SOURCE: Kastner, L. E. Introduction to The Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden, With ‘A Cypresse Grove,’ edited by L. E. Kastner, pp. xv-xliv. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1913.

[In the following excerpt, Kastner provides an overview of Drummond's life and works, discussing the poet's literary influences, his modest critical following, and the derivative nature of his verses.]

To the most unobservant reader of Drummond's poetry it is at once evident that his verse is wholly exotic. It shares that character with the poetry of his Scottish contemporaries and immediate predecessors. It is no exaggeration to say that the poetry produced in Scotland, during the close of the sixteenth century and the early years of the seventeenth century, is not Scottish at all, except in the sense that the authors of it were born in Scotland. This is true of Sir Robert Ayton, Sir David Murray of Gorthy, Sir William Alexander of Menstrie and others, and still more so of Drummond of Hawthornden. The reasons are not far to seek; the bitter quarrels of prelate and presbyter at the time of the Reformation in Scotland acted like a blight on native poetry; the Scottish idiom was gradually replaced by the vernacular of England as a means of literary expression, till it became the aim of all poets who wanted a hearing to write in as pure English as they could compass. Poetry written in Scotland ceased as a national art, and with the Union of the crowns in 1603, and the consequent removal of the court to London, the Scottish Muse, now only wooed by certain of the gentry of the land, became for the time but a lowly follower in the retinue of her brilliant English sister.

There was also the competition of Latin which at that time was still looked upon in Scotland by many as the normal vehicle for poetic utterance.¹ But besides English influence other external factors continued to operate on the literature of Scotland. The ties of friendship which bound her to her old ally, though sadly weakened, were still a force to be reckoned with, and the fashion of sending Scottish youths to France, in order to complete their education there, had not ceased in Drummond's time, especially among the Royalist party. French literature, which had but lately burst into renewed splendour in the works of Ronsard and his associates, could not fail to compel the attention of the Scottish poets, many of whom had been educated or had travelled extensively on the continent. James VI. himself, who liked to pose as a Maecenas, openly avowed discipleship to the French, and encouraged the small band of poets and poetasters, who had learnt to look to him as an authority in such matters, to turn to France for literary sustenance. Even Alexander Montgomerie, the last of the Scottish “Makaris,” while still adhering to the Scots vernacular, was largely an exotic poet in his choice of rhythms, and in his cultivation of the sonnet on the French and Italian pattern. Great as was the French influence on his predecessors it reached its climax in the poetry of Drummond, owing in great part to certain circumstances in his education.

William Drummond was the son of John Drummond, the first Laird of Hawthornden and his wife Susannah Fowler. He was born at Hawthornden, some little distance from Edinburgh, on December 13, 1585. In 1590 the poet's father was appointed Gentleman-Usher to the Scottish King; and about the same time his uncle, William Fowler, was made private secretary to the Queen. Thus we see that the young Scot grew up in close touch with the Scottish court. After leaving school he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh, recently founded in 1582, where he graduated M.A. in July 1605. The sole teaching of the University then was in Arts and Theology, and as it was his father's desire that he should become a lawyer, William was sent abroad to pursue his studies in that direction. Before the end of the year 1606 we find him in France, where he remained throughout 1607 and 1608, alternating between Bourges, renowned at that time for its Law School, and Paris, prosecuting the study of general literature, with much greater assiduity than that of jurisprudence. In 1610 his father died, and young Drummond, at the age of twenty-four, found himself the master of Hawthornden, and possessed of sufficient means to choose his own course of life. His mind being already of a contemplative and studious turn, it is not surprising that he immediately abandoned all thoughts of Law, and decided in favour of literature and a quiet life in picturesque Hawthornden. There he remained all his life, writing and meditating, undisturbed, save by the religious and political strifes of Scotland, making occasional more or less protracted sojourns in England or on the continent, when his peace was too seriously menaced. He died on December 4, 1649, his death being hastened, so his early biographer tells us, by his excessive grief for the execution of Charles I.²

Proof that Drummond was an accomplished French scholar is amply afforded by the contents of the library he had collected by 1611, and of which he has left an account in eight separate lists or “tables.” His collection consisted then of some 250 volumes in Latin, 120 in French, 61 in Italian, 8 in Spanish, 11 in Hebrew, and only 50 in English. The proportions in the different languages are instructive; they show plainly that Drummond's reading in French was wide and varied, and that he must have had no uncommon knowledge of the language and literature of that country. To this collection he added steadily, as we may gather from later lists of his books recorded in the Hawthornden Manuscripts, and from the catalogued donation³ which he made to the University of Edinburgh in 1627, with subsequent additions in 1628 and 1630. With the help of these various records it is not difficult to realise the nature and extent of Drummond's reading in French. Poetry of the first half of the sixteenth century is represented by the works of Jean Le Maire de Belges and of Clément Marot, Le Différent du Corps et de l'Esprit of François Habert, Les Marguerites of Marguerite de Navarre, the Amadis of Nicolas de Herberay. Coming to the Pléiade and their followers, we note the poetical works of Pontus de Tyard, of Peletier du Mans, of Jean de la Péruse, Les Jeux Rustiques of Du Bellay, practically the whole of Ronsard's poetic output, including the Amours, the Odes, the Franciade, the Bocage Royal, the Eclogues et Mascarades, the Elégies, the Hymnes, and the Discours des Misères de ce temps; the Amours of Baïf, the poems of Jean de la Taille, of Odet de la Noue, of Philippe Desportes, of Passerat, of Mesdames des Roches, as well as the complete works of Du Bartas, and the Quatrains and Plaisirs de la Vie Rustique of Pibrac; the tragedies of Jodelle and those of Garnier, the Regulus of Jean de Beaubreuil and the comedies of Larivey. Of contemporary French poets Drummond had also read the works of Bertaut and of Du Perron, Le Sireine of Honoré d'Urfé, Le Recueil de toutes pièces of Théophile de Viau; Les Muses gaillardes and Le Parnasse satyrique, besides sundry other anthologies of that period. The most important prose works figuring in the lists are the whole of Rabelais, the Institution Chrestienne of Calvin, the Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre, all the chief works of Henri Estienne, the Essais of Montaigne, the Traité de la Sagesse of Pierre Charron, the Traité de la Philosophie des Stoïques of Guillaume du Vair, the Commentaires of Monluc, the Satire Ménippée, the Recherches de la France and the Monophile of Estienne Pasquier, the Dialogues of Tahureau, the Lettres missives et familières of Estienne du Tronchet, the Bigarrures et Touches of Tabourot, several of the works of Du Plessis-Mornay, the Amours de Cléandre of Nicolas de Montreux, the Discours politiques of François de la Noue, and several others.

Although Drummond's reading in the French poets of the sixteenth century was so extensive, a glance at the examples quoted in the notes at the end of these volumes will show that his preferred models were Ronsard, Desportes, Pontus de Tyard, and Passerat. Ronsard especially was his favourite, we may conclude, from the large number of his works he possessed, and from the copious extracts he entered in his commonplace-book; and Desportes seems to have come next in the Scottish poet's affection. In preferring Ronsard and Desportes he was merely following the predilection of his predecessors and masters the Elizabethan sonneteers. Recent investigations have shown⁴ sufficiently how great was the debt of the Elizabethan sonneteers to Desportes; and Lodge's statement in his Margarite of America that Desportes' poetical writings were “ordinarily in everybody's hands” is a clear proof of that French poet's popularity in England at the time. The repeated recurrence on the part of Drummond to the works of a poet who, like Ronsard, enjoyed European reputation during the latter part of the sixteenth century occasions little surprise, especially if it is borne in mind that when the young Scot first visited France the fame of Ronsard, though declining, was by no means yet spent. Subsequently, at the time of Drummond's full literary activity, Ronsard's name was well-nigh forgotten in England and almost eclipsed in France, but the same cannot be said of other countries.⁵ It is not so easy to understand the influence, restricted though it may be, exercised on him by Pontus de Tyard, one of the lesser stars of the Pléiade, and the author of the Erreurs Amoureuses (1549-1554), a collection of sonnets with a few miscellaneous pieces interspersed. Apart from the importance in the history of French literature of the date of Tyard's collection, the first book of which appeared at the close of 1549, a few months after Du Bellay's L'Olive, it has little to recommend it to the lover of poetry. Drummond was, not improbably, attracted by that combination of philosophic thought and spiritual love which Pontus de Tyard had imbibed from the Délie of Maurice Scève, and which he further reinforced by studying and translating the Dialoghi di Amore of Leo Hebraeus. His partiality to Jean Passerat, exemplified in his numerous borrowings from him, dates back no doubt to the time when the young poet was a student in France, at the Universities of Paris and Bourges, with both of which Passerat had had close relations.⁶ Possibly his attention was drawn to Passerat by the fact that the latter's complete poetical works appeared in two almost simultaneous editions in 1606, the very year that Drummond arrived in Bourges.

It would have been strange indeed if the Scottish poet, addicted as he was to the transmutation of foreign material into his poetry, could have resisted the attraction of the famous Guillaume de Salluste, seigneur du Bartas, at a time when the author of the Weeks was undoubtedly more largely read in England than in his native country. There is evidence that Drummond had read Du Bartas, or at least a portion of his works, as early as 1609. In a letter written three years later, describing his first meeting with Alexander of Menstrie, and alluding to the latter's Doomesday, which had not yet appeared in print, he says of his new acquaintance: “This much I will say, and perchance not without reason, dare say, if the heavens prolong his days to end his Day he hath done more in one Day than Tasso did all his life, and Bartas in his two Weeks, though both the one and the other be most praiseworthy.” Now this passage reproduces almost verbatim the words which Simon Goulart, the commentator of the Sepmaines, ascribes to Ronsard after the publication of the first Sepmaine: “M. du Bartas a plus faict en une sepmaine que je n'ai faict en toute ma vie.” A detail of this kind, insignificant in itself, argues great familiarity with the writings of the Huguenot poet and all that concerns them.⁷ Drummond had also read Sylvester, and though he had no great opinion of his first-hand attempts, he praises his translations from Du Bartas unstintingly. His admiration for the French poet took concrete form in more than one poem of the Flowres of Sion. However, except in a certain passage of the “Shadow of Judgment” in that collection, describing the three Furies, his imitation of Du Bartas is pervasive rather than specific, though plain enough to anyone acquainted with the French poet's manner.

The list we have given does not by any means exhaust Drummond's creditors in France. A Cypresse Grove for example, owes a good deal to Montaigne and to Charron, and a not inconsiderable number of the shorter poems are traceable to other French poets than those mentioned; but in no case is the imitation sufficiently marked to call for special comment here.

The Scottish court poets being followers of the Elizabethan sonneteers and of their French contemporaries, both of which were steeped in Italian literature, inevitably fell under the spell exercised by Petrarch and his numerous votaries in the sixteenth century. Italian poetry affected them just as powerfully as it did the French and English poets. It is already apparent in the collections of sonnets and in the translations of William Fowler (who it may be recalled was Drummond's maternal uncle) and of Stewart of Baldines,⁸ and is manifest in the new forms and manner practised by Montgomerie, David Murray of Gorthy, and especially William Alexander of Menstrie. In the case of Drummond of Hawthornden, however, it is so remarkable that it would be impossible, as far as we know, to quote a parallel in the whole of English literature. Not only is the number of poems conveyed by him directly from Italian extraordinary in itself, but he is impregnated to such an extent with Italian sentiment and Petrarchan conceits, that there is hardly an idea or simile, in his sonnets particularly, that could not be matched in Petrarch, or in his Italian or foreign disciples.

The contents of Drummond's library show that his reading in Italian was hardly less comprehensive than in French. He had on his shelves the Divine Comedy of Dante, the Rime of Petrarch, and the sonnets “fatti ad imitatione del Petrarcha” of Benedetto Zino, the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto and his Rime, the Rime of Sannazaro, Bembo, Della Casa, Cesare Caporali, Luigi Groto, the Nvove Fiamme of Lodovico Paterno; all the important works of Torquato Tasso, including the complete Rime, the Rinaldo, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the Gerusalemme Conquistata, the tragedy Il Re Torrismondo, the Mondo Creato, and the Aminta; the Rime and the Pastor Fido of Guarini, the Contrasto Amoroso of Muzio Manfredi; collections of madrigals by Lelio Capilupi, Francesco Contarini, Muzio Manfredi, Cesare Rinaldi, Mauritio Moro, and Casone. He had also read and studied, of contemporary Italian poets, the whole of the Rime of Giambattista Marino, the Creazione del Mondo of Gaspare Murtola, and the Poemetti of Gabriele Chiabrera. In prose, he possessed the Filocopo and the Fiammetta of Boccaccio, the Arcadia of Sannazaro, the Suppositi of Ariosto, the Cortegiano of Baldassare Castiglione, the Asolani of Bembo, the Circe of Gelli, the Dialoghi of Pietro Aretino, the Prose of Bembo, the Battaglie per la difesa dell' italica lingua of Muzio, the Dialoghi of Sperone Speroni and those of Claudio Tolomei, the Lettere Amorose of Girolamo Parabosco, the Civil Conversazione of Guazzo, etc. His library included likewise much Italian literature in French and in English translations, which he no doubt found very useful when he wished to avoid too great literalness.

Drummond's preferred models among the Italian poets were Torquato Tasso, Guarini, and above all his contemporary Giambattista Marino, though he by no means confined his attention to this brilliant trio. His preference for Tasso, whom in one of his poems he apostrophises as “Rome's greatest wonder,” and for Guarini, is not difficult to understand; they were the two greatest Italian poets of the later sixteenth century, and both were widely read in England and in France in certain circles. When Drummond began to write poetry, of living Italian poets the most conspicuous was undoubtedly Marino, the apostle of a new poetic style which goes by the name of “Marinism.” The Scottish poet no doubt was attracted by Marino's gorgeous style and by his extraordinary wealth of expression, but more, we think, on account of a certain metaphysical tendency, which finds expression in some of the best of Marino's religious compositions, and which was perfectly in keeping with the Scotchman's own way of thinking. His dependence on Torquato Tasso and Guarini is conspicuous enough. His indebtedness to Marino, however, is still more striking, twenty of his poems at least having already been referred to that source, many of them being literal translations. The Italian influence is also betrayed by a predilection for such typical Italian forms as the sonnet, the madrigal, and the sestina. All this is sufficiently obvious, as is also the arrangement in two parts of his love-poems on the model of Petrarch's Rime.

Though the influence exercised by Italian literature on the poetry of Drummond is certainly remarkable, it is not wholly unexpected. It is the extent of it which is surprising. From the day that Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey introduced a new manner of poetry from Italy, save for a considerable break till we reach Spenser, the English poets were always powerfully attracted by the charms of the Italian Muse. This influence was particularly potent in the last two decades of the sixteenth century when the literature of the Elizabethan age was at its height; and continued to make itself felt, in a different form, in the Jacobean period. On the other hand, the Spanish poets were strangely neglected, in spite of frequent political relations between the two countries …

But Drummond was to all intents and purposes an Elizabethan in his conception of the poetic art; he did not share the indifference of his predecessors as regards Spanish poetry, but he shared their views. He too looked upon Boscán and Garcilaso as the two representative poets of Spain; he cites them together, and he read them, or at least Garcilaso, with so much delight and sympathy, that he could not resist the temptation of adapting several of their compositions—without acknowledgment as usual. This is an interesting fact which has hitherto been altogether overlooked, and which constitutes a not unimportant addition to the scanty debt which English literature owes to that of Spain. Drummond, however, differed from the Elizabethans in that he knew Spanish well; his library comprised, besides the combined poetical works of Boscán and Garcilaso, the Cárcel de Amor, the Celestina, the Dial of Princes and the Familiar Epistles of Guevara, the Guía de Pecadores of Granada, the Diana of Montemôr, the Galatea of Cervantes, the Arcadia and the Rimas Humanas of Lope de Vega, and various anthologies.

It has already been mentioned that his masters in England were the Elizabethans, the sonneteers principally. Of these his favourite was undoubtedly Sir Philip Sidney. W. C. Ward was the first, it appears, to instance a number of passages and single verses in which Sidney's influence is unmistakable, and to point out Drummond's habit of skilfully weaving Sidney's very phrases into the web of his own verse. To the instances gathered by Ward a substantial addition must be made. David Masson has also shown that the Scottish poet transplanted two powerful passages from Shakespeare into his own poetry without any acknowledgment. These, together with the numerous loans from Sidney, suggest that he may have extended this mode of exploitation to other poets. Our researches, however, have not corroborated the suspicion we once entertained that a large number of the striking lines in his poems were stolen property, and that he had systematically, pen in hand, ransacked his favourite poets, jotting down the finest verses for incorporation in his own poetry. This he undoubtedly did in the case of Sidney; practically all the outstanding verses of Astrophel and Stella⁹ can be paralleled in Drummond's sonnets. He was likewise a fervent admirer of Sidney's Arcadia, and to it he is indebted in almost equal measure, particularly in the longer poems. The other Elizabethan sonneteers he had also read and studied; he notes that the sonnets of Shakespeare have lately been published; praises those of his friend Sir William Alexander and those of Daniel; declares that Drayton “seemeth rather to have loved his Muse than his Mistress”; and makes the startling assertion that Spenser's Amoretti are “so childish” that they cannot very well be the work of so distinguished a poet. Constable's Diana he knew by report only, and Lodge's Phyllis he notes as having been read by him in the year 1611. To all these, however, he owes very little, except perhaps a reminiscence or two from Spenser's Amoretti, or from Alexander's Aurora.¹⁰

Before passing on to the second part of this inquiry, it may be added in conclusion that Drummond was also indebted to the poets of the Anthology, and to the Neo-Latin writers of France, Italy, and Scotland. In his lists of books we have noticed the Africa and the De Contemptu Mundi of Petrarch, the De Ætna of Bembo, the Macaronicorum Libri III. of Merlinus Coccaius, the Hymni of Pico della Mirandola and of Marullus, the Poemata of Pontanus, Basinius, Flaminius, and Castiglione; the Zodiacus Vitæ of Marcellus Palingenius, the De Mutatione Rerum of Cardanus, the Juvenilia of Beza and of Muret; various collections of Latin verse by Barclay, Melissus, Adrien de Turnèbe, Joachim du Bellay and Daniel Heinsius; the Nihil of Passerat, the Epigrammata of John Owen, the Basia of Ayton, and the complete Latin works of Arthur Johnston. From the Neo-Latin poets he borrowed the matter of several of his epigrams and other short pieces, and Castiglione's Latin elegy on the death of Alcon served as his model for the pastoral elegy on the death of Sir Anthony Alexander.

In his day Drummond hardly enjoyed the amount of celebrity one would expect, partly no doubt because of his retiring disposition, and perhaps also because he wrote far from the capital. None of his works had a wide circulation. Of his contemporaries, Drayton, who kept up a friendly correspondence with him for a considerable time, had a high opinion of his poetic powers. Sir William Alexander of Menstrie, to whom he was united by the bonds of the closest friendship, naturally looked favourably upon the productions of one he might with some reason claim as a disciple. Sir David Murray of Gorthy, another compatriot, was the first in a laudatory sonnet prefixed to the advance issue of the Poems, to point to that quality of “sweetness,” which has since been inseparably associated with Drummond's name as a poet.

Even a judge so difficult to satisfy as Ben Jonson, while making some characteristic reservations, thought well on the whole of the Laird's verse, if indeed implicit faith can be attached to his words as set down by Drummond in the Conversations: “His censure of my verse was: That they were all good, especiallie my Epitaphe of the Prince, save that they smelled too much of the Schooles, and were not after the fancie of the tyme; for a child (sayes he) may writte after the fashion of the Greeks and Latins verses in running; yett that he wished, to please the King, that piece of Forth Feasting had been his owne.” It is somewhat difficult to reconcile this statement with the following pronouncement, likewise recorded in the Conversations, according to which Jonson “cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to Sonnets; which he said were like that Tirrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short.” If Ben “cursed” Petrarch, he could not very well bless his Scottish friend.

In 1656 Drummond's collected poems were printed for the first time with a preface by Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew. In this preface Phillips writes: “To say that these Poems are the effects of a genius the most polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although it be a commendation not to be rejected (for it is well known that that country hath afforded many rare and admirable wits), yet it is not the highest that may be given him; for, should I affirm that neither Tasso, nor Guarini, nor any of the most neat and refined spirits of Italy, nor ever the choicest of our English Poets, can challenge to themselves any advantage above him, it could not be judged any attribute superior to what he deserves, nor shall I think it any arrogance to maintain that among all the several fancies that in these times have exercised the most nice and curious judgments there hath not come forth anything that deserves to be welcomed into the world with greater estimation and applause. etc.” This document, despite its obvious hyperbole, is most interesting, and opens out more than one attractive inquiry. Here we have the first inkling of Drummond's relation to the Italian poets. Phillips, who had been brought up and educated by his uncle, was in all probability well acquainted with Italian literature. In this part of his studies he could have had no better guide than Milton, whose long sojourn in Italy had enabled him to perfect his knowledge of a language and literature which he had already studied in his youth. May it then not be that Phillips, allowing for some exaggeration on his own part, is recording his uncle's estimate of Drummond's work as well as his own? There appears to be no doubt that the author of Paradise Lost was a reader of Drummond; and we are inclined to believe that he communicated his interest and admiration to his nephew. However, what concerns us more particularly is that Phillips actually mentions by name two of the Scottish poet's principal Italian creditors—Tasso and Guarini. This significant and suggestive mention seems to have been overlooked by subsequent writers on Drummond. Among modern critics the appreciation of Charles Lamb,¹¹ mainly because of the eminence of the author, deserves special attention: “The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.” The Laird of Hawthornden is here in good company, and the English essayist cannot be accused of having meted out praise with a grudging hand. Southey, Hallam, and others whose voice carries authority, have spoken of the Scotchman's sonnets as indubitably among the best in the English language, after those of Shakespeare and Milton, and a few of Wordsworth's. More recently David Masson, the author of the standard Life of Drummond, formulates his judgment best in the following well-chosen words: “What strikes us throughout in Drummond's pieces is the combination of a certain poetic sensuousness, or delight in the beauty of scenery, colours, forms, and sounds, with a tender and rather elevated thoughtfulness.” W. C. Ward, his latest editor, is manifestly over-generous in his appreciation, despite that he was the first to be able to take into account at least part of Drummond's debt to foreign models.

The epithets “sweet,” “contemplative,” “sensuous” have all been applied to the Scottish poet's verse. They are all more or less appropriate, but they are not of much assistance in assigning to him his proper position as a poet. In order to arrive at a more exact and definite conclusion, it is essential to judge him according to the tenets of the school to which he belonged, and in the light of recent discoveries. His whole attitude and his conception of the poet's art point unerringly to the Elizabethans and to the Ronsardists, though it is at once obvious that he lacked the freedom and plenitude of the greater of his predecessors. He is not a poet of the seventeenth century in spite of dates; from the first he represents an older school—the school of Petrarch, Ronsard, and Sidney. When he was first abroad, the Pléiade, as has already been pointed out, though seriously menaced and fast losing ground, was still a force; but on his second long visit to the Continent, between 1625 and 1630, he found the exact and “correct” Malherbe triumphant and reprobating Ronsard and his belated followers for their liberties. This ascendency of “prose and reason,” and fault-finding with revered masters, appears to have roused the Scottish poet's indignation. In a letter addressed to his friend Dr. Arthur Johnston, the famous Latinist, he writes, in answer to some queries put to him about poetry, in a tone which leaves little doubt that he is aiming at Malherbe and his innovations: “In vain have some Men of late (Transformers of every Thing) consulted upon her Reformation, and endeavoured to abstract her to Metaphysical Ideas and Scholastical Quiddities, denuding her of her own Habits, and those Ornaments with which she has amused the World some Thousand Years. Poesy is not a Thing that is yet in the finding and search, or which may be otherwise found out. … Neither do I think that a good Piece of Poesy, which Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Petrarch, Bartas, Ronsard, Boscan, Garcilasso (if they were alive, and had that Language) could not understand. … What is not like the Ancients and conform to those Rules which hath been agreed unto by all Times, may (indeed) be something like unto Poesy but it is no more Poesy than a Monster is a Man.” His adherence to the last to a school that had seen its day helps to understand, though it does not explain altogether, why he did not write any more poetry after 1623. He seems to have felt unconsciously that his Muse was now a stranger in the land.

To Drummond's masters the whole poetic scheme was founded on imitation. Was not the basis of Du Bellay's poetic evangel imitation? They all preached and practised it, French and English, as well as Italian and Spanish, following in the wake of the Angevin's Deffence, which had sounded like a call to arms, at least on both sides of the Channel. Howbeit, it is essential to understand what this new school really meant by what they called “imitation.” They did not attribute to the term the same meaning that we Moderns do, or the same value. The spokesman of the Pléiade has made his meaning plain in more than one passage of his celebrated manifesto. The poet was urged to imitate the Ancients,—and with hardly less emphasis the Italians,—but only in the sense that he must absorb and digest their ideas and forms to his own use, converting them into flesh and blood.¹² He might adopt the images, the turns, and even the thoughts of his model, provided he breathed into them his own individual spirit. …

In a considerable number of his poems Drummond may fairly claim to have assimilated his models. This is especially true of his borrowings from the French sonneteers, as the following example will show. In his Erreurs Amoureuses Pontus de Tyard had written:

Sont-ce ces prez où ma Déesse affable,
          Comme Diane allaigrement troussée,
          Chantoit un chant de ma peine passée,
          Et s'en rendoit soy-même pitoyable?
Est-ce cest Orme, où d'un riz aimable,
          Disant, A dieu gloire de ma pensée,
          Mignardement à mon col enlacée,
          Elle me fut d'vn baiser fauorable?
Et deà, où est (ô prez defleurez) donq
          Le beau tappiz, qui vous ornoit adonq?
          Et l'honneur gay (Orme) de ta verdure?
Languissez vous pour ma Nymphette absente?
          Donques sa veuë est elle assez puissante,
          Pour, comme moy, vous donner nourriture?

Here is Drummond's version, typical of how he could change a somewhat colourless canvas into a glowing picture:

Are these the flowry banks? is this the mead
Where she was wont to pass the pleasant hours?
Did here her eyes exhale mine eyes salt showrs,
When on her lap I laid my weary head?
Is this the goodly elm did us oerspread,
Whose tender rine cut out in curious flowrs
By that white hand, contains those flames of ours?
Is this the rustling spring us music made?
Deflourishd mead where is your heauenly hue?
Bank, where that arras did you late adorn,
How look ye elm all withered and forlorn?
Only sweet spring nought altered seems in you:
          But while here chang'd each other thing appears,
          To sour your streams take of mine eyes these tears.

The same is true of many of his borrowings from the Italian and Spanish poets.

In another equally graceful sonnet the Scottish poet apostrophises the Nymphs in these words:

Nymphs, sister nymphs which haunt this crystal brook,
And (happy) in these floating bowers abide,
Where trembling roofs of trees from sun you hide,
Which make ideal woods in every crook,
Whether ye garlands for your locks provide,
Or pearly letters seek in sandy book,
Or count your loves when Thetis was a bride?
Lift up your golden heads and on me look.
Read in mine eyes mine agonising cares,
And what ye read recount to her again:
Fair nymphs, say all these streams are but my tears,
And if she ask you how they sweet remain,
          Tell that the bittrest tears which eyes can pour,
          When shed for her do cease more to be sour.

The original, by Garcilaso, leaves little doubt that the pupil has at least equalled the master:

Hermosas ninfas, que en el río metidas,
          Contentas habitáis en las moradas
          De relucientes piedras fabricadas
          Y en colunas de vidro sostenidas;
Agora estéis labrando embebecidas,
          O tejiendo las telas delicadas;
          Agora unas con otras apartadas,
          Contándoos los amores y las vidas;
Dejad un rato la labor, alzando
          Vuestras rubias cabezas á mirarme,
          Y no os detendréis mucho según ando;
Que ó no podréis de lástima escucharme,
          O convertido en agua aquí llorando,
          Podréis allá de espacio consolarme.

Cardinal Bembo, celebrating the charms of a quiet country life, far from the vulgar throng and the world's discords, penned the following sonnet:

Lieta e chiusa contrada; ov' io m' involo
          Al vulgo, e meco vivo, e meco albergo;
          Chi mi t' invidia hor, ch' i Gemelli a tergo
          Lasciando scalda Phebo il nostro polo?
Rade volte in te sento ira ne duolo:
          Nè gli occhi al ciel sì spesso e le voglie ergo;
          Nè tante carte altrove aduno e vergo,
          Per levarmi talhor, s' io posso a volo.
Quanto sia dolce un solitario stato,
          Tu m' insegnasti; e quanto haver la mente
          Di cure scarca, e di sospetti sgombra.
O cara selva e fiumicello amato
          Cangiar potess' io il mar e 'l lito ardente
          Con le vostre fredd' acque e la verd' ombra.

Taking up again the same theme, Drummond refashions it as follows:

Dear wood, and you sweet solitary place,
Where from the vulgar I estranged live,
Contented more with what your shades me give,
Than if I had what Thetis doth embrace:
What snaky eye grown jealous of my peace,
Now from your silent horrors would me drive?
When Sun progressing in his glorious race
Beyond the Twins, doth near our pole arrive.
What sweet delight a quiet life affords,
And what it is to be of bondage free,
Far from the madding worldlings' hoarse discords,
Sweet Flowry place I first did learn of thee:
          Ah! if I were mine own, your dear resorts
          I would not change with princes' stately courts.

His relation to the foreign prototype is not always so easy to determine; a sonnet may be remoulded into a poem of quite a different form. Thus the piece with the rubric Astrea in Vrania:

Astrea in this time
Now doth not live, but is fled up to heaven;
Or if she live, it is not without crime
That she doth use her power,
And she is no more virgin, but a whore,
Whore prostitute for gold:
For she doth never hold her balance even,
And when her sword is roll'd,
          The bad, injurious, false, she not oerthrows,
          But on the innocent lets fall her blows.

is a transmutation of the antepenultimate sonnet of Marino's Rime Morali:

Quanto da quel di pria Francesco mio
          Varia è la nostra età. Più, qual solea,
          Non alberga fra noi la bella Astrea,
          Ma con l' altre compagne al Ciel sen gio.
O se pur vive in questo secol rio,
          Non è (qual dianzi fu) Vergine Dea,
          Ma meretrice mercenaria, e rea,
          Corrotta da vilissimo desio.
Le lance, use a librar l' humana sorte
          Con giusta legge, hor da l' usanze prime
          Per troppo ingorda passion son torte.
E la spada, ch' al Ciel dritta, e sublime
          Volgea la punta, in giù rivolta hor morte
          Minaccia al' egro, e l' innocente opprime.

These are characteristic examples of Drummond at his best. By the side of such pieces, there are many in which, while retaining his usual felicity of diction, he is little more than a translator, but a very skilful one. The following sonnet, likewise borrowed from Marino, will serve as an example:

Beneath a sable veil, and shadows deep,
Of unaccessible and dimming light,
In silence' ebon clouds more black than night,
The worlds great King his secrets hid doth keep:
Through those thick mists when any mortal wight
Aspires, with halting pace, and eyes that weep,
To pore, and in his mysteries to creep,
With thunders he and lightnings blasts their sight.
O Sun invisible, that dost abide
Within thy bright abysms, most fair, most dark,
Where with thy proper rays thou dost thee hide;
O ever-shining, never full-seen mark,
          To guide me in life's night, thy light me show,
          The more I search of thee, the less I know.

The Italian original is as follows:

Sotto caliginose ombre profonde
          Di luce inaccessibile sepolti,
          Tra nembi di silentio oscuri, e folti,
          L' eterna Mente i suoi secreti asconde.
E s' altri spia per queste nebbie immonde
          I suoi giudici in nero velo avolti,
          Gli humani ingegni temerari, e stolti,
          Col lampo abbaglia, e col suo tuon confonde.
O invisibil Sol, ch' a noi ti celi
          Dentro l' abisso luminoso, e fosco,
          E de' tuoi propri rai te stesso veli;
Argo mi fai, dov' io son cieco e losco,
          Nela mia notte il tuo splendor riveli,
          Quando t' intendo men, più ti conosco.

This beautiful sonnet—and it is far from being the only one—illustrates with what care he picked his models to suit his moods and temperament; so that frequently the spirit of the original as well as the letter is borrowed. The Scottish poet knew that gold as well as dross could be found in the pages of the prolific author of L' Adone.¹³

A full third of Drummond's compositions are translations or close paraphrases, and betray in no uncertain manner the imitative temper of his Muse. The rest are best described as adaptations from foreign models. Though the source of a small number of them has not yet been revealed, we may reasonably expect that one day the totality of his poems, with few exceptions, will be found to have been composed according to a given pattern, more or less vividly present in the poet's mind. All claim to originality he must forgo; when Ward writes that “the many productions of his pen which are wholly original afford ample proof that it was not from poverty of invention that he became a borrower,” we see ourselves compelled to impugn, nay to traverse, that judgment, not forgetting that his recent editor was unaware that the Scottish poet had drawn from so many varied sources.

Sufficient has been said, we think, to arrive at a more exact determination of Drummond's position in the hierarchy of English poetry. In one half roughly of his verse he may justly lay claim to a high rank as a poet of the school of imitation; he adapted, but his adaptations are impregnated with a charm essentially his own, and clothed in a form well-nigh impeccable. Nevertheless, even as an imitative poet, he cannot pretend to the highest rank; for that, his range is too limited, confined as it is to some hundred and thirty sonnets, about the same number of madrigals and epigrams, and less than a score of longer pieces. In his remaining poetic achievement Drummond is an imitator pure and simple, writing with a specific model before him, and producing verse which, distinguished as it is by exquisite diction and perfect craftsmanship, can nevertheless be regarded only as the exercises at vacant hours of a gifted poetic artist.

Notes

1. See Delitiæ Poetarum Scotorum, published at Amsterdam, in 1637.

2. The standard biography of Drummond is David Masson's Drummond of Hawthornden. The Story of his Life and Writings, London, 1873. The Memoir by Bishop Sage, introducing the folio edition of 1711, is the principal early authority for the poet's life.

3. The books presented by Drummond to his Alma Mater are still preserved in a separate cabinet in the University of Edinburgh, though several of them have disappeared. The original donation of 1627 consists of about 500 volumes in various languages, with some manuscripts. A Latin catalogue, with a preface by Drummond himself, accompanied the gift. Auctarium Bibliothecœ Edinburgenœ, sive Catalogus Librorum quos Gulielmus Drummond ab Hawthornden Bibliothecœ D.D.Q. Anno 1627, is the title of this little volume of 48 pages, printed at Edinburgh by the successors of Andro Hart.

4. See the Introduction to Sir Sidney Lee's Elizabethan Sonnets. London, 1907. Also Max Maiberger, Studien über d. Einfluss Frankreichs auf d. Elizabethan Literatur. Frankfurt a. M., 1903, and our articles in the Modern Language Review (April 1908, and January 1909), and in the Athenœum, October 22, 1904.

5. In Germany and Holland more especially, and to a less degree in Italy, the works of the chief of the Pléiade were read eagerly and imitated during the whole time that Drummond was writing poetry, and when Ronsard's verses in his own native land were perused by a few conservative country gentlemen only. Opitz, both in theory and practice, took him as his chief model in his attempt to reform German poetry; a large number of passages in the Buch von der deutschen Poeterey are copied verbatim from Ronsard's Art Poëtique or from his prefaces to the Franciade, and a still larger proportion of his poems are translations or paraphrases of his French predecessor's work, while others are skilfully tessellated with passages picked here and there from Ronsard's poetry. P. Melissus, G. R. Weckherlin, and other poets of the group of German writers associated with Opitz, were also fervent admirers of the “grand Vendômois.” In Holland, D. Heinsius, in his Nederduytsche Poëmata (1618), frequently imitated the same model. In Italy, during the vogue of Marinism, Marino himself borrowed the matter of more than one of his poems from the same source, and Ronsard was the only modern foreign poet, besides Garcilaso de la Vega, for whom the admiring Italian found a niche in his Galleria.

6. After having been a Professor at the colleges of Plessis and of Boncourt in Paris, Passerat in 1565 entered the University of Bourges as a law student, and followed there the lectures of the renowned Cujas. In 1572 he succeeded Ramus as Royal Professor of Eloquence in the Collège de France.

7. See Georges Pellissier, La Vie et les Œuvres de Du Bartas. Paris, 1883, p. 277.

8. For the cultivation of the sonnet among the Scottish poets of the reign of James VI. see pp. xliii-xlvii of George Stevenson's Introduction to the supplementary volume of the Poems of Alexander Montgomerie, published (1910) by the Scottish Text Society. Two volumes of manuscript poetry by Fowler, including a translation of Petrarch's Trionfi, and a sonnet-cycle entitled The Tarantula of Love, consisting of 71 sonnets, are in the Edinburgh University Library, to which they were presented by the poet Drummond. Stewart of Baldines is the author of Ane Abbregement of Roland Furïous translated out of Ariost, and of some 33 sonnets, both preserved in manuscript form in the Advocates' Library.

   We understand that the Scottish Text Society has in hand editions of Fowler and of Stewart of Baldines.

9. There is a copy in Drummond's hand of Astrophel and Stella, among the books which he presented to the University of Edinburgh.

10. For more details on Drummond's English books, see David Laing's memoir in Archæologia Scotica, iv. p. 73 et seq.

11. The Last Essays of Elia, 1833, p. 49.

12. Du Bellay's exact words (Deffence, i. 7) are: “Se transformant en eux, les devorant, et, apres les avoir bien digerez, les convertissant en sang et nouriture.” Estienne Pasquier, following Seneca (Epist. LXXXIV.), says the same thing, at greater length, in his thirty-seventh Letter: “Quand je vous parle de l'art, ce ne sont point les préceptes que je vous ai ci-devant touchés: la lecture d'un quart d'heure d'iceux peut rendre en ce sujet le lecteur aussi savant que je suis; mais bien une longue étude des auteurs grecs, latins, italiens, et de ceux qui ont quelque nom en notre vulgaire. Je veux que celui qui désire être bon poëte français alambique d'eux un bon suc, dont il façonnera ses écrits; je veux que, comme l'abeille, il suçotte leurs fleurs, pour en former son miel, non pas qu'il en soit quitte pour habiller à la française les inventions étrangères, comme j'en vois quelques-uns l'avoir fait avec une honte effacée (cela ne peut procéder que d'un esprit cacochyme); il faut qu'en lisant il se fasse riche aux dépens de celui qui, en lui prêtant, ne lui prêtera rien, même empruntera de lui telle chose à quoi l'auteur n'avait pensé, par une taisible suggestion et rencontre de leurs bons naturels; que ce soit une bonne digestion, dont il fera un corps solide, sans rendre les viandes indigestes, et ainsi qu'il les aura prises. S'il gagne cet avantage sur lui et sur nous qu'adonc il lui soit permis de mettre la main à la plume, et nous communiquer ses écrits.” Ben Jonson, in his Discoveries (ed. Castellain, p. 125), expresses his view in similar terms: “The third requisite in our Poet, or Maker, is Imitation, to bee able to convert the substance or Riches of another Poet, to his owne use. To make choise of one excellent man above the rest, and so to follow him, till he grow very Hee; or so like him, as the Copie may be mistaken for the Principall. Not, as a Creature, that swallowes, what it takes in, crude, raw, or undigested; but that feeds with an Appetite, and hath a Stomacke to concoct, devide, and turne all into nourishment. Not, to imitate servilely, as Horace saith, and catch at vices, for vertue, but to draw forth out of the best, and choisest flowers, with the Bee, and turne all into Honey, worke it into one relish, and savour: make our Imitation sweet: observe, how the best writers have imitated, and follow them. How Virgil, and Statius have imitated Homer: how Horace, Archilochus; how, Alcaeus, and the others Liricks: and so of the rest.”

13. Probably Drummond's natural bent towards imitation was strengthened by the example of his favourite Italian poet. In the preface to La Lira Marino writes “Non si nega, che quasi tutti i Poeti tanto antichi quanto moderni, eziando i più eccellenti, non abbiano usato di rubarsi l' un l' altro, e troppo sarebbe chi volesse farne minuto racconto. Ma chi ruba, e non sa nascondere il suo furto, merita il capestro; e bisogna saper ritignere d' altro colore il drappo della spoglia rubata, acciò che non sia con facilità riconosciuto.” Unfortunately Marino did not succeed, any more than Drummond, in hiding his thefts. In the sonnets alone, he borrows from the Humanists (especially Pontanus), from the Quattrocento (Serafino, Tebaldeo), from the Cinquecento (Tansillo, Tasso, Guarini), from Marot, and from Lope de Vega. In the longer pieces, and in L' Adone, his debt is no less marked.