When soft MONTGOMERY poured the rural lay :
Whether he sung the vermeil dawn of day,
Or in the mystic wreath, to soothe his woe,
Twin'd the red cherry with the sable sloe,
Each charming sound resistless love inspir'd,
Soft love resistless every bosom fir'd;
Of love the waters murmur'd in their fall,
And Echo sounds of love return'd to all;
Trembling with love, the beauteous scene imprest
Its amorous image on the firth's fair breast;

The scene ennobled by the lofty-dome

Where great Glencairn has fix'd his splendid home;
Whose breast the firm integrity inspires,

And scorn of slavery, that adorn'd his sires.

With the writer's sources of information, as well as the poem of which Finlayston is thus mentioned as the theme, I am totally unacquainted.

It appears from his own productions that his poetical talents procured him the patronage of his sovereign James the Sixth: and Dempster has indeed informed us that he stood high in the favour of that learned monarch. Of the royal bounty he however seems to have sustained at least a temporary deprivation; his poems insinuate that a pension which he had enjoyed was withheld at the secret instigation of his enemies. He also complains of his being involved in a tedious process before the Court of Session, and harassed with misfortunes of every denomination. One of his poems is entitled "The Poet's Com

Dempster. Hist. Ecclesiast. Gent. Scotor. p. 496.
A a

VOL. II.

plante aganst the Unkindness of his Companions when he wes in Prisone:" and in the following sonnet he pathetically bewails his accumulated misery:

If lose of guids, if gritest grudge or grief,
If povertie, imprisonment, or pane,
If for guid-will ingratitude agane,
If languishing in langour, but releif,
If det, if dolour, and to become deif,

If travell tint, and labour lost in vane,
Do properlie to poets appertane,

Of all that craft my chance is to be chief.
With August Virgill waunted his reward,

And Ovid's lote als lukles as the lave;
Quhill Homer liv'd, his hap wes wery hard,
Yit, when he died, sevin cities for him strave.
Thoght I am not lyk one of thame in arte,
I pingle thame [ ] perfytlie in that parted.

In one of his sonnets addrest to Robert Hudson, we meet with a passage which also contains biographical hints :

This is no lyfe that I leid up-a-land,
On raw rid herring reistit in the reik:
Syn I am subject som tyme to be seik,

And daylie deing of my auld diseis:
Ait bread, ill aill, and all things ar ane eik ;

This barme and blaidry buists up all my bees.

d Montgomery's Poems, sonn. xv. MS.

On the friendship of Hudson he seems to have relied with a confidence of which he afterwards found reason to repent. Christian Lindsay thus upbraids Hudson with his treachery :

Oft have I hard, but efter fund it trew,

That courteours kyndnes lasts bot for a quhyle:
Fra once your turnes be sped, quhy then adew!
Your promeist freindship passis in exyle.
Bot Robene, faith ye did me not beguyle:
I hopit ay of you as of the lave.

If thow had wit, thow wald haif mony a wyle
To mak thy self be knawin for a knaive.
Montgomrie, that sik hope did once conceave

Of thy guid-will, now finds all is forgottin:
Thocht nocht but kindness he did at the craive,

He finds thy friendship, as it rypis, is rotten.

The smeikie smeiths cairs not his passit travel,
Bot leivis him lingring deing of the gravel.

Many of the poems of Montgomery are written.

in a querulous strain; but he always speaks like a man conscious of rectitude; and the recollec

tion of his own virtues, together with the exercise of his poetical talents, seems to have been his principal source of consolation under all the calamities to which he was exposed.

The dates of his compositions cannot be ascertained. The Flyting betwixt Montgomrie and Polwart must have been written in or before the year 1584; for a passage of it is quoted by King

• Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, vol. iii. p. 504.

་

James in his Revlis and Cautelis of Scottis Poesie, a work which made its appearance in the course of that year. In 1595 he published his wellknown poem The Cherie and the Slae. It was reprinted in 1597, by Robert Waldegrave, “according to a copie corrected be the author himselfe." Of the edition printed by Andrew Hart in 1615, the title page informs us that the author had revised his work a short while before his death. He appears therefore to have died between 1597 and 1615. By referring his death to the year 1591, Dempster has fallen into one of his innumerable errors.

Many of his compositions are to be found in the collections of Pinkerton, Ramsay, Watson, and Sibbald. The Flyting was printed at Glasgow, in octavo, in the year 1665. Editions of his poetical works were published at Glasgow, by Foulis in 1751, and by Urie in 1754: but these, though sufficiently elegant, are incomplete and unfaithful.

Among the books presented by Drummond to the University of Edinburgh, is a manuscript collection of the poems of Montgomery, consisting of odes, sonnets, psalms, and epitaphs. Of these no very considerable number has hitherto met the public eye. Some specimens however occur in Mr Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry. The MS. extends to one hundred and fiftyeight pages in quarto, and has been preserved

with some degree of care: but by reducing it to the dimensions of the printed tracts together with which it forms a volume, the bookbinder has unfortunately shorn away several words and syllables,

MONTGOMERY was probably acquainted with the writings of the Italian poets: he has left many sonnets constructed on the Italian model; and his general taste in composition may perhaps be regarded as exotic. His productions undoubtedly discover a considerable degree of fancy; but his fancy is not always sufficiently regulated by the principles of a correct taste.

His fame chiefly rests on the merits of The Cherrie and the Slae; a poem which, as it still continues to be redd, must certainly be found possest of genuine beauty. A very acute writer who occasionally suffers caprice to usurp the place of judgment, has however censured it in the following terms: "It is a very poor production; and yet, I know not how, it has been frequently printed, while far superior works have been neglected. The stanza is good for a song; but the worst in the world for a long poem. The allegory is weak and wire-drawn ; and the whole piece beneath contempt. Let it then sleep." To sleep it does not however seem to have been

f Pinkerton's List of the Scotish Poets, p. cxviii,