Not always so patient, however, he jogs James's memory with a hundred remedies. "God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!" he cries with rueful glee through a lively set of verses—
"For war it so than weill were me
Bot (without) benefice I wald not be;
My hard fortune war endit then
God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!"
John Thomson's man was, according to the popular saying, a man who did as his wife told him; and Dunbar was strong in the Queen's favour. Therefore happy had been his fate had James been of this character. We cannot, however, follow the poet through all his pleadings and witty appeals and remonstrances, until at last in despairing jest he commends "the gray horse Auld Dunbar" to his Majesty, and draws or seems to draw at last a consolatory reply, which is thus recorded at the end of the poem under the title of "Responsio Regis."
"Efter our writtingis, Treasurer
Tak in this gray horse, Auld Dunbar,
Which in my aucht with service trew
In lyart changit is his heu.
Gar house him now against this Yuill
And busk him like ane Bischoppis muill,
For with my hand I have indorst
To pay whatever his trappouris cost."
Whether this response was really from James's hand or was but another wile of the eager suitor it is impossible to tell: but he did eventually have a pension granted him of twenty pounds Scots a year, until such time as a benefice of at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to "his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's inopportune absence—since quarterday we may suppose—is lost in gratulations over his return. "Welcome," he cries—
"Welcome my benefice and my rent
And all the lyflett to me lent,
Welcome my pension most preclair,
Welcome my awin Lord Thesaurair."
Thus the reckless and jolly priest carols. A little while after he has received his money he sings "to the Lordes of the King's Chacker," or Exchequer—
"I cannot tell you how it is spendit,
But weel I wat that it is ended."
These peculiarities, however, it need not be said do not belong entirely to the sixteenth century. The reader will find a great deal of beautiful poetry among the works of Dunbar. These lighter verses serve our purpose in showing once more how perennial has been this vein of humorous criticism, and frank fun and satire, in Scotland, in all ages, and in throwing also a broad and amusing gleam of light upon Edinburgh in the early fifteen hundreds, the gayest and most splendid moment perhaps of her long history.
All these splendours, however, were hard to keep up, and though Edinburgh and Scotland throve, the King's finances after a while seem to have begun to fail, and there was great talk of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land—it is supposed by the historians as a measure of securing that the King might not have the uncomfortable alternative of cutting short his splendours at home. This purpose, if it was gravely entertained at all, and not one of the proposals of change with which, when need comes, the impecunious of all classes and ages amuse themselves to put off actual retrenchment, never came to anything. And very soon there arose complications of various natures which threw all Christendom into an uproar. Henry VIII, young, arrogant, and hot-headed, succeeded his prudent father in England, and the treaty with the Scots which made, or seemed to make, England safe on the Borders, gave the English greater freedom in dealing with the other hereditary foe on the opposite side of the Channel; while France on her side began to use all possible efforts to draw from the English alliance the faithful Scots, who had always been the means of a possible diversion, always ready to carry fire and flame across the Border, and call back the warring English to look after their own affairs. James, with perhaps his head slightly turned by his own magnificence and the prosperity that had attended him since the beginning of his career, seemed to have imagined that he was important enough to play the part of peacemaker among the nations of Europe. And there are many embassies recorded of a bustling bishop, Andrew Forman, who seems for some time to have pervaded Christendom, now at Rome, now at Paris, now in London, with various confused negotiations. It was a learned age, and the King himself, as has been seen, had very respectable pretensions in this way; but that there was another side to the picture, and that notwithstanding the translator of Virgil, the three Universities now established in Scotland, and many men of science and knowledge both in the priesthood and out of it, there remained a strong body of ignorance and rudeness, even among the dignified clergy of the time, the following story, which Pitscottie tells with much humour of Bishop Forman, James's chosen diplomatist, will show.