Lecture the Eleventh. ALEXANDER SCOT-SIR RICHARD MAITLAND-ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY-ALEXANDER HUME-GEORGE BUCHANAN-JAMES THE SIXTH-SIR ROBERT AYTONEARL OF ANCRUM-EARL OF STIRLING-WILLIAM DRUMMOND-DOCTOR ARTHUR JOHNSTON-SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE. HAVING, in the last lecture, closed our remarks upon the English mis cellaneous poets who graced the age of Elizabeth and her immediate successors, we now pass to notice briefly their contemporaneous bards in Scotland, where the muses were not wholly neglected. There was, however, so little intercourse between the two nations at this time, that the works of the English poets seem to have been comparatively unknown in the north, and to have had no Scottish imitators. The country was then in a rude and barbarous state, tyrannized over by the nobles, and torn by internal feuds and dissensions. In England, the Reformation had proceeded. from the throne, and was accomplished without violence or disorder; but in Scotland it uprooted the whole form of society, and was marked by fierce contentions and lawless turbulence. The absorbing influence of this ecclesiastical struggle was altogether unfavorable to the cultivation of poetry. It shed a gloomy spirit over the nation, and almost proscribed the study of romantic literature. The drama, which in England was the nurse of so many fine thoughts, so much stirring passion, and beautiful imagery, was shunned as a leprosy, fatal to both religion and morality. The very songs in Scotland partook of this religious character; and so widely was the polemical spirit diffused, that ALEXANDER SCOT, the earliest poet of this period, in his New Year Gift to the Queen, in 1562, says— That trimmer lads and little lasses, lo, Will argue baith with bishop, priest, and friar. The history of Scot's life is so little known, that neither the date of his birth, nor the period of his death, has been preserved. He wrote several short satires, and some other miscellaneous poems, the prevailing amatory character of which has caused him to be called the Scottish Anacreon, though there are many points wanting to complete his resemblance to the Teian bard. As a specimen of his talents, we present the following piece: TO HIS HEART. Hence, heart, with her that must depart, Nor have the heart that does me pain; See that thou come not back again, Sen she that I have servit lang, Fra she be gone, heartless am I; Though this belappit body here Be bound to servitude and thrall, My faithful heart is free inteir, And mind to serve my lady at all. Sen in your garth3 the lily whyte May not remain amang the lave, Adieu the flower of haill delyte; Adieu the succour that may me save And lamp of ladies lustiest! My faithful heart she sall it have, Deplore, ye ladies clear of hue, Her absence, sen she must depart, That wounded be with luvis dart, As weil as I, therefore at last Do go with mine, with mind inwart, And bide with her thou luvis best. Contemporary with Scot, lived Maitland, Montgomery, Hume, and Buchanan, the last of whom distinguished himself equally in both prose and verse, but is particularly celebrated for the purity and classic elegance of his Latin poems. SIR RICHARD MAITLAND was born at Lethington, in 1496. Rather. * Garden. He passed 2 Competent; had it in my power 4 Embrace. an active life as a judge and statesman, and during his latter years he relieved the duties of his official station by composing some moral and conversational pieces, and by collecting into the well-known manuscript that bears his name, the best productions of his contemporaries. Maitland's familiar style reminds us of that of Lyndsay. His death occurred in 1586, when he was in his ninety-first year. The following satire will well reward the labor of a careful perusal : SATIRE ON THE TOWN LADIES. Some wifis of the borrowstoun And of fine silk their furrit clokis, Their wilicoats maun weel be hewit, Their woven hose of silk are shawin, With gartens of ane new maneir Sometime they will beir up their gown Their collars, carcats, and hause beidis !4 Their shoon of velvet, and their muilis! And some will spend mair, I hear say, 1 Wot, or know not 3 Attire. 2 Spend. 4 Beads for the throat. Nor wald their mothers in ane yeir. Between them, and nobles of blude, ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY, of whose history little has been preserved, was known as a poet of reputation as early as 1568, but his principal work, The Cherry and the Slae, was not published until 1597. 'The Cherry and the Slae' is an allegorical poem, representing virtue and vice. The allegory is defective, but some of Montgomery's descriptions are lively and vigorous, and the stylo of verse adopted in this poem was afterward followed by Burns. Divested of some of the antique spelling, parts of the poem seem as modern, and are as smoothly versified as the Scottish poetry of a century and a half later. To illustrate this remark we need only take the following sample: The cushat crouds, the corbie cries, The jargon of the jangling jays, The turtle wails on wither'd trees, Repeating, with greeting, How fair Narcissus fell, By lying and spying His shadow in the well. I saw the hurcheon and the hare 1 Crv till their eyes become red. The hart, the hind, the dae, the rae, The bearded buck clamb up the brae The air was sober, saft, and sweet, Had trinkled mony a tear; The which like silver shakers shined, Wherewith their heavy heads declined Some knoping, some dropping Of balmy liquor sweet, Excelling and swelling Through Phoebus' wholesome heat. ALEXANDER HUME, of the Humes of Polwarth, was brought up to the legal profession, but abandoning the law, he became a clergyman of the stern Puritan faith. He was the minister of Logie, where he died in 1609, but at what age is uncertain, so that the period of his birth can not be ascertained. Hume published,in 1599, a volume of Hymns or Sacred Songs, the most finished of which is the 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 whole poem. It opens as follows: O perfect light, which shed away And set a ruler o'er the day, Thy glory when the day forth flies, The shining sun is clear. The shadow of the earth anon Removes and drawis by, Syne in the east, when it is gone, Whilk soon perceive the little larks, The lapwing and the snipe; And tune their song like Nature's clerks, |