Laten, Frenche, and Doche," but he seems to have been most familiar with
the Latin version. He used a good deal of freedom in his translation,
"sometyme addynge, sometyme detractinge and takinge away suche thinges as
semeth me necessary and superflue." The fools are given a local colour, and
Barclay appears as the unsparing satirist of the social evils of his time.
At the end of nearly every section he adds an _envoi_ of his own to drive
home the moral more surely. The poem is written in the ordinary Chaucerian
stanza, and in language which is more modern than the common literary
English of his day.

_Certayne Ecloges of Alexander Barclay, Priest_, written in his youth, were
probably printed as early as 1513, although the earliest extant edition is
that in John Cawood's reprint (1570) of the _Ship of Fools_. They form,
with the exception of Henryson's _Robin and Makyn_, the earliest examples
of the English pastoral. The first three eclogues, in the form of dialogues
between Coridon and Cornix, were borrowed from the _Miseriae Curialium_ of
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.), and contain an eulogy of John
Alcock, bishop of Ely, the founder of Jesus College, Cambridge. The fourth
is based on Mantuan's eclogue, _De consuetudine divitum erga poetas_, with
large additions. It contains the "Descrypcion of the towre of Virtue and
Honour," an elegy on Sir Edward Howard, lord high admiral of England, who
perished in the attack on the French fleet in the harbour of Brest in 1513.
The fifth, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, also without date, is entitled the
"Fyfte Eglog of Alexandre Barclay of the Cytezen and the uplondyshman" and
is also based on Mantuan. Two shepherds, Amintas and Faustus, discuss the
familiar theme of the respective merits of town and country life, and
relate a quaint fable of the origin of the different classes of society.
Barclay's pastorals contain many pictures of rustic life as he knew it. He
describes for instance the Sunday games in the village, football, and the
struggle for food at great feasts; [v.03 p.0394] but his eclogues were,
like his Italian models, also satires on social evils. The shepherds are
rustics of the Colin Clout type, and discuss the follies and corruptions
around them. Barclay had, however, no sympathy with the anti-clerical
diatribes of John Skelton, whom he more than once attacks. Bale mentions an
_Anti-Skeltonum_ which is lost. His other works are:--_The Castell of
Laboure_ (Wy