CJ ST£SL Lf-£ £be Scottish tCeyt Society THE POEMS OF ALEXANDER HUME r THE POEMS OF ALEXANDER HUME (? 1557-1609) EDITED FROM THE TEXT OF WALDEGRAVE (1599) WITH NOTES, APPENDICES, AND GLOSSARY BY ALEXANDER LAWSON, B.D. BKRRY PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS •N (§' • 0- \ ^ PrintelJ for t^e Soci'etg fig WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON 1902 A ll Rights reserved PREFATORY NOTE. The Editor has to acknowledge very warmly the kindness of many friends who gave him access to books and manu- scripts, or rendered other services in the course of his researches. He has to record his special obligation to the authorities of Edinburgh University for the use of their copy of Waldegrave’s edition of the ‘Hymns’ and of the “Treatise of Conscience”; to John Scott, Esq., C.B., of Halkshill, Ayrshire, who personally superintended a most careful transcription of his own almost unique copy of “ The Felicitie of the Life to Come,” and gave it with a goodwill which made the gift doubly welcome; and to the Rev. George Murray, B.D., of Sauchie, Clerk to the Pres- bytery of Stirling, who not only carefully and cheerfully extracted all passages in the Records under his care bearing upon Hume’s ministry at Logie, but also read the Intro- duction in proof. The Editor has also to thank most cordially the Lib- rarians of St Andrews University, of Edinburgh University, and of the Advocates’ Library for unfailing courtesy and willingness to oblige. The proofs of the Introduction were also read by Mr W. W. VI PREFATORY NOTE. Robertson, his Majesty’s Surveyor for Scotland, by Mr Oliphant Smeaton, by Mr William Bayne, and by Sheriff Alexander Moffatt of Lerwick ; while Mr William Ingram, Advocate, most kindly revised the proofs of the Notes. In the footnotes to the Text and to Appendix C, MS. means one or other of the MSS. in the Advocates’ Library described at the close of the Introduction ; W. is Walde- grave’s edition of the Poems ; B. is the edition published by the Bannatyne Club ; and S. is Sibbald’s ‘ Chronicle of Scottish Poetry.’ Conjectural readings are put in brackets, thus [ ]. St Andrews, 27M AW. 1902. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction 1x The Language of Hume 'xvl Manuscripts ...•••• ^xx Printed Editions lxx*' To the Faithfull and Vertuous Ladie, Elizabeth Malvill, Ladie Cumrie 3 To the Scottish youth ^ A Sonnet of Loue 9 Hymnes and Sacred Songs— i. His Recantation , . • • • . 11 II. Of Gods Benefites bestowed vpon Man . -17 III. Of the Day Estivall ...••• 25 iv. To his Sorrowful! Saull, Consolation. • 34 v. Thankes for Deliverance of the Sicke . • 41 vi. Of Gods Omnipotencie . • • 47 VII. The Triumph of the Lord, after the Manner of Men . 52 vni. The Humiliation of a Sinner . • • .64 Ane Epistle to Maister Gilbert Montcreif, Mediciner to the Kings Majestie ^ Christian Precepts seruing to the Practise of Sanctification . 80 Appendix— a. Ane Briefe Treatise of Conscience . • • °9 B. Of the Felicitie, of the Life to Come . • • I4I c. Ane Afold Admonitioun to the Ministerie of Scotland . .168 D. Elizabeth Malvill, Lady Cumrie . • • I^4 E. The Several Alexander Humes . • • • r99 f. The “ Polwart ” of Montgomerie’s ‘ Flyting ’ . • • 202 G. Gilbert Moncrieff . • • • .211 H. Hume’s Will 212 Notes 2I$ Glossary ....•••• 2^7 INTRODUCTION. i. With the exception of the royal singers and Gawin Douglas, Alexander Hume has, perhaps, the most dis- tinguished pedigree among our country’s poets. Fie belonged to a minor but still important branch of the great clan which, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, possessed the larger portion of the Merse and part of East Lothian. Lord Hume, who was head of the family, traced his descent from the eldest son of Sir Thomas Hume of Hume; and the Humes of Polwarth traced their line from the second son, David Hume, to whom Wedderburn was gifted by Archibald, Earl of Douglas, in 1413 (Douglas, ‘Peerage,’ ii. 173). This Sir Thomas Hume was a descendant of Cospatrick, Earl of Northum- berland, who fled to Scotland in 1068, and whose son was created Earl of Dunbar by King David I. (ibid., i. 166, 167). The first Patrick Hume of Polwarth was Comptroller of Scotland in 1499, and acquired the property from which he took his designation by his marriage with Margaret Sinclair, the second of the two b X INTRODUCTION. daughters and co-heiress of John Sinclair of Herdmanston. The designation remained that of the family until the creation of the Earldom of Marchmont submerged the older title (Douglas, ‘Peerage,’ ii. 176). Like other great families, they were for several genera- tions closely identified with the service of the old religion, for they acquired an interest in the Augustinian nunnery of North Berwick, and a succession of ladies from the Polwarth family held the post of abbess (‘ Nunnery of North Berwick’—Bannatyne Club). An Alison Hume was prioress in September 1523, and let in tack for nine- teen years “ the teinds of the Kirk of Logy to Alexander Hume of Polwart and Patrick his sone and appeirand heir ” (ibid.) This Alison was succeeded by an Isabel Hume, and Isabel was succeeded by Margaret Hume, sister of the poet’s father. When the great national cleavage came at the Refor- mation, the Polwarth Humes, unlike their kinsman Lord Hume, cast in their lot with Knox and the Lords of the Congregation, and in Queen Mary’s troubles both Patrick Hume of Polwarth and Alexander Hume his brother were adherents of the Regent Moray. Lor this Alexander Hume the monastery lands of North Berwick were con- verted into a barony or lairdship, and the solidity of his Protestant convictions was thus assured (Douglas, ‘Peerage,’ ii. 177; ‘Reg. Mag. Sig.,’ v., No. 1492). With the adhesion of the Polwarth family to the Reformed faith came entry upon the service of the Protestant Church ; and Adam Hume, uncle of the poet, became Rector of Polwarth in 1580. As the cure had been served by a reader from 1567 to 1580, there had probably been INTRODUCTION. xi some difficulty either about the erection of the parish or the Protestant convictions of the laird’s brother (Scott’s ‘Fasti,’ sub Polwarth). The family of Hume in its various branches had already in this early time, and preserved through many genera- tions, one notable and pleasing characteristic. This was a predilection for literature. Ninian Hume was a favourite pupil of John Major, who dedicates to him both his lectures on Logic and his ‘ Parva Logicalia,’ and describes him as “ex antiqua nobilium domo ortum ” (Major’s ‘ Greater Britain,’ li, Ixi). Humphrey Hume wrote of the conflict between the Scots and English ad Merlini praedicationes (David Buchanan, ‘ De Scrip- toribus Scotis,’ p. 15). Our poet’s elder brother was a poet, and his namesake, the grammarian, was an acute philologist as well as a vehement religious controver- sialist {vide Appendices). David Hume of Godscroft, a kinsman and contemporary, wrote Latin verse, and is counted among the Latin poets of Scotland as well as among her minor historians. His daughter, Anna Hume, translated the ‘Triumphs’ of Petrarch (‘Diet. Nat. Biog.’); while the first editor of Milton, who illustrated the sixth edition of ‘ Paradise Lost ’ with notes, published by Jacob Tonson in 1695, was Patrick Hume, who is believed to have had a connection with the Polwarth family (‘ Blackwood’s Magazine,’ iv. 658; Anderson’s ‘ Scottish Nation,’ ii. 504). More romantic in her story and more happy in her Muse was Lady Grizel Baillie, daughter of the first Earl of Marchmont and wife of a Baillie of Jerviswood, who wrote “And werena my heart licht I wad dee” (Veitch, ‘History Xll INTRODUCTION. and Poetry of the Scottish Border,’ pp. 436, 437, 1 vol. edition). By much the most famous was David Hume, historian and philosopher, although his contemporary, John Home of Athelstaneford — the poet of ‘ Agis ’ and ‘ Douglas ’ —contended with him for notoriety if not for fame; while Henry Home, Lord Karnes, by his ‘Elements of Criticism,’ published in 1762, may be reckoned the pioneer of Scottish literary criticism. Hugh Blair, however, had given lectures in the University a year or two earlier. A living descendant of the Polwarth family, although not bearing the name of Hume, has written a sketch of the family history in ‘ Marchmont and the Humes of Polwarth.’ II. The poet’s father was a grandson of the Comptroller of Scotland, and must have been a very young person when, by his father’s resignation on 1st September 1534, he obtained half of Polwarth and Kimmerghame (Douglas, ‘Peerage,’ ii. 177). He married, probably before 1550, Agnes Hume, daughter of Alexander Hume of Mander- ston, a clansman, whose son and namesake at a later date was not of the same political party as the laird of Polwarth; for James Melville, in his ‘Diary,’ refers to him in his account of the ministers’ voyage to Berwick: “ Now we had Cowdengham bay and Haymouth to pas by, and that but slowly, rowing be the land, where [was] the residence of Alexander Hume of Manderston, ane of our chieff confederat enemies” (Melville’s ‘Auto- biography,’ p. 167). INTRODUCTION. Xlll Patrick and Agnes Hume had at least seven sons1 and two daughters. Alexander was the second son, and he was probably born in 1556 or 1557 at the family house of Reidbrais on the Polwarth property.2 The date of his birth has been commonly given as 1560, and David Laing (‘Adversaria’—Bannatyne Club) fixes conjecturally upon 1562. But as the poem on the defeat of the Armada is dated October 1589, and is the seventh of the ‘ Hymnes,’ and was therefore presumably written later than the fourth hymn, in the course of which Hume states that he is in his thirty-first year, he must have been born before 1558.