IT is stated by Timothy Pont. in 1600, | Captain, considers it more probable in his Cuningham Topographized, that | that he was a soldier than a sailor; and Alexander Montgomery was born at that notwithstanding that his references Hazelhead Castle, in Ayrshire; but he to the experience of a sailor, especially assigns no date to the time of his birth. in "Navigation," are many, while those Although nothing is related regarding to military life are few. The fact of his his education, the study of his works being a courtier, and the general tone leaves no doubt that it was liberal, and of his poems, however, do not leave in keeping with his social rank. the impression that their author spent much of his time at sea. It adds some confusion to the account of his connection with the court of James VI., that a Captain Robert Montgomery was at the same time a gentleman of the King's household, and a poem by the poet is erroneously ascribed to that name in the Bannatyne MS. It is very probable that his family was a branch of the Montgomeries of Eglinton; and his life seems to have been neither obscure nor uneventful, while as a poet he is well known as the author of "The Cherrie and the Slae;" yet, notwithstanding the comparative recentness of the time in which he lived, there are few of our elder poets about whose personal history less | definite information is preserved. Almost all that we know of him is inferred from references in his poems to "crooks in his lot," which place it beyond doubt that he experienced at least an average share of life's misfortunes. One of his biographers, founding upon statements put into the mouth of an imaginary traveller, in his poem entitled "Navigation," written as a pageant on the occasion of James VI.'s "first magnificent entry" into Edinburgh in 1579, makes him a German by birth, though of Scotch extraction. Dr Irving, who writes the memoir of him prefixed to Dr David Laing's collected edition of his works (Edinburgh, 1821), referring to his being styled It is uncertain when he began to write; but from some of his short pieces having been inserted in the above MS., and from "The Banks of Helicon," which is the model of the stanza of "The Cherrie and the Slae," having been preserved in the Maitland MS., it is placed beyond a doubt that he became an author before 1568. "The Banks of Helicon " is inserted anonymously in the MS., yet the style, the stanza, and the matter are all so characteristic of Montgomery, that Dr Laing has little hesitation in attributing it to him. "The Cherrie and the Slae," "Echo," and "The Flyting," are quoted in "Ane Schort Treatise conteining some Reulis and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie," published by King James in 1584. Montgomery must have been in favour at court some time previously, for the grant of an annual pension of five hundred marks, chargeable upon the rents of the archbishopric of Glasgow, was confirmed to him in 1583. This is no life that I live upaland On raw red herring reisted in the reik; Syne I am subject some time to be sick, And daily dying of my auld disease. In some sonnets addressed to the King, he displays a wonderful gift for adulation, not unredeemed by poetical gracefulness; yet making every allowance for the manners of the times in matters of this sort, and for the different estimate in which James' character is creditable to Montgomery's taste now held, they can hardly be considered manliness. I. Bellona's son, of Mars the chosen child, or In 1586, a royal licence is granted him to go abroad for five years. In the course of his travels he found himself the inmate of a foreign prison; but where, and for what reason, is not specified. In connection with his imprisonment, the payment of his pension had been suspended, but on its being shown that "his good services merited rather❘ SONNETS IN Praise of the King's Urania. augmentation than diminishing of the said pension," the previous grant was renewed and confirmed by writ of privy seal in 1588. Nevertheless, he appears not to have obtained undisputed possession; for being a charge upon the rents of the archbishopric of Glasgow, the holder of which, James Beaton, was in France, payment was withheld on some plea founded on his absence, and the poet had to apply for redress to the Court of Session. Several of his sonnets refer to this action, and give anything but a favourable character of the dispensation of justice in those days. Minerva's wit and Mercury's golden tongue, Apollo's light, that ignorance exiled, From Jove ingendered and from Pallas sprung; Truimphs oure death, in register of fame; Thy weighty words make mine appear but Yet worthy Prince! thou would take in good part II. Of Titan's harp, sith thou intones the strings, Of ambrose and of nectar so thou feeds, Not only other poets thou outsprings, His frequent references to his misfortunes give an impression that we might not be far wrong in sometimes substituting faults, or at least failings; and his readiness of expression, by way of complaint, suggests caution in accepting his descriptions as the nett product of the real state of his affairs. Most readers can make a sufficient allowance for the souredness of the following to a friend at court, from a poet who once experienced the sunshine of court favour:- Whas muse, not Jove, but great Jehovah sings. But whiles, also thy very self exceeds; |