Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I.
This poem, under the title 'Tears on the Death of Moeliades,' appeared
in 1613, and reached a third edition within a twelvemonth. Its two
hundred lines show the finished versification of the scholar, with
much poetic grace. It was a product of the Spenserian school, and
emphasized the fact that the representative literature of the land had
abandoned the Scottish dialect for English forms. Drummond's second
volume of poems commemorated the death of his wife and his love of
her. It is in this work that the ultimate mood of the poet appears.
Much beauty of form, a delightful sensitiveness to nature, a
luxuriance of color, and a finely tempered thoughtfulness pervade the
poems. His next production, celebrating the visit of James I. to his
native land, was entitled 'Forth Feasting,' and represented the Forth
and all its borders as rejoicing in the presence of their King. To the
reader of to-day the panegyric sounds fulsome and the poetry stilted,
and the once famous book has now merely an archaic interest.

Drummond's reputation is based upon the 'Poems,' and upon the
Jeremy-Taylor-like 'Cypress Grove,' published in 1623 in connection
with the religious verses called 'Flowers of Sion.' 'Cypress Grove'
is an essay on death, akin in spirit to the religious temper of the
Middle Ages, and in philosophic breadth to the diviner mood of Plato.
Only a mind of a high order would have conceived so beautiful and
lofty a meditation on the Final Mystery. This brief essay marks the
utmost reach of Drummond's mind, and shows the strength of that serene
spirituality, which could thus hold its way undisturbed by the
sectarian bitterness that fixed a great gulf between England and
Scotland. 'The History of the Five Jameses,' which Drummond was ten
years in compiling and which was not published until six years after
his death, added nothing to his reputation. It lacked alike the
diligent minuteness of the chronicler and the broader view of the
historian. Many minor papers on the state of religion and politics,
chief of which is the political tract 'Irene,' show Drummond's
aggressive interest in contemporary affairs. It is not generally known
that this gentle scholar was also an inventor of military engines. In
1626 Charles I. engaged him to produce sixteen machines and "not a few
inventions besides." The biographers have remained curiously ignorant
of this phase of his activity, but the State papers show