His chance to-nycht, it may be thyne to-morrow."
SHAKESPEARE. (From the Portrait by Droeshout in the First Folio.)
The last poet of this period that we must notice is Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, Lyon King-at-Arms, whom Sir Walter Scott, in "Marmion," has made so familiar to modern readers, predating, however, Sir David's office of Lyon King by seventeen years. Sir David was born about 1490, and is supposed to have died about 1567; so that he lived in the reigns of Henry VII. of England and of Elizabeth, through the whole period of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary. His life was cast in times most eventful, and Sir David, as Lyon-Herald of Scotland, occupied a prominent position in the shaping of those events. At the time of the battle of Flodden in 1513, both Pitscottie and Buchanan assure us that he was with James IV. when the ghost appeared to him in the church at Linlithgow, warning him against the battle. Lyndsay was then only three-and-twenty. He was appointed page to the young king, and continued about him and in his service during the king's life. In his "Complaynt," addressing the king, he says:—
"How as are chapman beres his pack,
I bore thy grace upon my back,
And sometymes stridlingis on my neck,
Dansand with mony bend and beck:
The first syllabis that thou did mute,
Pa-da-lyn upon the lute;