Nor did many men do more to bring the city to love our worship than he did. But there was so little superstition, and so much reason and gentleness in his way of explaining things, that malice was long levelled at him, and in conclusion broke out fiercely on him.

"I preached his funeral sermon, in which I gave a character of him which was so severely true, that I perhaps kept too much within bounds, and said less than he deserved. But we had lived in such friendship together, that I thought it was more decent, as it always is more safe, to err on that hand. He was the man of the truest judgment and best temper I had ever known; he had a clear head, with a most tender and compassionate heart; he was a faithful and jealous friend, but a gentle and soon-conquered enemy; he was truly and seriously religious, but without affectation, bigotry, or superstition; his notions of morality were fine and sublime; his thread of reasoning was easy, clear, and solid; he was not only the best preacher of the age, but seemed to have brought preaching to perfection; his sermons were so well liked and heard, and so much read, that all the nation proposed him as a pattern, and studied to copy after him; his parts remained with him clear and unclouded, but the perpetual slanders and other ill-usage he had been followed with for many years, more particularly since his advancement to that great post, gave him too much trouble and too deep a concern; it could neither provoke him, nor fright him from his duty, but it affected his mind so much that this was thought to have shortened his days." 20

In the department of poetry proper, Scotland in the seventeenth century, unlike the two preceding ones, was rather barren. Sir William Alexander, subsequently better known as the Earl of Stirling, was a writer of rhymed compositions in the reigns of James the Sixth and Charles the First. But he broke through his native dialect, and essayed to write in the

20 History of His Own Time, Voi I., pp. 324-325, 1823.

literary English of the period; his style, however, is not pure or correct. He had a good command of language, but he lacked the poetic glow, though he tried his hand at various themes; his poetry is commonplace and monotonous, and often pervaded with a moralising strain. 21

William Drummond, of Hawthornden, attained to some distinction as a poet in the first half of the century. He was a notable man in his own lifetime, having travelled abroad, residing for some time in Paris and in Rome, and visited the most celebrated universities of the continent. He corresponded with Ben Jonson and other English poets, and they recognised him as a member of their fraternity. He wrote a number of poems and sonnets, also a history of the first five James's; but the latter is not of much value, as his special information on the subject was limited and incomplete. He left behind him various political papers relating to affairs between the years of 1632 and 1646, mainly written in support of the cause of Charles the First. He died in 1649.

Drummond holds a place among the minor English poets, but represents nothing distinctively Scottish, as he wrote in the literary English of the period. His taste and culture were formed under the influences of Italian and English literature, and he seems to have shut himself out from the association and the inspiration of the vernacular. His poetry lacks fire and force, and emotional power; on the other hand, he had a cultured taste, fancy, and a command of descriptive imagery. Some of his sacred poems exhibit poetical imagery and an easy

21 Alexander's so-called "Monarchic Tragedy" was published at Edinburgh in 1603. "Thus known to James in Scotland as one of the most accomplished of his subjects there, Alexander continued after the union of the Crowns to put forth volume after volume, professedly as a British poet using the common literary tongue, vying with his English contemporaries. At length, in 1614, appeared the huge poem, in twelve cantos of heavy eight-line stanzas, entitled 'Doom's Day, or the Great Day of the Lord's Judgment'." About this time he entered the King's service, and was promoted step by step till he became Earl of Stirling in 1633.-Dr. Masson's Life of Milton, Vol I., p. 421.

flow of versification. In one of them, called "The Shadow of Death," the following lines occur:

66

'So seeing earth, of angels once the inn,
Mansion of saints, deflowered all by sin,
And quite confus'd by wretches here beneath,
The world's great sovereign moved was to wrath.
Thrice did he rouse himself, thrice from his face,
Flames sparkle did throughout the heavenly place,
The stars, though fixed, in their rounds did quake,
The earth, and earth-embracing sea did quake."

His piece composed on the King's visit to his native land in 1617, is one of his best; in it he pays a warm tribute to the King's love of peace.

But "his sonnets in particular have been praised in modern times as among the second best in the language. In his narrative and descriptive poems he is decidedly one of the English Arcadians, with something of Browne's sweet sensuousness, and using very musically the same metrical couplet. . If, as a poet of sensuous circumstance, Drummond has any one particular excellence, entitling him to a kind of pre-eminence, so far as that excellence could bestow it, among the minor poets, it is the description of the clear nocturnal sky and the effects of quiet moonlight on streams and fields"; as in these lines:

"To western worlds when wearied day goes down,

And from Heaven's windows each star shows her head,
Earth's silent daughter Night is fair though brown,
Fair is the moon though in love's livery clad." 22

With the progress of social organisation and civilisation, laws and legal writings accumulate; hence more legal literature was produced in Scotland in the seventeenth century than in the sixteenth. Sir Thomas Hope, the eminent advocate, and warm Covenanter, was the author of several well-known legal treatises, which were long esteemed among the faculty.

22 Dr. Masson's Life of Milton, Vol. I., pp. 424-425. An edition of Drummond's Poems was published in 1656; a fuller one in 1711; but the most complete edition of his poems was printed for the Maitland Club in 1832.

But the most famous writer of Scottish Jurisprudence was Viscount Stair, president of the Court of Session. 23 His chief work, "The Institutions of the Law of Scotland," was long the standard authority on legal matters. 24 He is also the author of a digest of "The Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session, in the important cases debated before them, with the Acts of Sederunt," published at Edinburgh in 1683-87. It contained a report of cases from 1660 to the month of August, 1681, and thus it has an interesting and special historical value.

But Lord Stair was the author of several other works of a different character. In 1686, he published in Latin a treatise entitled "Physiologia nova Experimentalis," which was favourably noticed by Boyle. His last publication was "A Vindication of Divine Providence, illustrating the Glory of God, by Reason and Revelation: methodically digested into several Meditations". In 1690, he published a defence of himself in a tract of four leaves.

Sir George Mackenzie, the notorious lord-advocate of the reign of Charles the Second, was a writer of reputation in his time, and a clear and vigorous thinker. He attempted various subjects. His legal writings consist of "Institutes of the Law of Scotland," "Laws and Customs in matters Criminal," "Observations on the Laws and Customs of Nations as to precedency, with the Science of Heraldry as part of the Law of Nations". Of these, the first is a well-arranged and digested treatise, but it is short and summary, and falls far behind Stair's work on the same subject. The other two contain useful information forcibly expressed.

Concerning both the knowledge and the art of medicine the civilised world was still in a backward state. The practice of

23 Born 1619, died 1696.

24 The first edition of Stair's Institutions appeared in 1681; a second edition, greatly enlarged, was published at Edinburgh in 1693; a third, corrected and enlarged, with notes, in 1759; a fourth, with commentaries and supplement by George Brodie, in 1829-31; and another, with notes and illustrations by John S. More, 1832, in two volumes.

surgery especially was very rude, even in its most elementary principles. 25 Although in this branch of science there was no great advance in Scotland, yet more interest began to be manifested in the subject, and some progress was made.

It is stated that Sir Andrew Balfour 26 first introduced the dissection of the human body into Scotland. He projected a sick hospital for the relief of pain and poverty at the public expense. He also drew up a scheme for the Royal College of I'ysicians at Edinburgh, and formed the botanic garden there. To the public he bequeathed a museum which at that time would have been considered a great acquisition to any city. Further, he introduced into Scotland many foreign plants; and as in his youth he had travelled in foreign countries, he greatly extended his information, his culture, and his experience.27

25 In the treatment of simple wounds, "instead of bringing the edges of the wound together, and endeavouring to unite them by the first intention, as is practised in the present day, the wound was filled with dressings and acid balsams, or distended with tents and leaden tubes. . . . In those days every lap of skin, instead of being reunited was cut away, and every open wound was dressed as a sore, and every deep one was filled with a tent lest it should heal." -Physic and Physicians, Vol. I., pp. 42-43.

Born 1630, died 1694.26

27 Though the Royal College of Physicians was not incorporated till 1681, it is recorded that "the doctors of physic" petitioned parliament in 1639, craving that a college of physicians should be established in Edinburgh. — Acts Parl. Scot., Vol. V., p. 283.

James Sutherland was appointed keeper of the new botanic garden in 1683. He published "A Catalogue of the Plants in the Physic Gardens at Edinburgh, containing their most proper names in Latin and in English". In the dedication of it to the Provost of Edinburgh, he says, "It has been my business for seven years past, wherein I have had the honour to serve the city as intendent over the garden, to use all care and industry, by foreign correspondence, to acquire both seeds and plants from the Levant, Italy, Spain, Holland, England, and the East and West Indies, and by many painful journeys, in all seasons of the year, to recover whatever this kingdom possesses of variety, and to cultivate and to preserve them, with all possible care”.

After Dr. Balfour's death, his library, consisting of about three thousand volumes, besides MSS., was dispersed, but his museum was placed in the hall which, till 1829, was used as the University. "There it remained many years useless and neglected, some parts of it falling into inevitable decay, and other parts being abstracted. Yet even after 1750, it still contained a considerable