GAVIN DOUGLAS.
This eminent prelate was a younger son of Archibald, the fifth Earl of
Angus. He was born in Brechin about the year 1474. He studied at the
University of Paris. He became a churchman, and yet united with
attention to the duties of his calling great proficiency in polite
learning. In 1513 he finished a translation, into Scottish verse, of
Virgil's 'Aeneid,' which, considering the age, is an extraordinary
performance. It occupied him only sixteen months. The multitude of
obsolete terms, however, in which it abounds, renders it now, as a
whole, illegible. After passing through various subordinate offices,
such as the 'Provostship' of St Giles's, Edinburgh, and the 'Abbotship'
of Arbroath, he was at length appointed Bishop of Dunkeld. Dunkeld was
not then the paradise it has become, but Birnam hill and the other
mountains then, as now, stood round about it, the old Cathedral rose up
in mediaeval majesty, and the broad, smooth Tay flowed onward to the
ocean. And, doubtless, Douglas felt the poetic inspiration from it quite
as warmly as did Thomas Brown, when, three centuries afterwards, he set
up the staff of his summer rest at the beautiful Invar inn, and thence
delighted to diverge to the hundred scenes of enchantment which stretch
around.
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