al board was yet spread.

While this heydey of life lasted and all was bright around and about the
chivalrous James, there was a certain suitor of his Court, a merry and
reckless priest, more daring in words and admixtures of the sacred and
the profane than any mere layman would venture to be, whose familiar and
often repeated addresses to the King afford us many glimpses into the
royal surroundings and ways of living, as also many pictures of the
noisy and cheerful mediaeval town which was the centre of pleasures, of
wit and gay conversation, and all that was delightful in Scotland.
Dunbar's title of fame is not so light as this. He was one of the
greatest of the followers of Chaucer, a master of melody, in some points
scarcely inferior to the master himself whose praise he celebrates as

"Of oure Inglisch all the light
Surmounting every tong terrestrial
Alls far as Mayis morrow dois mydnyght."

But it is unnecessary here to discuss the "Thrissil and the Rois," the
fine music of the epithalamium with which he celebrated the coming of
Margaret Tudor into Scotland, or the more visionary splendour of the
"Golden Targe." The poet himself was not so dignified or harmonious as
his verse. He possessed the large open-air relish of life, the broad
humour, sometimes verging on coarseness, which from the time of James I.
to that of Burns has been so singularly characteristic of Scots poetry:
and found no scene of contemporary life too humble or too ludicrous for
his genius--thus his more familiar poems are better for our purpose than
his loftier productions, and show us the life and fashion of his town
and time better than anything else can do. This is one, for example, in
which he upbraids "the merchantis of renown" for allowing "Edinburgh
their nobil town" to remain in the state in which he describes it:--

"May nane pass through your principall gates
For stink of haddocks and of skates,
For cryin' of carlines and debates,
For fensome flytings of defame.
Think ye not shame
Before strangers of all estates
That sic dishonour hurt your name?

"Your stinkand schule that standis dirk
Halds the light from your Parroche Kirk,
Your forestairs makis your houses mirk
Like na country but here at hame
Think ye not shame,
Sa little policie to work
In hurt and sklander of your name?

"At your hie Croce, where gold and silk
Should be, t