Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/169

 

No one can fail to remark that, while the incident is in the highest degree honourable to Bruce, showing that the gentle heart may still be known by gentle deed, so also is Barbour entitled to the credit of humane feelings, from the way in which he had detailed and commented upon the transaction.

Barbour was the author of another considerable work, which has unfortunately perished. This was a chronicle of Scottish history, probably in the manner of that by Andrew Winton.  , a distinguished writer of the English tongue at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is known to have been a native of Scotland only by very obscure evidence. He spent some of his earliest years at Croydon, in Surrey, and it is conjectured that he received his education at one of the English Universities. In the year 1508, he was a prebendary of the collegiate church of St Mary, at Ottery, in Devonshire. He was afterwards a Monk, first of the order of St Benedict at Ely, and latterly of the order of St Francis at Canterbury. While in this situation, and having the degree of Doctor of Divinity, he published an English translation of the "Mirrour of Good Manners," (a treatise compiled in Latin by Dominyke Mancyn,) for the use of the "juvent of England." After the Reformation, Barclay accepted a ministerial charge under the new religion, as vicar of Much-Badew in Essex. In 1546, he was vicar of Wokey in Somersetshire, and in 1552 he was presented by the Dean and Chapter of London to the rectory of Allhallows in Lombard Street. Having reached an advanced age, he died in June this year, at Croydon in Surrey, where he was buried.

Barclay published a great number of books, original and translated, and is allowed by the most intelligent enquirers into early English literature to have done more for the improvement of the language than any of his contemporaries. His chief poetical work is "the Ship of Fooles," which was written in imitation of a German work entitled, "Das Narren Schiff," published in 1494. "The Ship of Fooles," which was first printed in 1509, describes a vessel laden with all sorts of absurd persons, though there seems to have been no end in view but to bring them into one place, so that they might be described, as the beasts were brought before Adam in order to be named. We shall transcribe one passage