On ane side, they their faes had,
That slew them down, without mercy:
And they had, on the tother party,
Bannockburn, that sae cumbersome was,
For slike and deepness for to pass,
That they micht nane out-ower it ride:
Them worthies, maugre theirs, abide;
Sae that some slain, some drownit were :
Micht nane escape that ever came there.

ANDREW WYNTOUN, the next important poet that the Scottish literature of this period presents, lived some time after the age of Barbour, but neither the place nor the period of his birth is now known. He was Prior of St. Serf's monastery at Lochleven, and about the year 1420, he completed an Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, including much universal history, and extending down to his own time. The genius of this author was inferior to that of Barbour; but his versification is easy, his language pure, and his style often animated. His Chronicle is valuable as a picture of ancient manners, as a repository of historical anecdotes, and as a specimen of the literary attainments of that age in Scotland. It contains a considerable number of fabulous legends, such as we may suppose to have been told beside the parlor fire of the monasteries of those days, and which convey a curious idea of the credulity of the age. From this Chronicle we extract the following singular imaginary interview between St. Serf and Sathanas. St. Serf lived in the sixth century, and was the founder of the monastery of which Wyntoun was Prior :2

INTERVIEW OF ST. SERF WITH SATHANAS.

While St. Serf, intil a stead,
Lay after matins in his bed,
The devil came, in foul intent
For til found him with argument,
And said, 'St. Serf, by thy werk
I ken thou art a cunning clerck.'
St. Serf said, 'Gif I sac be,
Foul wretch, what is that for thee?'
The devil said, 'This question

I ask in our collation,

Say where was God, wit ye oucht,
Before that heaven and erd was wroucht??

St. Serf said, 'In himself steadless

His Godhead hampered never was.'

The devil then askit, 'What cause he had
To make the creatures that he made?'

To that St. Serf answered there,

'Of creatures made he was maker.

A maker micht he never be,

But gif creatures made had he.'

1 Slime, mud.

The devil askit him, 'Why God of noucht
His werkis all full gude had wroucht.'
St. Serf answered, 'That Goddis will
Was never to make his werkis ill,
And as envious he had been seen,
Gif nought but he full gude had been.'
St. Serf the devil askit than,
'Where God made Adam, the first man?'
'In Ebron Adam formit was,'

St. Serf said. And til him Sathanas,
Where was he, eft that, for his vice,
He was put out of Paradise?'

St. Serf said, 'Where he was made.'
The devil askit, 'How lang he bade
In Paradise, after his sin.'

'Seven hours,' Serf said, 'bade he therein.'
'When was Eve made?" said Sathanas.
'In Paradise,' Serf said, 'she was.' *
The devil askit, 'Why that ye

Men, are quite delivered free,
Through Christ's passion precious boucht,
And we devils sae are noucht?"

St. Serf said, 'For that ye

Fell through your awn iniquity;

And through ourselves we never fell,

But through your fellon false counsell.' **
Then saw the devil that he could noucht,
With all the wiles that he wrought,
Overcome St. Serf. He said than
He kenned him for a wise man.
Forthy there he gave him quit,
For he wan at him na profit.
St. Serf said, 'Thou wretch, gae
Frae this stead, and 'noy nae mae
Into this stead, I bid ye.'
Suddenly then passed he;
Frae that stead he held his way,
And never was seen there to this day.

Besides Wyntoun there were a few other Scottish writers of the same period, such as Hutcheon of the Hall Royal, who wrote a metrical Romance entitled the Gest of Arthur; and Clerk of Tranent, who wrote a Romance entitled The Adventure of Sir Gawain. In the narrative of what remains of this latter poem, there is a sort of wildness which is very striking, though the language is often so obsolete, as to be quite unintelligible. The Howlate, an allegorical, satirical poem written about the same time by a poet named Howland, but of whom nothing more is known, strikingly reminds us of The 'Pricke of Conscience,' and 'Pierce Ploughman's Vision.'

The last of the romantic or minstrel class of compositions in Scotland of this period was The Adventures of Sir William Wallace, written about the middle of the fifteenth century by a wandering poet usually called Blind Harry. Of the author, however, nothing is farther known than that he was blind from his infancy, that he wrote this poem, and that he supported himself by reciting it before company. The work abounds with marvellous stories respecting the prowess of its hero, and in one or two places, grossly outrages real history: its value has, perhaps, on this account been generally understated. But within a very few years past, several of the transactions attributed by the blind minstrel to Wallace, and hitherto supposed to be fictitious such as his expeditions to France-have been confirmed by the discovery of authentic evidence. The poem is in ten-syllable lines, and is not deficient in poetical effect, and elevated sentiment. A paraphrase of it into modern Scotch, by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, has long been a favorite volume among the Scotch peasantry; and it was the study of this book which had so great an effect in kindling the genius of Robert Burns. Perhaps the most striking passages in this poem are the Adventures of Wallace while fishing in Irvine Water-The Escape of Wallace from Perth-and Wallace's Death: the last of which follows:

THE DEATH OF WALLACE.

On Wednesday the false Southron furth brocht
To martyr him, as they before had wrocht.2
Of men in arms led him a full great rout.
With a bauld sprite guid Wallace blent about:
A priest he asked, for God that died on tree.
King Edward then commanded his clergy,
And said, 'I charge you, upon loss of life,
Nane be sae bauld yon tyrant for to shrive.
He has reigned long in contrar my highness.'
A blyth bishop soon, present in that place.
Of Canterbury he then was righteous lord;
Again the king he made this richt record,
And said, 'Myself shall hear his confession,
If I have micht in contrar of thy crown.
An thou through force will stop me of this thing,
I vow to God, who is my righteous king,
That all England I shall her interdite,
And make it known thou art a heretic.
The sacrament of kirk I shall him give:
Syne take thy choice, to starve or let him live.
It were mair weil, in worship of thy crown,
To keep sic ane in life in thy bandoun,

Than all the land and good that thou hast reived,
But cowardice thee ay fra honour dreived,
Thou has thy life rougin in wrangeous deed;
That shall be seen on thee or on thy seed.'
The king gart5 charge they should the bishop ta,
But sad lords counsellit to let him ga.

All Englishmen said that his desire was richt.
To Wallace then he rakit in their sicht

Burn's life by Dr. Currie.

3 The necessary consequence of an interdict. 4 Spent.

E

• Contrived. 5 Caused.

And sadly heard his confession till ane end:
Humbly to God his sprite he there commend
Lowly him served with hearty devotion
Upon his knees and said ane orison.
A psalter-book Wallace had on him ever
Fra his childheid-fra it wald nocht dissever;
Better he trowit in wyagel for to speed.
But then he was despalyed of his weed.2
This grace he asked at Lord Clifford, that knicht,
To let him have his psalter-book in sicht.
He gart a priest it open before him hald,
While they till him had done all that they wald.
Stedfast he read for ought they did him there;
Feil Southrons said that Wallace felt na sair.
Guid devotion, sae, was his beginning,
Conteined therewith, and fair was his ending.
While speech and sprite at anis all can fare
To lasting bliss, we trow, for evermair.

From these romantic writers of Scotland, we proceed to notice a few of a different class, the first of whom, in the order of time, is the Scottishking, James the First.

JAMES THE FIRST was the son of Robert the Third, king of Scotland, and was born in 1395. His father being of a weak mind and easy disposition, allowed his brother, the Duke of Albany, to gain a complete ascendency over him. The reins of government consequently passed entirely into the duke's hands; and as he was the next heir to the crown after Robert and his issue, he soon entertained the ambitious and criminal design of securing the kingdom for himself. With this view, he so misrepresented the conduct of the king's eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, that the weak monarch committed the prince to the care of the regent Albany, by whom he was immediately imprisoned in Falkland Castle, and soon after starved to death. The king, too weak to punish the man to whom he had foolishly committed the administration of the government, had still sufficient discernment to perceive the necessity of preserving his remaining son from a similar fate. With this view he, in 1404, caused the prince to embark, attended by a large retinue, for the court of his ally, Charles the Sixth of France, there to be educated. The vessel in which the prince sailed, had the misfortune to be captured on its way thither by an English ship-of-war, and James and his attendants were immediately conveyed to London as prisoners. This event occurred in the sixth year of the reign of Henry the Fourth; and during the remaining eight years of that monarch's reign, throughout the whole of the reign of Henry the Fifth, and until the commencement of the fourth year of the reign of Henry the Sixth, James remained a prisoner in England. Though Windsor Castle was his prisonhouse during the eighteen years of his captivity, yet his captors treated him with every mark of respect and kindness, and bestowed upon him an education far superior to what he could, in that age, have received in his own country.

The captivity of the young prince so deeply affected his father's mind, that he soon sunk under the weight of the affliction, and James was, accordingly, in 1405, declared king by an assembly of the Scottish states, though the Duke of Albany still retained the regency.

In 1424, when James was set at liberty, and assumed the reins of the government of his country, he found his kingdom in such disorder that the most rigorous measures were required to curb the existing abuses. These measures bore very severely upon the usurpations of the crown lands by the nobility, in consequence of which a conspiracy was formed against the king, at the head of which was his uncle, the Earl of Athole. James received timely intelligence of the designs of the conspirators, but his natural intrepidity led him to treat the threatened danger with contempt; 'and while in the Dominican Convent, near Perth, attended by his queen and a very few of his courtiers, he was murdered in the most cruel manner, in the fortyfourth year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign.'1

While James was a prisoner in Windsor Castle, and pining for his liberty, he accidentally saw, in an adjacent garden, a young princess, Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. This incident exerted a most remarkable influence over the captive, and induced him to seek the hand of the princess, which he eventually obtained. To the Lady Jane, James was most ardently attached, and her praises elicited his finest poetic strains.

The only unquestioned production of this youthful monarch, is a long poem entitled The King's Quhair, or Book. This poem, which embraces the relation of various particulars in his own life, and a full development of his passion for the Lady Jane, abounds in simplicity and pathos, and contains poetry superior to any other, with the exception of that of Chaucer, produced in England previous to the reign of Elizabeth. To sustain this remark, we need only present the following stanzas :

THE FIRST SIGHT OF LADY JANE BEAUFORT AS SEEN FROM
WINDSOR CASTLE.

Bewailing in my chamber, thus alone,
Despaired of all joy and remedy,
For-tired of my thought, and woe-begone,
And to the window gan I walk in hy2
To see the world and folk that went forbye,3
As, for the time, though I of mirthis food
Might have no more, to look it did me good.

Now was there made, fast by the towris wall,
A garden fair; and in the corners set
Ane arbour green, with wandis long and small
Railed about, and so with trees set