with every mark of respect and kindness, and bestowed upon him an education far superior to what he could, in that age, have received in his own country. The captivity of the young prince so deeply affected his father's mind, that he soon sunk under the weight of the affliction, and James was, accordingly, in 1405, declared king by an assembly of the Scottish states, though the Duke of Albany still retained the regency. In 1424, when James was set in liberty, and assumed the reins of the government of his country, he found his kingdom in such disorder that the most rigorous measures were required to curb the existing abuses. These measures bore very severely upon the usurpations of the crown lands by the nobility, in consequence of which a conspiracy was formed against the king, at the head of which was his uncle, the Earl of Athole. James received timely intelligence of the designs of the conspirators, but his natural intrepidity led him to treat the threatened danger with contempt; 'and while in the Dominican Convent, near Perth, attended by his queen and a very few of his courtiers, he was murdered in the most cruel manner, in the fortyfourth year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign.'1 While James was a prisoner in Windsor Castle, and pining for his liberty, he accidentally saw, in an adjacent garden, a young princess, Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. This incident exerted a most remarkable influence over the captive, and induced him to seek the hand of the princess, which he eventually obtained. To the Lady Jane, James was most ardently attached, and her praises elicited his finest poetic strains. The only unquestioned production of this youthful monarch, is a long poem entitled The King's Quhair, or Book. This poem, which embraces the relation of various particulars in his own life, and a full development of his passion for the Lady Jane, abounds in simplicity and pathos, and contains poetry superior to any other, with the exception of that of Chaucer, produced in England previous to the reign of Elizabeth. To sustain this remark, we need only present the following stanzas : THE FIRST SIGHT OF LADY JANE BEAUFORT AS SEEN FROM WINDSOR CASTLE. 1 Twigs. Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet, So thick the boughis and the leavis green The boughis spread the arbour all about. * Cast I down mine eyes again, Where as I saw, walking under the tower, For which sudden abate, anon astart,2 And though I stood abasit tho a lite 3 No wonder was; for why? my wittis all Were so overcome with pleasance and delight, That suddenly my heart became her thrall, There was no token in her sweete face. And in my head I drew right hastily, Or are ye god Cupidis own princess, Or are ye very Nature the goddess, That have depainted with your heavenly hand, If ye a goddess be, and that ye like To do me pain, I may it not astart: 6 If ye be warldly wight, that doth me sike,7 4 Say. 3 Confounded for a little while. 2 Went and came. 6 Fly. 5 Minister. 1 Pleased. Why list God make you so, my dearest heart, That loves you all, and wot of nought but woe? Of her array the form if I shall write, 6 * Full of quaking spangis bright as gold, About her neck, white as the fire amail,7 And for to walk that fresh May's morrow, Thus halflings loose for haste, to such delight In her was youth, beauty, with humble aport, 4 A kind of precious stone. 6 A kind of lily. It is conjectured that the royal poet may here allude covertly to the name of his mistress, which, in the diminutive, was Janet or Jonet.-Thompson's She turned has, and furth her wayis went; The king's Quhair was written while James was confined in Windsor Castle, and it is supposed that he wrote several poems descriptive of humorous rustic scenes after he ascended the Scottish throne; none of these, however, can be identified. James was followed in comparatively rapid succession by such writers as Henryson, Dunbar, Douglass and Lyndsay, of whom Warton remarks that 'they displayed a degree of sentiment and spirit, a command of phraseology, and a fertility of imagination not to be found in any contemporary English poets.' ROBERT HENRYSON, the first of these writers, followed king James after an interval of about a half a century. Of this poet there are no personal memorials farther than that he was a schoolmaster of Dunfermlane, and that he died about 1508. His principal poem is The Testament of Cresseid, being a sequel to Chaucer's romantic poem Troilus and Cresseide. Henryson also wrote a series of fables, thirteen in number, and some miscellaneous poems chiefly of a moral character. One of his fables is the common story of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, which he treats with much humor and characteristic description, and concludes with the following beautifully expressed moral: Blissed be simple life, withouten dreid; Wha has eneuch of no more has he neid, Though it be little into quantity. Grit abundance, and blind prosperity, Oft timis make ane evil conclusion; The sweetest life, theirfor, in this country, Is of sickerness, with small possession. To these lines we may add the following pointed though fanciful descrip Her sark1 should be her body next, Of chastity so white: With shame and dread together mixt, Her kirtle should be of clean constance, Lacit with lesum3 love; The mailies of continuance, For never to remove. Her gown should be of goodliness, Her belt should be of benignity, Her mantle of humility To thole both wind and weit.8 Her hat should be of fair having, Her sleeves should be of esperance, To hide her fingers fair. Her shoen should be of sickerness, Would she put on this garment gay, I durst swear by my seill,11 That she wore never green nor gray That set12 her half so weel. WILLIAM DUNBAR, the poet who follows Henryson, was born at Salton, 1465. Of his early life little is farther known than that, though poor, he was educated at the university of St. Andrews, where he is represented to have taken the degree of master of arts in 1479, when not yet fifteen years of age. Having, soon after he closed his studies, entered the Franciscan Order of Friars, he travelled for a number of years in Scotland, England, and France, as a novitiate of that Order, preaching, and living by the alms of the pious -a mode of life which he himself afterward acknowledged involved him in the constant exercise of falsehood, deceit, and flattery. In 1490, Dunbar, when in the twenty-fifth year of his age, returned to |