Huge treasures to enjoy,

Of all her gems spoil Ind,

All Seres' silk in garments to employ,

Deliciously to feed,

The phoenix' plumes to find

To rest upon, or deck your purple bed;

Frail beauty to abuse,

And, wanton Sybarites,

On past or present touch of sense to muse;

Never to hear of noise

But what the ear delights,

Sweet music's charms, or charming flatterer's voice.

Nor can it bliss you bring,

Hid Nature's depths to know,

Why matter changeth, whence each form doth spring;

Nor that your fame should range,

And after-worlds it blow

From Tanais to Nile, from Nile to Gange.

All these have not the power

To free the mind from fears,

Nor hideous horror can allay one hour,

When death in stealth doth glance,

In sickness lurks or years,

And wakes the soul from out her mortal trance.

"Who such a life doth live

You happy even may call

Ere ruthless Death a wishéd end him give; And after then when given,

More happy by his fall,

For humanes' earth, enjoying angels' heaven.

"Swift is your mortal race,

And glassy is the field;

Vast are desires not limited by grace:

Life a weak taper is;

Then while it light doth yield,

Leave flying joys, embrace this lasting bliss."

This when the nymph had said,

She dived within the flood,

Whose face with smiling curls long after staid; Then sighs did zephyrs press,

Birds sang from every wood,

And echoes rang, "This was true Happiness."

After a recovery from severe illness Drummond sent these lines

TO SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER.

With the Author's Epitaph.

Though I have twice been at the doors of death,

And twice found shut those gates which ever mourn,
This but a light'ning is, truce ta'en to breathe,
For late-born sorrows augur fleet return.

Amidst thy sacred cares, and courtly toils,
Alexis, when thou shalt hear wandering fame
Tell, Death hath triumph'd o'er my mortal spoils,
And that on earth I am but a sad name;

If thou e'er held me dear, by all our love,
By all that bliss, those joys heaven here us gave,
I conjure thee, and by the maids of Jove,
To grave this short remembrance on my grave:
Here Damon lies, whose songs did sometime grace
The murmuring Esk:-may roses shade the place.

Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, born in 1580, was about five years older than Drummond. He also was a poet, and had been in favour with James VI. before he became James I. of England. In 1621 he received a grant of Nova Scotia, which he was to colonise at his own expense. He lived until 1640, was made Secretary of State for Scotland, and otherwise honoured. As poet, he is, perhaps, best known for his four Monarchic Tragedies, but he published at Edinburgh, in 1614, a long poem in octave rhyme, entitled "Doomsday, or the Great Day of the Lord's Judgment," of which there was a London edition in 1637. It is divided into Twelve Hours, and was perhaps inspired by the poem of Du Bartas on the Seven Days of creation; one poet tells of the beginning of the world, the other of its end. The first hour of Doomsday declares God proved in His works, tells of the sin of man and of temporal plagues and judgments that have been as figures of

the last. The second hour tells of signs and wonders before the sounding of the last trumpet call. The theme of the third hour is the descent of Christ to judgment and the end of the world. In the fourth hour the trumpet sounds and the dead rise. In the fifth hour trial of souls begins, and in this hour and the sixth and seventh the heathen, the creature worshippers, those whom ambition led through blood, those who lived sensually, the false judges and the learned, above all the Churchmen, who abused their gifts, are accused. With the eighth hour begins the record of the souls who stand in triumph. First come the patriarchs, priests, and prophets, faithful to God, though knowing Christ only in types and figures. Then in the ninth hour come the evangelists, apostles, and those who knew Christ in the flesh; then the first martyrs and early Fathers of the Church. In the tenth hour there is the parting of the evil from the good :-

Thus helpful alms, the offering most esteemed,
Doth men on th' earth, the Lord in heaven content,
How many are, if time might be redeemed,
Who wish they thus their revenues had spent?
If this on th' earth so profitable seemed,
What usurer would for others' gains be bent?
But would the poor with plenty oft supply,
Though they themselves for want were like to die.

Those who, affecting vain ambition's end,
To gain opinion muster all in show;
And, prodigal, superfluously spend
All what they have, or able are to owe,

For pleasures frail, whilst straying fancies tend,
As Paradise could yet be found below:

Still pamp'ring flesh with all that th' earth can give,
No happiness more seek but here to live;

Those if not gorgeous who do garments scorn,
And not in warmness but for cost exceed,
Though as of worms they have the entrails worn,
Worms shall at last upon their entrails feed;
Those dainty tastes who, as for eating born,
That they may feast strive appetite to breed,

And, curious gluttons, even of vileness vaunt,
Whilst surfeiting when thousands starve for want.

The world's chief idol, nurse of fretting cares,
Dumb trafficker, yet understood o'er all,
State's chain, life's maintenance, load-star of affairs,
Which makes all nations voluntar'ly thrall,
A subtle sorcerer, always laying snares;
How many, Money, hast thou made to fall!
The general jewel, of all things the price,
To virtue sparing, lavish unto vice.

The fool that is unfortunately rich,

His goods perchance doth from the poor extort,
Yet leaves his brother dying in a ditch,
Whom one excess, if spar'd, would well support;
And, whilst the love of gold doth him bewitch,
This miser's misery gives others sport:

The prodigal God's creatures doth abuse,
And them, the wretch, not necessar❜ly use.

Those roving thoughts which did at random soar,
And, though they had conveniently to live,
Would never look behind, but far before,
And, scorning goodness, to be great did strive;
For, still projecting how to purchase more,
Thus, bent to get, they could not dream to give:
Such minds whom envy hath fill'd up with grudge,
Have left no room, where charity may lodg.

Ah! who of those can well express the grief,
Whom once this earth did for most happy hold?
Of all their neighbours still esteem'd the chief,
Whilst stray'd opinion balanc'd worth by gold:
That which to thousands might have given relief,
Wrong spent or spar'd, is for their ruin told:

Thus pleasures past, what anguish now doth even?
We see how hardly rich men go to heaven.

The eleventh hour of "Doomsday" displays the suffering of those who are condemned; and the

twelfth points at the transcendent bliss of the souls glorified.

Francis Quarles, who was four years younger than Wither, and in the time of James I. was cupbearer to his daughter Elizabeth before becoming secretary to Dr. Usher in Ireland, wrote in James's reign some poems upon the Scripture stories of Jonah, Esther, and Job, with metrical versions from Jeremiah and King Solomon, as "Sion's Elegies" and "Sion's Sonnets." But Quarles is best known for his "Emblems," which were published in the reign of Charles I.

We may pass out of the reign of James I. with the two brothers Edward and George Herbert, sons of Richard Herbert, Esq., Deputy-Lieutenant of Montgomeryshire. Richard Herbert's grandfather, Sir Richard Herbert of Colebrook, had been steward of the Welsh Marches in Henry VIII.'s time, and brother to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Richard Herbert, the father of Edward and George, was black-haired, black-bearded, and bold. He and his wife Magdalen, daughter of Sir Richard Newport, had ten children: seven sons and three daughters. Edward, born in 1581, was the eldest son. He became afterwards a Knight of the Bath as Sir Edward Herbert, and then Lord Herbert of Cherbury. The second son, Richard, after he had been well educated, fought in the Low Countries in battles and duels, and carried scars of four-and-twenty wounds with him to his grave in Bergen-op-Zoom. William, the third son, also well educated, spent his life in the wars. Charles, the fourth son, distinguished himself at New College, Oxford, and died early. The fifth son was George Herbert, born in 1593, the poet whose name remains familiar to his countrymen. The other two brothers were Henry, who prospered greatly as a courtier, and Thomas, who distinguished himself by his skill and courage in the navy, but missed the promotion he deserved, and closed his days in discontent.

Edward, the eldest of these sons, was born in 1581, at Eyton, Shropshire, in a house that came into the family as part of his mother's heritage. He must have been more discreet as an infant than as a man, for he says in his autobiography, "The very farthest thing I remember is, that when I understood what was said by others, I did yet forbear to speak, lest I should utter something that were imperfect or impertinent." After private teaching, he was sent, at the age of twelve, to University College, Oxford, and soon afterwards arrangement was made for his marriage to an heiress in direct descent from William, the Earl of Pembroke, who was brother to Edward's great-grandfather, Sir Richard. The young lady inherited her large estates subject to the condition that she should marry a Herbert. Young Edward was the only Herbert matching her in fortune. He was six years younger, but the match was made, and Edward Herbert married before he had finished his studies at the University.

He himself thus tells in his autobiography how he came to London at the age of nineteen, and was made a Knight of the Bath early in the reign of James I.:

About the year of our Lord 1600, I came to London; shortly after which the attempt of the Earl of Essex, related in our history, followed, which I had rather were seen in the writers of that argument than here. Not long after this, curiosity, rather than ambition, brought me to court; and as it was the manner of those times for all men to kneel down before the great Queen Elizabeth, who then reigned, I was likewise upon my knees in the presence-chamber, when she passed by to the chapel at Whitehall. As soon as she saw me she stopped, and swearing her usual oath, demanded, "Who is this:" Everybody there present looked upon me, but no man knew me, until Sir James Croft, a pensioner, finding the queen stayed, returned back and told who I was, and that I had married Sir William Herbert of St. Gillian's daughter. The queen thereupon looked attentively upon me, and swearing again her ordinary oath, said, "It is a pity he was married so young," and thereupon gave her hand to kiss twice, both times gently clapping me on the cheek. I remember little more of myself, but that from that time until King James's coming to the crown, I had a son, which died shortly afterwards, and that I attended my studies seriously, the more I learnt out of my books adding still a desire to know more.

King James being now acknowledged king, and coming towards London, I thought fit to meet his Majesty at Burley, near Stamford. Shortly after I was made Knight of the Bath, with the usual ceremonies belonging to that ancient order. I could tell how much my person was commended by the lords and ladies that came to see the solemnity then used, but I shall flatter myself too much if I believed it.

I must not forget yet the ancient custom, being that some principal person was to put on the right spur of those the king had appointed to receive that dignity: the Earl of Shrewsbury seeing my esquire there with my spur in his hand, voluntarily came to me and said, "Cousin, I believe you will be a good knight, and therefore I will put on your spur;" whereupon, after my most humble thanks for so great a favour, I held up my leg against the wall, and he put on my spur.

There is another custom likewise, that the knights the first day wear the gown of some religious order, and the night following to be bathed; after which they take an oath never to sit in place where injustice should be done, but they shall right it to the uttermost of their power; and particularly ladies and gentlewomen that shall be wronged in their honour, if they demand assistance, and many other points, not unlike the romances of knight errantry.

The second day to wear robes of crimson taffety (in which habit I am painted in my study), and so to ride from St. James's to Whitehall, with our esquires before us; and the third day to wear a gown of purple satin, upon the left sleeve whereof is fastened certain strings weaved of white silk and gold tied in a knot, and tassels to it of the same, which all the knights are obliged to wear until they have done something famous in arms, or until some lady of honour take it off, and fasten it on her sleeve, saying, "I will answer he shall prove a good knight.”

Sir Edward Herbert, who had all the faith of his time in the chivalry of duelling, interpreted his vow as a Knight of the Bath in a way that would have satisfied his contemporary, Don Quixote, that good knight who was first introduced to the world by Cervantes in 1605, about the time when Sir Edward Herbert began his career as Knight of the Bath. About the year 1608, when he had a fourth child born, he went abroad. At Paris, soon after his

to restore it, the young lady addressing herself to me, said, "Monsieur, I pray get my riband from that gentleman;" hereupon going towards him, I courteously, with my hat in my hand, desired him to do me the honour, that I may deliver the lady her riband or bouquet again; but he roughly answering me, "Do you think I will give it you, when I have refused it to her?" I replied, "Nay then, sir, I will make you restore it by force;" whereupon also, putting on my hat and reaching at his, he to save himself ran away, and, after a long course in the meadow, finding that I had almost overtook him, he turned short, and running to the young lady, was about to put the riband on her hand, when I, seizing upon his arm, said to the young lady, "It was I that gave it." "Pardon me," quoth she, "it is he that gives it me:" I said then, "Madam, I will not contradict you, but if he dare say

that I did not constrain him to give it, I will fight with him." The French gentleman answered nothing thereunto for the present, and so conducted the young lady again to the castle. The next day I desired Mr. Aurelian Townsend to tell the French cavalier, that either he must confess that I constrained him to restore the riband, or fight with me; but the gentleman seeing him unwilling to accept of this challenge, went out from the place, whereupon I following him, some of the gentlemen that belonged to the constable taking notice hereof, acquainted him therewith, who sending for the French cavalier, checked him well for his sauciness, in taking the riband away from his grandchild, and afterwards bid him depart his house; and this was all that I ever heard of the gentleman, with whom I proceeded in that manner, because I thought myself obliged thereunto by oath taken when I was made Knight of the Bath, as I formerly related upon this occasion.

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But with the weakness of his time and of his blood, amusingly illustrated by the simple self-revelation of his autobiography, there was strength; and his other works bear witness to the scholarly side of Edward Herbert's character. When next in Paris he lodged with Casaubon. When home again after adventures in the wars, "I passed," he says, some time, partly in my studies, and partly riding the great horse, of which I had a stable well furnished." He was sent as ambassador to Paris, but it was not long before he was anxious to fight a duel with the French Minister, the Duc de Luynes, for which reason he had to be recalled in 1620, but afterwards he was sent again. While in Paris on his second embassy, he published, in 1624, a book in Latin, which he had begun in England, "on Truth as it is distinguished from Revelation that is like the truth, or possible, and from the false." Of the publication of this remarkable book Edward Herbert writes in his autobiography as follows:

My book, De Veritate prout distinguitur à Revelatione verisimili, possibili, et à falso, having been begun by me in England, and formed there in all its principal parts, was about this time finished; all the spare hours which I could get from my visits and negotiations being employed to perfect this work which was no sooner done, but that I communicated it to Hugo Grotius, that great scholar, who, having escaped his prison in the Low Countries,' came into France, and was

1 Hugo Grotius, the chief Dutch scholar of his time, had been condemned at the Synod of Dort, in November, 1618, to perpetual imprisonment for supporting the Arminians. In his prison at Louvestein he continued his studies, and after two years' confinement his wife obtained leave to remove an accumulation of books on the plea that they reduced space in his cell. This enabled her, instead of the books, to carry off her husband, in a box three feet and a half long. When freed from the box Grotius crossed the frontier in disguise as a mason, with rule and trowel. He found his way to Paris, and there received a pension. It was there that Edward Herbert met with him. In 1622 Grotius published his Apology, which the States-General forbade his countrymen to read, on pain of death. The Arminians, whom Grotius had favoured, began also from this time to add freedom to English thought, religious and political. They derived their name from Jacob Harmensen, Latinized Arminius. Harmensen was born in 1560, at Oudewater, a small town on the Yssel, in Holland, about eighteen miles from Rotterdam. His father died when Jacob Harmensen was an infant in the arms of a mother left with poor means, and two elder children to support. The fatherless child was educated and the foundation of his religious life was laid by a reformed priest named Theodore Æmilius, who was a wanderer through perse