DUNBAR, ROBERT NUGENT (d. 1866), poet, lived many years in the Antilles and elsewhere in the West Indies. He recorded his impressions of the scenery and romance of the Western Archipelago in sundry volumes of verse, which contain a good many reminiscences of Byron and Moore. The notes are worth reading. The titles of his poems are: 1. ‘The Cruise; or, a Prospect of the West Indian Archipelago: a Tropical Sketch, with Notes, Historical and Illustrative,’ 8vo, London, 1835. 2. ‘The Caraguin: a Tale of the Antilles,’ 8vo, London, 1837. 3. ‘Indian Hours; or Passion and Poetry of the Tropics. Comprising the Nuptials of Barcelona and the Music Shell,’ 8vo, London, 1839. ‘The Nuptials of Barcelona’ was afterwards published separately, 8vo, London, 1851. 4. ‘Beauties of Tropical Scenery; Lyrical Sketches, and Love-Songs. With Notes, Historical and Illustrative,’ 8vo, London, 1862; 2nd edit. 8vo, London, 1864; 3rd edit., with additions, 8vo, London, 1866. Dunbar was also the author of a slight piece, ‘Garibaldi at the Opera of “Masaniello,”’ 8vo, London, 1864. As long ago as 1817 he had mourned the death of the Princess Charlotte in ‘The Lament of Britannia,’ 8vo, London. He died at Paris in 1866.
[Prefaces to Works; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Gent. Mag. 4th ser. ii. 424.]
DUNBAR, WILLIAM (1465?–1530?), Scotch poet, probably a native of East Lothian, was born between 1460 and 1465. Laing thinks it unlikely that the date of his birth could be later than 1460, but there is no definite knowledge on the point. It is likewise difficult to settle precisely who Dunbar was by descent, but in the curious ‘Flyting’ between him and his contemporary wit, Walter Kennedy, certain references seem to connect him with the family of the tenth Earl of March. It is surmised, with some show of probability, that he may have been the grandson of Sir Patrick Dunbar of Beill in East Lothian, Sir Patrick himself being a younger son of this earl, and known as one of the hostages for James I in 1424. Almost nothing has been discovered regarding Dunbar's youth, although he is assumed to have been the William Dunbar that entered St. Andrews University in 1475, and graduated as master of arts in 1479. For the next twenty years his own works supply all the available information regarding his career. The principal fact of the period is that he had joined and forsaken the order of Franciscan friars. Dunbar's heart had not been in work of this kind; he acted, he says,
Lyk to ane man that with a gaist was marrit.
There is his own authority, given in his ‘Visitation of St. Francis,’ for stating that he found himself wholly unfitted for the exacting functions of begging friar. Still he is able to put it on record that his experience had been considerably enlarged by his performance of the duties so far as he had understood them. ‘In the habit of that order,’ he says (as paraphrased by Laing), ‘have I made good cheer in every flourishing town in England betwixt Berwick and Calais; in it also have I ascended the pulpit at Dernton and Canterbury; and crossed the sea at Dover, and instructed the inhabitants of Picardy.’ The period in which he was a begging friar is a curious episode in Dunbar's career, and it undoubtedly furnished him with some of the strongest material afterwards utilised in his satires. He was desirous of being a churchman, and longed for legitimate preferment, but he lacked sympathy with the begging fraternity, and regarded his sojourn in their midst as the epoch of his wild oats. Wrinkle, wile, falsehood, he avers, abounded in his conduct as long as he ‘did beir the freiris style,’ but he felt he must be otherwise placed to give full expression to his genuine manhood. He would remain devoted to the church, but he would likewise seek to be honest, and true to his higher nature.
Towards the close of the fifteenth century Dunbar had become attached to the court of James IV, on whose missions (as seems to be indicated in the ‘Flyting’) he probably visited several continental countries before 1500. From the ‘Flyting’ we gather that once the ship in which he started from Leith was driven by a storm far from its intended course, and wrecked on the coast of Zealand, Kennedy apparently finding a malicious amusement in the fancy picture he draws of his antagonist as he ‘sits superless’ in his distress, or cries ‘Caritas pro amore Dei’ from door to door. There is little doubt that Dunbar attended the Earl of Bothwell and Lord Monypenny to Paris in 1491, bearing at the same time a certain royal commission that implied individual action of his own beyond the Alps the following spring. The next undoubted item in his history—it is, indeed, one of the first fully attested facts—is under date of 15 Aug. 1500, when there is the important record in the ‘Privy Seal Register’ of a decree for 10l. a year for the poet. This pension he was to receive for life, or ‘untill he be promoted by our sovereign lord to a benefice of the value of forty pounds or more yearly.’ Subsequently the grant was increased, first to 20l., and then to 80l., ‘during life, or untill promoted to a benefice of 100l. or above.’ The benefice never came,
