IX.

Than the fowll monstir Glutteny,
Of wame unsasiable and gredy',
To dance syn did him dress2;
Him followit mony a fowll drunckhàrt3
With can and collep, cop and quart*,
In surfeit and excess.

Full mony a waistless wally drag 5
With waimis unwieldable did furth drag,
In creisch that did incress";

Drynk, ay they cryit, with mony a gaip,
The feynds gaif thame het leid to laip3,
Their lovery wes na less9.

X.

Na menstrals playit to thame but dowt',
For glémen thair wer haldin out,

By day and eke by nicht",
Except a menstrall that slew a man1;
Sa till his heretage he wan5

And enterit by brief of richt.

IX. Of womb insatiable and greedy.-2 To dance then addressed himself.-3 Him followed many a foul drunkard.—4 Different names of drinking vessels.-5 Full many a wasteless sot.— 6 With bellies unwieldable did drag forth.-7 In grease that did increase. The fiends gave them hot lead to lap. -9 Their love of drinking was not the less.

X. No minstrels without doubt.-2 For gleemen there were kept out.-3 By day and by night.-4 Except a minstrel that slew a man.-5 So till he won his inheritance.-6 And entered by letter of right.

XII.

Than cryd Mahoun for a heleand padyane',
Syn ran a feynd to fetch Mac Fadyane,
Far northwart in a nukes,

Be he the Correnoth had done schout',
Ersche-men so gadderit him about 5
In hell grit rume they tuke:
Thae termegantis, with tag and tatter,
Full lowd in Ersche begowd to clatter,
And rowp like revin and ruke.
The devil sa devit was with thair yell7,
That in the depest pot of hell

He smurit thame with smuke8.

-2 The name

XII. Then cried Satan for a highland pageant.of some highland laird.-3 Far northward in a nook.-4 By the time that he had raised the Correnoth or cry of help.—5 Highlanders so gathered about him.-6 And croaked like ravens and rooks.-7 The devil was so deafened with their yell.-8 He smothered them with smoke.

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY.

BORN 1490.

DAVID LYNDSAY, according to the conjecture of his latest editor1, was born in 1490. He was educated at St. Andrew's, and leaving that university, probably about the age of nineteen, became the page and companion of James V., during the prince's childhood, not his tutor, as has been sometimes inaccurately stated. When the young king burst from the faction which had oppressed himself and his people, Lyndsay published his Dream, a poem on the miseries which Scotland had suffered during the minority. In 1530, the king appointed him Lyon at Arms, and a grant of knighthood, as usual, accompanied the office. In that capacity he went several times abroad, and was one of those who were sent to demand a princess of the imperial line for the Scottish sovereign. James having however changed his mind to a connexion with France, and having at length fixed his choice on the Princess Magdelene, Lyndsay was sent to attend upon her to Scotland; but her death happening, six weeks after her arrival, occasioned another poem from our author, entitled

Mr. G. Chalmers.

the "Deploracion." On the arrival of Mary of Guise, to supply her place, he superintended the ceremony of her triumphant entry into Edinburgh; and, blending the fancy of a poet with the godliness of a reformer, he so constructed the pageant, that a lady like an angel, who came out of an artificial cloud, exhorted her majesty to serve God, obey her husband, and keep her body pure, according to God's commandments.

On the 14th of December 1542, Lyndsay witnessed the decease of James V., at his palace of Falkland, after a connexion between them, which had subsisted since the earliest days of the prince. If the death of James (as some of his biographers have asserted) occasioned our poet's banishment from court, it is certain that his retirement was not of long continuance; since he was sent, in 1543, by the Regent of Scotland, as Lyon King, to the Emperor of Germany. Before this period, the principles of the reformed religion had begun to take a general root in the minds of his countrymen; and Lyndsay, who had already written a drama in the style of the old moralities, with a view to ridicule the corruptions of the Popish clergy, returned from the continent to devote his pen and his personal influence to the cause of the new faith. In the parliaments which met at Edinburgh and Linlithgow, in 1544-45 and 46, he represented the county of Coupar in Fife; and in 1547, he is recorded among

the champions of the reformation, who counselled the ordination of John Knox.

The death of Cardinal Beaton drew from him a poem on the subject, entitled, a Tragedy, (the term tragedy was not then confined to the drama) in which he has been charged with drawing together all the worst things that could be said of the murdered prelate. It is incumbent, however, on those who blame him for so doing, to prove that those worst things were not atrocious. Beaton's principal failing was a disposition to burn with fire those who opposed his ambition, or who differed from his creed; and, if Lyndsay was malignant in exposing one tyrant, what a libeller must Tacitus be accounted?

His last embassy was to Denmark, in order to negotiate for a free trade with Scotland, and to solicit ships to protect the Scottish coasts against the English. It was not till after returning from this business that he published Squyre Meldrum, the last, and the liveliest of his works. The time of his death is uncertain.