Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/134

118 friend and lover, Ben Jonson." Drummond answers in July : " Worthy Friend [a cold-blooded address !], The uncertainty of your abode was a cause of my silence this time past — I have adventured this packet upon hopes that a man so famous cannot be in any place either of the City or Court, where he shall not be found out. In my last (the missing letter) I sent you a description of Loch Lomond, with map of Inch- merionach, which may, by your book, be made most famous," &c. The book was never published, the MS. being destroyed by fire. As the poem " My Picture left in Scotland " is not only very beautiful, but of special interest for its brave uncompromising self-portraiture, I quote it in Drummond's version, which appears rather superior than inferior to that in the text, " Underwoods," ' I doubt that Love is rather deaf than blind, For else it could not be That she Whom I adore so much should so slight me, And cast my suit behind : I'm sure my language to her is as sweet, And all my closes meet In numbers of as subtile feet As makes the youngest he That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree. O ! but my conscious fears. That fly my thoughts between, Prompt me that she hath seen My hundred of grey hairs, Told six and forty years, Read so much waste as she cannot embrace My mountain belly and my rocky face, And all these, through her eyes, have slept her ears."