SOURCE: Kastner, L. E. Introduction to The Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden, With ‘A Cypresse Grove,’ edited by L. E. Kastner, pp. xv-xliv. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1913.

In the following excerpt, Kastner provides an overview of Drummond's life and works, discussing the poet's literary influences, his modest critical following, and the derivative nature of his verses.

To the most unobservant reader of Drummond's poetry it is at once evident that his verse is wholly exotic. It shares that character with the poetry of his Scottish contemporaries and immediate predecessors. It is no exaggeration to say that the poetry produced in Scotland, during the close of the sixteenth century and the early years of the seventeenth century, is not Scottish at all, except in the sense that the authors of it were born in Scotland. This is true of Sir Robert Ayton, Sir David Murray of...