“Masters dear,
  Gower and Chaucer, that on the steppes sate
    Of retorick, while they were livand here,
  Superlative as poets laureate
  Of morality and eloquence ornate.”

But while, during the reigns of the Jameses, Scottish genius was being acted upon by the broader and deeper genius of England, Scotland, quite unconsciously to herself, was preparing a liquidation in full of all spiritual obligations.  For even then, in obscure nooks and corners, the Scottish ballads were growing up, quite uncontrolled by critical rules, rude in structure and expression, yet, at the same time, full of vitality, retaining in all their keenness the mirth of rustic festivals, and the piteousness of domestic tragedies.  The stormy feudal time out of which they arose crumbled by process of gradual decay, but they remained, made brighter by each succeeding summer, like the wildflowers that blow in the chinks of ruins.  And when English poetry had become artificial and cold, the lucubrations of forgotten Scottish minstrels, full of the touches that make the whole world kin, brought new life with them.  Scotland had invaded England more than once, but the blue bonnets never went over the border so triumphantly as when they did so in the shape of songs and ballads.

James IV., if not the wisest, was certainly the most brilliant monarch of his name; and he was fortunate beyond the later Stuarts in this, that during his lifetime no new popular tide had set in which it behooved him to oppose or to float upon.  For him in all its essentials to-day had flowed quietly out of yesterday, and he lived unperplexed by fear of change.  With something of a Southern gaiety of spirit, he was a merrier monarch than his dark-featured and saturnine descendant who bore the appellation.  He was fond of martial sports, he loved to glitter at tournaments, his court was crowded with singing men and singing women.  Yet he had his gloomy moods and superstitious despondencies.  He could not forget that he had appeared in arms against his father; even while he whispered in the ear of beauty the iron belt of penance was fretting his side, and he alternated the splendid revel with the cell of the monk.  In these days, and for long after, the Borders were disturbed, and the Highland clans, setting royal authority at defiance, were throttling each other in their mists.  The Catholic religion was yet unsapped, and the wealth of the country resided in the hands of the nobles and the churchmen.  Edinburgh towered high on the ridge between Holyrood and the Castle, its streets reddened with feud at intervals, and its merchants clustering round the Cathedral of St. Giles like bees in a honeycomb; and the king, when he looked across the faint azure of the Forth, beheld the long coast of Fife dotted with little towns, where ships were moored that traded with France and Holland, and brought with them cargoes of silk and wines.  James was a popular monarch; he was beloved by the nobles and by the people.  He loved justice, he cultivated his marine, and he built the Great Michael—­the Great Eastern of that day.  He had valiant seamen, and more than once Barton sailed into Leith with a string of English prizes.  When he fell with all his nobility at Flodden, there came upon Scotland the woe with which she was so familiar—­