31. Stirling, William Alexander, Earl of. This accomplished nobleman was born at Menstrie, in the county of Clackmannan, Scotland, 1580, a descendant of the family of Macdonald. He was a favourite both of James the First, and of his son Charles, and by the latter was created Viscount Canada, and subsequently Earl of
Stirling. From an early period he gave promise of more than common genius, and his attachment to poetry was fostered, as in Drummond, by the sorrows of unrequited love. To the stimulus of this powerful passion we are indebted for his "Aurora: containing the first Fancies of the Author's Youth," 4to., which was published, together with some other pieces, in 1604. This elegant production, the solace of a rural retreat, on his return from a tour on the continent, consists of one hundred and six sonnets, ten songs or odes, some madrigals, elegies, &c., and places the talents of the writer in a very favourable point of view: for the versification is often peculiarly harmonious, and many beauties, both in imagery and sentiment, are interspersed through the collection, which, though a juvenile production, must be pronounced the most poetical of his works. The diction approximates, indeed, so nearly to that of the present century, that a specimen may be considered as a curiosity, and will confirm the assertion of Lord Orford, that he "was greatly superior to the style of his age."[650:A] With the exception of a little quaintness in the second line, the subsequent sonnet will equal the expectation of the reader:—
SONNET X.
"I sweare, Aurora, by thy starrie eyes,
And by those golden lockes whose locke none slips,
And by the corall of thy rosie lippes,
And by the naked snowes which beautie dies;
I sweare by all the jewels of thy mind,
Whose like yet never worldly treasure bought,
Thy solide judgement and thy generous thought,