of his contemporaries." The instances given of our author's pleasantry in this
way are any thing but well chosen, and their authenticity may be questioned.
We may continue the quotation, and present the following, not certainly for its
merit, but for the pleasure of the association which it gives rise to, and as the
only remaining trait which a scanty biography has left us to notice. "Being
at London, it is very creditably reported of him (though by some ascribed to
others) that he peeped into the room where Sir William Alexander, Sir Robert
Kerr, Michael Drayton, and Ben Jonson, these famous poets, were sitting.
They desired Bo-peep, as they called him, to come in, which he did. They fell
a rhyming about paying the reckoning ; and all owned their verses were not
comparable to his, which are still remembered by the curious:—
'I, Bo-peep,
See you four sheep,
And each of you his fleece.
The reckoning is five shilling ;
If each of you be willing
It's fifteen pence a piece.' ''
We have already alluded to several of Drummond's productions,—his "Cypress Grove," his history, and his "Irena,"—and must now briefly refer to those on which his fame as a poet is founded. They consist principally of sonnets of an amatory and religious cast; a poem of some length entitled "The river of Forth feasting;" and "Tears on the death of Moeliades," anagrammatically Miles a Deo, the name assumed in challenges of martial sport by Henry, prince of Wales, eldest son of king James VI. This last piece was written so early as 1612. As a panegyric it is turgid and overcharged; but it has been referred to by more than one critic as displaying much beauty of versification.
The sonnet, about this time introduced into our literature, must be supposed to owe somewhat of the favour it received to the elegant and discriminatino taste of Drummond. He had a perfect knowledge of Italian poetry, and professed much admiration for that of Petrarch, to whom he more nearly approaches in his beauties and his faults, than we believe any other English writer of sonnets. This, however, refers more particularly to his early muse, to those pieces written before his own better taste had dared use an unshackled freedom. We shall give two specimens, which we think altogether excellent, of what we consider Drummond's matured style in this composition. The first is one of six sonnets entitled " Urania, or Spiritual Poems ;" and the second (already transiently alluded to) is a sonnet addressed by the poet to his lute. The first, per- haps, refers to what Drummond considered the political unhappiness or degradation of his county, though, in truth, it may be made answerable to the state of humanity at all times; the second, to the well known catastrophe of his first love, and accordingly it has its place among the sonnets professedly written on that topic.
I.
What hapless hap had I for to be born
In these unhappy times, and dying days
Of this now doting world, when good decays;-
Love's quite extinct and Virtue's held a scorn I
When such are only priz'd, by wretched ways,
Who with a golden fleece can them adorn ;
When avarice and lust are counted praise,
And bravest minds live orphan-like forlorn!
