Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Poems of Alexander Montgomerie

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INTRODUCTION.
To praise thair owen these countries gois about:
Italians lyke Petrarchas noble grace,
Who well deservvis first place amange that rout.
Bot FOULAR, thou dois now thame all deface,
No vanting grece nor Romane now will strywe ;
They all do yield sen Fouler doith arrywe.
§ 26. Between the two countries in James’s reign a
channel of literary communication was kept open by the
coming and going of soldiers of fortune, Government
envoys, and political intriguers of one kind or another,
who happened to be, according to the manner of that
age, men of letters as well.1 A veteran of this type was
Thomas Churchyard, whose literary career begins with
Tottel’s ‘Miscellany,’ and stretches over into the next
century. In the first two decades of Elizabeth’s reign,
a time of small achievements in literature, he was one
of the most popular poets of the day. Contributions of
his appear in ‘The Mirror for Magistrates’ and ‘The
Paradyce of Dainty Devises.’ Indefatigable to the last,
he was, however, unable to keep pace with the later
developments of English poetry, and suffered the taunt
from Spenser of having sung himself hoarse. No one
could have been more familiar with the literature of the
Elizabethan period, or a better guide to it. Among his
intimate friends were Sidney and Raleigh ; and he had
1 One of Montgomerie’s sonnets is dated from London. He was probably
doing duty there as an envoy. Thomas Hudson (translator of Du Bartas’
‘Judith,’ and a contributor to ‘England’s Parnassus’) appears to have been
an Englishman, and likewise Robert Hudson, another of James’s Court
musicians and poets (probably a brother of the former), whom Montgomerie
eulogises in the following couplet
Thy Homer’s style, thy Petrark’s high invent,
Sail vanquish death’and live eternally.
Only four of his sonnets have survived.