set a somewhat different program. Alhough they were encouraged to draw on the best of Continental poets, including French and ItalianMontgomerie himself was early influenced by Marot and RonsardJames looked for a national poetry in Scots in a sophisticated rhetorical style. In his own work,
Reulis and Cautelis to be Observit and Eschewit in Scottish Poesie
, published in 1584, James remarked that works on the subject in English did not satisfy the differing rules of Scottish poetry. James wanted a characteristically Scottish poetry that was at the same time in the mainstream of European fashion; he also wanted a poetry more mannered and exhibitionist than suited Montgomerie, or indeed could suit any original poet. (James's own poetry is ingenious and self-consciously mannered.) In spite of Montgomerie's eventual disgrace, and the disturbing demands of politics on literature, there was a vigorous sense of Scottish poetic renaissance in the latter part of the sixteenth century, which disappeared when James left for England in 1603, removing at a blow the one effective source of patronage of the arts in Scotlandthe royal Court.
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Although Aubigny enjoyed the king's favor, his influence on the king was deplored by the Protestant lords, as a result of whose activity he had to flee back to France in 1583. Montgomerie was now chief cultural adviser to the king, who granted him a royal pension in August 1583, but his high standing at Court lasted barely three years. He continued, however, to write poetry, and if he was no longer the "Beloved Saunders, maistre of our art" that the king had called him in a poem addressed to Montgomerie in the early days of their relationship, he remained an active and an admired poet till his death, the greatest Scottish poet of his age.
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Montgomerie's lyrics are in the courtly tradition of Dunbar, Lindsay, and Alexander Scott, and represent a conscious attempt to produce a poised and civilized poetry that would help restore cultural wholeness to a divided Scotland. A minor poet of the time, Sir Richard Maitland, had in his "Satire on the Age" expressed the sense of cultural loss produced by the civil and religious strife of the period: Where are "daunsing, singing, game and play" when "all mirrines is worne away"? Montgomerie sought to restore some of the lost merriness. Yet he was a fundamentally serious poet, who could write grave moral lyrics as well as poems of courtly compliment. The lyric beginning,
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 | | Sweit hairt rejoiss in mynd
With conforte day and nicht,
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