“Shepherds have not so wretched lives as they: 
     Though they live poorely on cruddes, chese, and whey,
     On apples, plummes, and drinke cleree water deepe,
     As it were lordes reigning among their sheepe. 
     The wretched lazar with clinking of his bell,
     Hath life which doth the courtiers excell;
     The caytif begger hath meate and libertie,
     When courtiers hunger in harde captivitie. 
     The poore man beggeth nothing hurting his name,
     As touching courters they dare not beg for shame. 
     And an olde proverb is sayde by men moste sage,
     That oft yonge courters be beggars in their age.”

The third ‘Eclogue’ begins with Coridon relating a dream that he went to court and saw the scullions standing

                             “about me thicke
     With knives ready for to flay me quicke.”

This is a text for Cornix, who continues his tirade, and convinces Coridon of the misery of the court and his happier life, ending as follows:—­

“Than let all shepheardes, from hence to Salisbury
With easie riches, live well, laugh and be mery,
Pipe under shadowes, small riches hath most rest,
In greatest seas moste sorest is tempest,
The court is nought els but a tempesteous sea;
Avoyde the rockes.  He ruled after me.”

The fourth ‘Eclogue’ is a dialogue on the rich man’s treatment of poets, by two shepherds, Codrus and Menalcas, musing in “shadowe on the green,” while their snowy flocks graze on the sweet meadow.  This contains a fine allegorical description of ‘Labour.’

The fifth ‘Eclogue’ is the ‘Cytezen and the Uplondyshman.’  Here the scene changes, and two shepherds, Faustus and Amyntas, discourse in a cottage while the snows of January whirl without.  Amyntas has learned in London “to go so manerly.”  Not a wrinkle may be found in his clothes, not a hair on his cloak, and he wears a brooch of tin high on his bonnet.  He has been hostler, costermonger, and taverner, and sings the delights of the city.  Faustus, the rustic, is contented with his lot.  The ‘Cytezen and the Uplondyshman’ was printed from the original edition of Wynkyn de Worde, with a preface by F. W. Fairholt, Percy Society (Vol. xxii.).

Other works ascribed to Barclay are:—­’The Figure of Our Holy Mother Church, Oppressed by the French King’; ’The Lyfe of the Glorious Martyr Saynt George,’ translated (from Mantuan) by Alexander Barclay; ’The Lyfe of the Blessed Martyr, Saynte Thomas’; ‘Contra Skeltonum,’ in which the quarrel he had with his contemporary poet, John Skelton, was doubtless continued.

Estimates of Barclay may be found in ‘The Ship of Fools,’ edited by T. H. Jamieson (1874); ‘Sibbald’s Chronicle of Scottish Poetry,’ from the thirteenth century to the union of the crowns (1802); ’The History of English Poetry,’ by Thomas Warton (1824); ’The History of Scottish Poetry,’ by David Irving (1861); and ‘Chips from a German Workshop,’ by F. Max Mueller (1870).