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with his house, together with all his silver plate, and fine tapestry, "excepting always such part as my Lord of Dryburgh †, Mr John Preston, the master-general ‡, and my cousin, the laird of Dunnipais, have got." To Lord Erskine, his fairest jewel which he got from Henry the Great, King of France. To his wife, the fine jewel he bought in London from Sir William Lerick. "Lastly, I leive my hairt to my maister the king's majesty, maist houmblie intreating his hieness to be a patron to my wyffe, that nane doe her wrong; as also I leive unto my yonge sueitte maister the prince, my eldest sonne, and his hail briether and sister, because their greatest honor is that they were brocht up with him, in our houss: not doubting bott quen time serves, (giff thay be worthie of thaimselves,) seeing that thair father was his faithfull servant."

J. S. MARR.

+ Ancestor of the Earl of Buchan.

His third son of the second marriage, Sir Alexander Erskine, blown up at Dunglass castle, anno 1640, and died without issue.

Biography, continued.

Remarks on the character and writings of William Drummond of Hawthornden.

SIR,

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BEE.

(May 16. 1792.)

PINKERTON, a man whom the Scots are pleased to dislike because he tells them truths disagreeably, has judiciously proposed that the poems of Hawthornden should be reprinted with due selections.

I beg leave to second Mr Pinkerton's motion. I greatly and fondly cherish the memory of Hawthornden. I like his character, 'his muse, and his residence; moreover I like his companions; for I doat upon Ben Johnson, and I esteem Drayton. There are few lords now like Lord Stirling. He admired and honoured Drummond, and cherished his friendship and correspondence in the depth of retirement, when the peer was basking in the sun-shine of Whitehall, and warm in the prosecution of his trans-atlantic projects.

Among all the poets of the beginning of the last century, (writes the author of the Cursory Remarks on some of the ancient English poets, said to be Mr le Neve,) there

is not one, after Shakespeare, whom a general reader of the English poetry of that age will regard with so much and so deserved attention as William Drummond. He was born àt Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, in 1585, and was the son of Sir John Drummond, descended of the family of Stobhall, who, for ten or twelve years, was usher, and afterwards knight of the black rod to King James I. of England. The poet was educated at Edinburgh, where he took the degree of master of arts in the year 1606, and was afterwards sent by his father to study civil law at Bourges in France; but having no taste for the profession of a lawyer, he returned to Hawthornden, and there applied himself with great assiduity to classical learning and poetry.

Having courted a daughter of Cunningham of Barnes, whom he celebrates in his poems, and to whom her accomplishments, congeniality of taste, and propensity to retirement, had strongly attached him,---he was successful in his addresses, and a day was fixed for their marriage.

Soon after she was seized by an illness which proved fatal, upon which Drummond again quitted his native country, and resided eight years on the continent, chiefly at Rome: and Paris.

In the year 1630 he married Margaret Logan of Restalrig, by whom he had several children, the eldest of whom, William, was

knighted by King Charles II*. He spent very little time in England, though he corresponded frequently with Drayton and Ben Jonson; the latter of whom had so great a respect for his abilities, and so ardent a desire to see him, that at the age of forty-five he walked to Hawthornden to visit him.

The favourite seat of Ben Jonson, in the sequestered wood of Hawthornden, is yet known, and pointed out to visitors, where a bust of Jonson ought to be placed to gratify the sentimental devotion of the admirers of exalted merit.

This would add something spiritual to the strawberry feasts of Roslin, and be worthy of a precious few in that wonderful little country that produced a Drummond and a Thomson.

Ben Jonson's father too was a Scot; and it is fit that he should be honoured in the land of his fathers.

Hawthornden is a lovely spot. The house hangs like an eagle's nest on the romantic banks of Esk. The ground is classic. The genius of his plaintive sonnets meets the fan

* The heiress general of Hawthornden was married to Dr Abernethy, a non-juring bishop in Scotland of the ancient family of Abernethy of Saltoun, who presented the whole remaining manuscripts of the poet to the Earl of Buchan, who deposited them in the museum of the Antiquarian Society at Edinburgh.

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of the congenial soul. Here he addressed his Alexis, (Lord Stirling :)

Tho' I have twice been at the doors of death,
And twice found shut those gates which ever mourn
This but a light'ning is,-a truce to breathe;
For late-born sorrows augur fleet return.
Amid thy sacred cares, and courtly toils,

Alexis! when thou shalt hear wand'ring fame
Tell, death hath triumph'd o'er my mortal spoils,
And that on earth I am but a sad name:
If thou e'er held me dear, by all our love,

By all that bliss, those joys heav'n here us gave,
I conjure you, and by the maids of Jove,

To grave this short remembrance on my grave: Here Damon lies, whose songs did sometimes grace The murmuring Esk,-May roses shade the place!

Let us inquire for the venerable spot in which were placed the ashes of Hawthornden, and let these lines be sculptured on the belly of a lyre, that they may meet the eye of the traveller, Why should not this little speck of earth of ours, so near to Iceland, be warmed with something that may supply the want of better skies!

Ben Jonson, too, ought to be characterised by a suitable inscription on his seat, that the offended dignity of his name in Westminster Abbey may be worthily retrieved. O rare Ben Johnson! is an exclamation that admits too much an application to him who could only set the table in a roar, and too little to

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