We have now made a survey of Scottish literature throughout
the Middle Ages, bringing together the work or the editors
of the middle Scots texts, and of the scholars who have written
on various parts of the subject. AL the same time we have
tried to indicate, more roughly, the course of the contemporary
literature in France. We find that Scotland, like England,
looked to France as the chief source of literary culture.
The imitation was not always direct; England, and especially
Chaucer, made a bridge between France and the North. Political
circumstances tended to increase the direct influence, which
culminated in the reign of James V and the regency of Mary of
Guise - in Lindsay and "The complaynt of Scotlande ". Yet
there is no intrinsic bond between the two literatures.
Scottish authors borrowed their materials and forms from
France, but they were never very deeply influenced by the
spirit of French courtly poetry, nor by that subtler essence
defying analysis, the "esprit gauloise". Scotland is in the
position of a pupil, but of a fairly independent pupil.
No French writer ever inspired the admiration and reverence
which the Makars accorded to Chaucer.The connection with France enabled the Scottish poets
to be more independent of English influence and to take their
place in European culture, as James IV enabled his country
to do politically. This place they held till the end or
the Middle Scots period.We can look back on the Scottish Middle Ages as a
literary period in many ways imitative, yet fully alive,
and richly representative of mediaeval culture; as a
period characteristically Scottish in spite of .its literary
borrowings, and worthy of the nation to whose life it gave
expression
