train of the Earl of Bothwcll and Lord Monypenny, then on an embassy to the court of France.
In the books of the treasurer of Scotland, we find that Dunbar enjoyed a pension from his sovereign. Under date May 23, 1601, occurs the following entry:—"Item, to Maister William Dunbar, in his pension of Martymes by past, 5l." Another entry occurs December 20, "quhilk was peyit to him eftir he com furth of England." If these were half-yearly payments, the pension must have been one of ten pounds, which cannot be deemed inconsiderable, when we take into account the resources of the king, the probable necessities of the bard, and the value of money at that time. In March, 1504, he first performed mass in the king's presence. In 1507 we find that his pension was newly eiked, or augmented, to the sum of twenty pounds a-year; and in 1510, to eighty pounds. On the marriage of James IV. to Margaret of England, Dunbar celebrated that event, so auspicious of the happiness of his country, in a poem entitled "Tho Thistle and the Rose," in which he emblematized the junction and amity of the two portions of Britain. In the plan of this poem, he displays, according to Dr Irving, "boldness of invention and beauty of arrangement, and, in several of its detached parts, the utmost strength and even delicacy of colouring." Dunbar seems to have afterwards been on as good terms with the queen as he had previously been with the king, for he addresses several poems in a very familiar style to her majesty. In one, moreover, "on a Daunce in the Queene's chalmer," where various court personages are represented as coming in successively arid exhibiting their powers of saltation, he thus introduces himself:—
"Than in cam Dunbar the Makar;[1]
On all the flure there was nane fracar,
And thair he dauncet the Dirry-duntoun:
He hopet, like a tiller wantoun,
For luff of Musgraeffe men fulis me.
He trippet quhile he tur his pantoun:
A mirrear daunce micht na man see."
The next person introduced was Mrs Musgrave, probably an English attendant of the queen, and, as the poet seems to have admired her, we shall give the stanza in which she is described: —
"Then in cam Maestres Musgraeffe:
Scho micht haff lernit all the laeffe.
Quhen I saw her sa trimlye dance,
Hir gud convoy and contenance,
Than for hir saek I wissit to be
The grytast erle, or duke, in France:
A mirrear dance micht na man see."
Notwithstanding the great merit of Dunbar as a poet, he seems to have lived a life of poverty, with perhaps no regular means of subsistence but his pension. He appears to have addressed both the king and the queen for a benefice, but always without success. How it came to pass that king James, who was so kind a patron to men professing powers of amusement, neglected to provide for Dunbar is not to be accounted for. The poet must have been singularly disqualified, indeed, to have been deemed unfit in those days for church-preferment. It appears that the queen became more disposed to be his patron than the king, for he writes a poem in the form of a prayer, wishing that the king were
- ↑ Writers of verses were so termed in the sixteenth century.
