About the end
of the year 1618 Ben Jonson, then Poet Laureate of England, walked from
London to Edinburgh to visit his friend Taylor, the Thames waterman,
commonly known as the Water Poet, who at that time was at Leith. In the
January following he called to see the poet Drummond of Hawthornden, who
was more frequently called by the name of the place where he lived than
by his own. He found him sitting in front of his house, and as he
approached Drummond welcomed him with the poetical salutation:
"Welcome! welcome! Royal Ben,"
to which Jonson responded,
"Thank ye, thank ye, Hawthornden."
[Illustration: HAWTHORNDEN.]
The poet Drummond was born in 1585, and died in 1649, his end being
hastened by grief at the execution of Charles I. A relative erected a
monument to his memory in 1784, to which the poet Young added the
following lines:
O sacred solitude, divine retreat,
Choice of the prudent, envy of the great!
By the pure stream, or in the waving shade
I court fair Wisdom, that celestial maid;
Here from the ways of men, laid safe ashore,
I smile to hear the distant tempest roar;
Here, blest with health, with business unperplex'd,
This life I relish, and secure the next.
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