(1585-1649)
[Illustration: WILLIAM DRUMMOND]
It seems to be the mission of many writers to illuminate contemporary
literature and so to light the way for future students, rather than to
make any vital contribution to the achievement of their time. Such
writers reflect the culture of their own day and represent its ideals;
and although their creative work may be slight, their loss to
literature would be serious. Among these lesser men stands that
sincere poet, Drummond of Hawthornden. In Scotland under the Stuarts,
when the vital energy of the land was concentrated upon politics and
theology, native literature was reduced to a mere reflection of the
pre-Spenserian classicism of England. Into this waste of correct
mediocrity entered the poetry of William Drummond, an avowed and
enthusiastic follower of the Elizabethan school, a finished scholar,
one of the typical Scottish gentlemen who were then making Scottish
history. Courtier and trifler though he was, however, he showed
himself so true a poet of nature that his felicities of phrase seem to
anticipate the sensuous realism of Keats and his successors.
William Drummond, born in 1585, was a cadet of the historic house
which in 1357 gave in marriage to King Robert III. the beautiful
Annabella Drummond, who was destined to become the ancestress of the
royal Stuarts of Scotland and England. In his own day the family,
whose head was the Earl of Perth, was powerful in Scottish affairs,
and the history of the clan Drummond would be largely a history of the
events which led to the Protectorate. Throughout the storm and stress
that preceded the civil war Drummond was a loyalist, though at one
time he appeared to be identified with the Covenanters. His literary
influence, which was considerable, was always thrown on the side of
the King, while the term "Drummondism" was a popular synonym for the
conservative policy. Throughout the struggle, however, Drummond seems
to have been forced into activity by circumstances rather than by
choice. He had the instincts of a recluse and a scholar. He delighted
in the society of literary men, and he was much engrossed in
philosophical speculations.
In spite of the difficulties of distance, he managed to keep abreast
of the thought of literary London, the London of Drayton and Webster,
of Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, and Ford. His chief satisfaction was
to know that his own work was not unacceptable to this brilliant
group, and one of the great pleasures of his life was a visit from Ben
Jonson, who, making a walking tour to Scotland, found at Hawthornden
that congenial hospitality in which his soul delighted. Of this famous
visit, as of other important events, Drummond kept a record, in which
he set down his guest's behavior, opinions, and confidential sayings.
Warmly as he admired Jonson's genius, he found his personality
oppressive, and intrusted his criticisms to his diary. When this was
published, more than a century later, the gentle Scot was accused of
bad taste, breach of confidence, and disloyalty to friendship. But his
defense lies in the fact that the book was meant for no eyes but his
own, and that the intimacy and candor of its revelations were intended
to preserve his recollections of a memorable experience.
If his environment was not entirely favorable to literary excellences,
it is yet very likely that Drummond developed the full measure of his
gift. He expressed the spirit of the more imaginative generation which
succeeded a hard and fettered predecessor, and it is for this that
literature owes him its peculiar debt.
His career began in his twenty-ninth year with the publication of an
elegy on the death of Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I.
This poem, under the title 'Tears on the Death of Moeliades,' appeared
in 1613, and reached a third edition within a twelvemonth. Its two
hundred lines show the finished versification of the scholar, with
much poetic grace. It was a product of the Spenserian school, and
emphasized the fact that the representative literature of the land had
abandoned the Scottish dialect for English forms. Drummond's second
volume of poems commemorated the death of his wife and his love of
her. It is in this work that the ultimate mood of the poet appears.
Much beauty of form, a delightful sensitiveness to nature, a
luxuriance of color, and a finely tempered thoughtfulness pervade the
poems. His next production, celebrating the visit of James I. to his
native land, was entitled 'Forth Feasting,' and represented the Forth
and all its borders as rejoicing in the presence of their King. To the
reader of to-day the panegyric sounds fulsome and the poetry stilted,
and the once famous book has now merely an archaic interest.
Drummond's reputation is based upon the 'Poems,' and upon the
Jeremy-Taylor-like 'Cypress Grove,' published in 1623 in connection
with the religious verses called 'Flowers of Sion.' 'Cypress Grove'
is an essay on death, akin in spirit to the religious temper of the
Middle Ages, and in philosophic breadth to the diviner mood of Plato.
Only a mind of a high order would have conceived so beautiful and
lofty a meditation on the Final Mystery. This brief essay marks the
utmost reach of Drummond's mind, and shows the strength of that serene
spirituality, which could thus hold its way undisturbed by the
sectarian bitterness that fixed a great gulf between England and
Scotland. 'The History of the Five Jameses,' which Drummond was ten
years in compiling and which was not published until six years after
his death, added nothing to his reputation. It lacked alike the
diligent minuteness of the chronicler and the broader view of the
historian. Many minor papers on the state of religion and politics,
chief of which is the political tract 'Irene,' show Drummond's
aggressive interest in contemporary affairs. It is not generally known
that this gentle scholar was also an inventor of military engines. In
1626 Charles I. engaged him to produce sixteen machines and "not a few
inventions besides." The biographers have remained curiously ignorant
of this phase of his activity, but the State papers show that the King
named him "our faithful subject, William Drummond of Hawthornden." He
died in 1649, his death being hastened, it was said, by his passion of
grief over the martyrdom of King Charles.