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FISHED JUNE 1 BY T. BOYS, 7 LUDGATE HILL

The Portraits by W T. FRY, and the Orr a nental par

LES HEATH, from a design by, COB******

LIVES

OF

EMINENT SCOTSMEN.

Poets.

JAMES THE FIFTH.

Redoubted roy, your ragment* I have red,
Proclaiming you the prince of poetry.

SIR DAV. LINDSAY.

PRINCE of the roving eye, and winning tongue! most gallant and generous of knights! "gude man o' Ballangeigh!" "KING OF THE POOR!" Immortal honor to thy name! Although short was thy term of being, and melancholy its end, yet splendid as the meteors was its course; in life as in death thou wert all a Stuart.

When the fatal field of Flodden numbered among its victims the chivalrous James the Fourth, his suc

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cessor, James the Fifth, was but an infant of a year and half old. Among the persons who had the principal charge of his education, were the celebrated poet, Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, and the elegant translator of Boethius' History, John Bellenden. The works of both authors abound with passages, referring to the share which they had in the formation of the young sovereign's character. It would seem, that to Lindsay the task had chiefly fallen of attending the prince in his hours of amusement.

And ay quhen thou came from the schule,
Than I behufft to play the fule.

Lindsay's Complaint.

On no man of his age could the superintendence of moments of such susceptibility have more providentially devolved. Lindsay was a man of elegant taste and grand ideas; as great a philosopher as he was a poet; a detester of abuses and prejudices; and the secret projector of some of the most important improvements which soon after took place in the condition of his country. How many a valuable precept, how many a striking lesson, must have imperceptibly mingled in those scenes of amusement, in which so enlightened a mentor was actor and guide! James parted from Lindsay too soon to have acquired from him much of that skill in the art of government which he subsequently displayed; but to his influence we may safely ascribe a large share of that regard for justice, that taste for literature and the arts, and that love of poetry, music, and romance, for which James V. became no less remarkable.

In 1524, when James was in his twelfth year, the

dissentions which prevailed among the nobles of the country, induced them to call, by common consent, upon the young king, to take the reins of government into his own hands. James, who developed at an unusually early age great intrepidity of character, eagerly embraced the proposition; but, on repairing from Stirling, where he had been educated, to the capital, he found that he was to be shackled in the exercise of the sovereign authority by four tutors or governors, in the persons of the Earl of Lennox, the Earl of Angus, Lord Hamilton, and Archbishop Beaand that he must besides part with Sir David Lindsay, Bellenden, and others, who had been the ⚫preceptors and among the dearest friends of his youth. It was not for even a king of his years to quarrel with conditions; Lindsay was dismissed with a pension; Bellenden with a preferment in the church; James consented to all that his governors desired, and, for "the space of ane year," says Pitscottie, there was "great triumph and merriness" at the palace of Holyrood.

ton;

The division of "the loaves and fishes" produced, at length, a division among the king's governors, which ended in the ascendancy of Angus, and the exile of the others from court. The young prince, however, became speedily provoked at the state of nullity in which he was held by Angus; ere two years more had passed away, he had secretly stirred up two rebellions against the ostensible government, in order to get himself out of the earl's hands; and, at last, in a moment of intermitted watchfulness, he contrived, in his fifteenth year, to escape from his keepers, and fled to Stirling Castle. Shutting himself

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