Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/131

Rh of his nativity is not more accurately known. In the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, a series of satires which these two poets interchanged with each other, the former speaks of the "Carrick lips" of his antagonist, a bona fide allusion to the provincial vernacular of that poet, and, within three lines, he uses the adjective Lothian in the same way, respecting a part of his own person; thereby, apparently, indicating that he was a native of that district. Unless Dunbar here meant only to imply his habitual residence in Lothian, and his having consequently contracted its peculiar language, he must be held as acknowledging himself a native of the province. The early events of the poet's life are unknown. In 1476, when he must have reached his fifteenth or sixteenth year, he was sent to the university of St Andrews, then the principal seat of learning in Scotland. The name of William Dunbar is entered in the ancient registers of the university, in 1477, among the Determinantes, or Bachelors of Arts, in St Salvator's College, a degree which students could not receive till the third year of their attendance. His name again occurs in 1479, when he had taken his degree of Master of Arts, in virtue of which he was uniformly styled Maister William Dunbar, a designation which was exclusively appropriated till a late period to persons who had taken that degree at a university. Of his subsequent history, from 1480 to 1499, no trace remains. He became an ecclesiastic at an early age, having entered the mendicant order of St Francis, which had an establishment of Grey Friars at Edinburgh.

In his poem entitled, How Dunbar was desyred to be ane Frier, he gives the following intimation on this subject, as reduced to prose, by Dr Irving:—" Before the dawn of day, methought St Francis appeared to me with a religious habit in his hand, and said, 'Go, my servant, clothe thee in these vestments, and renounce the world.' But at him and his habit I was scared like a man who sees a ghost. 'And why art thou terrified at the sight of the holy weed?' 'St Francis, reverence attend thee. I thank thee for the good-will which thou hast manifested towards me; but with regard to these garments, of which thou art so liberal, it has never entered into my mind to wear them. Sweet confessor, thou needs not take it in evil part. In holy legends have I heard it alleged that bishops are more frequently canonized than friars. If, therefore, thou wouldest guide my soul towards heaven, invest me with the robes of a bishop. Had it ever been my fortune to become a friar, the date is now long past. Between Berwick and Calais, in every flourishing town of the English dominions, have I made good cheer in the habit of thy order. In friars' weed have I ascended the pulpit at Dernton and Canterbury; in it have I crossed the sea at Dover, and instructed the inhabitants of Picardy. But this mode of life compelled me to have recourse to many a pious fraud, from whose guilt no holy water can cleanse me.' "

It is probable that he did not long continue his connection with this order, as he informs us that the studies and life of a friar were not suited to his disposition. It is no doubt to his having been a travelling noviciate of the Franciscan order that his poetical antagonist Kennedy alludes, when he taunts Dunbar with his pilgrimage as a pardoner, begging in all the churches from Ettrick Forest to Dumfries. His poems do not inform us how he was employed after relinquishing the office of a friar, nor how he became connected with the Scottish Court, where we find him residing, about the beginning of the sixteenth century, under the patronage of James IV. From some allusions in his writings, at a subsequent period of his life, to the countries he had visited while in the king's service, it is not improbable that he was employed as secretary, or in some kindred capacity, in connection with the embassies to foreign states which were maintained by the reigning monarch. In 1491 he was residing at Paris, in all likelihood in the