contained 'reulis and cautelis to be observit and eschewit,' absurd and arbitrary many of them; but all early literary criticism has historic value. The Treatise was followed by his Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie, in which he doubtless illustrated as far as he could his rules and cautions, without too great success: the experiments comprised sonnets in Scottish; Ane Schort Poeme of Tyme, also in Scottish; The Phenix, inspired by Pliny, in seven-line stanzas; and a close and fairly spirited translation of L'Uranie of Du Bartas, who, as ambassador from the King of Navarre, flattered the King of Scots to the top of his bent. A later volume of Poeticall Exercises contains more translations from Du Bartas, the king's extraordinary doggerel glorification of the battle of Lepanto in ballad metre, and a translation of the same into French by the admiring diplomat, as the work of the Apollo of our time! This longest of James's poems (nearly a thousand lines) runs like this: The Turquish Host in manner like The which two Bashaas did command For Portan Basha had in charge To governe all by land, And Ali-Basha had by sea The only cheife command. |