Trespassing on you nor in word nor deed?
That ye consent thereto, O God forbid;
Leave cruelty and save your man for shame,
Or through the world quite losëd is your name."
It may be added that what are by far the finest passages in Dunbar's poems are passed unnoticed and unquoted by Mr. Smeaton. Indeed, his acquaintance with Dunbar, or, at all events, his taste in selection, is exactly on a par with that of Ned Softley's with Waller. "As that admirable writer has the best and worst verses among our English poets, Ned," says Addison, "has got all the bad ones by heart, which he repeats upon occasion to show his reading." Should Mr. Smeaton ever meet his idol in Hades, we would in all kindness advise him to avoid an encounter; let him remember that the fulsome eulogy is his own, but that the verses quoted are the poet's. Attempted murder—so the irate shade might argue—is less serious than compulsory suicide.
Dunbar was undoubtedly a man of genius, but a reference to the poets who immediately preceded him will make large deductions from the praises lavished on him by his eulogists. He struck no new notes. The Thistle and the Rose and The Golden Terge are mere echoes of Chaucer and Lydgate, and, in some degree, of the author of The King's Quair, and are indeed full of plagiarisms from them. The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins is probably little more than a faithful description of a popular mummery. His moral and religious poems had their prototypes, even in Scotland, in such poets as Johnston and Henryson. His most remarkable characteristic is his versatility, which ranges from the composition of such poems as The Merle and the Nightingale to the Twa Maryit Wemen and the Wedo, from such lyrics as the Meditation in Winter to such lyrics as the Plea for Pity. Mr. Smeaton calls him "a giant in an age of pigmies." The author or authoress of The Flower and the Leaf was infinitely superior to him in point of style, Henryson was infinitely superior to him in originality, and Gavin Douglas at least his equal in power of expression and in description.
Let us do Dunbar the justice which Mr. Smeaton has not done him, and take him at his very best. Here is part of a picture of a May morning,—
"For mirth of May, wyth skippis and wyth hoppis
The birdis sang upon the tender croppis,
With curiouse notis, as Venus Chapell clerkis.