not be supposed, however, that these coincidences detract from the originality of A Cypress Grove. The contrast between Drummond's and Bacon's works has been already emphasised.

Mr. Masson's comparison of A Cypress Grove with Hydriotaphia has been repeated by later critics. Beyond the similarity of subject there is little or nothing upon which to base it. No resemblance is traceable between the learning and wit of Sir Thomas Browne's reflections on ancient burial rites, and the poetic melancholy of Drummond. Had Browne read A Cypress Grove he might have applied to the author words from his Urn-Burial: "Many are too early old"; "Pious spirits who pass their days in raptures of futurity, make little more of this world than the world that was before it." The idealistic creed common to both writers affords some parallels of thought among the concluding pages of the Religio Medici. But the healthy zest in life of the busy physician is a contrast to the relaxing introspection of the recluse of Hawthornden; and their styles, where it is possible to compare them, reflect the difference between their characters.

A Cypress Grove was written under the inspiration of affliction and depression, when, as we learn from a letter to Sir William Alexander, "The loss of friends had estranged him from himself," and after he had

verse.

"Twice been at the doors of death,

And twice found shut those gates which ever mourn.

It was published with his "Flowers of Zion," its counterpart in We have no previous prose of his except some notes and letters, and his later writings are disappointing. The History of the Five Jameses, much the longest of his works, is a dull and commonplace chronicle, of no historical and small literary value. His Irene and Ekiaμaxía contain some trenchant pages; but, with the rest of his tracts, their main interest consists in their revelation of Drummond's attitude during the political and ecclesiastical troubles through which he lived. He longed, like the saner spirits of his time, for tolerance and peace; and, though a royalist, he did not scruple on occasion to criticise the policy of Charles.

Though Drummond's life, except for a few short intervals, was spent in Scotland, his work belongs properly to English literature. The pure Scots dialect had in his time almost fallen out of literary use. Even Knox's prose is anglicised, and the Union of the

Crowns had completed what the Reformation had begun. Drummond's friend, Sir William Alexander, with the other Scottish poets who had followed James to his English court, had taken English models for their verses. But Drummond may be regarded as the earliest prose writer in Scotland who uses English as a mother-tongue; for James, even in his later work, occasionally falls back on a northern word or idiom. As in his sonnets he attaches himself to the school of Spenser, so his prose has its place alongside that of Sidney, Raleigh, and Bacon. He was the one star in the "Ekoría Scotorum" of his age: a late survival of the Scottish renaissance which had already disappeared before the reforming zeal of presbyteries.

66

W. S. M'CORMICK.

A REVERIE ON DEATH

:

HAVING often and diverse times, when I had given myself to rest in the quiet solitariness of the night, found my imagination troubled with a confused fear, or sorrow or horror, which, interrupting sleep, did astonish my senses, and rouse me all appalled, and transported in a sudden agony and amazedness of such an unaccustomed perturbation not knowing, not being able to dive into any apparent cause, carried away with the stream of my then doubting thoughts, I began to ascribe it to that secret foreknowledge and presaging power of the prophetic mind, and to interpret such an agony to be to the spirit, as a sudden faintness and universal weariness useth to be to the body, a sign of following sickness; or as winter lightnings, earthquakes, and monsters are to commonwealths and great cities, harbingers of wretched events, and emblems of their sudden destinies.

Hereupon, not thinking it strange, if whatsoever is human should befal me, knowing how providence overcomes grief, and discountenances crosses; and that, as we should not despair in evils which may happen to us, we should not be too confident, nor lean much to those goods we enjoy; I began to turn over in my remembrance all that could afflict miserable mortality, and to forecast everything which could beget gloomy and sad apprehensions, and with a mask of horror show itself to human eyes: till in the end, as by unities and points mathematicians are brought to great numbers and huge greatness, after many fantastical glances of the woes of mankind, and those incumbrances which follow upon life, I was brought to think, and with amazement, on the last of human terrors, or (as one termed it) the last of all dreadful and terrible evils, Death.

For to easy censure it would appear, that the soul, if it can foresee that divorcement which it is to have from the body, should not without great reason be thus over-grieved, and plunged in inconsolable and unaccustomed sorrow: considering their near union,

long familiarity and love, with the great change, pain, and ugliness, which are apprehended to be the inseparable attendants of Death. They had their being together, parts they are of one reasonable creature, the harming of the one is the weakening of the working of the other. What sweet contentments doth the soul enjoy by the senses! They are the gates and windows of its knowledge, the organs of its delight. If it be tedious to an excellent player on the lute, to abide but a few months the want of one, how much more the being without such noble tools and engines be painful to the soul? And if two pilgrims which have wandered some few miles together, have a heart's-grief when they are near to part, what must the sorrow be at parting of two so loving friends and never-loathing lovers, as are the body and soul?

Death is the violent estranger of acquaintance, the eternal divorcer of marriage, the ravisher of the children from the parents, the stealer of parents from their children, the interrer of fame, the sole cause of forgetfulness, by which the living talk of those gone away as of so many shadows or age-worn stories. All strength by it is enfeebled, beauty turned into deformity and rottenness, honour into contempt, glory into baseness. It is the reasonless breaker off of all actions, by which we enjoy no more the sweet pleasures of earth, nor contemplate the stately revolutions of the heavens. The sun perpetually setteth, stars never rise unto us: It in one moment robbeth us of what with so great toil and care in many years we have heaped together: By this are succession of lineages cut short, kingdoms left heirless, and greatest states orphaned: It is not overcome by pride, soothed by flattery, tamed by entreaties, bribed by benefits, softened by lamentations, nor diverted by time. Wisdom, save this, can prevent and help everything. By Death we are exiled from this fair city of the world: it is no more a world unto us, nor we any more a people unto it. The ruins of fanes, palaces, and other magnificent frames yield a sad prospect to the soul; and how should it without horror view the wreck of such a wonderful masterpiece as is the body?

That Death naturally is terrible and to be abhorred, it cannot well and altogether be denied, it being a privation of life, and a not being; and every privation being abhorred of nature, and evil in itself, the fear of it too being ingenerated universally in all creatures. Yet I have often thought that even naturally, to a mind by nature only resolved and prepared, it is more terrible in

conceit than in verity, and at the first glance than when well pryed into; and that rather by the weakness of our fantasy than by what is in it; and that the marble colours of obsequies, weeping, and funeral pomp (which we ourselves paint it with) did add much more ghastliness unto it than otherwise it hath. To aver which conclusion, when I had gathered my wandering thoughts, I began thus with myself.

If on the great theatre of this earth among the numberless number of men, to die were only proper to thee and thine, then undoubtedly thou had reason to repine at so severe and partial a law. But since it is a necessity, from which never any age bypast hath been exempted, and unto which they which be, and so many as are to come, are thralled (no consequent of life being more common and familiar), why shouldst thou with unprofitable and nought-availing stubbornness, oppose so inevitable and necessary a condition? This is the high-way of morality, and our general home: Behold what millions have trod it before thee, what multitudes shall after thee, with them which at that same instant run. In so universal a calamity (if Death be one) private complaints cannot be heard: with so many royal palaces, it is no loss to see thy poor cabin burn. Shall the heavens stay their ever-rolling wheels (for what is the motion of them but the motion of a swift and ever-whirling wheel, which twineth forth and again uprolleth our life), and hold still time to prolong thy miserable days, as if the highest of their working were to do homage unto thee? Thy death is a pace of the order of this All, a part of the life of this world; for while the world is the world, some creatures must die, and others take life. Eternal things are raised far above this sphere of generation and corruption, where the first matter, like an ever flowing and ebbing sea, with divers waves, but the same water, keepeth a restless and never tiring current; what is below in the universality of the kind, not in itself doth abide: Man a long line of years hath continued, This man every hundred is swept away. This globe environed with air is the sole region of Death, the grave where everything that taketh life must rot, the stage of fortune and change, only glorious in the inconstancy and varying alterations of it, which though many, seem yet to abide one, and being, a certain entire one, are ever many. The never agreeing bodies of the elemental brethren turn one into another; the earth changeth her countenance with the seasons, sometimes looking