Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/163

 enjoying his position at court, and making fair use of his time both as royal servitor and as poet, he seems all through to have longed for the benefice he had been taught to expect. His ambition, he explains, is by no means lofty, for if his majesty would but grant him the appointment his soul longs for he would be pleased with ‘ane kirk scant coverit with hadder.’ He tempts him with many ingenious addresses, ranging from such embittered satires as ‘The Fenyet Friar of Tungland,’ and the ‘Dream of the Abbot of Tungland,’ through reflective monologues like the ‘Worldis Instabilitie,’ and on to direct epistolary lyrics, posing in touching metaphor as ‘the king's grey horse, auld Dunbar.’ James apparently considered Dunbar more happily placed as he was than if he had a parish under his charge, and so no benefice was ever bestowed as a mark of the king's appreciation. The suggestion, sometimes made, that Dunbar may have been morally unfit for the position of parish priest is worthless, for besides the fact that a man's character must have been very bad indeed to debar him in those days from church preferment, it has been ascertained that Dunbar was in full orders. He performed mass in the king's presence for the first time on 17 March 1504, and there is nothing to show why he should not have done the same many times and under any possible circumstances. James, however, kept him as his laureate, and in thus having helped in the development of the greatest of the ‘makaris’—to use Dunbar's own happy vernacular equivalent for poets—he is entitled to a certain credit.

The poems increased while the benefice lingered. Soon after the allegorical bridal song, as already said, came ‘The Goldyn Targe,’ the ‘Flyting,’ and the ‘Lament.’ In the first of these the poet represents Cupid as steadily repelled by Reason with golden targe or shield, till a powder thrown into his eyes overpowers him. The poem has an even and sustained interest, and several of its descriptions are appreciative and vivid. The ‘Flyting between Dunbar and Kennedy’ is a comparative trial of wits, wherein each seems to say the worst he possibly can of the other for the amusement of their readers. It set the example afterwards followed by James V and Lyndsay, and by Alexander Montgomery and Sir Patrick Hume. That the one poet did not forfeit the other's regard by the strong language used is seen in the affectionate tone with which Dunbar mourns over the impending death of ‘guid Maister Walter Kennedy’ in the ‘Lament for the Makaris.’ This is one of the most tender and fascinating of memorial poems. Its Latin refrain, ‘Timor mortis conturbat me,’ suggests the macaronic verse which is a minor feature of interest in Dunbar's work, and its pathetic sentiment and sober reflection readily introduce us to his meditative poems. Representative pieces in this class are ‘No Treasure avails without Gladness,’ ‘Meditation in Winter,’ ‘Love Earthly and Divine,’ and the various poems on our Lord.

But although Dunbar is attractive and satisfying as a lyrist and writer of allegory, he is strongest and most poetical as a satirical humorist. Either he or some other standing close to Chaucer wrote the ‘Freiris of Berwik,’ and he is the author of the ‘Twa Marriit Wemen and the Wedo,’ which is at once a somewhat repulsive and a very witty satire, and fairly challenges comparison with the ‘Wife of Bath.’ His greatest humorous satire, however, is ‘The Dance of the Sevin Deidly Synnis’ (with its appendages about ‘Telyouris’ and ‘Sowtaris’), which may owe something to Langland, but is Scotch in conception and range as well as in imagery. The sins, from pride to gluttony, are depicted in their repulsive deformity, while old Mahoun and his idiosyncrasies are scrutinised with inquisitive and boisterous humour such as never afterwards played about them till they received the treatment of Burns.

The edition of Dunbar's poems issued by Chepman & Myllar in 1508, and no doubt seen through the press by himself, disappeared from view, and only one imperfect copy is known to exist. This was found in Ayrshire in 1788, and is now in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. Had it not been that many of his poems were included in the Bannatyne and Maitland MSS. of the sixteenth century, Dunbar would have been almost, if not altogether, lost to English literature. He seems to have been overlooked by writers on Scottish poetry from the time of Lyndsay's reference, 1530, till Ramsay produced specimens of his work in the ‘Evergreen,’ 1724. From that date he received attention from editors, notably Lord Hailes, Pinkerton, Ritson, and Sibbald, whose ‘Chronicle of Scottish Poetry,’ 4 vols. 1802, contains thirty-two of his poems. The first complete collection, and the one that is likely to remain the standard edition, is that of David Laing, 2 vols. 1834. The late Dr. John Small, of the Edinburgh University Library, edited Dunbar for the Scottish Text Society, 1884. His lamented death occurred before he completed the biographical and critical introduction which he intended to prefix to the work, but in a prefatory note to the text as issued to subscribers he expresses his opinion that Dunbar