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ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY.

1535 (?)—1605 (?)

It is stated by Timothy Pont, in 1600, | Captain, considers it more probable in his Cuningham Topographized, that Alexander Montgomery was born at Hazelhead Castle, in Ayrshire; but he assigns no date to the time of his birth. Although nothing is related regarding his education, the study of his works leaves no doubt that it was liberal, and in keeping with his social rank.

It is very probable that his family was a branch of the Montgomeries of Eglinton; and his life seems to have been neither obscure nor uneventful, while as a poet he is well known as the author of "The Cherrie and the Slae;" yet, notwithstanding the comparative recentness of the time in which he lived, there are few of our elder poets about whose personal history less definite information is preserved. Almost all that we know of him is inferred from references in his poems to "crooks in his lot," which place it beyond doubt that he experienced at least an average share of life's misfortunes. One of his biographers, founding upon statements put into the mouth of an imaginary traveller, in his poem entitled "Navigation," written as a pageant on the occasion of James VI.'s "first magnificent entry" into Edinburgh in 1579, makes him a German by birth, though of Scotch extraction.

Dr Irving, who writes the memoir of him prefixed to Dr David Laing's collected edition of his works (Edinburgh, 1821), referring to his being styled

that he was a soldier than a sailor; and that notwithstanding that his references to the experience of a sailor, especially in "Navigation," are many, while those to military life are few. The fact of his being a courtier, and the general tone of his poems, however, do not leave the impression that their author spent much of his time at sea. It adds some confusion to the account of his connection with the court of James VI., that a Captain Robert Montgomery was at the same time a gentleman of the King's household, and a poem by the poet is erroneously ascribed to that name in the Bannatyne MS.

"The

It is uncertain when he began to write; but from some of his short pieces having been inserted in the above MS., and from "The Banks of Helicon," which is the model of the stanza of "The Cherrie and the Slae," having been preserved in the Maitland MS., it is placed beyond a doubt that he became an author before 1568. Banks of Helicon " is inserted anonymously in the MS., yet the style, the stanza, and the matter are all so characteristic of Montgomery, that Dr Laing has little hesitation in attributing it to him." "The Cherrie and the Slae," "Echo," and "The Flyting," are quoted in "Ane Schort Treatise conteining some Reulis and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie," published by King James in

This is no life that I live upaland
On raw red herring reisted in the reik;
Syne I am subject some time to be sick,
And daily dying of my auld disease.
In some sonnets addressed to the

King, he displays a wonderful gift for
adulation, not unredeemed by poetical
gracefulness; yet making every allow-
ance for the manners of the times in
matters of this sort, and for the different
estimate in which James' character is
now held, they can hardly be considered
creditable to Montgomery's taste or
manliness.

1584. Montgomery must have been in favour at court some time previously, for the grant of an annual pension of five hundred marks, chargeable upon the rents of the archbishopric of Glasgow, was confirmed to him in 1583. In 1586, a royal licence is granted him to go abroad for five years. In the course of his travels he found himself the inmate of a foreign prison; but where, and for what reason, is not specified. In connection with his imprisonment, the payment of his pension had been suspended, but on its being shown that "his good services merited rather❘ SONNETS IN PRAISE OF The King's UraniA. augmentation than diminishing of the said pension," the previous grant was renewed and confirmed by writ of privy seal in 1588. Nevertheless, he appears not to have obtained undisputed possession; for being a charge upon the rents of the archbishopric of Glasgow, the holder of which, James Beaton, was in France, payment was withheld on some plea founded on his absence, and the poet had to apply for redress to the Court of Session. Several of his sonnets refer to this action, and give anything but a favourable character of the dispensation of justice in those days.

I.

Bellona's son, of Mars the chosen child,

Minerva's wit and Mercury's golden tongue, Apollo's light, that ignorance exiled,

From Jove ingendered and from Pallas sprung;
Thy Uranie, O Second Psalmist ! sung,

Truimphs oure death, in register of fame;
Wherefore thy trophie trimly shall be hung
With laurel green eternizing thy name.
But even as Phoebus' shining does ashame
Diana, with her borrowed beams, and blind;
So when I press thy praises to proclaim,

Thy weighty words make mine appear but
wind.

Yet worthy Prince! thou would take in good
My will for weel; I want but only art.

part

II.

Of Titan's harp, sith thou intones the strings,
Of ambrose and of nectar so thou feeds,
Not only other poets thou outsprings,

His frequent references to his misfortunes give an impression that we might not be far wrong in sometimes substituting faults, or at least failings; and his readiness of expression, by way of complaint, suggests caution in accepting his descriptions as the nett product of the real state of his affairs. Most readers can make a sufficient allowance for the souredness of the following to a friend at court, from a poet who once experienced the sunshine of court favour: Whas muse, not Jove, but great Jehovah sings.

But whiles, also thy very self exceeds;
Transporting thee as ravished, when thou reads
Thine own invention, wondering at thy wit.
What marvel then though our fordullèd heads
And blunter brains be mair amaized at it;
To see thy years and age whilks thou has yet,
Inferior far to thy so grave ingine,
Wha hazard at so high a mark, and hit,
In English, as this Urania of thine :
Wherefore thy name, O Prince ! eternal rings

III.

As bright Apollo staineth every star

With golden rays, when he begins to rise, Whose glorious glance yet stoutly skails the skies,

None of our ancient poets had attained to that artless naturalness, which, since Burns' time, is recognized, in the delineation of the passions, as the perfection of art; therefore all their

When with a wink we wonder where they productions on the subject of love

war;

Before his face for fear they fade so far,

And vanishes away in such a wise, That in their spheres they dare not enterprise For to appear like planets as they are; Or as the Phoenix, with her fedrum fair, Excels all fowls in diverse heavenly hues, Whas nature, contrar nature she renews,

As only but companion or compair So quintessenst of Kings! when thou compile, Thou staines my verses with thy stately style.

Apart from the obsequiousness, a great part of which must be attributed to the ideas of the age in which they were written, these sonnets are evidence of great poetic skill.

But as he himself confesses, the concerns of kings, courts, or commonwealths, considered politically, were not the proper subjects for his muse; but socially he was very much of a courtier, and longed to be restored to royal favour.

"With mighty matters mind I not to mell, As copping courts, or commonwealths, or kings Whas craig yokes fastest, let them say themsel;

My thought could never think upon sic things:

I wantonly write under Venus' wings;
In Cupid's court ye know I have been kend,
Where muses yet some of my sonnets sings,
And shall do always the world's end.
Men has no cause my cunning to commend,
That it should merit sic a memory;
Yet ye have seen his grace oft for me send,
When he took pleasure into poesie:

Till time may serve, perforce I must refrain,
That please his grace I come to court again."

appear to us somewhat affected; but, taking the old standpoint, the following sonnet is an excellent specimen of the ancient manner, and forecasts some of the features of the new. Indeed, to none of the ancients is the new school more indebted for their bard-craft than to Montgomery, who may be regarded as the last pure representative of the school of Dunbar.

TO THEE FOR ME.

"Sweet nightingale! in holene green that haunts,

To sport thyself, and special in the Spring; Thy chivring chirls whilk changingly thou chants,

Make all the roches round about thee ring;
Whilk slaiks my sorrow, so to hear thee sing,
And lights my loving langour at the least;
Yet thou sees not, silly saikless thing!
The piercing pike-prods at thy bony breast:
Even so am I, by pleasure likewise prest,'
In greatest danger where I most delight:
But since thy song, for shoring, has not ceased,
Should feeble I, for fear, my conquest quit?
Na, na-I love thee freshest Phoenix fair,
In beauty, birth, in bounty but compare."

"The Flyting betwixt Montgomery and Polwart," though in imitation of that between Dunbar and Kennedy, is perhaps better known than its prototype, and certainly excels it in length, and consequently in the amount of playful but vile abuse with which the respective champions pelt each other, for the sport of the philosophic King and his courtiers.

Montgomery begins the match with a piece of most skilful light raillery :

"Polwart, ye peep like a mouse amongst thorns,
Nae cunning ye keep; Polwart ye peep;
Ye look like a sheep, and ye had twa horns:
Polwart, ye peep like a mouse amongst thorns.

writer; and "Admonition to Young Lasses," though hardly a song, is a gem of its kind.

But The Cherrie and the Slae," notwithstanding its defective structure, is the best test of his poetical power. We agree with Dr Irving in thinking that Beware what thou speaks, little foul earth tade, the poet changed his purpose in regard to its meaning-beginning it as a love

With thy Cannigate breeks, beware what thou speaks

Or there shall be wat cheeks, for the last that allegory, and ending it as a moral homily, thou made;

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but "missing stays" in both respects. Its failure in point of purpose, or even of meaning, must be taken as an indication of the author's defect in the faculty of design. We have quoted it to the end of the love section, which is the most poetical; the remainder is a continuation of the debate which is begun in stanzas xxvii. and xxviii., between the opposing qualities of the mind, as to whether it is better for the man to overcome the

obstacles that intervene between him and that which is confessedly best, or to rest content with that which is easily obtained, but of inferior worth. The advocates for the nobler, but more difficult end, carry the day; and on the resolution to overcome the difficulties being taken, they vanish; for the cherries, which are meant to symbolize the prize of valour, have ripened, and fall at the

Thy cheeping, and peeping, with weeping thou man's feet before resolution evolves

shalt rue.'

"

into action. The allegory has also been explained as referring to the choice between a mistress of rank and beauty, and one of humble origin; but this is so repugnant to taste and feeling, and the conditions of allegorical structure, as to be quite inadmissible.

Perhaps the most prefect product of Montgomery's muse is his beautiful lyric, "Hey now the day dawis," in which the spirit of nature is so skilfully conjured, as almost to seem visible as a morning nymph. "The Banks of Helicon," besides being the model of Montgomery, like Dunbar, whom, in the stanza in which it is written, is a much of his mental and moral constifine example of his skill as a love song | tution, he resembles, appears to have

turned pious in his old age, and wrote a short series of devotional poems, an extract or two from one of which throws some characteristic light upon his muse in her penitential mood.

"Suppose I slide, let me not sleep in sleuth,
In stinking stye with Satan's sinful swine,
But make my tongue the trumpet of Thy truth,
And lend my verse sic wings as are divine.
Sen Thou has granted me so good ingine

To love thee, Lord, in gallant style and gay, Let me no more so trim a talent tine:

Peccavi Pater, miserere mei.

"Thy spirit, my spirit to speak, with speed, inspire:

Help, Holy Ghost! and be Montgomerie's
Muse;

Fly down on me in forkèd tongues of fire,
As Thou did on Thy own Apostles use;
And with Thy fire me fervently infuse

To laud the Lord, and longer not delay:
My former foolish fictions I refuse;

Peccavi Pater, miserere mei.

"Stoup, stubborn stomach, that has been so stout,

Stoup, filthy flesh and carrion of clay, Stoup, hardened heart before the Lord, and lout;

Stoup, stoup in time, defer not day by day; Thou knows not weel when thou maun pass

away,

The tempter als is busy to betray, Confess thy sins and shame not for to say,

Peccavi Pater, miserere mei."

But his poems do not show that he took an active part in the religious controversies of his time, nor is it certain to what section of the Church he adhered.

That he lived till 1592 is proved by his having written the epitaphs of two friends, one of whom was Sir Robert Drummond of Carnock, grandfather to William Drummond of Hawthornden,

who died in that year. Dr Irving thinks it probable that he survived till 1605, when his "Mindes Melodie" was published; it is certain, however, that he died before 1615, when Hart's edition of "The Cherrie and the Slae," revised not long before the author's death, was published. Taking his age to be seventy, and 1605 the year of his death, this would give 1535 as the year of his birth. His sonnets are preserved in a manuscript presented by Drummond of Hawthornden to the Edinburgh College Library.

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