Stop, stop, John Gilpin ! - Here 's the house!' They all at once did cry; 'The dinner waits, and we are tired!' Said Gilpin: 'So am I!'" But on he goes, the turnpike gates flying open before him, and the hue and cry behind, the tollmen all thinking that he "rode a race." "And so he did, and won it too, For he got first to town; Nor stopped till where he had got up He did again get down." We may well spare from history the august figure of Alexander the Great trampling down the world on his Bucephalus; but doughty John Gilpin, never! On the back of the Calendar's runaway, this famous equestrian hero must forever "drink the wind of his own speed," and in this sound poetical faith "Now let us sing, long live the king, And Gilpin, long live he." IN CHAPTER XIII. SCOTTISH POETRY AND ROBERT BURNS. N the reign of Edward II. (1307-27) — which is thought to be the era of the earlier metrical romances of Scotland-lived Thomas of Ercildoune, noted in Scottish tradition under the appellation of Thomas the Rhymer. Sir Walter Scott in 1804 published a composition of this poet entitled "Sir Tristrem," which he supposed upon tolerable evidence to have been written in the middle or latter part of the thirteenth century, though the soundness of his theory has since been denied. The romance of "Sir Tristrem" was taken from the Auchinleck manuscript in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh,—a volume containing in all forty-four pieces of ancient poetry, complete or imperfect, and supposed to have been compiled in an Anglo-Norman convent in the earlier part of the fourteenth century. The language spoken by the Lowland Scotch in the earlier part of the fourteenth century, which is the age of the birth of Scottish poetry, must have sprung out of the same sources and been affected by nearly the same circumstances as the English of the same age, and is said to have been distinguished from that of the south of England, which acquired the ascendency over that of the northern counties as the literary dialect, by little more than the retention of many vocables which had become obsolete among the English, and a generally broader enunciation of the vowel sounds. Chaucer had in the latter part of that century a more formidable rival than his friend Gower, in the person of a Scotchman by the name of John Barbour. Of his personal history but little is known. In the year 1320 he is styled Archdeacon of Aberdeen in a passport granted him by Edward III. at the request of King David II. of Scotland, to come into England for the purpose of studying in the university at Oxford. Three other passports are extant; the third, in 1368, secures him protection in coming with two valets and two horses into England, and travelling through the same on his way to France, for the purpose of studying there. It is to be inferred from this outfit that Barbour was in most prosaically "comfortable circumstances." His death is known to have taken place at an advanced age, in 1395. His sole remaining work, "The Bruce," is a complete history of the memorable transactions by which King Robert asserted the independency of Scotland, and obtained its crown for himself and family. "The Bruce" is a poem of great length, comprising between twelve and thirteen thousand lines. The main texture of the narrative has always been regarded as an authentic historical monument, and has been received and quoted by all subsequent writers and investigators of Scottish history. Barbour lacks the grand inventive imagination of Chaucer, and has neither his wit nor humor nor his delicate sense of the beautiful; but his diction is clear, strong, and direct, and his narrative descriptive, animated, and picturesque. And though his poem lacks sweetness and harmony, it is pervaded with generous and dignified sentiment. He paints the injuries of his country with distinctness and force, and celebrates the heroism of her champions and deliverers with admiration and sympathy. Cotemporary with Barbour, and like him adorning the language by a strain of versification, expression, and poetical imagery far superior to his age, is Blind Harry, who about 1460 wrote a heroic poem entitled "The Adventures of Sir William Wallace." Of this author nothing is known but that he was blind from infancy, and that he wrote this poem, and made a living by reciting it, or parts of it, before company. It abounds in marvellous stories of the prowess of Scotland's grand old hero, whose name will forever thrill along the chords of the national heart. Some of Harry's legends are thought to have no foundation in fact, though from the simple unaffectedness of the narrative it is supposed that the author meant only to state real facts. Blind Harry's poem has been commended for elevated sentiment and poetical effect, and a paraphrase of it into modern Scotch, by William Hamilton, has long been a popular volume among the Scottish peasantry. Dr. Currie, in his Life of Burns, affirms that the study of this book had great effect in kindling the genius of this gifted. son of Scotland. King James I. of Scotland may be considered as the most eminent of all her poets of the early part of the fifteenth century. James was in his eleventh year when he was carried away to England, in 1405, by Henry IV.; and it is probable that he still retained some of the peculiarities of his native idiom, though the poem may be regarded as written in English rather than in Scotch. The difference, however, between the two dialects was not so great at this early date as it afterward became. The only certain production of his is a long poem called "The King's Quhair" (or "book") in which he describes the circumstances of an attachment formed for a beautiful English princess while a prisoner in Windsor Castle. This lady, Joanna Beaufort, he is said first to have beheld walking in the garden below, from the window of his prison in the Round Tower. She was afterward married to the king, and accompanied him to Scotland. "The King's Quhair" is a serious poem of nearly fourteen hundred lines; the style is in great part allegorical, and the poet is evidently an imitator of Chaucer. He is said to have approached nearer to the excellence of his great model than any poet before the reign of Elizabeth. It contains descriptive passages of great beauty. Thus he addresses this beautiful vision, at whose sudden apparition he says, "6 Anon, astart The blood of all my body to my heart. Ah, sweet! are ye a worldly creature, Or heavenly thing in likeness of nature? Or are ye God Cupidis own princess, Shall I minister unto your excellence? If ye a goddess be, and that ye like To do me pain, I may it not astart: If ye be warldly wight, that doth me sike, Why list God make you so, my dearest heart, To do a seely prisoner this smart, That loves you all, and wot of nought but woe? King James was assassinated at Perth in the year 1437, at the age of forty-two. It has been observed that " most of the English poets immediately succeeding Chaucer seem rather relapsing into barbarism than availing themselves of those striking orna |