THE

OF

LIFE

DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN:

BORN 1585: DIED 1649.

:

THERE are two kinds of poetry, the natural and the artificial both have numerous followers, and each their warm admirers and devotees: from these come other classes, partaking of the nature of both, viz.: those bred in the natural, but encumbered with the artificial; and those bred in the artificial, but relieved and beautified by the natural. Of the latter is the poet whose life and works I am now about to deli

neate.

William Drummond, poet and historian, son of Sir John Drummond, Usher and Knight of the Black Rod to James the Sixth,* and Susannah Fowler his

* The poet's father was born in 1553, and was ap

A

wife, was born the thirteenth day of December, 1585, at Hawthornden House, on the Eske, within seven miles of Edinburgh.* * The Drummonds of Hawthornden were descended from those of Carnuck, afterwards Earls and Dukes of Perth: the family had given a queen to Scotland, Anabella Drummond, the beautiful and accomplished consort of Robert the Third, and the mother of the poet-king, James the First of Scotland.†

Young Drummond was sent to Edinburgh to be educated how long he remained there is not known; all I can discover is, that he took the degree of Master of Arts, 27th July, 1605. From thence he went to London. Intended for the legal profession, he

pointed Gentleman Usher to James the Sixth in 1590 : on James's accession to the throne of England, he was one of three hundred gentlemen dubbed knights in the royal garden of Whitehall, 23rd July, 1603.-(Nichols' Progresses, vol. i, p. 208.)

*The poet was the eldest of four sons and three daughters. (Maitland Edition 1832.)

† Maurice Drummond, a native of Hungary, is said to have accompanied Edgar Atheling and his two sisters to Scotland in the year 1068.

Archæologia Scotica.

§ From dates on some of Drummond's books in the College Library, we find he was at London in 1606; at

was, at the age of twenty-one, sent by his father to study civil law at Bruges in France, where he attended the classes of Peter Vignal, Frederick Morell, and others. He visited Paris, but seems not to have studied there.

*

After a residence of nearly four years abroad, he returned to Scotland (1609), and remained at Hawthornden. Whether he had any taste or inclination for the Law, I must leave my readers to determine; for the writers to whom I am indebted in compiling this memoir take different courses, and contradict one another. The first I shall quote is, a memoir prefixed to an edition of his Poems published in 1790. "In 1606, he was sent by his father to study civil law at Bourges in France; but having no taste for the profession of a lawyer, he returned to Hawthornden." Cibber, or rather Shiels, must have been this writer's authority, who says, "Drummond had a sovereign contempt for the Law." The other which I shall

Bruges in 1607 and 1608; at Paris in the same years; at Edinburgh in 1609; and again in London in 1609.—(Archæologia Scotica.)

* Among the miscellaneous contents of the seventh and eighth volumes of Drummond's Mss., in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, there are notes of the various Lectures.

+ Cibber's Lives, vol. i.

"Dry

cite I cannot consider a weighty authority.* as the science of right and wrong is commonly, though perhaps erroneously reputed to be, it appears not to have been without its charms to Drummond, who studied it with assiduity, and not only took copious notes of the Lectures, but wrote observations of his own upon them."

From the two former accounts it appears that Drummond had no taste for the profession he had once chosen; and from the last, that he was enthusiastic about it: such are the mazes and labyrinths which biographers sometimes make, presenting to the future writer an intricate and perplexing path, and inducing him to enter upon his task with unwilling

ness.

Soon after his return his father died; † and having thus come into possession of an independent inheritance, he gave up all thoughts of the Law, and resolved to enjoy happiness in a life of dignified quiet on his own peaceable domain, and cultivate acquaintance with the Muses; the light of whose inspirations was now dawning within him.

Than the present there could not have been a better

*Lives of Eminent Scotsmen, part ii.

Aged fifty-seven, and was buried in the Chapel at Holyrood House.-(Douglas's Baronage.)

period for his appearance; a poet was wanted to throw off the northern barbaric but poetic mantle, and put on the more elegant apparel of the south.

Let us look at the poetry of Scotland previous to the appearance of Drummond.

Before King James the First, Scotland had produced no poets very worthy of the name; chroniclers in verse were the minstrels of the land, who gained their livelihood by wandering from court to hall, reciting the actions of the living and the dead, true or fabulous; the Bruce of Barbour, and the Wallace of Blind Harry, are the chief of their productions. The poet being thus tied down to the events of real life, or to popular belief, seldom indulged in any of those lofty flights of poetry necessary for verse of the first stamp; his productions therefore cannot rank with those of the highest order.

“King James is the author of our first serious and purely imaginative poem, the King's Quair;' and our earliest truly comic, and humorous, and homely poem, 'Peblis to the Play.' He is more; he is the chief of the Scottish rustic poets, the forerunner of Ramsay and Burns: though somewhat difficult to be understood, his natural beauties and glowing pictures are easily seen through the dim antiquity of his language.

* Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, vol. i, p. 24.