A Scottish poet and courtier, knighted by James I. in 1612. He was one of the first Scotsmen who wrote in English with any degree of elegance and purity. “I do confess thou’rt smooth and fair,” and the prototype of “Auld Lang Syne,” have been ascribed to him, but on scant authority.

  Sir Robert Aiton, knight;—he lies buried in the south aisle of the choire of Westminster abbey where there is erected to his memory an elegant marble and copper monument and inscription…. That Sir Robert was one of the best poets of his time—Mr. John Dreyden says he has seen verses of his, some of the best of that age, printed with some other verses—quaere. He was acquainted with all the witts of his time in England. He was a great acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Hobbes of Malemsbury, whom Mr. Hobbes told me he made use of (together with Ben Johnson) for an Aristarchus, when he made his Epistle Dedicatory to his translation of Thucydides.

  Aytoun’s poems are not numerous, nor of sustained effort, but they show much perfection in the art of poetry, and a Horatian elegance of style and turn of thought becoming their semi-lyrical character. He himself possibly placed more value upon his Latin Poems, which appeared in the “Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum,” than on his English Poems, for they appeared in all sorts of ways, scattered here and there, and were only first collected in 1844, on the occasion of a manuscript copy having come into the hands of Dr. Charles Rogers, who had them printed for private circulation.

  Connected with several of the wits of that period; and Jonson averred to Drummond that “Sir R. Ayton loved him dearly.” He was evidently a man of sprightly talents, as well as an elegant scholar: his Latin poems, which occur in the “Delitiæ Poetarum Scotorum,” have been highly commended by Borrichius; and his English poems, although inconsiderable for their number and length, are sufficient to evince that he was capable of higher efforts.

  To whom is commonly attributed the well-known song, “I do confess thou’rt smooth and fair,” and who is also the author of a considerable number of other similar effusions, many of them of superior polish and elegance.

  The literary repute of Sir Robert Aytoun is as much of a paradox as Sir Edward Dyer’s. His Latin productions are stilted and unmellifluous, mere echoes of the iron age of classic Latinity, and simply grotesque beside Buchanan’s and Johnston’s. Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet indeed gives him a relatively large space in his “Delitiæ Poet. Scot.,” but simply from his contemporary repute. Among his Latin poems appear several epitaphs and epigrams celebrating eminent contemporaries. The latest event to which any of them refers is the death of Buckingham in 1628, commemorated in elegiacs. Aytoun’s “Diophantus and Charidora” has a certain interest as having been among the earlier writing in English by a Scot, but it is poor in substance. His “Inconstancy Upbraided” has a ring of truthfulness and touches of music. Such praise as is due to the elegant trifles of an accomplished man of the world is all that can be allowed his poems. If it could be proved that he wrote “I do confess thou’rt smooth and fair,” of which Burns gave a Scottish version, it would not be necessary to modify this estimate; and it is all but certain that Sir Robert Aytoun did not write it.

  Aytoun long preserved a considerable reputation for the grace and delicacy of his verse; but, unhappily a doubt hangs over his most admired compositions, and it is not certain that we possess, as his, the verses which Dryden pronounced “some of the best of that age.”