Withdraw thy face, then are they troubled sair, Thair breath by thee received, sone dois them kill; Syne they returne into thair ashes bair. But, notwithstanding, Father deare, in cace As earth does tremble, mountains reikis, afraid. To Jehoua I all my life shall sing, To sound his name I ever still shall cair: It shall be sweit my thinking on that king; In him I shall be glaid for ever mair. O let the wicked be into no whair In earth. O let the sinful be destroyde, Blesse him my soule who name Jehoua bair O blesse him now with notts that are enjoyde SONNET. We find, by proof, that into every age Fulfill'd their countries with their works divi In tongue Italic, in a sugar'd style, And to the circled skies his name did raise; For he, by poems that he did compile, Led in triumph love, chasteness, death, and fa But thou triumphs o'er Petrarch's proper na ROBERT AYTON. BORN 1570- DIED 1638. SIR ROBERT AYTON, a younger son of Andrew Ayton, of Kinaldie, Fifeshire, was born there in the year 1570, and studied at St. Leonards College, St. Andrews, where he took his master's degree after the usual course of study, in 1588. Subsequently he resided for some time in France; whence in 1603 he addressed an elegant panegyric in Latin verse to King James, on his accession to the throne of England. On his appearance at court he was knighted, and appointed one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber and private secretary to the queen, Anne of Denmark. At a later period Ayton was secretary to Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I. About 1609 he was sent by James as ambassador to the Emperor of Germany with the king's "Apology for the Oath of Allegiance," which he had dedicated to all the crowned heads of Europe. During Ayton's residence abroad, as well as at the court of England, he lived in intimacy with, and secured the esteem of, the most eminent persons of his time. "He was acquainted," says Aubrey, "with all the wits of his time in England; he was a great acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Hobbes of Ma bury, whom Mr. Hobbes told me he made us together with Ben Jonson, for an Aristar when he made his epistle dedicatory, for translation of Thucydides." Ben Jo seemed proud of his friendship, for he Drummond of Hawthornden that Sir R loved him (Jonson) dearly. Sir Robert Ayton died in London in M 1638, and was buried in Westminster A where a handsome monument was erect his memory by his nephew. The inscri is in Latin, and his bust in bronze; i looks there is as much of the gentleman a genius. His monument is near that of F V. The brass head of the humble poet i safe and unmutilated; while the silver of the hero of Agincourt fell a victim t value of its material: it was melted dow Cromwell's parliament to assist in payin army! The courtier poet's song to his for mistress is one of the sweetest and happi our early compositions. It was on this that Burns bestowed a Scottish dress, a once he failed to improve upon the original. | oured, like Buchanan, to make the world feel It did not admit of emendation. The English his genius in a language which only a few can poems of Ayton, for the first time published understand. A critic says, "I cannot underin the Miscellany of the Bannatyne Club, are stand how a man can hope to write felicitously few in number, but of great merit, and remind out of his mother tongue; by what spell is he us of the elegant productions of Herrick. to be possessed with all the proverbial turnJohn Aubrey remarks “that Sir Robert Ayton ings and windings of language, all those meltwas one of the best poets of his time;" and ings of word into word-those gradations of adds the more important testimony that "Mr. meaning direct and implied, which give a John Dryden has seen verses of his, some of deeper sense than they seem to bear, and the best of that age, printed with some other assist in the richness and the strength of comAyton was also the writer of verses position. The language may be learned and in Greek and French, as well as in English words may be meted out in heroic or lyric and Latin. Several of his Latin poems are quantities by the aid of a discreet ear; but preserved in the work called Delitiæ Poet- such verses will want the original flavour of arum Scotorum, which was printed at Ams native poetry-the leaf will come without the terdam the year previous to his death. fragrance, and the blossom without the fruit." A privately-printed edition of Ayton's poems, with a memoir prepared from original sources of information by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL. D., was issued in 1871. verses. It is sad to think that the poet who could charm us with such songs in his native tongue should have poured the stream of his fancy into the dark regions of Latin verse, and lab ON WOMAN'S INCONSTANCY. I lov'd thee once, I'll love no more, Thine be the grief as is the blame; What reason I should be the same? Nothing could have my love o'erthrown, When new desires had conquer'd thee, Not constancy, to love thee still. Yet do thou glory in thy choice, Thy choice of his good fortune boast; I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice To see him gain what I have lost; THE ANSWER. Thou that loved once, now loves no more, Apostasy thou dost maintain. A choice well made no change admits- Say that she had not been the same, Can thou take virtue's name in thee? True love has no reflecting end, The object good sets it at rest, And noble breasts will freely lend Without expecting interest. 'Tis merchants' love, 'tis trade for gain, To barter love for love again: 'Tis usury, yea, worse than this, For self-idolatry it is. Then let her choice be what it will, Let constancy be thy revenge; If thou retribute good for ill, Both grief and shame shall check her change; Thus may'st thou laugh when thou shalt see Remorse reclaim her home to thee; And where thou begg'st of her before, She now sits begging at thy door. The morning rose, that untouch'd stands, Such fate ere long will thee betide, When thou hast handled been awhile! And I will sigh, while some will smile, 1 Altered by Burns into the song "I do confess that thou art fair;" and from another of Ayton's, beginning "Should old acquaintance be forgot, And never thought upon," father was assassinated by a kinsman, Robert Kerr younger of Cessford. He was one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber who attended James VI. on his accession to the throne of England. In 1619 he became involved, either through family connection or friendship, in a violent quarrel which arose between the Maxwells and Johnstones respecting the wardenship of the western marches, and received a he took the idea of a song especially dear to all Scotch- challenge from Charles Maxwell to meet him men. -ED. in single combat. Although his adversary was a perfect giant, and he himself had scarcely | through the intercession of friends, he was recovered from a long illness, he promptly restored to his place at court. In 1624 he accepted the challenge, consulting his honour addressed the following letter to his friend rather than his safety. It required all his Drummond:-"Every wretched creature knows skill to sustain the onset of his huge antago- the way to that place where it is most made of, nist, a bold and impetuous man, but he at and so do my verses to you, that was so kind length ran him through the body. Having to the last, that every thought I think that now closed, they both fell, Maxwell being way hastens to be at you. It is true I get uppermost; but in a few minutes he breathed leisure to think few, not that they are cara his last, leaving Kerr covered with his blood. because rara, but indeed to declare that my The friends of the deceased are said to have employment and ingine concur to make them, acquitted Sir Robert of all blame, yet so strict like Jacob's days, few and evil." "The best were the laws established by the king for the is, I care as little for them as their fame; yet if prevention and punishment of duels, that he you do not mislike them, it is warrant enough was obliged to escape to Holland, where he for me to let them live till they get your remained for about a year. There is a letter doom. In this sonnet I have sent you an from William Drummond, the poet, to Sir approbation of your own life, whose character, Robert on the subject of his duel, with which however I have mist, I have let you see how our readers cannot fail to be interested. Philo- I love it, and would fain praise it, and indeed sophically and with much kindness he thus fainer practise it." The poem thus diffidently reprehends his rashness and temerity:-" It introduced has had a more fortunate career was too much hazarded on a point of honour. than was contemplated by its author. It is Why should true valour have answered fierce the beautiful sonnet which follows this notice, barbarity; nobleness, arrogancy; religion, im- and is unfortunately the only specimen of his piety; innocence, malice,-the disparagement poetical powers extant. On the accession of being so vast? And had ye then to venture Prince Charles in 1625 he was promoted to be to the hazard of a combat, the exemplar of a lord of the bedchamber, and in 1633 was virtue and the Muses' sanctuary? The lives raised to the peerage by the titles of the Earl of twenty such as his who has fallen in hon- of Ancrum and Lord Kerr of Nesbit. Unlike our's balance would not counterpoise your own. many persons who owed everything to King Ye are too good for these times, in which, as Charles, the earl continued his steady adherent in a time of plague, men must once be sick, during all his trials and troubles, and on his and that deadly, ere they can be assured of death again took refuge in Holland, where he any safety. Would I could persuade you in spent the remainder of his days. He died in your sweet walks at home to take the prospect 1654, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. In of court shipwrecks." Park's edition of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors there is a portrait of the Earl of Ancrum, assigning him a thoughtful and strongly-marked countenance. During his exile he employed himself in the collection of pictures which he afterwards presented to Prince Charles. At the end of a year, PRAISE OF A SOLITARY LIFE.1 Sweet solitary life! lovely dumb joy, Never acquainted with the world's vain broils, That need'st no warnings how to grow more wise When the whole day to our own use we spend, By other men's mishaps, nor the annoy The morning's second mansion, truth's first friend, This beautiful and sweetly plaintive sonnet, and the interesting letter which accompanied it (to Drummond of Hawthornden), must be considered as ornamental to this or to any other publication. - Thomas Park's Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors. And our dear time no fierce ambition spoils. Nor none of falsehood's savoury lies dost hear; sense, Nor its sad cure-dear-bought experience. WILLIAM ALEXANDER, an eminent statesman and poet, was born on the estate of Menstrie, near Stirling, in 1580. His original station in life was that of a small landed proprietor or laird. While still young he accompanied the Earl of Argyll abroad as his tutor and travelling companion. Previous to this period, when only fifteen years of age, he was smitten with the charms of a country beauty, "the cynosure of neighbouring eyes," and on his return to Scotland his passion had suffered no abatement. His first poems were addressed to his mistress, and though he actually penned a hundred songs and sonnets in her praise the lassie was not to be moved. She gave her hand to another; and as Alexander poetically tells us, "the lady, so unrelenting to him, matched her morning to one in the evening of his age." In his next attachment he was more fortunate, and after a brief courtship married the daughter and heiress of Sir William Erskine. In 1604 his first volume of poems was published in London under the title of "Aurora, containing the first Fancies of the Author's Youth." Shortly after James VI. ascended the throne of England Alexander followed him, and, it appears, soon obtained the place of gentleman of the privy chamber to Prince Henry, to whom he had addressed a poem or paraenesis. In 1607 he published some dramatic poems, entitled Monarchick Tragedies, dedicated to the king, with which was republished his first tragedy, founded on the history of Darius. In 1613 Alexander was appointed gentleman-usher to Prince Charles. In 1614 he received the honour of knighthood from James, who used to call him his "philosophic poet," and was made master of requests. The same year he published a sacred poem entitled "Doomsday, or the Great Day of Judgment,” his largest and perhaps most meritorious production, which has been several times republished. It is divided into twelve parts, or hours, as the author calls them, each hour containing upwards of one hundred stanzas. Prefixed were some complimentary verses by his friend Drummond of Hawthornden, which thus conclude: "Thy phoenix muse still wing'd with wonder flyes Praise of our brookes, staine to old Pindus springs, And who thee follow would, scarce with their eyes Can reach the sphere where thou most sweetly sings, Though string'd with starres, heavens, Orpheus' harpe enrolle, More worthy thine to blaze about the Pole." Drummond on another occasion described Alexander as "that most excellent spirit and rarest gem of our north," and Drayton coupled them in highly eulogistic verse: "So Scotland sent us hither for our own That man whose name I ever would have known I want extremely. Yet in speaking thus 1 Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents. Edinburgh, 1873, three vols.-ED. |