Gavin Douglas

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Gawin or Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld (c. 1476 – 1522) was a Scottish Chaucerian poet or makar. His Eneados, a loose translation of Virgil's Aeneid, was the first complete rendering of any major work of classical antiquity into English.

Contents 1 Sourced 1.1 Eneados 2 Criticism 3 External links

[edit] Sourced

[edit] Eneados

• Fyrst I protest, beaw schirris, by зour leif
  Beis weill avisit my wark or зhe reprief;
  Consider it warly, reid oftar than anys,
  Weill at a blenk sle poetry nocht tayn is.
  • Bk. 1, prologue, line 105.

• Bot a sentens to follow may suffice me:
  Sum tyme I follow the text als neir I may,
  Sum tyme I am constrenyt ane other way.
  • Bk. 1, prologue, line 356.

• It is richt facil and eith gait, I the tell,
  Forto discend and pas on down to hell.
  • Bk. 6, line 265.

• Ryveris ran reid on spait with watir broune,
  And burnys hurlys all thar bankis doune.
  • Bk. 7, prologue, line 19.

• Woddis, forrestis, with nakyt bewis blowt,
  Stude strippyt of thar weid in every howt.
  So bustuusly Boreas his bugill blew,
  The deyr full dern doun in the dalis drew;
  Smale byrdis, flokkand throu thik ronys thrang,
  In chyrmyng and with cheping changit thar sang,
  Sekand hidlis and hyrnys thame to hyde
  Fra feirfull thuddis of the tempestuus tyde.
  • Bk. 7, prologue, line 65.

• Dame naturis menstralis.
  • Bk. 12, prologue, line 231.

• And al smail fowlys syngis on the spray:
  Welcum the lord of lycht, and lamp of day.
  • Bk. 12, prologue, line 251.

• As to the text accordyng never a deill,
  Mair than langis to the cart the fift quheill.
  • Bk. 13, prologue, line 117.

[edit] Criticism

• Gavin Douglas, set on a particular labour, with his mind full of Latin quantitative metre, attains a robuster versification than you are likely to find in Chaucer…the texture of Gavin's verse is stronger, the resilience greater.
  • Ezra Pound ABC of Reading (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934) p. 103.

• About Douglas as a translator there may be two opinions; about his Aeneid (Prologues and all) as an English book there can be only one. Here a great story is greatly told and set off with original embellishments which are all good – all either delightful or interesting – in their diverse ways.
  • C. S. Lewis English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954) p. 90.

• Arguably the best version of Virgil in English poetry.
  • Douglas Gray, in W. F. Bolton (ed.) The Middle Ages (London: Sphere, 1970) p. 366.

[edit] External links