III
OTHER POETS IN THE SCOTTISH COURT,
1584-1603
"Quique poetas claros sodales suos vulgo vocari voluit."
—Dempster.
The publication of The Essayes of a Prentise in 1584 was followed, it would seem, by some slackening of the King's interest in poetry. In the winter of 1587 he was occupied "in commenting of the Apocalypse and in setting out of sermontes thereupon against the Papistes and Spainyards," though, as Melville adds, "by a piece of grait oversight, the Papists practised never mair busselie in this land. . . ."[1] In the commentary, or Paraphrase upon the Revelation[2] the author by a scarcely prosaic flight of fancy connects the Pope with Anti-Christ and Catholicism with St. John's vision of the beast with seven heads and ten horns. Ane Fruitfull Meditatioun on Revelation xx. 7-10 appeared in 1588, and Ane Meditatioun on 1 Chronicles xv. 25-29 in 1589.[3]
These pursuits were pleasantly interrupted, however, by the arrival, in May, 1587,[4] of the French poet Du Bartas, whom the King in a letter of extravagant flattery had invited to Scotland for the summer. Du Bartas's popularity among devout Protestants was due primarily to the highly commendable character of his subject-matter, drawn as it was so largely from the Bible,—
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