Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/331

 Carnal Friend, Sathan, Michael," &c., sustain their parts with such spirit, as to show, in connexion with his other works of the like nature, that he might have excelled in a department of profane literature, for which, no doubt, he entertained the greatest horror, namely, writing for the stage. The first volume of the work is dedicated, in an English address to King Charles I., and then in a French one, to his consort Henrietta Maria. It says much for the dexterity of Mr Zachary, that he inscribes a religious work to a Catholic Princess, without any painful reference to her own unpopular faith. He dedicates the second volume to the Electress Palatine, daughter of James VI., and adds a short piece, which he styles her "Lamentations for the death of her son," who was drowned while crossing in a ferry-boat to Amsterdam. The extravagant grief which he describes in this little work is highly amusing. It strikes him that the Electress must have conceived a violent antipathy to water, in consequence of the mode of her son's death, and he therefore makes her conclude her lamentations in the following strain:

"O cursed waters! O waters of Marah, full bitter are yee to me! O element which of all others shall be most detestable to my soule, I shall never wash mine hands with thee, but I shall remember what thou hast done to my best beloved sonne, the darling of my soul! I shall for ever be a friend to the fire, which is thy greatest foe. Away rivers! away seas! Let me see you no more. If yee were sensible creatures, my dear brother Charles, Prince of the European seas, should scourge you with his royal ships; with his thundering cannons, he should pierce you to the bottom.

"O seas of son-owes, O fearfull floodes, O tumbling tempests, O wilfull waves, O swelling surges, O wicked waters, O dooleful deepes, O feartest pooles, O botchful butcher boates, was there no mercy among you for such an hopefull Prince? that I could refraine from teares, and that because they are salt like yourselves!" &c.

Childish as this language is in spirit, it is perhaps in as good taste as most of the elegies produced either by this or by a later age.

Mr Zachary appears to have been naturally a high loyalist. In 1633, when Charles I. visited his native dominions, to go through the ceremony of his coronation, Mr Zachary met him, the day after that solemnity, in the porch of Holyrood Palace, and addressed him in a Latin oration couched in the most exalted strains of panegyric and affection. He afterwards testified this feeling under circumstances mere apt to test its sincerity. When the attempt to impose the episcopal mode of worship upon Scotland, caused the majority of the people to unite in a covenant for the purpose of maintaining the former system, the whole of the individuals connected with Glasgow college, together with Mr Zachary, set themselves against a document, which, however well-meant and urgently necessary, was certainly apt to become a stumbling-block in the subsequent proceedings of the country. These divines resolved rather to yield a little to the wishes of their sovereign, than fly into open rebellion against him. Mr Robert Baillie paid them a visit, to induce them to subscribe the covenant, but was rot successful: "we left them," says he, "resolved to celebrate the Communion on Pasch in the High Church, kneeling." This must have been about a month after the subscription of the covenant had commenced. Soon afterwards, most of these recusants, including Mr Zachary, found it necessary to conform, for where the majority is very powerful or very violent, no minority can exist. Baillie says, in a subsequent letter, "At our townsmen's desire, Mr Andrew Cant and Mr J. Rutherford were sent by the nobles to preach in the High Kirk, ard receive the oaths of that people to the covenant. Lord Eglintoune was appointed to be a