Your honey sweet shall mixèd be with gall, Your short delight shall end with pain and grief;

Yet trust in God, for His assistance call, And He shall help and send you some relief

XLIX.

LII.

Gif Christ be gain, although ye seem to flee

With golden wings above the firmament; Come down again, ye shall not better be, That pride of yours ye shall right sore repent:

aye bent

Triumph for joy your enemies are killed; The Lord of Hosts, that is your strength and shield,

LVIII.

The joy of Heaven is worth ane moment's pain;

Trust in His strength, pass fordwart in the field,

Overcome in fecht, and ye shall wear the

crown.

LVI.

The King of kings, gif He be on our side, We need not fear what dare agains1 us stand;

Into the field may we not boldly bide, When He shall help us with his mighty hand,

Who sits above and rules both sea and land,

high;

To judge the earth when Christ shall

come again,

Above the clouds ye shall exalted be:
The throne of joy and true felicity
Await for you, when finished is your fecht;
Suffer ane while, and ye shall shortly see
Ane glore maist great and infinite of wecht.1

LIX.

Prepare yourselves, be valiant men of weir,2 And thrust with force out through the

narrow way;

Hold on thy course and shrink not back for fear,

to shake:

The hosts of heaven are armed at his command

To fight the field, when we appear most wake.2

LVII.

Pluck up your heart, ye are not left alone, The Lamb of God shall lead you in the way;

The time is near, be sober, watch and pray; He sees your tears, and He has laid in

store

Ane rich reward, whilk in that joyful day Ye shall receive, and ring for evermore.

LX.

Now to the King that create all of nought, And Lord of lords, that rules both land and sea,

SIR ROBERT AYTOUN is reckoned the first Scotchman who, after the divergence of English and Scotch into different dialects, wrote correct English in the style to which the language attained through the powerful transforming genius of the writers of the Elizabethan period.

The Aytouns of Scotland are descended from Gilbert De Vescy, who received the lands of Aytoun, in Berwickshire, from King Robert Bruce, and thence they derive their surname.

Sir Robert was the second son of Andrew Aytoun, of Kinaldie in Fifeshire, and was born there in 1570. He entered St Andrews University in 1584, where he studied for four years, and took his degree of M.A. He afterwards proceeded to Paris, as is supposed, to study law, and distinguished himself as a Greek and Latin scholar. Returning to Britain in 1603, he wrote a Latin address on the accession of James VI. to the English throne, which attracted the King's notice, and led to the poet's appointment as a gentleman of the bed-chamber, private secretary to the Queen, and a privy councillor. James, in 1609, employed him as his ambassador to present copies of his "Apology for the Oath of Allegiance" to the courts of Germany; and in connection with this mission, it is supposed, he received the honour of knighthood. After James' death, he

became private secretary to the queen of Charles I.

His eminence as a scholar, and his elegance as a poet, brought him into contact with most of the literary men of his time; while with Ben Jonson, and Hobbes of Malmsbury, he was on terms of intimate friendship. In his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, he was almost the only one of his acquaintances of whom Ben spoke in an affectionate manner, for he says, 'Aytoun loved him dearly!" No further particulars are known of his life, but his monument in Westminster Abbey, erected by his nephew, Sir John Aytoun, knight of the Black Rod, records his having died unmarried, in the palace of Whitehall, in March 1638, in his 68th year.

66

Aytoun's poems are not numerous, nor of sustained effort, but they show much perfection in the art of poetry, and a Horation elegance of style and turn of thought becoming their semilyrical character. He himself possibly placed more value upon his Latin Poems, which appeared in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum, than on his English Poems, for they appeared in all sorts of ways, scattered here and there, and were only first collected in 1844, on the occasion of a manuscript copy having come into the hands of Dr Charles Rogers, who had them printed for private circulation. In Aubrey's

SIR ROBERT AYTOUN is reckoned the first Scotchman who, after the divergence of English and Scotch into different dialects, wrote correct English in the style to which the language attained through the powerful transforming genius of the writers of the Elizabethan period.

The Aytouns of Scotland are descended from Gilbert De Vescy, who received the lands of Aytoun, in Berwickshire, from King Robert Bruce, and thence they derive their surname.

Sir Robert was the second son of Andrew Aytoun, of Kinaldie in Fifeshire, and was born there in 1570. He entered St Andrews University in 1584, where he studied for four years, and took his degree of M.A. He afterwards proceeded to Paris, as is supposed, to study law, and distinguished himself as a Greek and Latin scholar.

Returning to Britain in 1603, he wrote a Latin address on the accession of James VI. to the English throne, which attracted the King's notice, and led to the poet's appointment as a gentleman of the bed-chamber, private secretary to the Queen, and a privy councillor. James, in 1609, employed him as his ambassador to present copies of his "Apology for the Oath of Allegiance" to the courts of Germany; and in connection with this mission, it is supposed, he received the honour of knighthood. After James' death, he

became private secretary to the queen of Charles I.

His eminence as a scholar, and his elegance as a poet, brought him into contact with most of the literary men of his time; while with Ben Jonson, and Hobbes of Malmsbury, he was on terms of intimate friendship. In his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden, he was almost the only one of his acquaintances of whom Ben spoke in an affectionate manner, for he says, "Aytoun loved him dearly!" No further particulars are known of his life, but his monument in Westminster Abbey, erected by his nephew, Sir John Aytoun, knight of the Black Rod, records his having died unmarried, in the palace of Whitehall, in March 1638, in his 68th year.

Aytoun's poems are not numerous, nor of sustained effort, but they show much perfection in the art of poetry, and a Horation elegance of style and turn of thought becoming their semilyrical character. He himself possibly placed more value upon his Latin Poems, which appeared in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum, than on his English Poems, for they appeared in all sorts of ways, scattered here and there, and were only first collected in 1844, on the occasion of a manuscript copy having come into the hands of Dr Charles Rogers, who had them printed for private circulation. In Aubrey's