Sir David Lyndesay (generally surnamed “of the Mount,” from the name of an estate in Fifeshire, in the parish of Monimail) was born about 1490, and educated at the university of St. Andrew’s. He was the companion of the young Scottish prince, afterwards James V., whose course he watched from his earliest days till his death in 1542. He was knighted by James, and made Lord Lyon King-at-Arms in 1530…. Lyndesay retired in his latter days to the Mount, where he died about 1557. His principal works are “The Dreme,” written about 1528; “The Complaynt,” 1529; “The Complaynt of the Kingis Papyngo” (Parrot), 1530; “Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits,” 1535; “The Historie of William Meldrum, Squyer,” before 1550; and “The Monarche” (i.e., Monarchie or Monarchy), 1552.

  Sir David Lindesay of Mont shall first be named, a man honorably descended, and greatly favored by King James the Fifth. Besides his knowledge and deep judgment in heraldry (whereof he was the chief) and in other publick affairs, he was most religiously inclined, but much hated by the clergy, for the liberty he used in condemning the superstition of the time, and rebuking their loose and dissolute lives. Nottheless he went unchallenged, and was not brought in question; which showed the good account wherein he was held.

  In the works of Sir David Lindsay we do not often find either the splendid diction of Dunbar, or the prolific imagination of Gawin Douglas. Perhaps, indeed, “The Dream” is his only composition which can be cited as uniformly poetical: but his various learning, his good sense, his perfect knowledge of courts and of the world, the facility of his versification, and, above all, his peculiar talent of adapting himself to readers of all denominations, will continue to secure to him a considerable share of that popularity, for which he was originally indebted to the opinions he professed, no less than to his poetical merit.

  About this time, he published the most pleasing of all his poems, “The Historie and Testament of Squyer Meldrum.” He, on this occasion, tries to amuse as well as to reform; but he shows his own coarseness by addressing his “trifling jests and fulsom ribaldry” to “companies unlettered, rude, and shallow.”

  He was esteemed one of the first poets of the age, and his writings had contributed greatly to the advancement of the Reformation. Notwithstanding the indelicacy which disfigures several of his poetical productions, the personal deportment of Lindsay was grave, his morals were correct, and his writings discover a strong desire to reform the manners of the age, as well as ample proofs of true poetical genius, extensive learning, and wit the most keen and penetrating.

  Inferior in high poetical genius to Dunbar or Douglas, he yet pleases by the truth and natural colouring of his descriptions, his vein of native humour, his strong good sense, and the easy flow of his versification. For the age in which he lived, and considering the court-like occupations in which his time was spent, his learning was various and respectable; and were he only known as a man whose writings contributed essentially to the introduction of the Reformation, this circumstance alone were sufficient to make him an object of no common interest.

  Though inferior to Dunbar in vividness of imagination and in elegance of language, he shows a more reflecting and philosophical mind; and certainly his satire upon James V. and his court is more poignant than the other’s panegyric upon the Thistle. But, in the ordinary style of his versification, he seems not to rise much above the prosaic and tedious rhymers of the fifteenth century. His descriptions are as circumstantial without selection as theirs; and his language, partaking of a ruder dialect, is still more removed from our own.

  A warm-hearted, truth-loving gentleman, who took up Satire half as an amateur, but produced an effect with it that makes us honor his memory long after the Mount has vanished from his kindred; in days when the brave and beautiful symbols on his armorial coat look dim and old-fashioned, and when even his gentile name of Lindsay must owe its chief honor to the merits of those who bear it.

  Whose productions are not indeed characterized by any high imaginative power, but yet display infinite wit, spirit, and variety in all the forms of the more familiar poetry…. If Dunbar is to be compared to Burns, Lyndsay may be said to have his best representative among the more recent Scottish poets in Allan Ramsay, who does not, however, come so near to Lyndsay by a long way as Burns does to Dunbar.

  His works indeed exhibit considerable inequalities; but where they are not distinguished by any superior force of imagination, they are often entertaining by their strokes of humour, or instructive by their views of life and manners. He was evidently a man of sense and observation, with serious impressions of virtue and piety; nor was he destitute of those higher powers of mind which enable a writer to communicate his ideas with due effect. He frequently displays no mean vivacity of fancy; and the extensive and continued popularity to which he attained, must have rested on some solid foundation…. Lindsay’s versification is generally distinguished by its ease and fluency. His style often rises to a considerable degree of elegance, but on some occasions is overloaded with extraneous terms.

  There are some satirists in this group of poets—among these Sir David Lindsay stood unrivalled…. Old Davy Lindsay was transcendently popular. We see the marks of his influence on the history of the times, and can understand how it was so, when we read his potent attacks on the abuses of the day. He was a consummate artist. His riotous wit seems to drive him before it; but when his sarcasm is sharpened for a hit it never misses its aim, but strikes the victim right in the face. We have seen in the history of the Reformation some traces of his handiwork.

  In estimating the literary character of Lyndsay, we cannot claim for him the name of a Great Poet. Without either “the language at large,” which he assigns to Dunbar, or his inventive genius, our Author is nevertheless entitled to no ordinary place among our ancient Makaris. He exhibits (without the least scruple in altering words to suit the rhyme) a great command of versification, a fine feeling for the beauties of external nature, and a fund of what may be called, low genuine humour and keen satire; while for a vivid conception and delineation of individual character, even in his impersonations of abstract Virtues and Vices, he displays great Dramatic power, and in this respect he far surpasses any one of the early Scottish Poets.

  Before the voice of Dunbar was silent, Lindsay took up the strain and was free Scotland, canny, humorous, sincere, with a direct earnestness that brings out notes of the deeper poetry of life; the voice for Scotland of that spirit of reformation which had grown up, as we have seen, among true men of all theological creeds during the fifteenth century, and had been strengthened by all influences of the time.

  His works are specially remarkable as having exerted great influence in helping forward the cause of the Reformation.

  Lyndesay was rather a man of action bent on popularising his keen convictions than a professional writer. The bias of his mind and the temper of his time were alike unfavourable to finished works of art. His superabundant energy and ready humour made him a power, but he had no inclination to philosophise in solitude or to refine at leisure. His life was spent amid stormy politics, and we need not wonder that a pressure of affairs similar to that which for a space held even the genius of Milton in abeyance, should have marred the literary productions of a man who had more talent than genius, and who wrote “currente calamo” on such various themes with an almost fatal fluency.

  It is a characteristic of Lyndsay, as of Swift, Defoe, and some other writers, that he does not produce a striking result by brilliant flashes of fancy, but by a series of minute, cunning touches. His strength lies for the most part in details; his imagination can work only in prosaic channels; his satiric humour is raciest in petty familiarities. It is only where hatred of priestly hypocrisy impassions his speech that he rises into eloquence; and even then the elevation of his style comes from the Mount of Sinai and not from the heights of Parnassus.

  Lyndsay was a satirist, powerful in invective, fluent in style, and abounding in proverbial philosophy. But his poems were of local, and to a large extent of temporary interest. Yet these very limitations gave them an immediate fame and more extensive currency than the works of any other early Scottish poet, and render them invaluable to students of the time of James V. It passed into a proverb for what was not worth knowing, “You will not find that in David Lyndsay,” and his writings were at one time in the library of every castle and the shelves of many cottages of Scotland.

  No elaborate summing-up of Lindsay’s work and position is necessary: he has spoken for himself. He was not a great poet; although in a few passages, such as the prologue to “The Dreme” and the prologue to “The Monarchie,” he shows the marks of a poetic mind, imagination was not his strongest faculty. His own words, “I did never sleip on Pernasso,” had perhaps a deeper truth than he realised. His work is inartistic, harsh in versification, formless in style, marred by a coarseness which it would be difficult to parallel, impossible to outdo. All attempts to palliate his defects are vain. The appeal to the coarseness of the age is but a partial excuse, and any other is out of the question. The Kirk was not without excuse in putting sternly down exhibitions which admitted of ribaldry and licentiousness such as we find in “The Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis.” And yet, the more Lindsay is read, the firmer will be the conviction that all this is external to his work. Despite his faults he still retains a true claim to greatness, namely, that of being the literary leader in the Reformation of the life and faith of his time.

  A vigorous and voluble writer of verse rather than a poet…. Robust, often coarse, humor, a large share of vigorous common-sense, and a strong power and constant habit of speaking his mind without needing or caring to pick his words, are the chief characteristics of Lindsay’s verse.

  For the best dramatic relic of the day—the best morality, perhaps, ever written in Britain—we have to cross once more the Scottish border.

  Is not so good a poet as Douglas, but is no less interesting as a writer. He had great political insight, a considerable power of putting things pithily, and no small gift of wit, but, like Lydgate, his poetical ambition exceeded his capacity. Lyndsay, indeed, drew his inspiration from Dunbar as Lydgate did from Chaucer, but directly he leaves politics or the life of the times his work becomes bad.

  Lyndesay’s interests and instincts were not artistic, and it is plain that he wrote in verse mainly because it was the only convenient weapon to his hand.