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162 the destruction of the king and his nobles. How the fortunes of the bard were affected by this sad national event does not appear. Mr. Laing thinks it probable that he at last succeeded in obtaining preferment in the church. "The queen dowager, whom, during the king's life, our poet styled his 'advocate bayth fair and sweit,' could have no difficulty, during her regency, in providing for his wants; and we cannot believe that she would allow his old age to pine away in poverty and neglect. Even were it otherwise, we are not to suppose that he had no other friends in power who would be willing to assist in procuring some adequate and permanent provision for an individual who had so long contributed by his writings, to the amusement of the court." The poet is supposed to have survived till 1520, and died at the age of sixty. The first complete collection of his works was published by Mr David Laing in 1834. Although Dunbar received from his contemporaries the homage due to the greatest of Scotland's early makars, his name and fame were doomed to a total eclipse, during the period from 1530, when Sir David Lyndsay mentions him among the poets then deceased, to the year 1724, when some of his poems were revived by Allan Ramsay. Mr Laing observes, that " if any misfortune had befallen the two nearly coeval manuscript collections of Scottish poetry by Bannatyne and Maitland, the great chance is, that it might have been scarcely known to posterity that such a poet as Dunbar ever existed."

DUNCAN,, one of the comparatively few naval heroes of whom Scotland can boast, was a younger son of Alexander Duncan, Esq. of Lundie, in the county of Forfar. He was born in Dundee on 1st July, 1731; in which town he also received the rudiments of his education. The family of Lundie, which had for centuries been distinguished for its peaceful and domestic virtues, seems, at this time to have had an inclination directed towards the more active business of war the eldest son having gone into the army, while the younger, the subject of the present sketch, joined the navy at the aspiring age of sixteen. In 1747, he took the humble conveyance of a carrier's cart to Leith, whence he sailed to London ; and beginning his career in a manner so characteristic of the unostentatious but settled views of his countrymen, he did not revisit the place of his birth until his genius, his virtues, and his courage had secured for him the honour of an admiral's commission, and the gratitude of his country.

In the year last mentioned, young Duncan went on board the Shoreham frigate, Captain Kaldane, under whom he served for three years. He was afterwards entered as a midshipman on board the Centurion of fifty guns, then flag-ship of commodore Keppel, who had received the appointment of commander-in-chief on the Mediterranean station. While on this station, Mr Duncan attracted the attention and regard of the commodore, no less by the mildness of his manners, and the excellence of his disposition, which, indeed, distinguished his character through life, than by the ability and intrepidity which he uni- formly displayed in the discharge of his arduous though subordinate duties. How true it is that the sure foundations of future fame can be laid only during that period of youth which precedes the commencement of manhood's more anxious business ! His submission to the severity of naval discipline, the diligence with which lie made himself acquainted with the practical details of his professional duties, and the assiduity with which he cultivated an intellect naturally powerful, formed the true germs whence his greatness afterwards sprung. The amiable and excellent qualities which so soon and so conspicuously manifested themselves in his mind and character, gained for him, at an early period of his life, the affection of many whose friendship proved useful to him in the subsequent stages of his professional advancement.