The greater part of Mr Horsley's various unfinished works, correspondence, and
other manuscripts, fell after his death into the hands of the late John Cay, Esq.
of Edinburgh, great-grandson of Mr Robert Cay, an eminent printer and publisher
at Newcastle, to whose judgment in the compiling, correcting, and getting up of
the Britannia Romana, Mr Horsley appears to have been much indebted. From
these papers, as printed in a small biographical work by the Rev. John Hodgson,
vicar of Whelpington in Northumberland, published at Newcastle in 1831, the
most of the facts contained in this brief memoir were taken.
HUME, Alexander, a vernacular poet of the reign of James VI., was the second son of Patrick Hume, fifth baron of Polwarth. Until revived by the tasteful researches of Dr Leyden, the works of this, one of the most elegant of our early poets, lay neglected, and his name was unknown except to the antiquary. He had the merit of superseding those "godlie and spiritual sangis and ballatis," which, however sacred they may have once been held, are pronounced by the present age to be ludicrous and blasphemous, with strains where piety and taste combine, and in which the feelings of those who wish to peruse writings' on sacred subjects, are not outraged. The neglect which has long obscured the works of this poet, has impeded inquiries as to his life and character. He is supposed to have been born in the year 1560, or within a year or two prior to that date. Late investigators have found that he studied at St Andrews, and that he may be identified with an Alexander Hume, who took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at St Leonard's college of that university in the year 1574. The outline of his farther passage through life is expressed in his own words, in his epistle to Mr Gilbert Moncrieff, the king's physician. He there mentions, that, after spending four years in France, he was seized with a desire to become a lawyer in his own country, and he there draws a pathetic picture of the miseries of a briefless barrister, sufficient to extract tears from half the faculty.
"To that effect, three years or near that space,
I haunted maist our highest pleading place
And senate, where great causes reason 'd war;
My breast was bruisit with leaning on the bar;
My buttons brist, I partly spitted blood,
My gown was trail'd and trampid quhair I stood ;
My ears were deif d with maissars cryes and din
Quhilk procuratoris and parties callit in."
Nor did the moral aspect of the spot convey a more soothing feeling than the physical. He found
"The puir abusit ane hundredth divers waves;
Postpon'd, deffer'd with shifts and mere delayes,
Consumit in gudes, ourset with grief and paine."
From the corrupt atmosphere of the law, he turned towards the pure precincts of the court ; but here he finds that
"From the rocks of Cyclades fra hand,
I struck into Charybdis sinking sand."
He proceeds to say that, "for reverence of kings he will not slander courts," yet he has barely maintained his politeness to royal ears, in his somewhat vivid description of all that the calm poet experienced during his apprenticeship at court.
"In courts, Montcrief, is pride, envie, contention,
Dissimulance, despite, disceat, dissention,
Fear, whisperings, reports, and new suspition,
Fraud, treason, lies, dread, guile, and sedition ;
