to the throne of the southern kingdom, that is, in the year 1617. This
would make it contemporaneous with Ben Jonson’s researches on the
English Grammar; for we find, in 1629, James Howell (Letters, Sec. V.
27) writing to Jonson that he had procured Davies’ Welch Grammar for
him, “to add to those many you have.” The grammar that Jonson had
prepared for the press was destroyed in the conflagration of his study;
so that the posthumous work we now possess consists merely of materials,
which were printed for the first time in 1640, three years after the
author’s death.

The Dedication of this Tract is merely signed _Alexander Hume_, and
contains no other clue to the authorship. Curiously enough there were
four Alexander Humes living about the same time, and three of them were
educated at St. Mary’s College, St. Andrew’s; only two, however, became
authors, the first of whom was Minister of Logie, and wrote _Hymnes or
Sacred Songes_. There can be little doubt, however, that the present
grammar was written by the Alexander Hume who was at one time Head
Master of the High School, Edinburgh, and author of _Grammatica Nova_.

From Dr. Steven’s History of the High School, Edinburgh, and from
M’Crie’s Life of Melville, I have been enabled to extract and put
together the following scanty particulars of our author’s life:--The
time and place both of his birth and of his death are alike unknown;
but he himself, on the title of one of his works, tells us that he was
distantly connected with the ancient and noble family of Home, in the
county of Berwick. He was educated at the school of Dunbar, under the
celebrated Andrew Simson, and in due time was enrolled a student in St.
Mary’s College, St. Andrew’s, and then took the degree of Bachelor of
Arts in 1574. He came to England, and was incorporated at Oxford January
26, 1580-81, as “M. of A. of St. Andrew’s, in Scotland.”[1] He spent