Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/34

94 M. A. Home, St Leonardes.

A small manuscript volume bearing the name of Alexander Hume, and entitled "Rerum Scoticarum Compendium," is probably from the pen of one of these four, but of which, it may now be impossible to determine.

Alexander Hume, minister of Logic, is, however, the undoubted author of "Hymnes or Sacred Songs, wherein the right use of poesie may be espied: whereunto are added, the experience of the author's youth, and certain precepts serving to the practice of sanctification." This volume, printed by Waldegrave in 1599, was dedicated to Elizabeth Melvill, by courtesy styled lady Culross, a woman of talent and literary habits, the authoress of "Ane godlie dream, compylit in Scottish meter," printed at Aberdeen in 1644. The Hymns and Sacred Songs have been several times partially reprinted, and the original having fallen into extreme rarity, the whole has lately been reprinted by the Bannatyne club. In the prose introduction, the author addressing the youth of Scotland, exhorts them to avoid "profane sonnets and vain ballads of love, the fabulous feats of Palmerine, and such like reveries." "Some time," he adds, "I delighted in such fantasies myself, after the manner of riotous young men : and had not the Lord in his mercy pulled me aback, and wrought a great repentance in me, I had doubtless run forward and employed my time and study in that profane and unprofitable exercise, to my own perdition." The first of his hymns he styles his "Recantation:" it commences in the following solemn terms: