1 - Cultural Contexts

Summary

George Lauder (1603–1670) is a fascinating figure in the history of seventeenth-century literature in English, although hitherto a dearth of information concerning his life, his career and his writings has meant that his achievement has not been appreciated. His poems are of interest for several reasons. Many of them, for example, have a strong political dimension – whether he is envisaging a role for Charles I as Protestant conqueror of Catholic Europe, commenting on the tensions between the Stuart monarch and the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, celebrating the military successes of the princes of Orange, or congratulating Charles II on the Restoration. This particular combination of themes is without parallel.

Lauder's earliest published work, however, had no specifically Scottish or English content, and consisted of imitations and translations of neo-Latin anti-papal and anti-Catholic verses composed mainly by Italian poets of the Renaissance. At this stage of his life Lauder, fresh from his studies in Edinburgh, evidently wished to cut a figure as a university wit. Soon after this early success, he set off for England to seek patronage from those around the court, and he duly came under the influence of the contemporary Metaphysical and Caroline poets.

A few years later, and for reasons that are not altogether clear, Lauder opted for life in the army, and in more than four decades he saw service in France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Low Countries. This military career is the backdrop to the work of his mature years, much of which consists of elegies on praiseworthy commanders, both British and Dutch. During his long residence in the Netherlands, Lauder became increasingly involved with the culture of his adoptive land, though he also maintained a keen interest in Scottish and British affairs. By nature Lauder was a celebrator of the great and the good – whether political, as exemplified by the Stadholder Frederick Henry of Orange-Nassau, literary, as exemplified by the poet William Drummond of Hawthornden, or religious, as exemplified by the Huguenot theologian Andre Rivet.

Lauder's cast of mind was fundamentally conservative and, as will be seen, he had an unshakeable faith in the values and virtues of aristocratic excellence, royalty, heroism and Protestant Christianity.