Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/126

110 This was about the 20th September. He paid many other visits, including one to the elegant and scholarly poet, William Drummond of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh.* This, according to Gifford, occu- pied the greater part of April 1619 ; but, as Col. Cunningham shows, it clearly occurred before January 17, 1619.1 Drummond, as we are all aware, took notes of his conversations ; and of these I can dis- cover no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy, in spite of the furious raging of Gifford ; nor can I see that the conversations thus reported derogate in any degree from the character or judgment of Jonson. But Drummond pretended a cordial amity for his guest, writing after the visit, on the 17th January, 161 9 : "If there be any other thing in this country (unto which my power can reach), command it ; there is nothing 1 wish more than to be in the calendar of says : ' ' Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of Shakespeare? It may be that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are. Kit Marlowe [Lamb, as an intimate, had the right to call him Kit], Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley." In the same essay, by-the-bye, he says of the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess, concerning which I have already quoted him : " No casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable to honour and keep safe such a jewel." t Col. Cunningham points out that Gifford errs in some dates relating to this visit or depending upon the "Conversations," through ignorance of the fact that in Scotland the year began on the ist January after A.u. 1600. Thus he places Drummond's letter of January, 1619, after Jonson's letters of May and July, 1619 — which, of course, would have been the proper order had Drummond been an Englishman, dating in the then English style.
 * Lamb, in his " Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading,"