James's metrical version of the Psalms (said to be mainly the Earl of Stirling's work) was not published till 1631. In 1901 Mr R. S. Rait, who had (in The Royal Rhetorician, 1900) reprinted the Treatise, the Essays, and the Counterblast, printed (in folio) nineteen unprinted poems and prose pieces from a volume of James's MSS. found in the Bodleian in 1900. James's most noted prose publications, almost wholly in English as he understood it (not without pronounced Scotticisms), are the Dæmonology (1597), the Basilicon Doron (1599), and A Counterblast against Tobacco (1604); but he issued four Meditations on Scripture and a tractate on the Oath of Allegiance. The Doron was written for the instruction of his son Prince Henry a short time before the union of the crowns. Allowance being made for James's 'high' view of the royal prerogative, it is a shrewd, sensible, and well-worded treatise on the duties and responsibilities of kings. He instances the evil example of James V., ‘who by his adulterie bred the wracke of his lawful daughter and heire, in begetting that bastard, who unnaturally rebelled, and procured the ruine of his owne Soverane and sister;' and he denounces 'such famous invectives as Buchanans or Knoxes Chronicles, and if any of these infamous libels remaine untill your daies, use the law upon the keepers thereof.' In the preface to the Dæmonology the king displays his learning in maintaining the existence and criminality of witches, who he says abounded in Scotland: Sorcery and Witchcraft. The fearefull abounding at this time in this Country of these detestable slaues of the Diuel, the Witches or enchaunters, hath mooued mee (beloued Reader) to dispatch in post, this following Treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serue for a shew of my learning and ingine, but onely (moued of conscience) to preasse thereby, so farre as I can, to resolue the doubting hearts of many; both that such assaults of Satan are most certainely practised, and that the instruments thereof merits most seuerely to be punished: against the damnable opinions of two principally in our aage, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in publike Print to deny, that there can be such a thing as Witch-craft: and so maintaines the old errour of the Sadduces in denying of spirits; The other called Wierus, a German Physition, sets out a publike Apologie for all these crafts-folkes, whereby, procuring for their impunitie, he plainely bewrayes himselfe to haue bene one of that profession. And for to make this Treatise the more pleasant and facill, I haue put it in forme of a Dialogue, which I haue diuided into three Bookes: The first speaking of Magie in generall, and Necromancie in speciall: The second, of Sorcerie and Witch-craft: and the third containes a discourse of all these kinds of spirits, and Spectres that appeares and troubles persons, together with a conclusion of the whole worke. My intention in this labour is onely to prooue two things, as I haue already said: The one, that such diuelish artes haue bene and are: The other, what exact triall and seuere punishment they merit and therefore reason I, What kinde of things are possible to be performed in these Arts, and by what naturall causes they may be, not that I touch euery particular thing of the Diuels power, for that were infinite but onely to speake scholastickely, (since this cannot be spoken in our language) I reason vpon genus, leauing species and differentia to bee comprehended therein As for example, speaking of the power of Magiciens, in the first booke and sixt Chapter, I say, that they can suddenly cause be brought vnto them all kinds of daintie dishes by their familiar spirit; since as a thiefe he delights to steale, and as a spirit he can subtilly and suddenly ynough transport the same. Now vnder this genus may be comprehended all particulars depending thereupon; such as the bringing Wine out of a wall (as wee haue heard oft to haue bene practised) and such others; which particulars are sufficiently prooued by the reasons of the generall. How Witches Travel. Philomathes. Byt by what way say they, or thinke yee it possible they can come to these vnlawfull conuentions? Epistemon. There is the thing which I esteeme their senses to be deluded in, and though they lie not in confessing of it, because they thinke it to be trew, yet not to be so in substance or effect: for they say that by diuers meanes they may conueene either to the adoring of their Master, or to the putting in practise any seruice of his, committed vnto their charge: one way is naturall, which is natural riding, going, or sailing, at what houre their master comes and aduertises them and this way may be easily beleeued: another way is some-what more strange, and yet it is possible to bee trew: which is, by being caried by the force of the spirit which is their conducter, either aboue the earth, or aboue the Sea swiftly, to the place where they are to meete: which I : am perswaded to bee likewise possible, in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the Angel in that forme, to the den where Daniel lay; so thinke I, the diuell will be readie to imitate God, as well in that as in other things: which is much more possible to him to doe, being a Spirit, then to a mighty wind, being but a naturall Meteore, to transport from one place to another, a solide body, as is commonly and daily seene in practise: But in this violent forme they cannot be caried but a short bounds, agreeing with the space that they may retaine their breath: for if it were longer, their breath could not remaine vnextinguished, their body being caried in such a violent and forcible maner; as by example: If one fall off a small height, his life is but in perill, according to the hard or soft lighting: but if one fall from an high and stay [steep] rocke, his breath will be forcibly banished from the body, before he can win to the earth, as is oft seene by experience: And in this transporting they say themselues, that they are inuisible to any other, except amongst themselues, which may also be possible in my opinion : For if the deuill may forme what kinde of impressions he pleases in the aire, (as I haue said before, speaking of Magic) why may hee not farre easilier thicken and obscure so the aire that is next about them, by contracting it straite together, that the beames of any other mans eyes cannot pierce thorow the same, to see them? But the third way of their comming to their conuentions, is that wherein I thinke them deluded: for some of them say, that being transformed in the likenesse of a little beast or foule, they will come and pierce through whatsoeuer house or church, though all ordinarie passages be closed, by whatsoeuer open the aire may enter in at: And some say that their bodies lying still, as in an extasie, their spirits will be rauished out of their bodies, and caried to such places; and for verifying thereof, will giue euident tokens, as well by witnesses that haue seene their body lying sencelesse in the meane time, as by naming persons whom-with they met, and giuing tokens what purpose was amongst them, whom otherwise they could not haue knowen: for this forme of iourneying, they affirme to vse most, when they are transported from one countrey to another. In his Counterblast James declares that many of the nobles and gentry spent three and four hundred pounds [Scots, it is to be hoped] a year on tobacco. The man, he says, who introduced it was 'generally hated,' meaning Raleigh. He seems to have done Raleigh an injustice (small compared with his other sins against him!) in making him the introducer of tobacco. It was almost certainly Drake or Hawkins who brought tobacco hither; but Raleigh had doubtless much to do with promoting its popularity by encouraging the growth of it. James concludes his Counterblast with these emphatic words: Smoking is a custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoake of the pit that is bottomlesse.' Alexander Hume (1560?-1609), a son of Patrick Hume, Baron Polwarth, studied at St Andrews and Paris for the Scottish bar, held some court appointments, but in 1598 forsook the world to enter the Church, and died the sternly Puritan minister of Logie in 1609. He published a volume of Hymns or Sacred Songs in the year 1599. The most finished poem is a description of a summer's day, which he calls the Day Estivall. The natural aspects of Scottish landscape are painted with truth and clearness, and the poem is instinct with devout feeling. It opens as follows: O perfite light, which shaid away Ane uther ou'r the night; Thy glorie, when the day foorth flies, Nor at mid-day unto our eyes The shining Sun is cleare. The shaddow of the earth anon Remooves and drawes by, Sine in the East, when it is gon, Appeares a clearer sky; shed, divided Quhilk Sunne perceaves the little larks, And tunes their sangs like nature's clarks, Over lively then The condition of the Scottish labourer would seem to have been then more comfortable than at present, and the climate of the country warmer, for Hume describes those working in the fields as stopping at midday, 'noon meat and sleep to take,' and refreshing themselves with caller wine' in a cave, and 'sallads steeped in oil.' As the poet lived four years in France, he was doubtless drawing on his Continental recollections for some of the features in this picture. At length 'the gloaming comes, the day is spent,' and the poet concludes in a strain of pious gratitude and joy : What pleasour were to walke and see The salmon out of cruifs and creils, Uphailed into skowts, The bels and circles on the weills Through lowpping of the trouts. Along leaping All labourers drawes hame at even, And can till uther say, Thankes to the gracious God of heauen, Quhilk send this summer day. Cruifs and creels, cruives and baskets, are frames of wooden spars and wickerwork contrivances in rivers for catching fish ; skowts are boats; and weills are patches of deep dead-water at the bend of a stream. The Triumph of the Lord is his account of the 'defait of the Spanish Navie.' He prefixes to his poem an exhortation to the Scottish youth to forswear profane sonnets, vain ballads, and fabulous romances (which we must think were not very much in demand); denounced popery; and published some sermons and a treatise on conscience. The Hymns and Songs were published by the Bannatyne Club in 1832; and there is the Rev. Menzies Fergusson's Alexander Hume, an early Poet-Pastor of Logie (Paisley, 1899). Sir Robert Ayton (1570-1638), Scottish courtier and poet, was the son of Ayton of Kinaldie, near St Andrews, graduated at St Andrews, studied law at Paris, and was ambassador to the Emperor. James I. appointed him one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and private secretary to his queen, besides conferring upon him the honour of knighthood. Ben Jonson told Drummond that Sir Robert loved him (Jonson) dearly. Aubrey says he was acquainted with all the wits in England, specially naming Hobbes of Malmesbury. He was a man of culture; wrote verses in French, Latin, and Greek; and was one of the first Scotsmen to write English, prose and verse, with tolerable purity. He was, indeed, one of the very earliest of the Cavalier poets; and Dryden accounted some of his verses as amongst the best of that age. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Diophantus and Charidora is not a great poem, though better than his stilted and awkward Latin verses. The best known of his shorter poems-some of them wonderfully felicitous—is Inconstancy Upbraided (sometimes called To an Inconstant Mistress): I loved thee once, I'll love no more; Nothing could have my love o'erthrown, When new desires had conquered thee, It had been lethargy in me, Not constancy, to love thee still. Yea, it had been a sin to go Yet do thou glory in thy choice, On rather slender authority another famous poem (of which Burns made a rather poor Scotch version) has been credited to him, as has also the prototype of Burns's Auld Lang Syne. Probably the poem An Inconstant Mistress, given below, was confounded with Inconstancy Upbraided, given above: I do confess thou 'rt smooth and fair, And I might have gone near to love thee; That lips could speak had power to move thee: As worthy to be loved by none. I do confess thou 'rt sweet, yet find Which kisses everything it meets, The morning rose that untouched stands, Armed with her briers, how sweet she smells! Such fate ere long will thee betide, When thou hast handled been a while, Hath brought thee to be loved by none. The first verse (first of six) of Old Long Syne is as follows: Should old acquaintance be forgot, And never thought upon? The flames of love extinguished, And freely past and gone? Is thy kind heart now grown so cold, In that loving breast of thine, That thou canst never once reflect On old long-syne? See an edition of the poems, with a memoir, by Dr Charles Rogers (1844 and 1871); and Professor H. Walker's Three Centuries of Scottish Literature (1893). The Earl of Stirling-William Alexander of Menstrie (1567?-1640), made an earl by Charles I. in 1633-was a conspicuous Scottish courtier and public functionary as well as a fairly prolific poet. Born at Menstrie, in the house which afterwards gave birth to Sir Ralph Abercromby, he studied at Glasgow and Leyden ; travelled in France, Spain, and Italy; and published Aurora (1604) and a series of four Monarchicke Tragedies - Darius (1603), Cræsus (1604), The Alexandræan Tragedy (1605), and Julius Cæsar (1607). The theme is in all four the fall of ambition, and the method is an imitation of the Greek drama; the plays are dignified in style and contain some fine lyrics, but they are utterly wearisome. He was knighted by 1609; in 1613 was attached to the household of Prince Charles; in 1614 was made Master of Requests for Scotland, and published Part I. of his huge poem Doomesday (not completed till 1637). He received in 1621 the grant of Nova Scotia,' a vast tract in Canada and what now is the United States; in 1631 he was made sole printer of King James's version of the Psalms. From 1626 till his death he was the Secretary of State for Scotland; and in 1627-31 he was also made Keeper of the Signet, a Commissioner of Exchequer, and a Judge of the Court of Session. The French pushed their conquests in America, and Alexander's grant of lands became valueless. Long unpopular as too self-seeking and avaricious, he was now suspected and hated. In 1630 he was created Viscount and in 1633 Earl of Stirling, in 1639 also Earl of Dovan (Burns's 'crystal Devon '), but he died insolvent in London next year. His tragedies are not dramatic, but their quatrains are graceful. The songs, sonnets, elegies, and madrigals forming the Aurora are marred by conceits, yet show fancy and ingenuity; his friendly rival, Drummond, said he was a better poet than Tasso. His amatory poems Stirling did not include in his collected Recreations with the Muses (1637). The Julius Cæsar play contains some passages rather noticeably resembling Shakespeare's; but as the greater drama was almost certainly written some years before, there is no ground for holding-as used to be held that Shakespeare borrowed from Stirling. A famous passage in the Tempest was supposed— somewhat hypercritically (though in this case the date of the Tempest, 1611 or thereabouts, would permit the derivation)—to be also derived from the Earl of Stirling. In his play of Darius the reflection, Of glassie scepters let fraile greatnesse vaunt, Not scepters, no, but reeds, which (rais'd up) break, And let eye-flatt'ring shows our wits enchant, All perish'd are, ere of their pomp men speak ; Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls, Those stately courts, those skie-encount ring walls, O! what affliction jealous greatnesse beares, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, The following is one of the Earl of Stirling's best sonnets: I sweare, Aurora, by thy starrie eyes, And by the naked snowes which beautie dies, See the Glasgow edition of the Earl of Stirling's works (1870), the Memorials by Charles Rogers (1877), and Walker's Three Centuries of Scottish Literature (1893). Robert Earl of Ancrum (1578-1654), son of Ker of Ancrum and grandson of Ker of Ferniehirst, enjoyed the favour of James and of Charles I., by whom he was promoted to various court appointments and made Earl of Ancrum. On Charles's execution he retired to Amsterdam, where he died in debt. He translated the Psalms, like others of his contemporaries; and the following sonnet, addressed to Drummond of Hawthornden in 1624 (as reproduced in Ker's Correspondence, 1875), shows how since the unions of the crowns the Scottish vernacular was being supplanted by English: Sweet solitary life: lovely, dumb joy, That need'st no warnings how to grow more wise The Court's great earthquake, the griev'd truth of change, To the sonnet he appended this note: The date of this starved rhime and the place was the very Bedchamber where I could not sleep. See his Correspondence with his son, the first Earl of Lothian (1875). William Drummond of Hawthornden (15851649) rose as a poet above mere provincial fame, and was associated in friendship and genius with his great English contemporaries. His father, Sir John Drummond, was gentleman-usher to King James, and the poet seems to have inherited his reverence for royalty-few authors have been more outspoken in their loyalty. Having graduated at Edinburgh and studied civil law in France (1607-8), he succeeded his father in 1610 as second laird of Hawthornden-a perfect home for a poet. In all Scotland there are few more beautiful glens than the cliffs, caves, and wooded banks of the Esk at Hawthornden, hereafter to be known for Drum WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN. From the Engraving prefixed to his Works (Edinburgh, 1711). mond's sake as 'classic Hawthornden ;' and close by is the ornately sculptured Roslin Chapel, besung by Scott. Drummond was a most accomplished man, well read not merely in Greek and Latin literature, but in French, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew. In 1613 he published Tears on the Death of Maliades, or Henry, Prince of Wales. In 1616 appeared a volume of Poems: Amorous, Funerall, Divine, Pastorall, in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals, chiefly of love and sorrow. The death of his wife (1614), within a year of her marriage, was keenly felt; he did not marry again for eighteen years. Forth Feasting, a Panegyric to the King's Most Excellent Majesty (1617), congratulates James. effusively and lengthily on his revisiting his native country of Scotland. Drummond spent his life mainly between poetry and mechanical experiments the poet patented a new kind of pistol, a pike, a battering-ram, a telescope, a burning glass, an anemometer, and a condenser. He abhorred the Covenant, but was constrained to subscribe it, relieving his feelings by bitterly sar castic verses. His affection for the royal cause and the king's person was so keen that grief for the royal martyr's death hastened his own. Flowers of Zion appeared in 1623: his prose works include a History of the Five Jameses, some royalist and polemical tracts, and The Cypresse Grove, a prose meditation on death, which Professor Masson pronounces 'superlatively excellent,' insomuch that there is, he thinks, nothing of the same length superior, if anything quite equal to it, in all Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Taylor-though the style is in places laboured. Drummond was intimate with Drayton; and his friendship with Ben Jonson was cemented by a memorable visit paid to him by Jonson at Hawthornden in the winter of 1618. On the 25th of September the magistrates of Edinburgh conferred the freedom of the city on Jonson, and on the 26th of October following he was entertained by the civic authorities to a banquet. During Jonson's stay at Hawthornden, the Scottish poet kept notes of the opinions expressed by the great dramatist, and chronicled some of his foibles and failings (see page 403). It should be remembered that his notes were private memoranda, never published by himself; and their truth has been partly confirmed from other sources. Drummond's poetry is sweet rather than strong; many of his sonnets are admirable and exquisite, and, as compared with his other poems, have fewer conceits and more natural feeling, elevation of sentiment, and grace of expression. He wrote a number of madrigals, epigrams, and other short pieces, some of which are rather coarse. The purity of his language, the harmony of his verse, and the play of fancy, musical sweetness, and melancholy mysticism are conspicuous features, but his range was manifestly limited. With more energy and force of mind he would have been a greater favourite with Ben Jonson-and with posterity. He shows pronounced traces of Italian influence; but he was more sensitive to natural scenery than any of his contemporaries, and he was one of the first to see and record the beauty of a snow-clad hill. From 'Forth Feasting.' [bright, What blustring Noise now interrupts my Sleep? |