“Woe to that realme that haith an ower young king.”

A long regency followed; disturbing elements of religion entered into the life of the nation, and the historical stream which had flowed smoothly for a series of years became all at once convulsed and turbulent, as if it had entered upon a gorge of rapids.  It was in this pleasant interregnum of the reign of the fourth James, when ancient disorders had to a certain extent been repressed, and when religious difficulties ahead were yet undreamed of, that the poet Dunbar flourished—­a nightingale singing in a sunny lull of the Scottish historical storm.

Modern readers are acquainted with Dunbar chiefly through the medium of Mr. David Laing’s beautiful edition of his works published in 1834, and by good Dr. Irving’s intelligent and admirable compacted “History of Scottish Poetry,” published the other day.  Irving’s work, if deficient somewhat in fluency and grace of style, is characterised by conscientiousness of statement and by the ripest knowledge.  Yet, despite the researches of these competent writers, of the events of the poet’s life not much is known.  He was born about 1460, and from an unquotable allusion in one of his poems, he is supposed to have been a native of the Lothians.  His name occurs in the register of the University of St. Andrews as a Bachelor of Arts.  With the exception of these entries in the college register, there is nothing authentically known of his early life.  We have no portrait of him, and cannot by that means decipher him.  We do not know with certainty from what family he sprang.  Beyond what light his poems may throw on them, we have no knowledge of his habits and personal tastes.  He exists for the most part in rumour, and the vague shadows of things.  It appears that in early life he became a friar of the order of St. Francis; and in the capacity of a travelling priest tells us that “he preached in Derntown kirk and in Canterbury;” that he “passed at Dover across the Channel, and went through Picardy teaching the people.”  He does not seem to have taken kindly to his profession.  His works are full of sarcastic allusions to the clergy, and in no measured terms he denounces their luxury, their worldly-mindedness, and their desire for high place and fat livings.  Yet these denunciations have no very spiritual origin.  His rage is the rage of a disappointed candidate, rather than of a prophet; and, to the last, he seems to have expected preferment in the Church.  Not without a certain pathos he writes, when he had become familiar with disappointment, and the sickness of hope deferred—­

  “I wes in youth an nureiss knee,
  Dandely! bischop, dandely! 
  And quhen that age now dois me greif,
  Ane sempill vicar I can nocht be.”