They went to the printer’s to have a peep at the last sheets, just passing through the press, where they presently spied some plain-spoken words like to be highly unpalatable at Court. Again they sought the old scholar and spoke to him about them. “Tell me, man,” says he, “giff I have tould the truth.” His visitors were of the same views as himself, and they could not shirk so plain an issue. “Yes, sir,” says one of them, “I think sae.” Then says the old man sternly: “Let it remain, I will byde it, whatever happen. Pray, pray to God for me and let Him direct all.” A “Stoick” philosopher, says Melville, and so he proved to the end, which came on the 28th of September 1582, in Kennedy’s Close, the second close to the west of the Tron Kirk, and long since vanished. The day before he died he found that he had not enough money to pay for his funeral, but even this, he said, must be given to the poor, his body could fare for itself. Wisely provident for its own renown Edinburgh gave him a public funeral in the Greyfriars Churchyard. Tradition marked the spot for some time, and then a blacksmith put up a tablet at his own cost, but that too vanished, and one is not certain that the learned Dr. David Laing succeeded in fixing the true place. As we have seen, the University of Edinburgh possesses what is believed to be his skull. When Deacon Brodie stole the mace, this trophy did not come under his hand, or it had surely gone too. [Illustration: WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN, From the Painting by Cornelius Janson van Ceulen] No one could be less like George Buchanan than William Drummond of Hawthornden, born three years after the death of the other, save that he also was a man of letters, and that he also had intimate connection with Edinburgh. Hawthornden is one of the beauty spots near the capital. Here Ben Jonson paid him, in 1618-19, one of the most famous visits in all the history of letters. The story is that Drummond was seated under a huge sycamore tree when Jonson’s huge form hove in sight. The meeting of two poets needs must call forth a spark of poetry. “Welcome! Welcome! royal Ben! Thank ye kindly, Hawthornden!” A little suspicious, you may think! Where did Ben Jonson learn to address a Scots laird in this peculiarly Scots fashion? After all, Ben’s forbears came from Annandale, and who that has seen Hawthornden will doubt here was the ideal spot for such an encounter? Drummond was a devoted cavalier; his death was caused or hastened by that of Charles I. He was buried by his favourite river in the neighbouring churchyard of Lasswade. He has written his own epitaph: “Here Damon lies whose songs did sometime grace The wandering Esk—may roses shade the place.”