Chapter Douce to Drummond of D by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

country for the African Lakes Corporation, and brought home a valuable Report. He also published Tropical Africa, a vivid account of his travels. He became much associated with the American evangelist, D.L. Moody, and became an extremely effective speaker on religious subjects, devoting himself specially to young men. His chief contribution to literature was his Natural Law in the Spiritual World, which had extraordinary popularity. The Ascent of Man was less successful. Drummond was a man of great personal fascination, and wrote in an interesting and suggestive manner, but his reasoning in his scientific works was by no means unassailable.

Drummond, William (1585-1649).—Poet, was descended from a very ancient family, and through Annabella Drummond, Queen of Robert III., related to the Royal House. Editor at Edinburgh University, he studied law on the Continent, but succeeding in 1610 to his paternal estate of Hawthornden, he devoted himself to poetry. Tears on the Death of Meliades (Prince Henry) appeared in 1613, and in 1616 Poems, Amorous, Funerall, Divine, etc. His finest poem, Forth Feasting (1617), is addressed to James VI. on his revisiting Scotland. Drummond was also a prose-writer, and composed a History of the Five Jameses, Kings of Scotland from 1423-1524, and The Cypress Grove, a meditation on death. He was also a mechanical genius, and patented 16 inventions. Drummond, though a Scotsman, wrote in the classical English of the day, and was the friend of his principal literary contemporaries, notably of Ben Jonson, who visited him at Hawthornden, on which occasion Drummond preserved notes of his conversations, not always flattering. For this he has received much blame, but it must be remembered that he did not published them. As a poet he belonged to the school of Spenser. His verse is sweet, flowing, and harmonious. He excelled as a writer of sonnets, one of which, on John the Baptist, has a suggestion of Milton.

Life by Professor Masson (1873), Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, Walker, 1893. Maitland Club edition of Poems (1832).