Last in the list of makars enumerated by Lyndsay in the prologue to his “Complaynt of the Papyngo” is mentioned “ane plant of poeitis, callit Ballendyne,” who seems to have excited both respect and anticipation among his early contemporaries. The prophecy of Lyndsay’s lines appears to have been more than fulfilled. The new makar of 1530, having gained the ear of the court, not only wrote poems which, whether they excelled those of his rivals or not, have at least outlived most of them, but produced works in prose regarding which a critic of the first rank has said, “No better specimen of the middle period (of the Scottish language) in its classical purity exists.”[579]

Some obscurity has been cast upon the life of this scholar and poet by confusing him with an eminent contemporary of the same name, Sir John Bellenden of Auchinoul. The latter was secretary to the Earl of Angus at the time of that nobleman’s downfall in 1528, appearing twice before parliament as agent for the Douglases on the 4th of September. Some time afterwards he became Justice-Clerk.[580] These functions of Bellenden the lawyer have been attributed, however incongruously, to Bellenden the churchman, and have again and again led to a hopeless confusion of parentage and other details. As a matter of fact the Justice-Clerk seems to have survived the poet by more than twenty-seven years.[581]

Of the poet’s life few facts are known with certainty. Born towards the close of the fifteenth century, he is believed to have been a native of Haddingtonshire, and to have entered St. Andrew’s University in 1508. At least the matriculation of one John Ballentyn of the Lothian nation is recorded in that year. He completed his education at the University of Paris, where he took the degree of Doctor of Divinity. From the fourth stanza of his proheme to the CosmographÉ, and from the prose epistle to James V. at the close of his translation of Boece’s History, it is gathered that, returning to this country, he was employed at court during that monarch’s youth as Clerk of Accounts, but was presently cast from his post by certain court intrigues. His loss of place probably coincided with that of Sir David Lyndsay, and was probably owed to the same cause, the seizure of power by the Douglases in 1524. It seems clear, moreover, that it was upon the downfall of that house that he returned to court favour; and circumstances would lead to the belief that he was among those for whom James, mindful of early services, made provision shortly after his accession to power in 1528. At anyrate, in 1530 and the three following years Bellenden was engaged by express command of James in translating the histories of his contemporary Boece and of Livy. The Treasurer’s accounts from October 30th, 1530, to November 30th, 1533, contain notes of payment for this work. In all, he received during that time the sum of £114; £78 being for the translation of Boece, and £36 for that of Livy.

A year or two later, during the vacancy of the bishopric of Moray, the archdeaconry of that see also became vacant, and its gift in consequence fell to the crown. Two clergymen, however, John Duncan, parson of Glasgow, and Alexander Harvey, solicited the Pope to confer the benefice upon James Douglas. For this they were brought to trial, and, by the statutes under which Gavin Douglas had suffered, were declared rebels, and had their property escheated to the king. The emoluments of this property for the years 1536 and 1537 were conferred successively upon Bellenden, who for the two years’ income paid compositions respectively of 350 marks and £300 Scots. About the same time, it is believed, occurred his promotion to the archdeaconry itself, and his appointment as a canon of Ross.

Little more is known of the poet’s life. A strenuous opponent of the new heresy, as the movement of the Reformation was called, he appears to have done all in his power to resist its progress, and at last, finding his utmost efforts in this direction vain, to have betaken himself to the headquarters of counsel at Rome, where he died in 1550.[582]

The catalogue of Bellenden’s works, though important in more than one detail, is not of great length. He is said to have written a treatise, De Litera PythagorÆ—the letter upsilon, in the form of which Pythagoras had chosen to see certain emblematical properties. Of this treatise nothing is now known. It is to his translations of Boece and Livy that the Archdeacon of Moray owes his chief fame. The first edition of the Latin History of Scotland by Hector Boece, consisting of seventeen books, had been printed at Paris in 1526, and dedicated to James V.[583] That king’s knowledge of Latin must have been strictly limited, as we know from Lyndsay he was withdrawn from school at twelve years of age. His desire, therefore, for a translation into the vernacular may be understood. Bellenden’s translation, with Boece’s “cosmographÉ,” or description of Scotland, prefixed, was published at Edinburgh in 1541,[584] and has the credit of being the earliest existing prose work in the Scottish language. The translator divided Boece’s books into chapters, and, from a reference in his proheme, apparently meant to bring the history down to his own time. As a translation the work is somewhat free, Bellenden having taken the liberty of correcting errors and supplying omissions where he thought right. Nevertheless it soon became the standard translation of the historian, and was the version which, with interpolations from the histories of Major, Lesley, and Buchanan, was used by Hollinshed, being the direct channel, therefore, through which Shakespeare derived the story of Macbeth. As a contribution to literature it remains the earliest and the most ample specimen we possess of Scottish prose. “Rich,” as its latest editor has said, “in barbaric pearl and gold,” while “the rust of age has not obscured the fancy and imagery with which the work abounds,” it affords an admirable illustration of the force and variety of the language in which it was written.

At the end of his translation Bellenden appended an epistle to the king—one of these sound, if somewhat plain, admonitions which his courtiers apparently did not scruple to address to James the Fifth. It deals boldly with the distinction between a king and a tyrant, and does not hesitate to hold up by way of example the fate which has constantly overtaken the wickedness of princes.

The best edition of Bellenden’s Boece is that edited, with a biographical introduction by Thomas Maitland, Lord Dundrennan, and published at Edinburgh in two volumes, quarto, in 1821. The only edition of the Livy is one by the same editor, printed in 1822 from a manuscript in the Advocates’ Library. The translation extends only to the first five books of the original, though it was Bellenden’s intention to furnish a complete version of his author. The work actually done is characterised, like the translation of Boece, by great fluency and vividness, and a natural happiness of style.

But it is to Bellenden’s work as a poet that the chief consideration is here due. To each of his three translations he prefixed a poetical proheme, or preface, of some length; before the title-page of his Boece appears a quaint “Excusation of the Prentar” which must be attributed to him; and a separate poem of twenty-two stanzas by him, entitled “The Benner of Pietie, concerning the Incarnatioun of our Saluiour Chryst,” forms one of the duplicate articles in the Bannatyne MS., printed by the Hunterian Club, 1878–86.[585] These five compositions represent his entire poetical achievement so far as is known. Though printed each in its due place, as above indicated, they have never been collected in a single volume.[586]

Bellenden’s chief poem is the proheme to the cosmographÉ prefixed to his translation of Boece. It bears no real relation to the work which it precedes, and is believed to have been written before 1530. Modelled upon the classical allegory of the “Choice of Hercules,” it is addressed to James V., and with great tact seeks to convey a somewhat pertinent moral lesson to that youthful monarch. The original title of the composition is understood to have been “Virtew and Vyce”; and after the poetic fashion of its time the allegory is cast in form of a dream. It describes the wooing of a handsome young prince, whose personality can hardly be mistaken, by two lovely and splendidly attired ladies, Delight and Virtue. With quaint shrewdness the poet contrives to awaken at the proper moment, saving himself the invidious task of describing the prince’s choice.

The proheme to the history is a graver and less poetical production, though bearing a closer relation to the work which follows. The chief object of history, it declares in effect, is to set forth the noble deeds of the past as an example to the present—a task performed with great array of classic information. The most striking passage of the poem is the descant on nobility, which occupies nine out of the twenty-nine stanzas. Some of the lines in this have all the incisiveness of the clearest-cut aphorism.

Somewhat the same theory of history forms the burden of the prologue to Livy. The chief interest of this piece consists, perhaps, as Lord Dundrennan pointed out, in its representation of James V. as a patron of literature. The opening stanzas, however, are not without a certain warlike resonance suited to a prelude of Roman deeds of arms.

Altogether, though not of the era-making order, and though comparatively limited in quantity, the poetry of Bellenden is worthy of more attention than it has hitherto received. In allegoric method and in form of verse it follows the fashion of its day, and it shares that fashion’s faults; but, these drawbacks apart, it is marked by great skill and smoothness of versification, by no small descriptive charm, and by a certain happy vividness of imagery which again and again surprises and delights the reader. One can almost feel the breath of

and a seascape rises instantly before the eye at mention of the

Beyond this, Bellenden shows himself a careful student of human nature, with more than one significant word to say upon the subject.

The Proheme of the CosmographÉ prefixed to Boece’s History.