Note 136 — APOCRYPHAL LIFE OF ESOP, THE FABULIST.

Robert Henryson was a schoolmaster in Dunfermline in the latter part of the 15th century. His Moral Fables, edited by Dr. David Irving, were printed for the Maitland Club in 1832, and his complete works (Poems and Fables) were edited by Dr. David Laing, and published in 1865. His Testament of Cresseid, usually considered as his best performance, is a continuation of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cresseide, which was derived from the Latin of an unknown author named Lollius. Henryson was the author of the first pastoral poem composed in the English (or Scottish) language—that of Robin and Makyn. “To his power of poetical conception,” Dr. Laing justly remarks, “he unites no inconsiderable skill in versification: his lines, if divested of their uncouth orthography, might be mistaken for those of a more modern poet.” Return