[4] On finding himself his own master, Drummond naturally abandoned law for the muses; "for," says his biographer in 1711, "the delicacy of his wit always run on the pleasantness and usefulness of history, and on the fame and softness of poetry".

In 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death, appeared Poems: Amorous, Funerall, Divine, Pastorall: in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals, which for several centuries was thought to commemorate Drummond's love for a fiancée who died young, a certain Cunningham of Barns,[5] but the story is now considered unlikely, considering that Cunningham died in July 1616 and that Drummond omitted any reference to her when he compiled a list of important dates in his life many years later.

Forth Feasting: A Panegyricke to the King's Most Excellent Majestie (1617), a poem written in heroic couplets of remarkable facility, celebrates James's visit to Scotland in that year.

[7] The account of their conversations, long supposed to be lost, was discovered in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, by David Laing, and was edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1842 and printed by Gifford & Cunningham.

The conversations are full of literary gossip, and embody Jonson's opinion of himself and of his host, whom he frankly told that "his verses were too much of the schooles, and were not after the fancie of the time," and again that he "was too good and simple, and that oft a man's modestie made a fool of his witt".

[2] But the publication of what was obviously intended as a private journal has given Jonson an undeserved reputation for very harsh literary judgements, and has cast blame on Drummond for blackening his guest's memory.

[citation needed] In 1627, however, he seems to have been home for a short time, as, in that year, he appears in the entirely new character of the holder of a patent for the construction of military machines, entitled "Litera Magistri Gulielmi Drummond de Fabrica Machinarum Militarium, Anno 1627".

[9] As Drummond preferred High Church Episcopalianism to Presbyterianism, and was an extremely loyal subject, he supported King Charles's policy of spreading Laudianism, though he protested against some of the methods employed to enforce it.

When Lord Balmerino was put on trial for the capital offence of retaining in his possession a petition regarded as a libel against the King, Drummond in an energetic "Letter" (1635) urged the injustice and folly of the proceedings.

About this time a claim by the earl of Menteith to the earldom of Strathearn, which was based on the assertion that King Robert III, husband of Annabella Drummond, was illegitimate, roused the poet's pride of blood and prompted him to prepare a historical defence of his house.

It is entitled Irene: or a Remonstrance for Concord, Amity, and Love amongst His Majesty's Subjects (1638), and embodies Drummond's political creed of submission to authority as the only logical refuge from democracy, which he hated.

[7] A noteworthy feature in Drummond's poetry, as in that of his courtier contemporaries Aytoun, Lord Stirling and others, is that it manifests no characteristic Scottish element, but owes its birth and inspiration rather to the English and Italian masters.

A remarkable burlesque poem Polemo Middinia inter Vitarvam et Nebernam (printed anonymously in 1684) has been persistently, and with good reason, ascribed to him.

It is a mock-heroic tale, in macaronic Latin enriched with Scottish Gaelic expressions, of a country feud on the Fife lands of his old friends the Cunninghams.

As well as treasures in the fields of literature, history, geography, philosophy and theology, science, medicine and law, Drummond also donated several, now 'iconic', Shakespeare quartos.