Mr. Brown's object in all this is to relegate the Kingis Quair to that group of poems which are represented by the Romaunt of the Rose, The Court of Love, and Lancelot of the Lak, which appeared late in the fifteenth century, and in which all these peculiarities are very pronounced. Into philological details we have not space to enter, but this we will say. We will admit that ane before a consonant, the past participle in yt or it, the pronouns thaire and thame, the plural form quhilkis, the employment of the verb to do in the emphatic conjugation and the like, are peculiarities which belong to a period not earlier than about 1440, and that all these peculiarities are to be found in the poem. But, we contend that these are just as likely to be due to the transcriber as they are to the author. Nothing was so common with copyists as to import into their texts the peculiarities of their own dialects, indeed it was habitual with them. Thus Hampole's Pricke of Conscience was greatly altered by southern scribes. Thus, in the Bannatyne MS., Chaucer's minor poems were similarly altered by northern scribes. It is, in truth, the very height of rashness to dispute the genuineness of an original, in consequence of the presence of peculiarities which might quite well have been imported into it by a copyist. The resemblances between this poem and the Court of Love are, we admit, not likely to have been mere coincidences, and we are quite ready to admit that the Court of Love in the form in which we have it now, must be assigned to a much later date, more than a century later, than the date (1423) assigned to the Kingis Quair. But this is certain—that many, and very many, of the resemblances between the two poems are to be attributed to the fact that the writers were saturated with the influence of Chaucer, and delighted in imitating and recalling his poetry. If, again, it be assumed that one poem was the exemplar of the other, this is indisputable, that the Court of Love was modelled on the Kingis Quair, and not the Kingis Quair on the Court of Love. For, setting aside peculiarities which may be assigned to transcribers, there can be little doubt that the Court of Love belongs to the sixteenth century at the very earliest, while Mr. Brown himself admits that the MS. of the Kingis Quair may be approximately fixed at 1488.
Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than Mr. Brown's attempt to show that the poem breaks down in autobiographical details, and that it derives these details from Wyntown's Chronicle. James does not mention the exact year in which he was taken prisoner. He tells us that he commenced his voyage when the sun had begun to drive his course upward in the sign of Aries, that is, on or about the 12th of March—and that he had not far passed the state of innocence, "bot nere about the nowmer of zeris thre"—in other words, that he was about ten years of age. Hereupon Mr. Brown, assuming that Wyntown gives the date of the King's birth correctly, proceeds to point out that the King was not at this time "about ten," but that he was about eleven and a half; and then asks triumphantly whether James would have been likely to forget his own age. Again, he contends that the King's capture could not have taken place in March, because it is highly probable that at the end of February, or at the beginning of March, the King was in the Tower. For the fact that he was in the Tower at that date there is not an iota of proof, or even of tolerably satisfactory presumptive evidence. How the author of the Kingis Quair could have been indebted to Wyntown's Chronicle for the autobiographical details it is, indeed, difficult to see. The poem gives March as the date of the capture; the Chronicle gives April. According to the poem, the King's age at the time of his capture was about ten; according to the Chronicle, about eleven and a half. The Chronicle gives the year of the capture; the poem does not. The Chronicle gives details not to be found in the poem; the poem details not to be found in the Chronicle. Mr. Brown has no authority whatever for asserting that Book IX. chap. xxv. of the Chronicle was certainly written years before James returned to Scotland. All we know about the Chronicle is that it was finished between the 3rd of September, 1420, and the return of James in April, 1424.
Mr. Brown must forgive us for expressing regret that he should have wasted so much time and learning, in attempting to support a paradox which can only serve to perplex and mislead. Scholars, especially in these days, would do well to remember, that nothing can justify destructive criticism but a conscientious desire, on the part of those who apply it, to correct error and to discover truth. And they would also do well to ponder over Bacon's weighty words: "Like as many substances in Nature which are solid do putrify and corrupt into worms, so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrify and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and, as I may term them, vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter nor goodness of substance."
WILLIAM DUNBAR [24]
[24] William Dunbar. By Oliphant Smeaton. Edinburgh: Oliphant.
Boswell tells us that he once offered to teach Dr. Johnson the Scotch dialect, that the sage might enjoy the beauties of a certain Scotch pastoral poem, and received for his reply, "No, sir; I will not learn it. You shall retain your superiority by my not knowing it." It would not be true to say that Dr. Johnson's indifference to the Scotch language and to Scotch poetry has been shared by all cultivated Englishmen, but it has certainly been shared by a very large majority in every generation. The superb merit of many of the Scotch ballads, the lyrics of Burns and the novels of Scott have practically done little to diminish this majority and to induce English readers to acquire the knowledge which Dr. Johnson disdained. Nine Englishmen out of ten read Burns, either with an eye uneasily fishing the glossary at the bottom of the page, or ad sensum, that is, in contented ignorance of about three words in every nine. And this is, perhaps, all that can reasonably be expected of the Southerner. Life is short; the world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion and Scotch manners is not, as Matthew Arnold observed, a lovely one, and the time which such an accomplishment would require would be far more profitably spent in acquiring, say, the language of Dante and Ariosto, or even the language of the Romancero General and of Cervantes. A modern reader may stumble, with more or less intelligence, through a poem of Burns, catching the general sense, enjoying the lilt, and even appreciating the niceties of rhythm. But this is not the case with the Scotch of the fifteenth century—the golden age of the vernacular poetry, the age when poets were writing thus:—
"Catyvis, wrechis, and ockeraris,
Hud-pykis, hurdaris, and gadderaris,