in that profession, a circumstance not much in its favour, and is a kind of proof, that the professors of it are generally composed of men who are capable of application, but without genius.  Mr. Drummond having, as we have already observed, a sovereign contempt for the law, applied himself to the sublimer studies of poetry and history, in both which he became very eminent.  Having relinquished all thoughts of the bar, or appearing in public, he retired to his pleasant seat at Hawthornden, and there, by reading the Greek and Latin authors, enriched the world with the product of his solitary hours.  After he had recovered a very dangerous fit of sickness, he wrote his Cypress Grove, a piece of excellent prose, both for the fineness of the stile, and the sublimity and piety of the sentiments:  In which he represents the vanity and instability of human affairs; teaches a due contempt of the world; proposes consolations against the fear of death, and gives us a view of eternal happiness.  Much about this time he wrote the Flowers of Sion in verse.  Though the numbers in which these poems are wrote are not now very fashionable, yet the harmony is excellent, and during the reign of King James and Charles I. we have met with no poet who seems to have had a better ear, or felt more intimately the passion he describes.  The writer of his life already mentioned, observes, that notwithstanding his close retirement, love stole upon him, and entirely subdued his heart.  He needed not to have assigned retirement as a reason why it should seem strange that love grew upon him, for retirement in its own nature is the very parent of love.  When a man converses with but few ladies, he is apt to fall in love with her who charms him most; whereas were his attention dissipated, and his affections bewildered by variety, he would be preserved from love by not being able to fix them; which is one reason why we always find people in the country have more enthusiastic notions of love, than those who move in the hurry of life.  This beautiful young lady, with whom Mr. Drummond was enamoured, was daughter of Mr. Cunningham of Barnes, of an ancient and honourable family.  He made his addresses to her in the true spirit of gallantry, and as he was a gentleman who had seen the world, and consequently was accomplished in the elegancies of life, he was not long in exciting proper returns of passion; he gained her affections, and when the day of the marriage was appointed, and all things ready for its solemnization, she was seized with a fever, and snatched from him, when his imagination had figured those scenes of rapture which naturally fill the mind of a bridegroom.  As our author was a poet, he no doubt was capable of forming still a greater ideal fealt, than a man of ordinary genius, and as his mistress was, as Rowe expresses it, ‘more than painting can express,’ or ’youthful poets fancy when they love,’ those who have felt that delicate passion, may be able in some measure to judge of the severity of distress