INTRODUCTION.

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THE affluent of Translation cannot be said to have added its volume to the stream of English Verse until the first quarter of the sixteenth century, although it had been preceded by two or three centuries by a flood of paraphrase of metrical romances of French origin. It was the outflow of two springs, separated by fifty generations of mankind, one rising from the heart of a pagan poet in the Rome of Augustus, the other from the heart of a Christian poet in the Scotland of James the Fourth. The Scottish poet, Gawain Douglas, was the son of Archibald Douglas, historically known as the Great Earl of Angus, and popularly known as Bell-the-Cat. Born about the beginning of 1475, Gawain Douglas was liberally educated for the church, and is thought to have made the tour of the Continent, as was then and later the fashion with the young gentlemen of England and Scotland. His first preferment on entering into holy orders was to be Provost of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles, in Edinburgh, a place of great dignity and revenue, and to this appointment was afterward added the rectory of Hawick, and the abbey of Aberbrothick. Abbot, rector, and provost,

he found, or made, leisure in which to cultivate the courtly Muse, and before the close of the century had translated Ovid's Art of Love, and had begun, if he had not finished, two original allegorical poems, The Palice of Honour, and King Hart.

Apart from its poetic merit, which is considerable, The Palice of Honour is noteworthy on account of the promise made therein by the poet to translate the Eneid. This translation, the first metrical one of any classic into the English tongue, was begun in his thirtyseventh year, and, carried on stoutly for sixteen months, was finished in July, 1513, about two months before the battle of Flodden. A fatal field, and long remembered by the great Scottish families whose ancestors perished there, it was disastrous to our learned ecclesiastic, whose two elder brothers were borne away by the wild waves of that lost battle, and were followed within the twelvemonth by their stricken father, who died of grief at their loss. The title and estates of the old Earl descended to his grandson Archibald, whom Queen Margaret, the widow of the dead king, married before the year of her mourning was over. Among others who were slain at Flodden was the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, to whose see the Queen Regent straightway nominated Gawain Douglas, and entreated the Pope to confirm her nomination. He refused to do so, and appointed Forman, Bishop of Moray, to the vacancy. The chapter, however, had a mind of their own, and, approving neither of Forman nor of Douglas, chose Hepburn, Prior of St. Andrew's. "Douglas gained a step on his rivals, by what is generally considered a great step in law, obtaining possession. With a con

siderable body of retainers, he seized on the castle of St. Andrew's; but Hepburn, with a greater force, soon succeeded in expelling him, and retained the place till Forman appeared with the Earl of Home, and ten thousand men at his back, when he thought it prudent, for an annual consideration, to forego his pretentions and allow the papal nominee to enter into undisturbed possession. Douglas, who is said to have been ashamed of the ungodly contest, made no attempt to revive his claims." In the following year (1515) the Queen and the Pope nominated him for the Bishoprick of Dunkeld, which had become vacant, and in which he had a powerful competitor in Stewart, a brother of the Earl of Athol, who was elected by the chapter. The Duke of Albany had now become Regent in place of the Queen, and on the charge of having illegally procured a bull from the Pope he caused Douglas to be imprisoned for more than a year. Finally released and reconciled with the Regent, he was consecrated Bishop of Dunkeld, but could only obtain possession of the episcopal palace by the aid of an armed force, which compelled Stewart to capitulate. A strife of parties, lay and cleric, which need not be gone into here, compelled Bishop Douglas to seek refuge in England, where he was pensioned by Henry the Eighth, and where in 1522 he died in London of the plague.

Warton professed to admire Bishop Douglas's translation of Virgil, which he declared was executed with equal spirit and fidelity, and it was to him a proof that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were nearly the same at the time it was written. No later writer has shared this opinion, which Warton himself could not