The practice of composing on this model, after it had been for a considerable time discontinued, was perhaps revived by the celebrated Politian; who informs us that he wrote, in the Italian language, verses of this description which had been set to music. Erasmus presents us with a morsel of prose adapted to a similar pattern. Echo is the respondent in one of his colloquies, and returns sundry laconic and facetious answers.

A specimen of echoing poetry occurs among the works of David Hume of Godscroft". Captain William Mercer's English verses in commendation of Henderson, Rutherford, Baillie, and Gillespie, are written in the same wretched taste. Montgomery, Hume, and Mercer, are perhaps the only Scotish poets who have fallen into this egregious trifling.

Montgomery and Polwart seem to have been ambitious of rivalling their predecessors Dunbar and Kennedy: they have exhausted almost every term of abuse which the language then afforded".

Scio in Servii Centimetro echoicum versum definiri cujus ultima syllaba penultima congruit, ut est hic:

Exercet mentes fraternas gratia rara.

Sed hoc genus ad Sidonium non facit, qui artificia tractat quæ in elegis cernuntur." (Notæ ad Sidonium, p. 90.)

m Politiani Miscellanea, cap. xxii.

▲ Humii Daphn. Amaryllis. Lond. 1605, 4to.

• Mercer's Anglia Speculum, or England's Looking-Glasse, sig. N. 2. b. Lond. 1646, 4to.

Þ Ìf we may credit Dempster, the antagonist of Montgomery was Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth. (Hist. Ecclesiast. Gent, Scotor. p. 358.)

Their Flyting, to adopt the words of Lord Hailes, only tends to evince how poor, how very poor, genius appears, when its compositions are debased by the meanest prejudices of the meanest vulgar.

To the religious strains of Montgomery we listen with more satisfaction. Besides composing various poems of a pious tendency, he has versified several of the psalms in a peculiar measure, which was perhaps adapted to the church music. His mind seems at all times to have been imprest with a proper sense of the importance of religious duties.

Montgomery is almost the only Scotish poet who has composed any considerable number of sonnets in his native language. The Drummond MS. contains no fewer than seventy poems of this description. As they cannot but be deemed an object of some curiosity, I have se-. lected the following six; which are written on different subjects, and possess different degrees of

merit.

High architectur, wondrous vautit rounds,

Huge host of hevin in restless-rolling spheers,
Firme-fixt polis whilk all the axtrie beirs,
Concordant discords, suete harmonious sounds,
Boud zodiak, circle belting Phoebus bounds,
Celestiall signis, of moneths making yeers,
Bright Titan to the tropicks that reteirs,
Quhais fyrie flammis all chaos' face confounds,

Just-balanc'd ball amidst the hevins that hings,
All creaturs that Natur creat can

To serve the use of most unthankfull man;
Admire your maker, only king of kings:

Prais him, O man! his mervels that remarks,
Quhais mercyis far exceids his wondrous warks.

My plesuris past procures my present pain,
My present pain expels my plesurs past,
My languishing, alace! is lyk to last,
My grief ay groues, my gladenes wants a grane,
My bygane joyes I can not get agane,

Bot, once imbarkit, I must byde the blast:
I can not chuse; my kinsh is not to cast:
To wish it war, my wish wald be bot vane.
Yit whill I sey my senses to dissaive,

To pleis my thoght I think a thousand things, Quhilks to my breist bot boroude blythnes brings. Anis hope I had, thoght nou dispair I haive, A stratagem, thoght strange, to stay my sturt, By apprehensioun for to heill my hurt.

Suete nichtingale! in holene grene that han[ts],
To sporte thy self, and speciall in the spring,
Thy chivring chirls, whilks [charminglie thou chants],
Maks all the roches 'round about thé ring;
Whilk slaiks my sorow so to heir thé sing,
And lights my louing langour at the leist.

Yit thoght thou sees not, sillie saikles thing!
The peircing pykis, brods at thy bony breist,
Euin so am I by plesur lykuyis preist,

In gritest danger whair I most delyte.
Bot since thy song for shoring hes not ceist,
Suld feble I for feir my conqueis quyt ?
Na, na; I love the freshest phoenix fair,
In beutie, birth, in bountie, but compair.

The hevinlie furie that inspyr'd my spreit
Quhen sacred beughis war wont my brouis to bind,
With frostis of fashrie frozen is that, heet;
My garland grene is withrit with the wind.

Ye knau Occasio hes no hair behind :
The bravest spreits hes tryde it treu I trou;
The lang-forspoken proverb true I find,
No man is man, and man is no thing now;
The cuccou flees befor the turtle-dou ;

The pratling pyet matchis with the Musis; Pan with Apollo playis I wot not hou;

The attircops Minerva's office usis.

These be the grievis that garris Montgomrie gr[udge], That Mydas, not Mecenas, is our judge.

Excuse me, Plato, if I suld suppone,

That underneth the heuinlie vauted round, Without the world, or in parts profound By Stix inclos'd, that emptie place is none. If watrie vauts of air be full echone,

Then what contenis my teirs, which so abound

With sighis and sobbis, which to the hevins I sound

When Love delightis to let me mak my mone?

Suppose the solid subtilis ay restrantis,

Which is the maist, my maister, ye may mene,
Thoght all war void, yit culd they not contene
The half, let be the haill, of my complaintis.
Whair go thay then, the question wald I [craiv],
Except for ruth the hevins suld thame [recaiv]?

So suete a kis yistrene fra thee I reft
In bouing doun thy body on the bed,
That evin my lyfe within thy lippis I left.
Sensyne from thee my spirit wald neuer shed:
To folou thee it from my body fled,

And left my corps als cold as ony kie.

Bot when the danger of my death I dred,
To seik my spreit I sent my harte to thee;
Bot it was so inamored with thyne ee,

With thee it myndit lykwyse to remane:
So thou hes keipit captive all the thrie,
More glaid to byd then to returne agane.

Except thy breath thare places had suppleit,
Euen in thyne armes thair doutles had I deit.

The sonnet, a native of Italy, had been transplanted into the garden of English poetry by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyat, writers who adorned the court of Henry the Eighth. This species of composition, which at first seems to have been principally cultivated by men of rank and fashion, soon became a favourite vehicle of amatory and moral sentiment: and the example of such writers as Shakespeare, Spenser, Daniel,