William Dunbar is said to have been born about the year 1465. He
received his education at St Andrews, and took there the degree of M.A.
in 1479. He became then a friar of the Franciscan order, (Grey Friars,)
and in the exercise of his profession seems to have rambled over all
Scotland, England, and France, preaching, begging, and, according to his
own confession, cheating, lying, and cajoling. Yet if this kind of life
was not propitious, in his case, to morality, it must have been to the
development of the poetic faculty. It enabled him to see all varieties
of life and of scenery, although here and there, in his verses, you find
symptoms of that bitterness which is apt to arise in the heart of a
wanderer. He was subsequently employed by James IV. in some official
work connected with various foreign embassies, which led him to Spain,
Italy, and Germany, as well as England and France. This proves that he
was no less a man of business-capacity and habits than a poet. For these
services he, in 1500, received from the King a pension of ten pounds,
afterwards increased to twenty, and, in fine, to eighty. He is said to
have been employed in the negotiations preparatory to the marriage of
James with Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., which took place in
1503, and which our poet celebrated in his verses, 'The Thistle and the
Rose.' He continued ever afterwards in the Court, hovering in position
between a laureate and a court-fool, charming James with his witty
conversation as well as his verses, but refused the benefices for which
he petitioned, and gradually devoured by chagrin and disappointment.
Seldom has genius so great been placed in a falser position, and this
has given a querulous tinge to many of his poems. He seems to have died
about 1520. Even after his death, misfortune pursued him. His works
were, with the exception of two or three pieces, locked up in an obscure
MS. till the middle of last century. Since then, however, their fame has
been still increasing. In 1834, Mr David Laing, so favourably known as
one of our first antiquarians, published a complete and elaborate edition