Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/133

Rh Thomson's man, that is, subservient to the views of his consort, so that he might obtain what the queen desired his majesty to bestow upon him. The poor poet tells the king that his hopes were in reality very humble: —

His poetry is full of pensive meditations upon the ill division of the world's goods—how some have too much, without meriting even little, while others merit all and have nothing. He says—

He also reflects much upon the vanity of all sublunary affairs. At the beginning, for instance, of the above poem, he thus moralizes on "the warld's iustabilitie:"—

Next to "the Thistle and the Rose," the most considerable poem by Dunbar was "The Golden Targe," a moral allegorical piece, intended to demonstrate the general ascendency of love over reason: the golden targe, or shield, of reason, he shows to be an insufficient protection to the shafts of Cupid. He is also supposed to be the author of an exquisitely humorous tale, entitled, "The Freirs of Berwick," which has supplied the ground-work of a well known poem of Allan Ramsay, designated "The Monk and the Miller's wife." Another composition, styled " The Twa Marriet Wemen and the Wedo," contains much humorous sentiment, and many sarcastic reflections upon the fair sex; but of all Dunbar's poems, it is most open to the charge of immodest description. The poem, however, displaying the highest powers of mind, is certainly that entitled "A Dance," which presents pictures of the seven deadly sins, equally expressive, perhaps, with any that could have been delineated by the pen of Milton himself.

Dunbar had the fortune, rare in that age, of seeing some of his works printed in his own lifetime. In 1508, among the very first efforts of the Scottish press, Chepman and Millar published his " Golden Targe," his "Twa Marriet Wemen and the Wedo," and several other poems. Three years after the poet's pension had been increased to eighty pounds, came the fatal disaster of Flodden, involving