the military operations of Montrose, worthy as they are
of a more important page, and a better historian. By the assistance of
the chieftains whom we have commemorated, and more especially by the
junction of the Murrays, Stewarts, and other clans of Athole, which were
peculiarly zealous in the royal cause, he soon assembled an army of two
or three thousand Highlanders, to whom he successfully united the Irish
under Colkitto. This last leader, who, to the great embarrassment of
Milton's commentators, is commemorated in one of that great poet's
sonnets, was properly named Alister, or Alexander M'Donnell, by birth a
Scottish islesman, and related to the Earl of Antrim, to whose patronage
he owed the command assigned him in the Irish troops. In many respects
he merited this distinction. He was brave to intrepidity, and almost to
insensibility; very strong and active in person, completely master of
his weapons, and always ready to show the example in the extremity of
danger. To counterbalance these good qualities, it must be recorded,
that he was inexperienced in military tactics, and of a jealous and
presumptuous disposition, which often lost to Montrose the fruits of
Colkitto's gallantry. Yet such is the predominance of outward personal
qualities in the eyes of a mild people, that the feats of strength and
courage shown by this champion, seem to have made a stronger impression
upon the minds of the Highlanders, than the military skill and
chivalrous spirit of the great Marquis of Montrose. Numerous traditions
are still preserved in the Highland glens concerning Alister M'Donnell,
though the name of Montrose is rarely mentioned among them.

[Milton's book, entitled TETRACHORDON, had been ridiculed, it would
seem, by the divines assembled at Westminster, and others, on account of
the hardness of the title; and Milton in his sonnet retaliates upon
the barbarous Scottish names which the Civil War had made familiar to
English ears:--

. . . . why is it harder, sirs, than Gordon,
COLKITTO or M'Donald, or Gallasp?
These rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
That would have made Quintillian stare and gasp.

"We may suppose," says Bishop Newton, "that these were persons of note
among the Scotch ministers, who were for pressing and enforcing the
Covenant;" whereas Milton only intends to ridicule the barbarism
of Scottish names in general, and quotes, indiscriminately, that of
Gillespie, one of the Apost