The English Poets Volume 2 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL OF STIRLING (or STERLINE). [Bom about 1580, of a family which had for some time owned Mcnstrie in Clackmannan. In early life he travelled, and on Ms return, or during his absence, wrote A urora, First Fancies of the A uthor's Youth, a small volume of sonnets and songs to a real or imaginary lady called Aurora. lie became a courtier in 1603, and followed James to London. In 1603 he published at Edinburgh The Tragedie of Darius; in 1604 he reprinted it, adding The Tragedie of Croesus and The Parceuesis to Prince Henry; in 1607 he reprinted the two tragedies and added The Alexandrean Tragedy and Julius Cmsar, under the joint title of Tour Monnrchicke Tragedies.' lie helped King James in his version of the Psalms. Knighted in 16jl, and made Secretary of State for Scotland in 1626, he was raised to the peerage, as Viscount Canada in 1630, and created Karl of Stirling 1633. lie printed a fulio edition of his tragedies and of the religious poem o( Domesday iu 1637, and died 1640.] Mr. Masson in his life of Drummond pronounces a severe judgment over the grave of Drummond's friend, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. 'There he lies, I suppose, to this day, vaguely remembered as the second-rate Scottish sycophant of an inglorious despotism, and the author of a large quantity of fluent and stately English verse which no one reads.' He certainly played no very glorious part in the attempts of James and Charles to impose episcopacy on Scotland; unconscious all the while that he was one of those who were preparing the way for a ' Monarch- icke Tragedie' as terrible as any of the four that he had put into verse. That the bulk of his poetry deserves that neglect which, as Mr. Masson truly says, has befallen it, is not likely to be disputed by those wh...