(Excerpt from The Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander,...)
Excerpt from The Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, &C, Vol. 1 of 3: Now First Collected and Edited, With Memoir and Notes In the volume here issued, the Editor has the privilege of placing before the lovers of our old poetry the Avrora, and the Elegie on Prince Henrie, two of the rarest pieces of the Author. In conclusion, the Editor has to return his best thanks to David Laing, Esq., LL.D., the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D., and other gentlemen, for hints and information received during the course of the volume through the press. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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William Alexander was the son of Alexander of Menstrie and Marion, daughter of an Allan Couttie. The family was old and claimed to be descended from Somerled, lord of the Isles, through John, lord of the Isies, who married Margaret, daughter of Robert II.
William Alexander was probably educated at Stirling grammar school. There is a tradition that he was at Glasgow University; and, according to Drummond of Hawthornden, he was a student at the university of Leiden.
He accompanied Archibald, 7th earl of Argyll, his neighbour at Castle Campbell, on his travels in France, Spain and Italy.
Introduced by Argyll at court, Alexander speedily gained the favour of James VI, whom he followed to England, where he became one of the gentlemen-extraordinary of prince Henry's chamber. For the prince he wrote his Paraenesis to the Prince (1604), a poem in eight-lined stanzas on the familiar theme of princely duty. He was knighted in 1609. On the death of Henry in 1612, when he wrote an elegy on his young patron, he was appointed to the household of prince Charles. In 1613 he (in conjunction with Thomas Foulis and Paulo Pinto, a Portuguese) received from the king a grant of a silver-mine at Hilderston near Linlithgow, from which, however, neither the Crown nor the undertakers made any profit. In 1613 he began a correspondence with the poet Drummond of Hawthornden, which ripened into a lifelong intimacy after their meeting (March 1614) at Menstrie House, where Alexander was on one of hisshort annual visits. In 1614 Alexander was appointed to the English office of master of requests, and in July of the following year to a seat on the Scottish privy council. In 1621 he received from James I enormous grants of land in America embracing the districts of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Gaspe Peninsula, accompanied by a charter appointing him hereditary lieutenant of the new colony. This territory was afterwards increased on paper, so as to include a great part of Canada. Alexander proceeded to recruit emigrants for his "New Scotland, " but the terms he offered were so meagre that he failed to attract any except the lowest class. These were despatched in two vessels chartered for the purpose, and in 1625 he published an Encouragement to Colonies in which he vainly painted in glowing colours the natural advantages of the new territory. The enterprise was further discredited by the institution of an order of baronets of Nova Scotia, who were to receive grants of land, each 6 sq. m. in extent, in the colony for a consideration of £150. An attempt made by the French to makegood their footing in the colony was frustrated (1627) by Captain Kertch, and Alexander's son and namesake made two expeditions to Nova Scotia. But Alexander found the colony a constant drain on his resources, and was unable to obtain from the treasury, in spite of royal support, £6000 which he demanded as compensation for his losses. He received, however, a grant of 1000 acres in Armagh. He was the king's secretary for Scotland from 1626 till his death, and in 1630 was created Viscount Stirling and Lord Alexander of Tullibody. In the same year he was appointed master of requests for Scotland, and in 1631 an extraordinary judge of the Court of Session. Meanwhile French influence had gained ground in America. In 1631 Charles sent instructions to Alexander to abandon Port Royale, and in the following year, by a treaty signed at St Germain-en-Laye, the whole of the territory of Nova Scotia was ceded to the French. Alexander continued to receive substantial marks of the royal favour. In 1631 he obtained a patent granting him the privilege of printing a translation of the Psalms, of which James I was declared to be the author. There is reason to believe that in this unfortunate collection, which the Scottish and English churches refused to encourage, Alexander included some of his own work. He had been commanded by James to submit translations, when James was carrying out his long entertained wish to supplant the popular version of Sternhokl and Hopkins; but these the royal critic had not preferred to his own. It has been assumed from the scanty evidence that when Alexander was entrusted with the editing and publishing of the Psalms by Charles I he had introduced some of his own work. In 1633 he was advanced to the rank of earl, with the additional title of Viscount Canada, and in 1639 he became earl of Dovan. His affairs were still embarrassed and he had begun to build Argyll House at Stirling. In 1623 he received the right of a royalty on the copper coinage of Scotland, but this proved unproductive. He therefore secured for his fourth son the office of general of the Mint, and proceeded to issue small copper coins, known as "turners, " which were put into circulation as equivalent to two farthings, although they were of the same weight as the old farthings. These coins were unpopular, and were reduced to their real value by the privy council in 1639. Alexander died in debt on the 12th of February 1640, at his London house in Covent Garden.
Alexander's earliest work was probably Aurora (London, 1604), which was described on its title-page as 'the first fancies of the author's youth' and is a late addition to the corpus of Elizabethan Petrarchan sonnets. His closet dramas - Croesus, Darius, The Alexandrean, and Julius Caesar - were published together as The Monarchick Tragedies (London, 1604; further editions in 1607, 1616, 1637). According to Daniel Cadman, in these plays Alexander 'interrogates the value of republican forms of government and provides a voice for the frustrations of politically marginalised subjects of absolutist regimes'.
Alexander's grandest work is an epic poem describing the end of the world, Doomes-day. It was first published in four books (Edinburgh, 1614), and later in twelve (in the collected edition of Alexander's work printed in London, 1637).
Alexander was one of the most highly regarded Scottish poets in early seventeenth-century Scotland and England: he was praised by William Drummond of Hawthornden, Arthur Johnstone, Andrew Ramsey, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel and John Davies of Hereford.
The Canadian Coast Guard has named the CCGS Sir William Alexander in his honour.
(Excerpt from The Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander,...)
Quotations:
"No town can keep a man, but men keep towns. "
"The deepest rivers make least din. "
"While as he yet doth breath extend, no man is blest; behold the end. "
"The stately heavens which glory doth array, are mirrors of God's admirable might; there, whence forth spreads the night, forth springs the day. He fix'd the fountains of this temporal light, where stately stars enstall'd, some stand, some stray, all sparks of his great power (though small) yet bright. By what none utter can, no, not conceive. All of his greatness, shadows may perceive. "
"Not beauty, no, but virtue rais'd my fires, whose sacred flame did cherish chaste desires. "
He married, before 1604, Janet, daughter of Sir William Erskine, one of the Balgonie family.
