JOHN BELLENDEN.[578]
Last in the list of makars enumerated by Lyndsay in the prologue to his “Complaynt of the Papyngo” is mentioned “ane plant of poeitis, callit Ballendyne,” who seems to have excited both respect and anticipation among his early contemporaries. The prophecy of Lyndsay’s lines appears to have been more than fulfilled. The new makar of 1530, having gained the ear of the court, not only wrote poems which, whether they excelled those of his rivals or not, have at least outlived most of them, but produced works in prose regarding which a critic of the first rank has said, “No better specimen of the middle period (of the Scottish language) in its classical purity exists.”[579]
Some obscurity has been cast upon the life of this scholar and poet by confusing him with an eminent contemporary of the same name, Sir John Bellenden of Auchinoul. The latter was secretary to the Earl of Angus at the time of that nobleman’s downfall in 1528, appearing twice before parliament as agent for the Douglases on the 4th of September. Some time afterwards he became Justice-Clerk.[580] These functions of Bellenden the lawyer have been attributed, however incongruously, to Bellenden the churchman, and have again and again led to a hopeless confusion of parentage and other details. As a matter of fact the Justice-Clerk seems to have survived the poet by more than twenty-seven years.[581]
Of the poet’s life few facts are known with certainty. Born towards the close of the fifteenth century, he is believed to have been a native of Haddingtonshire, and to have entered St. Andrew’s University in 1508. At least the matriculation of one John Ballentyn of the Lothian nation is recorded in that year. He completed his education at the University of Paris, where he took the degree of Doctor of Divinity. From the fourth stanza of his proheme to the Cosmographé, and from the prose epistle to James V. at the close of his translation of Boece’s History, it is gathered that, returning to this country, he was employed at court during that monarch’s youth as Clerk of Accounts, but was presently cast from his post by certain court intrigues. His loss of place probably coincided with that of Sir David Lyndsay, and was probably owed to the same cause, the seizure of power by the Douglases in 1524. It seems clear, moreover, that it was upon the downfall of that house that he returned to court favour; and circumstances would lead to the belief that he was among those for whom James, mindful of early services, made provision shortly after his accession to power in 1528. At anyrate, in 1530 and the three following years Bellenden was engaged by express command of James in translating the histories of his contemporary Boece and of Livy. The Treasurer’s accounts from October 30th, 1530, to November 30th, 1533, contain notes of payment for this work. In all, he received during that time the sum of £114; £78 being for the translation of Boece, and £36 for that of Livy.
A year or two later, during the vacancy of the bishopric of Moray, the archdeaconry of that see also became vacant, and its gift in consequence fell to the crown. Two clergymen, however, John Duncan, parson of Glasgow, and Alexander Harvey, solicited the Pope to confer the benefice upon James Douglas. For this they were brought to trial, and, by the statutes under which Gavin Douglas had suffered, were declared rebels, and had their property escheated to the king. The emoluments of this property for the years 1536 and 1537 were conferred successively upon Bellenden, who for the two years’ income paid compositions respectively of 350 marks and £300 Scots. About the same time, it is believed, occurred his promotion to the archdeaconry itself, and his appointment as a canon of Ross.
Little more is known of the poet’s life. A strenuous opponent of the new heresy, as the movement of the Reformation was called, he appears to have done all in his power to resist its progress, and at last, finding his utmost efforts in this direction vain, to have betaken himself to the headquarters of counsel at Rome, where he died in 1550.[582]
The catalogue of Bellenden’s works, though important in more than one detail, is not of great length. He is said to have written a treatise, De Litera Pythagoræ—the letter upsilon, in the form of which Pythagoras had chosen to see certain emblematical properties. Of this treatise nothing is now known. It is to his translations of Boece and Livy that the Archdeacon of Moray owes his chief fame. The first edition of the Latin History of Scotland by Hector Boece, consisting of seventeen books, had been printed at Paris in 1526, and dedicated to James V.[583] That king’s knowledge of Latin must have been strictly limited, as we know from Lyndsay he was withdrawn from school at twelve years of age. His desire, therefore, for a translation into the vernacular may be understood. Bellenden’s translation, with Boece’s “cosmographé,” or description of Scotland, prefixed, was published at Edinburgh in 1541,[584] and has the credit of being the earliest existing prose work in the Scottish language. The translator divided Boece’s books into chapters, and, from a reference in his proheme, apparently meant to bring the history down to his own time. As a translation the work is somewhat free, Bellenden having taken the liberty of correcting errors and supplying omissions where he thought right. Nevertheless it soon became the standard translation of the historian, and was the version which, with interpolations from the histories of Major, Lesley, and Buchanan, was used by Hollinshed, being the direct channel, therefore, through which Shakespeare derived the story of Macbeth. As a contribution to literature it remains the earliest and the most ample specimen we possess of Scottish prose. “Rich,” as its latest editor has said, “in barbaric pearl and gold,” while “the rust of age has not obscured the fancy and imagery with which the work abounds,” it affords an admirable illustration of the force and variety of the language in which it was written.