seq.), the superstition of pilgrimages (l. 2360 et seq.), the corruption of the court of Rome (l. 4740 et seq.), the rack-rents of the lords and barons (l. 5700–1), the injustice and delays both of the civil (l. 5752) and the ecclesiastical courts (l. 5765), and the extravagant dress of the women (l. 5829 et seq.)
Two shorter pieces, ‘Kittie's Confessioun,’ a frank satire on the confessional, and ‘Ane description of Peder Coffer, having na regard to honestie in these Vocatiouns,’ an exposure of pedlars' tricks, are attributed to him by the Bannatyne MS. As that manuscript was written about 1568, the ascription is probably correct, although the poems preserved in it are not always correctly assigned. These poems, however, are quite in Lyndsay's style and exhibit him as an all-round reformer, one of those minds which delight in detecting and denouncing every form of corruption. He last appears as a herald on 16 Jan. 1554, when he held a chapter of heralds for the trial of William Carruthers, a messenger. He died before 18 April 1555, as is proved by a gift of that date, of the casualty of marriage, due by his brother Alexander, which mentions his death. He left no children. His office of Lyon king, after being held by Sir Robert Forman of Luthrie (1555–67) and Sir William Stewart, who was deposed and executed in 1568, was conferred on his youngest brother, Sir David Lyndsay of Rathillet (1568–91), and subsequently on a second Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, son of his brother, Alexander, who resigned in favour of his son-in-law, Sir Jerome Lyndsay of Annatland, in June 1621.
The character of Lyndsay is stamped on his face as it appears in all his works, and on the rude woodcuts prefixed to the quarto edition of his poems published at Paris in 1558, and the Edinburgh edition by Hart in 1634. Unfortunately, no original portrait exists. The description of him by Scott in ‘Marmion’ is well known.
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. The Reformation, in achieving which he bore so prominent a part, gave the first shock to this popularity when it passed from the stage of Knox, whose prose frequently reminds us of Lyndsay's verse—invective in its coarseness as well as its power—to the second stages represented by Andrew Melville. To the Calvinist and puritan his plain speech was abhorrent, his drama irreligious, and his satire hardly intelligible. The decay of the use of the Scottish dialect contributed to the decline of his reputation. In the century which followed the union of the kingdoms his poems were less frequently published. In the present century their philological and historical value has secured a renewal of interest in them. Lyndsay occupies an important place in the history of the Scottish dialect and in the history of the British drama. The satire of ‘The Three Estates’ affords one of the best illustrations of the transition from the mediæval religious miracle play, through the secular masque, the fools' play, and the interludes, to the Elizabethan tragedy and comedy. But in Scotland the Reformation killed the drama, and Lyndsay's satire of the ‘Three Estates’ remains almost unique, although we know the names of a few other early dramas. Lyndsay's historical position as one of the representative Scottish reformers is secure. It has been doubted whether he personally made the formal change from the Roman to the reformed creed. But this was only because that creed had not been formulated, and was during his life in course of formation. The protest against the papacy, as it then existed, was not uttered more boldly by Luther or by Knox than by Lyndsay. If some traces remain of the faith in which he had been brought up, they are not distinctively Roman. He was as pronounced a reformer of the state as of the church, and gave no quarter to the oppression of the nobles, the abuses of the law, or the vices of the court. He was a reformer before the Reformation, and an advocate for the ‘Common Weil’ before the word ‘Commonwealth’ had a place in English speech.
A full bibliography of his works, with facsimiles of the title-pages of the chief editions, is given in Laing's complete edition, Edinburgh, 1879, iii. 222–98. A French printer, Samuel Jascuy, in 1558, reprinted, imperfectly, in Paris, ‘The Dialogue,’ ‘The Complaint of the Papyngo,’ ‘The Dream,’ and ‘The Tragedy of the Cardinal,’ taking the ‘Dialogue’ word for word from the later edition of ‘The Monarchy’ in 1554. This and other early editions which appeared in Paris and London prove the interest at that time taken in Scottish poetry in France and England, and suggest that he had an influence on the cause of reformation in those countries as well as his own. A translation of the ‘Dialogue,’ through
