ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY.

ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY was known as a poet in 1568; but Lis principal work, The Cherry and the Slae,' was not published before 1597.The Cherry and the Slae' is an allegorical poem, representing virtue and vice. The allegory is poorly managed; but some of Montgomery's descriptions are lively and vigorous; and the style of verse adopted in this poem was afterwards copied by Burns. Divested of some of the antique spelling, parts of the poem seem as modern, and as smoothly versified, as the Scottish poetry of a century and a half later.

1 Beads for the throat. 2 Slippers without quarters, then worn by persons of rank. 3 Cry till their eyes become red.

* Burns, in describing the opening scene of his Holy Fair, has:

The hares were hirpling down the furs.

With stiff mustachios strange.
The hart, the hind, the dae, the rae,
The foumart aud false fox;
The bearded buck clamb up the brae
With birsy bairs and brocks;
Some feeding, some dreading
The hunters subtle snares,.
With skipping and tripping.

They played them all in pairs.

The air was sober, saft, and sweet,
Nae misty vapours, wind, nor weet,

·

ALEXANDER HUME.

ALEXANDER HUME, who died, minister of Logie, in 1609, pub. lished a volume of Hymns or Sacred Songs' in the year 1599. He was of the Humes of Polwarth, and, previous to turning clergyman. had studied the law, and frequented the court; but in his latter years, he was a stern and even gloomy Puritan. The most finished of his productions is a description of a summer's day, which he calls the Day Estival.' The various objects of external nature, characteristic of a Scottish landscape, are painted with truth and clearness, and a calm devotional feeling is spread over the poem. It opens as follows:

O perfect light, which shed away

The darkness from the light,
And set a ruler o'er the day,
Another o'er the night;

Thy glory, when the day forth flies,
More vively does appear,

Nor at mid-day unto our eyes
The shining sun is clear.

The shadow of the earth anon

Removes and drawis by,
Syne in the east, when it is gone,
Appears a clearer sky.

Whilk soon perceive the little larks,
The lapwing and the snipe;

And tune their song like Nature's clerks,
O'er meadow, muir, and stripe.

The summer day of the poet is one of unclouded splendour:

The time so tranquil is and clear,

That nowhere shall ye find,

Save on a high and barren hill,
An air of passing wind.

All trees and simples, great and small,
That balmy leaf do bear;

Than they were painted on a wall,
No more they move or steir.

The rivers fresh, the caller streams
O'er rocks can swiftly rin,
The water clear like crystal beams,
And makes a pleasant din.

As

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 lume describes those working in the fields as stopping at mid-day, 'noon meat and sleep to take,' and refreshing themselves with caller wine' in a cave, and 'sallads steeped in òil.' the poet lived four years in France previous to his settling in Scotland, in mature life, we suspect he must have been 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 delight:

F. I. v. 1-9

What pleasure, then, to walk and see
End-lang a river clear,
The perfect form of every tree
Within the deep appear.

The salmon out of cruives and creels,
Uphailed into scouts,

Th bells and circles on the weills
Through leaping of the trouts.

O sure it were a scemly thing,
While all is still and calm,

The praise of God to play and sing,
With trumpet and with shalin.
Through all the land great is the gild
Of rustic folks that cry;

Of bleating sheep fra they be killed
Of calves and rowting kye.

All labourers draw hame at even,
And can to others say,

Thanks to the gracious God of heaven,
Whilk sent this summer day.

KING JAMES VI.

In 1585, the Scottish sovereign, KING JAMES VI. ventured into the magic circle of poesy himself, and published a volume, entitled 'Essayes of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesie.' Also, Ane Short Treatise containing some Rewlis and Cautelis to be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie.' Kings are generally, as Milton has remarked, though strong in legions, but weak at arguments, and the rules and cautelis' of the royal author are puerile and ridiculous. His majesty's versés, considering that he was only in his nineteenth year, are more creditable to. him, and we shall quote one, in the original spelling, from the volume alluded to:

Ane Schort Poeme on Tyme.

As I was pansing in a morning aire,

And could not sicip nor nawyis take me rest,
Furth for to walk, the morning was so faire,
Athort the fields, it seemed to me the best.
The East was cleare, whereby belyve I gest
That fyrie Titan cumming was in sight,
Obscuring chaste Diana by his light.

Who by his rising in the azure skyes,

Did dewlie helse all thame on earth to dwell.
The balmie dew through birning drouth he dryis,
Which made the soile to savour sweit aud sinell,
By dew that on the night before downe fell,
Which then was sonkit up by the Delphienus heit
Up in the aire: it was so light and weit.

Whose hie ascending in his purpour chere
Provokit all from Morpheus to flee;

As beasts to feid, and birds to sing with beir,
Men to their labour, bissie as the bee;
Yet idle men devysing did I see

How for to drive the tyine that did them irk,
By sindrie pastymes, quhile that it grew mirk.

Then woundred I to see them seik a wyle
So willingly the precious tyme to time:
And how they did themselfis so farr begvle,
To fushe of tyme, which of itself is fyne.
Fra tymne be past to call it backwart syne
Is bot in vaine: therefore men sould be warr,
To sleuth the tyme that flees fra them so farr,

For what hath man hot tyme into this lyfe,
Which gives him dayis his God aright to know?
Wherefore then sould we be at sic a stryfe,

So spedelie our selfis for to withdraw

Evin from the tyme, which is on nowayes slaw
To flie from us, suppose we fled it noght?
More wyse we were, if we the tyme had soght.

But sen that tyme is sic a precious thing,
I wald we sould bestow it into that

Which were most pleasour to our heavenly King.
Flee ydilleth, which is the greatest lat;

Bot, sen that death to all is destinat.

Let us employ that tyme that God hath send us,
In doing weill, that good men may commend us.

EARL OF ANCRUM--EARL OF STIRLING.

Two Scottish noblemen of the court of James were devoted to letters-namely, the EARL OF ANCRUM (1578-1654) and the EARL OF STIRLING (1580-1640). The first was a younger son of Sir Andrew Ker of Ferniehurst, and he enjoyed the favour of both James and Charles I. The following sonnet by the earl was addressed to Drummond the poet in 1624. It shews how much the union of the crowns under James had led to the cultivation of the English style and language:

Sonnet in Praise of a Solitary Life.

Sweet solitary life! lovely, dumb joy,

That need'st no warnings how to grow more wise,
By other men's mishaps, nor the annoy

Which from sore wrongs done to one's self doth rise.
The morning's second mansion, truth's first friend,

Never acquainted with the world's vain broils,

When the whole day to our own use we spend,
And our dear time no fierce ambition spoils.
Most happy state, that never tak'st revenge

For injuries received, nor dost fear

The court's great earthquake, the grieved truth of change,

Nor none of falsehood's savoury lies dost hear;

Nor knows hope's sweet discase that charms our sense,

Nor its sad cure-dear-bought experience!

The Earl of Stirling-William Alexander of Menstrie, created a peer by Charles I -was a more prolific poet. In 1637, he published a complete edition of his works, in one volume folio, with the title of Recreations with the Muses, consisting of tragedies, a heroic poem, a poem addressed to Prince Henry (the favourite son of King James), another heroic poem, entitled Jonathan,' and a sacred poem, in twelve parts, on the 'Day of Judgment.' One of the Earl of Stirling's tragedies is on the subject of Julius Cæsar. It was first published in 1606, and contains several passages resembling part of Shakspeare's tragedy of the same name, but it has not been ascertained which was first published. The genius of Shakspeare did not disdain to gather hints and expressions from obscure authors, the lesser lights

of the age; and a famous passage in the Tempest' is supposedthough somewhat hypercritically-to be also derived from the Earl of Stirling. In the play of 'Darius,' there occurs the following reflection:

Let Greatness of her glassy sceptres vaunt,

Not sceptres, no, but reeds, soou bruised, soon broken:
And let this wordly pomp our wits enchant,

All fades, and scarcely leaves behind a token.

The lines of Shakspeare will instantly be recalled:
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind!

None of the productions of the Earl of Stirling touch the heart or entrance the imagination. He has not the humble but genuine inspiration of Alexander Hume. Yet we must allow him to have been a calm and elegant poet, with considerable fancy, and an ear for metrical harmony. The following is one of his best sonnets:

I swear, Aurora, by thy starry eyes

And by those golden locks, whose lock none slips,

And by the coral of thy rosy lips,

And by the naked suows which beanty dyes;

I swear by all the jewels of thy mind,

Whose like yet never worldly treasure bought,
Thy solid judgment. and thy generous thought,
Which in this darkened age have clearly shined;
I swear by those, and by my spotless love,
And by my secret, yet most fervent fires,
That I have never nurst but chaste desires,
And such as modesty might well approve.
Then, since I love those virtuous parts in thee,
Shouldst thou not love this virtuous mind in me?

The lady whom the poet celebrated under the name of Aurora, did not accept his hand, but he was married to a daughter of Sir William Erskine. The earl concocted an enlightened scheme for colonising Nova Scotia, which was patronized by the king, yet was abandoned from the difficulties attending its accomplishment. Stirling held the office of secretary of state for Scotland for fifteen years, from 1626 to 1641-a period of great difficulty and delicacy, when Charles attempted to establish Episcopacy in the north. He realised an amount of wealth unusual for a poet, and employed part of it in building a handsome mansion in Stirling, which still remains, the memorial of a fortune so different from that of the ordinary children of the muse.

An excellent edition of the works of the Earl of Stirling has been published by Maurice, Ogle, and Co. Glasgow, 1871.

WILLIAM DRUMMOND.

A greater poet flourished in Scotland at the same time with Stirling-namely, WILLIAM DRUMMOND of Hawthornden (1585 1649). Familiar with classic and English poetry, and imbued with true lite