Drummond William

Drummond, William, of Hawthornden (1585-1649), a poet who has been called the "Scottish Petrarch." He was born at Hawthornden House, and after studying at Edinburgh University, he travelled abroad for four years, spending part of the time at Bourges in the study of the civil law. He then retired to Hawthornden, and gave himself up to poetry and literature. Ben Jonson paid him a short visit in the winter of 1618, and he made notes of Jonson's conversation, which were published in 1741. In his poems he abandoned the Scottish dialect for the Elizabethan English then in vogue. He has been thought to resemble Milton in style. Some of his chief works are the Cypress Grove (prose), a set of reflections upon death, Polemo Middenia; or, Battle of the Dunghill, and a history of the lives and reigns of the five Jameses of Scotland. His style was ornate, his views were High Church, and he was devoted to the Stuarts. Indeed, the death of Charles I. has been said to have hastened his own.