is often no more than dull verfification. But, with all thefe faults, the "Ship of Fools," as a general fatire on the times, will not be found to be wholly void of entertainment. The language too of the writer is more cultivated than that of many of his contemporaries, and he had the honour of contributing fomething to the improvement of the phrafeology of his country. Befides other pieces, Barclay was the author of five Eclogues, which were the firft of the kind in the English tongue. They were formed upon the plan of Petrarch and Mantuan, being of a moral and fatirical nature, and containing but few ftrokes of rural defcription and bucolic imagery.

Three verfifiers in this period, William Walter, Henry Medwall, and Laurence Wade, are altogether undeferving of particular notice; neither would it be worth our while to enlarge upon fome pageants which were exhibited for the diverfion of king Henry the Seventh and his court. The dramatic entertainments called "Moralities," appear to have been carried to their height about the clofe of the prefent reign. A great contriver of them was John Raftall, a learned printer, and brother-in-law to fir Thomas More. This fort of spectacle had hitherto been confined either to moral allegory, or to religion blended with buffoonery; but Raftall formed the defign of rendering it the vehicle of fcience and philofophy.

John Skelton, the poet, might here have been introduced. But, as moft of his pieces were written in the time of Henry the Eighth, we fhall defer bringing him forward to our next number.

In our laft article, we were obliged to look up to Scotland for the glory of poetry; and this is more particularly the cafe with regard to the fhort period concerning which we are now treating. To Scotland we

b 3

ftand

ftand indebted for names with which no English ones can be put into comparifon. That country produced writers who adorned the age with a degree of fentiment and fpirit, a command of phrafeology, and a fertility of imagination, not, perhaps, to be found even in Chaucer or Lydgate. Thefe writers exhibited striking fpecimens of allegorical invention, a mode of compofition which for fome time had been almoft totally extinguished in England. William Dunbar and Gawin Douglas are the two principal perfons to whom this high praife belongs.

Dunbar, the chief of the ancient Scottish poets, was a native of East Lothian. Though he feems to have been bred an ecclefiaftic, there is no evidence, notwithftanding his high merit, that he ever attained to any valuable preferment. Of the poems written by him, which are numerous, and which, if the whole of them were collected together, would form a confiderable volume, the two longeft, and the moft celebrated, are "The Thistle and the Rofe," and "The Golden Terge." The

Thistle and the Rofe" was occafioned by an event which ultimately produced the union of the two crowns and kingdoms; and that was, the marriage of James the Fourth of Scotland, with Margaret Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry the Seventh, of England, Through the whole piece, Dunbar difplays a most admirable talent for allegorical invention, and poetical defcription. His defign, in the "Golden Terge," was, to fhew the gradual and imperceptible influence of love, when too far indulged over reason. This poem is tinctured with the morality and imagery of the "Romaunt of the Rofe," and the " Floure and Leafe" of Chaucer. But though the natural complexion of Dunbar's genius was of a moral or didactic caft, he had great merits in the comic ftyle of painting. His imagination was not lefs fuited to fatirical than to fublime allegory; and he was the firft who had appeared with any degree of fpirit

in this way of writing fince Pierce Plowman. According to the language of one who has made Dunbar his particular ftudy, he unites in himself, and generally furpaffes, the qualities of the chief old English poets; the morals and fatire of Langland; Chaucer's humour, poetry, and knowledge of life; the allegory of Gower; the defcription of Lydgate.

Gawin Douglas, the other great name in Scottish poetry, during this period, was illuftrious by birth, as well as by genius. He was fon, brother, and uncle to earls of Angus; and it was to the earl of Angus, his nephew, that Margaret, the queen dowager of Scotland, was married, after the deccafe of her firft husband, James the Fourth. As to Gawin Douglas himfelf, being bred an ecclefiaftic, he rofe to great preferments. He was provoft of the collegiate church of St. Giles, abbot of the opulent convent of Aberbrothock, and bifhop of Dunkeld: but it is on his eminence as a poet that his true fame depends. His education, which commenced in his native country, was finifhed at the univerfity of Paris; and, to whomfoever he was indebted for it, he attained to great excellence in claffical learning. This, in conjunction with the natural vigour of his own min, enabled him to fuftain a new character in the world of letters, which was that of a poetical tranflator, not from the old French metrical romances, but from the models of the Auguftan age. In his early youth, he tranflated Ovid's Art of Love; but he afterwards raifed his thoughts to a much nobler and more difficult undertaking, which was a complete tranflation, in heroic verfe, of the Eneid of Virgil. The defign, which had long been entertained by him, was accomplished in the space of fixteen months; and it is executed with equal fpirit and fidelity. Dr. Johnfon reprefents Mr. Pope's verfion of Homer as a very important object in the history of the literature of this country, though it was performed at a time when learning and tafte were in a high state of cultivation

b 4

cultivation in England. What, then, are we to think of fuch a work as that of Gawin Douglas's, in a period fo comparatively rude and unpolifhed? No metrical tranflation of a claffic had yet appeared in English, unless we are difpofed to give that appellation to Boethius. Virgil was hitherto generally known only by Caxton's romance on the fubject of the Eneid; concerning which Douglas afferted, that it no more refembled Virgil than the devil was like St. Auftin.

Gawin Douglas is eminent not only as a tranflator, but as an original writer. He was the author of an allegorical poem, called " King Hart," and of another, entitled the "Palice of Honour," excelling in the fame fpecies of compofition, and formed on the defign of the Tablet of Cebes. Befides thefe productions, the feveral books of his tranflation of Virgil are introduced with metrical prologues, which difplay a moft extraordinary degree of poetical beauty. His defcriptions of winter, of a fummer morning, and of a fummer evening, have uncommon merit. Thefe defcriptions are not the effufions of a mind that was indebted to the images of other poets, but the refult of a genius that operated by its own force, in the delineation of the objects that were prefented to it by the face of nature. Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penferofo have been reckoned the earliest defcriptive poems in English. If that was the cafe, Scotland produced the finest examples of this delightful species of compofition nearly a century and a half before. Notwithstanding Gawin Douglas's excellence as a tranflator, it it appears that his proper walk was original poetry,

With refpect to the ftate of architecture, in the reign of king Henry the Seventh, the Gothic kind, in its fineft form, ftill maintained its dominion. The fame ftyle and manner of building, which had fubfifted from the time of Edward the Third, continued to be preferved, with relation to the principal parts and members

of

of a ftructure. Some difference, however, took place in regard to the windows, which were lefs pointed and more open. A better taste of ftatuary began likewise to appear; and, indeed, a greater care feems to have been bestowed on all the ornamental parts, for the purpofe of giving them a lighter and higher finishing. The ribs of the vaulting in particular, which had been large, and apparently formed for ftrength and fupport, became at length divided into fuch an abundance of parts, iffuing from their impofts as from a centre, and preading themfelves over the vaulting, that the whole vault (thefe parts being at the fame time intermixed with delicate fculpture) affumed the appearance of embroidery, enriched with clusters of pendent ornaments, refembling the works occafionally formed by nature in caves and grottos, and hanging down from their roofs. Henry the Seventh's chapel at Weftminster, exhibits, in its vaulting, the moft ftriking inftance, without exception, of the fpecies of beauty now described, Indeed, this whole chapel is one of the finest monuments of the perfection of the Gothic architecture iu the prefent reign. It is alfo to be remembered, that Henry the Seventh affifted in carrying on the building of King's College chapel at Cambridge, which had been begun by Henry the Sixth. The remainder, to the battlements, was built by his order, and he completed the timber roof,

Concerning the ftate of the art of painting in this period, there is little to be faid. Though that fine art had risen to a very confiderable degree of perfection, both in Italy and in Flanders, it had fcarcely made its way into England. There was not, at leaft, a fingle native of the country who applied himself to the cultivation of it; nor was it likely to be greatly encouraged by a monarch whofe ruling character was avarice. However, two foreign painters came into this kingdom, during the reign of Henry the Seventh. The name of

one