As an original poet Sir Richard Maitland cannot be placed in the foremost rank. He is understood to have produced none of his existing verse until after the age of sixty-one, and naturally his compositions possess little of the fire, brilliancy, and warmth of youthful work. For this lack, however, they atone to some extent by other qualities. Full of sage observation and shrewd worldly wisdom, they throw a light, in nearly every line, upon the life and manners of that day. Mourning the rampant oppression and strife of the nobles, and the sorrows and follies of the nation, his verse breathes the inner sadness of Queen Mary’s time. It was his fate to live through the intestine dissensions of three successive minorities, as well as through the great struggle of the Reformation in Scotland, and it is no marvel therefore that he again and again repeats the prayer, “God give the lordis grace till aggrie!” Much of his work is of a religious cast, and exhibits him in a grave and venerable light. This, however, is not his happiest strain, and his longest composition, “Ane Ballat of the Creation of the Warld,” is little more than a bald paraphrase of the Bible narrative in Genesis. It is in his satiric and moral pieces that Maitland appears at his best. These, as in the case of Lyndsay, deal with a wide range of subjects, from the vanities of ladies’ dress to the venality of courtiers and the corruptions of church and state. Much of his satire, it is true, owes it chief interest to connection with events of his own age; but elsewhere he proves himself a not unworthy inheritor of the mantle of the Lyon King, his best pieces containing touches closely applicable to the human nature of all time.
[SATIRE ON THE AGE.]
Quhair is the blythness that hes bein
Bayth in brugh and landwart sein[1080]
Amang lordis, and ladeis schein[1081],
Dansing, singing, game, and play?
Bot weill I wat nocht quhat thay mein;
All merriness is worne away.
For now I heir na worde of Yule