LINDSAY, or LYNDSAY, Sir DAVID, OP THE MOUNT, one of the best and long the most popular of the older Scottish poets, was the son of David Lindsay of Garmylton, in East Lothian, whose grandfather was a son of sir William Lindsay of the Byres. The poet is said by Chalmers to have been born at the Mount about the year 1490, but Laing in his recent edition of Lyndsay (1871) notes the absence of evidence on this point, Chahners having apparently assumed it as a consequence of his supposition that the poet's father was " David Lyndsay of the Mountlit, while Laing has shovvn that this was the poet's grandfather. The name "Da Lindesay " occurs in the list of "incor porated ' students in St. Salvator's college, St. Andrews, for the year 1508 or 1509. It rnay be that of the poet. We cannot tell when he entered the royal service, but in Oct., 1511, he is found taking part in a play acted before the court of king James IV. In the following spring he was appointed " keeper " or " usher " of the prince, who, when little more than a twelvemonth old, became king James V.; and his verses preserve some pleasing traces of the carp and affection with which he tended the king's infant years. His wife, Janet Douglas, had long the charge of the royal apparel. In 1524 the court fell under the power of the queen-mother and the Douglases, and Lindsay lost his place; but four years afterward, when the Douglases were overthrown, Lindsay was made lion king at arms, and at the same time received the honor of knighthood. In this capacity he accompanied embassies to the courts of England, France, Spain, and Denmark. He appears to have represented Cupar in the parliaments of 1542 and 1543; and he was present at St. Andrews in 1547, when the followers of the reformed faith called Knox to take upon himself the office of a public preacher. He died childless before the summer of 1555.
The first collection of Lindsay's poems appeared at Copenhagen about 1553. They were republished at Paris or Rouen in 1558; at London in 1566, 1575, and 1581; at Bel fast in 1714; in Scotland in 1568, 1571, 1574, 1588, 1592, 1597, 1604, 1610, 1614, 1634, 1648, 1696, 1709, 1720, and 1776. This mere enumeration of editions might be enough
to show the great popularity which Lindsay long enjoyed. For nearly two centuries, indeed, he was what Burns has since become—the poet of the Scottish people. His works were in almost every house, his verses on almost every tongue. Like Burns, he owed part of his popularity, no doubt, to his complete mastery of the popular speech. But, like Burns, Lindsay would have been read in whatever language he chose to write. His verses show few marks of the highest poetical power, but their merits otherwise are great. Their fancy is scarcely less genial than their humor, and they are full of good sense, varied learmng, and knowledge of the world. They are valuable now, if for noth ing else than their vivid pictures of manueis and feelings. In the poet's own day, they served a nobler purpose, by preparing the way for the great revolution of the 16th cen tury. It has been said that the verses of Lindsay did more for the reformation in Scot land than all the sermons of Knox. Like Burns, Lindsay shot some of his sharpest shafts at the clergy. The licentiousness that characterizes his verses must be attributed in part to the age in which he lived. The earliest and most poetical of his writings is thd Dreme; the most ambitious, The Monarchic; the most remarkable in his own day, per-. haps, was The Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis; but that which is now read with most pleasure, both for the charm of its subject and for its freedom from the allegorical fashion of the time, is The Historie of Squyer Meldrum. An admirable edition of Lindsay's works is that of Chalmers (Lond. 1806, 3 vols.); but in points of detail it is less accurate than that of Laing (Edin. 1871, 2 vols.).