tudies of poetry and history, in both which he became
very eminent. Having relinquished all thoughts of the bar, or
appearing in public, he retired to his pleasant seat at Hawthornden,
and there, by reading the Greek and Latin authors, enriched the world
with the product of his solitary hours. After he had recovered a very
dangerous fit of sickness, he wrote his Cypress Grove, a piece of
excellent prose, both for the fineness of the stile, and the sublimity
and piety of the sentiments: In which he represents the vanity and
instability of human affairs; teaches a due contempt of the world;
proposes consolations against the fear of death, and gives us a view
of eternal happiness. Much about this time he wrote the Flowers of
Sion in verse. Though the numbers in which these poems are wrote are
not now very fashionable, yet the harmony is excellent, and during the
reign of King James and Charles I. we have met with no poet who seems
to have had a better ear, or felt more intimately the passion he
describes. The writer of his life already mentioned, observes, that
notwithstanding his close retirement, love stole upon him, and
entirely subdued his heart. He needed not to have assigned retirement
as a reason why it should seem strange that love grew upon him, for
retirement in its own nature is the very parent of love. When a man
converses with but few ladies, he is apt to fall in love with her
who charms him most; whereas were his attention dissipated, and his
affections bewildered by variety, he would be preserved from love by
not being able to fix them; which is one reason why we always find
people in the country have more enthusiastic notions of love, than
those who move in the hurry of life. This beautiful young lady, with
whom Mr. Drummond was enamoured, was daughter of Mr. Cunningham of
Barnes, of an ancient and honourable family. He made his addresses to
her in the true spirit of gallantry, and as he was a gentleman who had
seen the world, and consequently was accomplished in the elegancies of
life, he was not long in exciting proper returns of passion; he gained
her affections, and when the day of the marriage was appointed, and
all things ready for its solemnization, she was seized with a fever,
and snatched from him, when his imagination had figured those scenes
of rapture which naturally fill the mind of a bridegroom. As our
author was a poet, he no doubt was capable of forming still a greater
ideal fealt, than a man