Scotland, and the numerous friends which he had lost; and in 1624, at the close of the same edition, there is an admirable epistle and sonnet fromRobert Kerr, earl of Ancram, dated Cambridge, December the 16th, and directed to Mr. William Drummond, at Hawthornden. It is stated, moreover, in the life prefixed to the folio of 1711, that, as part of the fruits of his tour in France, Italy, and Germany, he enriched the library of his Alma Mater with a choice collection of books and manuscripts, of which he printed a catalogue at Edinburgh in 1626, preceded by an elegant Latin preface, the product of his own pen.

How the incidents and employments which I have thus brought together, as occurring between the years 1612 and 1630, can be deemed compatible with an uninterrupted residence of eight years upon the continent during the same period, it would be difficult to decide. The more probable supposition is, that our author commenced his travels anterior to 1617, and from the motives which have been assigned; and that, returning to Scotland in the course of that year, he occasionally revisited France and Italy, during those subsequent years in which we have found him unemployed at home.

・

Let us now, however, retracing the meagre outline which has been given of this important portion of his life, endeavour to fill up some part of the space which it includes, by critical comment or traditionary detail. Of the "Moeliades,” published in 1612, and the "Forth Feasting," in 1617, and, consequently, both written some years anterior to the earliest productions of Waller, and the Cooper's Hill of Denham, it has been justly observed by Mr. Le Neve, that their harmony of numbers, "at a time when those, who are usually called the first introducers of a smooth and polished versification, had not yet begun to write, is an honour to him that should never be forgotten

In the latter of these poems the construction of the couplet is, indeed, in many instances singularly polished and melodious; to such a degree, in fact, as need not fear a comparison with any subsequent effort in the same metre, either of the last or present

* "A short Account of the Life and Writings of Drummond," first privately printed in a work entitled "Cursory Remarks on some of the Ancient English Poets, particularly Milton," and subsequently prefixed to the edition of Drummond, published at London in 1791,

age. Mr. Le Neve has selected four lines from this production which have been manifestly and closely copied by Pope; and to these, which I shall requote, I must beg leave to add two more instances from the same piece, which will equally remind the reader of the favourite cadences of the bard of Twickenham, and prove, at the same time, with what industry, taste, and discrimination, he had studied the pages of the Scottish poet.

To virgins, flowers; to sun-burnt earth, the rain ;
To mariners, fair winds amidst the main;
Cool shades to pilgrims, which hot glances burn,
Are not so pleasing as thy blest return.

As looks a garden of its beauty spoil'd;

As woods in winter by rough Boreas foil'd;
As portraits raz'd of colours us'd to be ;

So look'd these abject bounds deprived of thee.

O virtue's pattern, glory of our times!
Sent of past days to expiate the crimes;

Great king! but better far than thou art great,
Whom state not honours, but who honours state.

Numerous, indeed, are the passages that might be extracted from the poetry of Drummond, on which, independent of the few that have been no

ticed by myself or others *, Pope appears to have exerted his powers of imitation. But, dropping any further instances of this kind, I wish to give my readers a more extended specimen of the admirable versification with which Drummond has often clothed his thoughts in this happy panegyric on king James, which, be it remembered, was written in the year 1617!

Let mother Earth now deck'd with flowers be seen,
And sweet-breath'd Zephyrs curl the meadows green;
Let heaven weep rubies in a crimson shower,
Such as on India's shores they use to pour;

Or with that golden storm the fields adorn,

Which Jove rain'd when his blue-eyed maid was born.
May never Hours the web of day out-weave;

May never Night rise from her sable cave;
Swell proud, my billows, faint not to declare
Your joys as ample as their causes are:-

Now where the wounded knight his life did bleed,
The wanton swain sits piping on a reed;
And where the cannon did Jove's thunder scorn,
The gaudy huntsman winds his shrill-ton'd horn.

Well might this poem attract, as we are told on good authority it did, not only the envy, but the

* A few have been noticed by Mr. Park, vide Biographia Britannica, vol. 5. p. 372. Kippis's edition.

praise of Ben Jonson, whose favourite metre was the English couplet, and who hesitated not to declare that he should have been proud to have been the author of Forth Feasting.

[To be continued.]