3. Conscience is in four seven-lined stanzas. Its subject is the “conceit” that men first clipped away the “con” from “conscience” and left “science” and “na mair.” Then they lost “sci,” and had nothing but “ens” (“that schrew, Riches and geir”).
4. Douglas’s longest, last, and in some respects most important work is his translation of the Aeneid, the first version of a great classic poet in any English dialect. The work includes the thirteenth book by Mapheus Vegius; and each of the thirteen books is introduced by a prologue. The subjects and styles of these prologues show great variety: some appear to be literary exercises with little or no connexion with the books which they introduce, and were perhaps written earlier and for other purposes. In the first, or general, prologue, Douglas claims a higher position for Virgil than for his master Chaucer, and attacks Caxton for his inadequate rendering of a French translation of the Aeneid. That Douglas undertook this work and that he makes a plea for more accurate scholarship in the translation have been the basis of a prevalent notion that he is a Humanist in spirit and the first exponent of Renaissance doctrine in Scottish literature. Careful study of the text will not support this view. Douglas is in all important respects even more of a medievalist than his contemporaries; and, like Henryson and Dunbar, strictly a member of the allegorical school and a follower, in the most generous way, of Chaucer’s art. There are several early MSS. of the Aeneid extant: (a) in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, c. 1525, (b) the Elphynstoun MS. in the library of the university of Edinburgh, c. 1525, (c) the Ruthven MS. in the same collection, c. 1535, (d) in the library of Lambeth Palace, 1545-1546. The first printed edition appeared in London in 1553. An Edinburgh edition was issued from the press of Thomas Ruddiman in 1710.
For Douglas’s career see, in addition to the public records and general histories, Bishop Sage’s Life in Ruddiman’s edition, and that by John Small in the first volume of his edition of the Works of Gavin Douglas (4 vols., 1874, the only collected edition of Douglas’s works). A new edition of the texts is much to be desired. On Douglas’s place in Scottish literature see [Scotland]: Scottish Literature, also G. Gregory Smith’s Transition Period (1900) and chapters in the Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. ii. (1908). P. Lange’s dissertation Chaucer’s Einfluss auf die Originaldichtungen des Schotten Gavin Douglas (Halle, 1882) draws attention to Douglas’s indebtedness to Chaucer. Further discussion of the question of Douglas’s alleged Humanism will be found in Courthope’s History of English Poetry, i. (1895), T. F. Henderson’s Scottish Vernacular Literature (1898), and J. H. Millar’s Literary History of Scotland (1903). For the language of the poems see G. Gregory Smith’s Specimens of Middle Scots (1902).
(G. G. S.)
DOUGLAS, SIR HOWARD, Bart. (1776-1861), British general, younger son of Admiral Sir Charles Douglas, was born at Gosport in 1776, and entered the Royal Military Academy in 1790. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in 1794, becoming first lieutenant a few months later. In 1795 he was shipwrecked while in charge of a draft for Canada, and lived with his men for a whole winter on the Labrador coast. Soon after his return to England in 1799 he was made a captain-lieutenant, and in the same year he married. In his regimental service during the next few years, he was attached to all branches of the artillery in succession, becoming captain in 1804, after which he was placed on half-pay to serve at the Royal Military College. Douglas was at this time (1804) appointed to a majority in the York Rangers, a corps immediately afterwards reduced, and he remained on the roll of its officers until promoted major-general. The senior department of the R.M.C. at High Wycombe, of which he was in charge, was the forerunner of the Staff College. Douglas, since 1806 a brevet lieutenant-colonel, served in 1808-1809 in the Peninsula and was present at Corunna, after which he took part in the Walcheren expedition. In 1809 he succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his half-brother, Vice-admiral Sir William Henry Douglas. In 1812 he was employed in special missions in the north of Spain, and took part in numerous minor operations in this region, but he was soon recalled, the home government deeming his services indispensable to the Royal Military College. He became brevet colonel in 1814 and C.B. in 1815. In 1816 appeared his Essay on the Principles and Construction of Military Bridges (subsequent editions 1832, 1853); in 1819, Observations on the Motives, Errors and Tendency of M. Carnot’s System of Defence, and in the following year his Treatise on Naval Gunnery (of which numerous editions and translations appeared up to the general introduction of rifled ordnance). In 1821 he was promoted major-general. Douglas’s criticisms of Carnot led to an important experiment being carried out at Woolwich in 1822, and his Naval Gunnery became a standard text-book, and indeed first drew attention to the subject of which it treated. From 1823 to 1831 Sir Howard Douglas was governor of New Brunswick, and, while there, he had to deal with the Maine boundary dispute of 1828. He also founded Fredericton College, of which he was the first chancellor. On his return to Europe he was employed in various missions, and he published about this time Naval Evolutions, a controversial work dealing with the question of “breaking the line” (London, 1832). From 1835 to 1840 Douglas, now a G.C.M.G., was lord high commissioner of the Ionian Islands, where, amongst other reforms, he introduced a new code of laws. In 1837 he became a lieutenant-general, in 1840 a K.C.B., in 1841 a civil G.C.B., and in 1851 a general. From 1842 to 1847 Douglas sat in parliament, where he took a prominent part in debates on military and naval matters and on the corn laws. He was frequently consulted on important military questions. His later works included Observations on the Modern System of Fortification, &c. (London, 1859), and Naval Warfare Under Steam (London, 1858 and 1860). He died on the 9th of November 1861 at Tunbridge Wells. Sir Howard Douglas was a F.R.S., one of the founders of the R.G.S., and an honorary D.C.L. of Oxford University. Shortly before his death he declined the offer of a military G.C.B.
See S. W. Fullom, Life of Sir Howard Douglas (London, 1862), and Gentleman’s Magazine, 3rd series, xii. 90-92.
DOUGLAS, JOHN (1721-1807), Scottish man of letters and Anglican bishop, was the son of a small shopkeeper at Pittenweem, Fife, where he was born on the 14th of July 1721. He was educated at Dunbar and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took his M.A. degree in 1743, and as chaplain to the 3rd regiment of foot guards he was at the battle of Fontenoy, 1745. He then returned to Balliol as a Snell exhibitioner; became vicar of High Ercall, Shropshire, in 1750; canon of Windsor, 1762; bishop of Carlisle, 1787 (and also dean of Windsor, 1788); bishop of Salisbury, 1791. Other honours were the degree of D.D., 1758, and those of F.R.S. and F.S.A. in 1778. Douglas was not conspicuous as an ecclesiastical administrator, preferring to his livings the delights of London in winter and the fashionable watering-places in summer. Under the patronage of the earl of Bath he entered into a good many literary controversies, vindicating Milton from W. Lauder’s charge of plagiarism (1750), attacking David Hume’s rationalism in his Criterion of Miracles (1752), and the Hutchinsonians in his Apology for the Clergy (1755). He also edited Captain Cook’s Journals, and Clarendon’s Diary and Letters (1763). He died on the 18th of May 1807, and a volume of Miscellaneous Works, prefaced by a short biography, was published in 1820.