BARCLAY, ALEXANDER, an English poet, generally believed to have been a native of Scotland, though most of his life was spent in England. He is said to have been partly educated in the university of Oxford, and on one occasion makes an allusion to what he had observed at Cambridge. He spent some of his earlier days at Croydon in Surrey; and in 1508 he was a prebendary of the collegiate church of St Mary Ottery
Barclay, in Devonshire. He afterwards became a Benedictine monk of the monastery of Ely, and at length assumed the habit of St Francis at Canterbury. Having survived the dissolution of the monasteries, he became successively vicar of Much-Badew in Essex, and, in 1546, of Wokey in Somersetshire; and was finally presented by the dean and chapter of Canterbury to the rectory of All-Saints in Lombard-street. As he retained some of his preferences in the reign of Edward VI., it is presumed that he must have complied with the changes of the times. Having reached a very advanced age, he died in the year 1552, and was interred at Croydon.
Barclay wrote at a period when the standard of English poetry was extremely low; and, as excellence is always comparative, this circumstance may partly enable us to account for the high reputation which he enjoyed among his contemporaries. If not entitled to the name of a poet, he is at least a copious versifier. His most conspicuous performance is the Ship of Fools, first printed by Pinson in the year 1509. The original design, and many of the details, were derived from Sebastian Brandt,1 a civilian of Strasburg, who in 1494 published a poem entitled Das Narren Schiff,2 which was so well adapted to the taste of the age that a Latin and a French version appeared in 1497, and another French version in 1498. Barclay professes to have translated "oute of Laten, Frenche, and Doche;" but to the original cargo he has added many fools of English growth. Under the representation of a ship freighted with fools of various denominations, the poet exposes the prevalent vices and follies of the age; and although, as Warton remarks, the poem is destitute of plot, and the voyage of adventures,3 the general design was found to possess many attractions. Another publication of Barclay is the Mirror of good Manners, translated from the poem of Mancini De quatuor Virtutibus. His Eglogues chiefly excite curiosity as the earliest specimen of pastoral poetry in the English language, but their other attractions are not very powerful. They are of a more recent date than Henryson's Robene and Mahyne, and are certainly very inferior in poetical merit. Among his prose works we find a version of Sallust's history of the war with Jugurtha: it was twice printed by Pinson, and is an early specimen of an English translation from the classics. (D. 1.)