Scottish Authors > William Drummond Poet 1585-1649

William Drummond was born at Hawthornden, Midlothian, in 1585, and died there in 1649. Drummond's father, Sir John, was gentleman-usher to James VI and accompanied the King to England in 1603. His mother, Susannah, was sister to the Scottish court poet, William Fowler. Traditionally, Drummond would have been regarded as a hereditary poet.
Graduating MA in 1605 at Edinburgh University, Drummond travelled to the Continent to study law. His father's death in 1610 made him laird of Hawthornden. He returned to the seclusion of his estate by the Esk, and read widely in European languages, especially Italian. He collected the works of contemporary Scots and English poets too, amassing his famous library of over 550 books which he gifted to Edinburgh University.

Rarely leaving Hawthornden, he divided his time between his poetry and his mechanical inventions. His chief poetical works are: Teares on the death of Meliades (1613) a lament on the death of Prince Henry; Poems (1616), Forth feasting (1617) for the King's visit to Edinburgh; Flowres of Sion (1623), Scotland's finest collection of divine poems in that century; To the exequies of Sir Antonye Alexander (1638), a pastoral elegy. He is also credited with the comic verses Polemo-Medinia, or "the midden-fecht", in Scots mixed with dog Latin.

The finest Scottish poet of his day, he is at his best in his sonnets, particularly in his mastery of the final couplet. He prizes a flowing smoothness, full of natural grace and passionate feeling, very ltalianate, and he loves to decorate his verse in the mannerist style. He keeps many of the features of the older Scots poetry, especially his skill in metrics and in melody. Drummond's poems express his love of creation by a dynamic control of syntax linked to metrical fluency.

Drummond was admired by his contemporaries. Through his poetry he won the friendship of poets such as Alexander, Drayton and Jonson. Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations at Hawthornden give evidence of a congenial friendship and a stimulating freedom of speech.

He tried to avoid political involvement, but in troubled times he had to appear before covenanting committees and defend his writings, which he did on the basis of liberty of opinion. He refused an instruction "to ravage and plunder the more peaceable neighbours about". He sympathised with Montrose, and in 1645 Montrose, at the head of the royalist army, issued orders that Drummond, and Hawthornden, were specially protected. Drummond wrote his essay, Irene, as a plea for peace.

Men thirled to the fortunes of the court or of the battlefield, like Kerr or Montrose, looked to Drummond as their ideal personified, the"happy man" in the classical sense, who led a life which they hoped to emulate some day.

Drummond can be regarded as the first Scots poet to write in English, the forerunner of a tradition extending to today's Morgan or MacCaig. His poetry claims descent from the old Scots court poetry, but it looks to Europe and his literary boundaries overshoot those of nationality. He is part of European literature, his style developing the work of Bembo, Marino and Tasso.

Valerie Gillies

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