SOURCE: Atkinson, David W. “The Religious Voices of Drummond of Hawthornden.” Studies in Scottish Literature 21 (1986): 197-209.

In the following essay, Atkinson asserts that Drummond's poetry and prose writings reveal an insightful mind searching for answers to the complex and controversial religious issues of his day.

For a long time, critics viewed William Drummond as a first-class translater but a second-class poet, as one who carried the Renaissance ideal of imitation too far, producing poetry, as well as prose, which was little more than English renderings of European originals.¹ More recent critics, however, have found that Drummond is more than a good translater, and that he clearly expresses his own personal and philosophical outlook in his imitations.² An indication of this originality is how Drummond's writing serves as a revealing barometer of the Scottish religious temperament during the first half of the seventeenth century. Although Drummond by his own...