5 - George Lauder: The Man and his Art

Summary

George Lauder is a most interesting poet in many ways. Where William Drummond had a quintessentially bookish relationship with European literature, Lauder's contact with Continental culture was more direct and immediate. As a consequence of his chosen career, his experience of the world of contemporary intellectual, scientific, literary and religious discourse was probably more varied than was the case for any other Scottish poet of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His writings allow one to glimpse something of the inner life of his mind, in his recording of, and reaction to, outer realities, whether political, social or religious. When Lauder offers advice to princes, that advice is grounded in an understanding of the ways of the world. In the development of his poetic art, a progression can be traced from the scintillations of youthful wit, to the pursuit of glory, to the commemoration of dead heroes, to the giving of advice to those in power, and to a final climax in a narrative of the life and sacrifice of Christ. In all, arete is his lode-star. George Lauder is a unique and significant figure in the early modern literature of Britain: trained in Renaissance humanist culture and steeped in neo-Latin verse, but himself writing in the vernacular, he was a man of culture and a Christian soldier in a century rife with armed conflict, and a poet who, despite decades of professional life and interaction with leaders and intellectuals on the Continent, never ceased to be a patriotic Scot.