Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

Melville had a deep and abiding interest in history and its study. This poem, which is one of Melville's most fluent and powerful, was originally published in John Johnston's Inscriptiones historicae regum Scotorum (Amsterdam, 1602), a series of verse accounts of all the Scottish kings from Fergus I to James VI. The poem captures clearly his belief that history both provides us with moral instruction and guidance and contains hidden universal truths. Melville applies the study of history in poems such as the 'Antichristus' (d2_MelA_054) as an attempt to unlock the mysteries of scriptural prophecy and to pin them to a historical framework of world events. For a full account of Melville's 'historical' writings, see Reid, 'Andrew Melville, sacred chronology and world history'. Another edition of this poem, with introduction, can be found in Buchanan, Political Poetry, pp. 282-283. Metre: elegiac couplets.