The first known work from Barclay's pen[[3]] appeared from the press of De Worde, so early as 1506, probably immediately on his return from abroad, and was no doubt the fruit of continental leisure. It is a translation, in seven line stanzas, of the popular French poet Pierre Gringore's Le Chateau de labour (1499)—the most ancient work of Gringore with date, and perhaps his best—under the title of "The Castell of laboure wherein is richesse, vertu, and honour;" in which in a fanciful allegory of some length, a somewhat wearisome Lady Reason overcomes despair, poverty and other such evils attendant upon the fortunes of a poor man lately married, the moral being to show:—
"That idleness, mother of all adversity,
Her subjects bringeth to extreme poverty."
The general appreciation of this first essay is evidenced by the issue of a second edition from the press of Pynson a few years after the appearance of the first.
Encouraged by the favourable reception accorded to the first effort of his muse, Barclay, on his retirement to the ease and leisure of the College of St Mary Otery, set to work on the "Ship of Fools," acquaintance with which Europe-famous satire he must have made when abroad. This, his magnum opus, has been described at some length in the Introduction, but two interesting personal notices relative to the composition of the work may here be added. In the execution of the great task, he expresses himself, (II. 278), as under the greatest obligations to his colleague, friend, and literary adviser, Bishop:—
"Whiche was the first ouersear of this warke
And vnto his frende gaue his aduysement
It nat to suffer to slepe styll in the darke
But to be publysshyd abrode: and put to prent
To thy monycion my bysshop I assent