The Kingis Quhair
(b) Sir David Lyndsay (1490–1555) was born in Fifeshire about the year 1490. He entered the royal service, and rose to fill the important position of Lyon King-of-Arms.
His longer works, which were written during his service at Court, include The Dreme, in rhyme royal stanzas, with the usual allegorical setting; The Testament of Squyer Meldrum, in octosyllabic couplets, a romantic biography with a strongly Chaucerian flavor; The Testament and Compleynt of the Papyngo, which has some gleams of his characteristic humor; and Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estatis, a morality-play, coarse and vulgar, but containing much of his best work. It is full of telling satire directed against the Church, and it shows acute observation of the frailties of his fellows. Lyndsay represents the ruder type of the Scottish Chaucerian. He has a coarseness beyond the standard even of his day; but he cannot be denied a bluff good-humor, a sound honesty of opinion, and an abundant and vital energy.
(c) Robert Henryson (1425–1500) has left us few details regarding his life. In one of his books he is described as a “scholemaister of Dunfermeling”; he may have studied at Glasgow University; and he was dead when Dunbar (see below) wrote his Lament for the Makaris in 1506. Hence the dates given for his birth and death are only approximations.
The order of his poems has not been determined. His longest is a version of the Morall Fabillis of Esope, composed in rhyme royal stanzas and showing much dexterity and vivacity; The Testament of Cresseid is a continuation of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida, and it has a finely tragic conclusion; Orpheus and Eurydice, an adaptation from Boëthius, has, along with much commonplace moralizing, some passages of real pathos; and among his thirteen shorter poems Robene and Makyne, a little pastoral incident, is executed with a lightness, a brevity, and a precision that make it quite a gem among its fellows. His Garment of Gude Ladies, though often quoted, is pedantically allegorical, and of no high quality as poetry.
We quote two stanzas from The Testament of Cresseid. The diction is an artificial blend of that of Chaucer and of colloquial Scots, and it is heavily loaded with descriptive epithet; but it is picturesque and dramatic, in some respects suggesting the later work of Spenser.
His face frosnit,[49] his lyre was lyke the leid,
His teith chatterit, and cheverit[50] with the chin,
His ene[51] drowpit, how,[52] sonkin in his heid,
Out of his nois the meldrop[53] fast did rin,