ough deficient in tenderness and imagination, deserves praise for
his sinewy and occasionally picturesque verse. "The Bruce" is really a
fine poem. The hero is noble, resolute, and wise. Sir James Douglas is
a very perfect, gentle knight. The old Churchman had the true poetic
fire in him. He rises into eloquence in an apostrophe to Freedom, and he
fights the battle of Bannockburn over again with great valour, shouting,
and flapping of standards. In England, nature seemed to have exhausted
herself in Chaucer, and she lay quiescent till Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas
Wyatt came, the immediate precursors of Spenser, Shakspeare, and their
companions.

While in England the note of the nightingale suddenly ceased, to be
succeeded by the mere chirping of the barn-door sparrows, the divine and
melancholy voice began to be heard further north. It was during that
most barren period of English poetry--extending from Chaucer's death till
the beginning of Elizabeth's reign--that Scottish poetry arose, suddenly,
splendidly--to be matched only by that other uprising nearer our own
time, equally unexpected and splendid, of Burns and Scott. And it is
curious to notice in this brilliant outburst of northern genius how much
is owing to Chaucer; the cast of language is identical, the literary form
is the same, there is the same way of looking at nature, the same
allegorical forests, the troops of ladies, the same processions of
cardinal virtues. James I., whose long captivity in England made him
acquainted with Chaucer's works was the leader of the poetic movement
which culminated in Dunbar, and died away in Sir David Lindsay just
before the noise and turmoil of the Reformation set in. In the
concluding stanza of the "Quair," James records his obligation to those--

"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 festiv