page_title: William Drummond of Hawthornden
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: William Drummond of Hawthornden / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: The burial vault of William Drummond of Hawthornden, Lasswade Kirkyard
context_page_description: William Drummond, called "of Hawthornden", was a Scottish poet.
context_section_description: Drummond was born at Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian, to John Drummond, the first laird of Hawthornden, and Susannah Fowler, sister of the poet and courtier William Fowler and daughter of Janet Fockart. Sir Robert Drummond of Carnock, one-time Master of Work to the Crown of Scotland, was his grandfather.
  Drummond received his early education at the Royal High School of Edinburgh, and graduated in July 1605 as M.A. of the recently founded University of Edinburgh. His father was a gentleman usher at the English court (as he had been at the Scottish court from 1590) and William, in a visit to London in 1606, describes the festivities in connection with the visit of the king of Denmark. Drummond spent two years at Bourges and Paris in the study of law; and, in 1609, he was again in Scotland, where, by the death of his father in the following year, he became laird of Hawthornden at the early age of 24.
  The list of books he read up to this time is preserved in his own handwriting. It indicates a strong preference for imaginative literature, and shows that he was keenly interested in contemporary verse. His collection (now in the library of the University of Edinburgh) contains many first editions of the most famous productions of the age. On finding himself his own master, Drummond naturally abandoned law for the muses; "for," says his biographer in 1711, "the delicacy of his wit always run on the pleasantness and usefulness of history, and on the fame and softness of poetry". In 1612 began his correspondence with Sir William Alexander of Menstrie, afterwards Earl of Stirling, which ripened into a lifelong friendship after Drummond's visit to Menstrie in 1614.
  Drummond's first publication appeared in 1613, an elegy on the death of Henry, Prince of Wales, called Teares on the Death of Meliades (Moeliades, 3rd edit. 1614). The poem shows the influence of Spenser's and Sidney's pastoralism. In the same year he published an anthology of the elegies of Chapman, Wither and others, entitled Mausoleum, or The Choisest Flowres of the Epitaphs. In 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, appeared Poems: Amorous, Funerall, Divine, Pastorall: in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals, being substantially the story of his love for Mary Cunningham of Barns, who was about to become his wife when she died in 1615.
  The poems bear marks of a close study of Sidney, and of the Italian poets. He sometimes translates direct from the Italian, especially from Giambattista Marino. Forth Feasting: A Panegyricke to the King's Most Excellent Majestie (1617), a poem written in heroic couplets of remarkable facility, celebrates James's visit to Scotland in that year. In 1618 Drummond began a correspondence with Michael Drayton. The two poets continued to write at intervals for thirteen years, the last letter being dated in the year of Drayton's death. The latter had almost been persuaded by his "dear Drummond" to print the later books of Poly-Olbion at Hart's Edinburgh press. In the winter of 1618–1619, Drummond had included Ben Jonson in his circle of literary friends, and at Christmas 1618 was honoured with a visit of a fortnight or more from the dramatist.
  The account of their conversations, long supposed to be lost, was discovered in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, by David Laing, and was edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1842 and printed by Gifford & Cunningham. The conversations are full of literary gossip, and embody Jonson's opinion of himself and of his host, whom he frankly told that "his verses were too much of the schooles, and were not after the fancie of the time," and again that he "was too good and simple, and that oft a man's modestie made a fool of his witt". But the publication of what was obviously intended merely for a private journal has given Jonson an undeserved reputation for harsh judgements, and has cast blame on Drummond for blackening his guest's memory.
  In 1623 appeared the poet's fourth publication, entitled Flowers of Sion: By William Drummond of Hawthornedenne: to which is adjoyned his Cypresse Grove. From 1625 till 1630 D
caption: The burial vault of William Drummond of Hawthornden, Lasswade Kirkyard
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