Less unsatisfactory to Milton, must hare been the literary appearances about the same time of his elder nephew, Edward Phillips.  On the same day on which the stationer Nathaniel Brooke had registered Wit and Drollery edited by John Phillips, i.e. on Jan. 30, 1655-6, he had registered two tales or small novels called “The Illustrious Shepherdess” and “The Imperious Brother” both “written originally in Spanish and now Englished by Edward Phillips, Gent."[1] The first of these translations, both from the Spanish of Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638), is dedicated by Phillips to the Marchioness of Dorchester, in what Godwin calls “an extraordinary style of fustian and bombast."[2] With the exception, of such affectation in style, which Phillips afterwards threw off, there is nothing ill to report of these early performances of his; and two translations from the Spanish were a creditable proof of accomplishment.  But still more interesting was another literary performance of Edward Phillips’s of the same date.  This was his edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden.

[Footnote 1:  Stationers’ Registers of date.]

[Footnote 2:  Godwin’s Lives of the Phillipses, 138-139.  I know the translations only from Godwin’s account of them.]

Drummond had died in 1649, leaving in manuscript, at Hawthornden or in Edinburgh, not only his History of Scotland from 1423 to 1542, or through the Reigns of the Five Jameses, but also various other prose-writings, and a good deal of verse in addition to what he had published in his life-time.  Drummond’s son and heir being under age, the care of the MSS. had devolved chiefly on Drummond’s brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a well-known Scottish judge, antiquary, and eccentric.  Hitherto the troubles in Scotland had prevented the publication by Sir John of these remains of his celebrated relative, the only real Scottish poet of his generation.  With the other Scottish dignitaries and officials who had resisted the English invasion, Sir John himself had been turned out of his public posts, heavily fined, and remitted into private life (Vol.  IV. p. 561).  Gradually, however, as Scotland had become accustomed to her union with England, things had come round again for the old ex-Judge, as well as for others.  There is reason to believe that he was in London for some time in 1654-5, soliciting the Protector and the Council for favour in the matter of his fine, if not for restoration to one of his former offices, the Director of the Scottish Chancery.  The case of Scot of Scotstarvet, at all events, was then under discussion in the Council, with the result that his fine, which had been originally L1500, but had been reduced to L500, was first reduced farther to L300, and next, apparently by Cromwell’s own interposition, altogether “discharged and taken off, in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth."[1] If Scotstarvet himself,