Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish some striking illustrations of the powerful emotion of domesticity, it is not that we are without instances in the private history of families among ourselves. I have known more than one where the servant has chosen to live without wages, rather than quit the master or the mistress in their decayed fortunes; and another where the servant cheerfully worked to support her old lady to her last day.

Would we look on a very opposite mode of servitude, turn to the United States. No system of servitude was ever so preposterous. A crude notion of popular freedom in the equality of ranks abolished the very designation of "servant," substituting the fantastic term of "helps." If there be any meaning left in this barbarous neologism, their aid amounts to little; their engagements are made by the week, and they often quit their domicile without the slightest intimation.

Let none, in the plenitude of pride and egotism, imagine that they exist independent of the virtues of their domestics. The good conduct of the servant stamps a character on the master. In the sphere of domestic life they must frequently come in contact with them. On this subordinate class, how much the happiness and even the welfare of the master may rest! The gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and await him at all seasons and in all spots, in pleasure or in peril. Feelingly observes Sir Walter Scott—"In a free country an individual's happiness is more immediately connected with the personal character of his valet, than with that of the monarch himself." Let the reflection not be deemed extravagant if I venture to add, that the habitual obedience of a devoted servant is a more immediate source of personal comfort than even the delightfulness of friendship and the tenderness of relatives—for these are but periodical; but the unbidden zeal of the domestic, intimate with our habits, and patient of our waywardness, labours for us at all hours. It is those feet which hasten to us in our solitude; it is those hands which silently administer to our wants. At what period of life are even the great exempt from the gentle offices of servitude?

Faithful servants have never been commemorated by more heartfelt affection than by those whose pursuits require a perfect freedom from domestic cares. Persons of sedentary occupations, and undisturbed habits, abstracted from the daily business of life, must yield unlimited trust to the honesty, while they want the hourly attentions and all the cheerful zeal, of the thoughtful domestic. The mutual affections of the master and the servant have often been exalted into a companionship of feelings.

When Madame de Genlis heard that POPE had raised a monument not only to his father and to his mother, but also to the faithful servant who had nursed his earliest years, she was so suddenly struck by the fact, that she declared that "This monument of gratitude is the more remarkable for its singularity, as I know of no other instance." Our churchyards would have afforded her a vast number of tomb-stones erected by grateful masters to faithful servants;[A] and a closer intimacy with the domestic privacy of many public characters might have displayed the same splendid examples. The one which appears to have so strongly affected her may be found on the east end of the outside of the parish church of Twickenham. The stone bears this inscription:—

To the memory of MARY BEACH, who died November 5, 1725, aged 78. ALEXANDER POPE, whom she nursed in his infancy, and constantly attended for thirty-eight years, Erected this stone In gratitude to a faithful Servant.

[Footnote A: Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling, and exhibit many grateful EPITAPHS ON SERVANTS.]

The original portrait of SHENSTONE was the votive gift of a master to his servant, for, on its back, written by the poet's own hand, is the following dedication:—"This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by her master, William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity.—W.S." We might refer to many similar evidences of the domestic gratitude of such masters to old and attached servants. Some of these tributes may be familiar to most readers. The solemn author of the "Night Thoughts" inscribed an epitaph over the grave of his man-servant; the caustic GIFFORD poured forth an effusion to the memory of a female servant, fraught with a melancholy tenderness which his muse rarely indulged.

The most pathetic, we had nearly said, and had said justly, the most sublime, development of this devotion of a master to his servant, is a letter addressed by that powerful genius MICHAEL ANGELO to his friend Vasari, on the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant.[A] Published only in the voluminous collection of the letters of Painters, by Bottari, it seems to have escaped general notice. We venture to translate it in despair: for we feel that we must weaken its masculine yet tender eloquence.

[Footnote A: It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed by the great sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who would beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to assert his independent character as an artist, and through life evinced a somewhat hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention to his dying domestic, anticipating all his wants by a personal attendance at his bedside. This was no light service on the part of Michael Angelo, who was himself at the time eighty-two years of age.—ED.]

MICHAEL ANGELO TO VASARI.

"My Dear George,—I can but write ill, yet shall not your letter remain without my saying something. You know how Urbino has died. Great was the grace of God when he bestowed on me this man, though now heavy be the grievance and infinite the grief. The grace was that when he lived he kept me living; and in dying he has taught me to die, not in sorrow and with regret, but with a fervent desire of death. Twenty and six years had he served me, and I found him a most rare and faithful man; and now that I had made him rich, and expected to lean on him as the staff and the repose of my old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains than that of seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of God was this happy death to him; yet, even more than this death, were his regrets increased to leave me in this world the wretch of many anxieties, since the better half of myself has departed with him, and nothing is left for me than this loneliness of life."

Even the throne has not been too far removed from this sphere of humble humanity, for we discover in St. George's Chapel a mural monument erected by order of one of our late sovereigns as the memorial of a female servant of a favourite daughter. The inscription is a tribute of domestic affection in a royal bosom, where an attached servant became a cherished inmate.

King George III. Caused to be interred near this place the body of MARY GASCOIGNE, Servant to the Princess Amelia; and this stone to be inscribed in testimony of his grateful sense of the faithful services and attachment of an amiable young woman to his beloved Daughter.

This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is not peculiar to the refinement of our manners, or to modern Europe; it is not the charity of Christianity alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed this equality of affection, which the domestic may participate: monumental inscriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their slaves, have been preserved in the great collections of Graevius and Gruter.[A]

[Footnote A: There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who consecrate "to themselves and their servants" the sepulchres they erect in their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from those who had served them faithfully. An instance of affectionate regard to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes; it is an inscription by one Sextus Arius Varcis, to Hermes, "his best servant" (servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved an inscription which records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius Severus, his master, by which it appears he was the child of an old servant, who was honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and who is also styled in the epitaph "his sweetest freedman" (liberto dulcissimo).—ED.]

* * * * *

PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM.

Printed Letters, without any attention to the selection, is so great a literary evil, that it has excited my curiosity to detect the first modern who obtruded such formless things on public attention. I conjectured that, whoever he might be, he would be distinguished for his egotism and his knavery. My hypothetical criticism turned out to be correct. Nothing less than the audacity of the unblushing Pietro Aretino could have adventured on this project; he claims the honour, and the critics do not deny it, of being the first who published Italian letters. Aretino had the hardihood to dedicate one volume of his letters to the King of England, another to the Duke of Florence; a third to Hercules of Este, a relative of Pope Julius Third—evidently insinuating that his letters were worthy to be read by the royal and the noble.

Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, Queen of England, on her resuscitation of the ancient faith, which offers a very extraordinary catalogue of the ritual and ceremonies of the Romish church. It is indeed impossible to translate into Protestant English the multiplied nomenclature of offices which involve human life in never-ceasing service. As I know not where we can find so clear a perspective of this amazing contrivance to fetter with religious ceremonies the freedom of the human mind, I present the reader with an accurate translation of it:—

"Pietro Aretino to the Queen of England.

"The voices of Psalms, the sound of Canticles, the breath of Epistles, and the Spirit of Gospels, had need unloose the language of my words in congratulating your superhuman Majesty on having not only restored conscience to the minds and hearts of Englishmen and taken deceitful heresy away from them, but on bringing it to pass, when it was least hoped for, that charity and faith were again born and raised up in them; on which sudden conversion triumphs our sovereign Pontiff Julius, the College, and the whole of the clergy, so that it seems in Rome as if the shades of the old Caesars with visible effect showed it in their very statues; meanwhile the pure mind of his most blessed Holiness canonizes you, and marks you in the catalogue among the Catharines and Margarets, and dedicates you," &c.

"The stupor of so stupendous a miracle is not the stupefaction of stupid wonder; and all proceeds from your being in the grace of God in every deed, whose incomprehensible goodness is pleased with seeing you, in holiness of life and innocence of heart, cause to be restored in those proud countries, solemnity to Easters, abstinence to Lents, sobriety to Fridays, parsimony to Saturdays, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils, observances to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to the dying, festivals to saints, images to churches, masses to altars, lights to lamps, organs to quires, benedictions to olives, robings to sacristies, and decencies to baptisms; and that nothing may be wanting (thanks to your pious and most entire nature), possession has been regained to offices, of hours; to ceremonies, of incense; to reliques, of shrines; to the confessed, of absolutions; to priests, of habits; to preachers, of pulpits; to ecclesiastics, of pre-eminences; to scriptures, of interpreters; to hosts, of communions; to the poor, of alms; to the wretched, of hospitals; to virgins, of monasteries; to fathers, of convents; to the clergy, of orders; to the defunct, of obsequies; to tierces, noons, vespers, complins, ave-maries, and matins, the privileges of daily and nightly bells."

The fortunate temerity of Aretino gave birth to subsequent publications by more skilful writers. Nicolo Franco closely followed, who had at first been the amanuensis of Aretino, then his rival, and concluded his literary adventures by being hanged at Rome; a circumstance which at the time must have occasioned regret that Franco had not, in this respect also, been an imitator of his original, a man equally feared, flattered, and despised.

The greatest personages and the most esteemed writers of that age were perhaps pleased to have discovered a new and easy path to fame; and since it was ascertained that a man might become celebrated by writings never intended for the press, and which it was never imagined could confer fame on the writers, volumes succeeded volumes, and some authors are scarcely known to posterity but as letter-writers. We have the too-elaborate epistles of BEMBO, secretary to Leo X., and the more elegant correspondence of ANNIBAL CARO; a work which, though posthumous, and published by an affectionate nephew, and therefore too undiscerning a publisher, is a model of familiar letters.

These collections, being found agreeable to the taste of their readers, novelty was courted by composing letters more expressly adapted to public curiosity. The subjects were now diversified by critical and political topics, till at length they descended to one more level with the faculties, and more grateful to the passions of the populace of readers —Love! Many grave personages had already, without being sensible of the ridiculous, languished through tedious odes and starch sonnets. DONI, a bold literary projector, who invented a literary review both of printed and manuscript works, with not inferior ingenuity, published his love-letters; and with the felicity of an Italian diminutive, he fondly entitled them "Pistolette Amorose del Doni," 1552, 8vo. These Pistole were designed to be little epistles, or billets-doux, but Doni was one of those fertile authors who have too little time of their own to compose short works. Doni was too facetious to be sentimental, and his quill was not plucked from the wing of Love. He was followed by a graver pedant, who threw a heavy offering on the altar of the Graces; PARABOSCO, who in six books of "Lettere Amorose," 1565, 8vo. was too phlegmatic to sigh over his inkstand.

Denina mentions LEWIS PASQUALIGO of Venice as an improver of these amatory epistles, by introducing a deeper interest and a more complicate narrative. Partial to the Italian literature, Denina considers this author as having given birth to those novels in the form of letters, with which modern Europe has been inundated; and he refers the curious in literary researches, for the precursors of these epistolary novels, to the works of those Italian wits who flourished in the sixteenth century.

"The Worlds" of DONI, and the numerous whimsical works of ORTENSIO LANDI, and the "Circe" of GELLI, of which we have more than one English translation, which, under their fantastic inventions, cover the most profound philosophical views, have been considered the precursors of the finer genius of "The Persian Letters," that fertile mother of a numerous progeny, of D'Argens and others.

The Italians are justly proud of some valuable collections of letters, which seem peculiar to themselves, and which may be considered as the works of artists. They have a collection of "Lettere di Tredici Uomini Illustri," which appeared in 1571; another more curious, relating to princes—"Lettere de' Principi le quali o si scrivono da Principi a Principi, o ragionano di Principi;" Tenezia, 1581, in 3 vols. quarto.

But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to the artist, has appeared in mere recent times, in seven quarto volumes, consisting of the original letters of the great painters, from the golden age of Leo X., gradually collected by BOTTARI, who published them in separate volumes. They abound in the most interesting facts relative to the arts, and display the characteristic traits of their lively writers. Every artist will turn over with delight and curiosity these genuine effusions; chronicles of the days and the nights of their vivacious brothers.

It is a little remarkable that he who claims to be the first satirist in the English language, claims also, more justly perhaps, the honour of being the first author who published familiar letters. In the dedication of his Epistles to Prince Henry, the son of James the First, Bishop HALL claims the honour of introducing "this new fashion of discourse by epistles, new to our language, usual to others; and as novelty is never without plea of use, more free, more familiar." Of these epistles, in six decades, many were written during his travels. We have a collection of Donne's letters abounding with his peculiar points, at least witty, if not natural.

As we became a literary nation, familiar letters served as a vehicle for the fresh feelings of our first authors. Howell, whose Epistolae bears his name, takes a wider circumference in "Familiar Letters, domestic and foreign, historical, political, and philosophical, upon emergent occasions." The "emergent occasions" the lively writer found in his long confinement in the Fleet—that English Parnassus! Howell is a wit, who, in writing his own history, has written that of his times; he is one of the few whose genius, striking in the heat of the moment only current coin, produces finished medals for the cabinet. His letters are still published. The taste which had now arisen for collecting letters, induced Sir Tobie Mathews, in 1660, to form a volume, of which many, if not all, are genuine productions of their different writers.

The dissipated elegance of Charles II. inspired freedom in letter-writing. The royal emigrant had caught the tone of Voiture. We have some few letters of the wits of this court, but that school of writers, having sinned in gross materialism, the reaction produced another of a more spiritual nature, in a romantic strain of the most refined sentiment. Volumes succeeded volumes from pastoral and heroic minds. Katherine Philips, in the masquerade-dress of "The Matchless Orinda," addressed Sir Charles Cottrel, her grave "Poliarchus;" while Mrs. Behn, in her loose dress, assuming the nymph-like form of "Astraea," pursued a gentleman, concealed in a domino, under the name of "Lycidas."

Before our letters reached to nature and truth, they were strained by one more effort after novelty; a new species appeared, "From the Dead to the Living," by Mrs. Rowe: they obtained celebrity. She was the first who, to gratify the public taste, adventured beyond the Styx; the caprice of public favour has returned them to the place whence they came.

The letters of Pope were unquestionably written for the public eye. Partly accident, and partly persevering ingenuity, extracted from the family chests the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who long remained the model of letter-writing. The letters of Hughes and Shenstone, of Gray, Cowper, Walpole, and others, self-painters, whose indelible colours have given an imperishable charm to these fragments of the human mind, may close our subject; printed familiar letters now enter into the history of our literature.



AN INQUIRY

INTO THE

LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST;

INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE.

"The whole reign of James I. has been represented by a late celebrated pen (Burnet) to have been a continued course of mean practices; and others, who have professedly given an account of it, have filled their works with libel and invective, instead of history. Both King James and his ministers have met with a treatment from posterity highly unworthy of them, and those who have so liberally bestowed their censures were entirely ignorant of the true springs and causes of the actions they have undertaken to represent."—SAWYER'S Preface to "Winwood's Memorials."

"Il y auroit un excellent livre a faire sur les INJUSTICES, les OUBLIS, et les CALOMNIES HISTORIQUES."—MADAME DE GENLIS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

* * * * *

The present inquiry originates in an affair of literary conscience. Many years ago I set off in the world with the popular notions of the character of James the First; but in the course of study, and with a more enlarged comprehension of the age, I was frequently struck by the contrast of his real with his apparent character; and I thought I had developed those hidden and involved causes which have so long influenced modern writers in ridiculing and vilifying this monarch.

This historical trifle is, therefore, neither a hasty decision, nor a designed inquiry; the results gradually arose through successive periods of time, and, were it worth the while, the history of my thoughts, in my own publications, might be arranged in a sort of chronological conviction.[A]

[Footnote A: I have described the progress of my opinions in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 467, last edition.]

It would be a cowardly silence to shrink from encountering all that popular prejudice and party feeling may oppose; this were incompatible with that constant search after truth which we may at least expect from the retired student.

I had originally limited this inquiry to the literary character of the monarch; but there was a secret connexion between that and his political conduct; and that again led me to examine the manners and temper of the times, with the effects which a peace of more than twenty years operated on the nation. I hope that the freshness of the materials, often drawn from contemporary writings which have never been published, may in some respect gratify curiosity. Of the political character of James the First opposite tempers will form opposite opinions; the friends of peace and humanity will consider that the greatest happiness of the people is that of possessing a philosopher on the throne; let profounder inquirers hereafter discover why those princes are suspected of being but weak men, who are the true fathers of their people; let them too inform us, whether we are to ascribe to James the First, as well as to Marcus Antoninus, the disorders of their reign, or place them to the ingratitude and wantonness of mankind.



AN INQUIRY

INTO THE

LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST;

INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE.

* * * * *

If sometimes the learned entertain false opinions and traditionary prejudices, as well as the people, they however preserve among themselves a paramount love of truth, and the means to remove errors, which have escaped their scrutiny. The occasion of such errors may be complicate, but, usually, it is the arts and passions of the few which find an indolent acquiescence among the many, and firm adherents among those who so eagerly consent to what they do not dislike to hear.

A remarkable instance of this appears in the character of James the First, which lies buried under a heap of ridicule and obloquy; yet James the First was a literary monarch at one of the great eras of English literature, and his contemporaries were far from suspecting that his talents were inconsiderable, even among those who had their reasons not to like him. The degradation which his literary character has suffered has been inflicted by more recent hands; and it may startle the last echoer of Pope's "Pedant-reign" to hear that more wit and wisdom have been recorded of James the First than of any one of our sovereigns. An "Author-Sovereign," as Lord Shaftesbury, in his anomalous but emphatic style, terms this class of writers, is placed between a double eminence of honours, and must incur the double perils; he will receive no favour from his brothers, the Faineants, as a whole race of ciphers in succession on the throne of France were denominated, and who find it much more easy to despise than to acquire; while his other brothers, the republicans of literature, want a heart to admire the man who has resisted the perpetual seductions of a court-life for the silent labours of his closet. Yet if Alphonsus of Arragon be still a name endeared to us for his love of literature, and for that elegant testimony of his devotion to study expressed by the device on his banner of an open book, how much more ought we to be indulgent to the memory of a sovereign who has written one still worthy of being opened?

We must separate the literary from the political character of this monarch, and the qualities of his mind and temper from the ungracious and neglected manners of his personal one. And if we do not take a more familiar view of the events, the parties, and the genius of the times, the views and conduct of James the First will still remain imperfectly comprehended. In the reign of a prince who was no military character, we must busy ourselves at home; the events he regulated may be numerous and even interesting, although not those which make so much noise and show in the popular page of history, and escape us in its general views. The want of this sort of knowledge has proved to be one great source of the false judgments passed on this monarch. Surely it is not philosophical to decide of another age by the changes and the feelings through which our own has passed. There is a chronology of human opinions which, not observing, an indiscreet philosopher may commit an anachronism in reasoning.

When the Stuarts became the objects of popular indignation, a peculiar race of libels was eagerly dragged into light, assuming the imposing form of history; many of these state-libels did not even pass through the press, and may occasionally be discovered in their MS. state. Yet these publications cast no shade on the talents of James the First. His literary attainments were yet undisputed; they were echoing in the ear of the writers, and many proofs of his sagacity were still lively in their recollections.

* * * * *

THE FIRST MODERN ASSAILANTS OF THE CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.

Burnet, the ardent champion of a party so deeply concerned to oppose as well the persons as the principles of the Stuarts, levelled the father of the race; we read with delight pages which warm and hurry us on, mingling truths with rumours, and known with suggested events, with all the spirit of secret history. But the character of James I. was to pass through the lengthened inquisitorial tortures of the sullen sectarianism of Harris.[A] It was branded by the fierce, remorseless republican Catharine Macaulay, and flouted by the light, sparkling Whig, Horace Walpole.[B] A senseless cry of pedantry had been raised against him by the eloquent invective of Bolingbroke, from whom doubtless Pope echoed it in verse which has outlived his lordship's prose:—

Oh, cried the goddess, for some pedant reign! Some gentle James to bless the land again; To stick the doctor's chair into the throne, Give law to words, or war with words alone, Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule, And turn the council to a grammar-school!

Dunciad, book iv. ver. 175.

[Footnote A: The historical works of Dr. William Harris have been recently republished in a collected form, and they may now be considered as entering into our historical stores.

HARRIS is a curious researcher; but what appears more striking in his historical character, is the impartiality with which he quotes authorities which make against his own opinions and statements. Yet is Harris a writer likely to impose on many readers. He announces in his title-pages that his works are "after the manner of Mr. Bayle." This is but a literary imposition, for Harris is perhaps the meanest writer in our language both for style and philosophical thinking. The extraordinary impartiality he displays in his faithful quotations from writers on opposite sides is only the more likely to deceive us; for by that unalterable party feeling, which never forsakes him, the facts against him he studiously weakens by doubts, surmises, and suggestions; a character sinks to the level of his notions by a single stroke; and from the arguments adverse to his purpose, he wrests the most violent inferences. All party writers must submit to practise such mean and disingenuous arts if they affect to disguise themselves under a cover of impartiality. Bayle, intent on collecting facts, was indifferent to their results; but Harris is more intent on the deductions than the facts. The truth is, Harris wrote to please his patron, the republican Hollis, who supplied him with books, and every friendly aid. "It is possible for an ingenious man to be of a party without being partial" says Rushworth; an airy clench on the lips of a sober matter-of-fact man looks suspicions, and betrays the weak pang of a half-conscience.]

[Footnote B: Horace Walpole's character of James I., in his "Royal Authors," is as remarkable as his character of Sir Philip Sidney; he might have written both without any acquaintance with the works he has so maliciously criticised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed over the "Defence of Poetry;" and in his second edition he makes this insolent avowal, that "he had forgotten it; a proof that I at least did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired." Every reader of taste knows the falseness of the criticism, and how heartless the polished cynicism that could dare it. I repeat, what I have elsewhere said, that Horace Walpole had something in his composition more predominant than his wit, a cold, unfeeling disposition, which contemned all literary men, at the moment his heart secretly panted to partake of their fame.

Nothing can be more imposing than his volatile and caustic criticisms on the works of James I.; yet it appears to me that he had never opened that folio volume he so poignantly ridicules. For he doubts whether these two pieces, "The Prince's Cabala" and "The Duty of a King in his Royal Office," were genuine productions of James I. The truth is, they are both nothing more than extracts printed with those separate titles, drawn from the King's "Basilicon Doron." He had probably neither read the extracts nor the original. Thus singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which this noble writer startled the world by his paradoxes, and at length lived to be mortified at a reputation which he sported with and lost. I refer the reader to those extracts from his MS. letters which are in "Calamities of Authors," where he has made his literary confessions, and performs his act of penance.]

* * * * *

THE PEDANTRY OF JAMES THE FIRST.

Few of my readers, I suspect, but have long been persuaded that James I. was a mere college pedant, and that all his works, whatever they maybe, are monstrous pedantic labours. Yet this monarch of all things detested pedantry, either as it shows itself in the mere form of Greek and Latin, or in ostentatious book-learning, or in the affectation of words of remote signification: these are the only points of view in which I have been taught to consider the meaning of the term pedantry, which is very indefinite, and always a relative one.

The age of James I. was a controversial age, of unsettled opinions and contested principles; an age, in which authority was considered as stronger than opinion; but the vigour of that age of genius was infused into their writings, and those citers, who thus perpetually crowded their margins, were profound and original thinkers. When the learning of a preceding age becomes less recondite, and those principles general which were at first peculiar, are the ungrateful heirs of all this knowledge to reproach the fathers of their literature with pedantry? Lord Bolingbroke has pointedly said of James I. that "his pedantry was too much even for the age in which he lived." His lordship knew little of that glorious age when the founders of our literature flourished. It had been over-clouded by the French court of Charles II., a race of unprincipled wits, and the revolution-court of William, heated by a new faction, too impatient to discuss those principles of government which they had established. It was easy to ridicule what they did not always understand, and very rarely met with. But men of far higher genius than this monarch, Selden, Usher, and Milton, must first be condemned before this odium of pedantry can attach itself to the plain and unostentatious writings of James I., who, it is remarkable, has not scattered in them those oratorical periods, and elaborate fancies, which he indulged in his speeches and proclamations. These loud accusers of the pedantry of James were little aware that the king has expressed himself with energy and distinctness on this very topic. His majesty cautions Prince Henry against the use of any "corrupt leide, as book-language, and pen-and-inkhorn termes, and, least of all, nignard and effeminate ones." One passage may be given entire as completely refuting a charge so general, yet so unfounded. "I would also advise you to write in your own language, for there is nothing left to be said in Greek and Latine already; and, ynewe (enough) of poore schollers would match you in these languages; and besides that it best becometh a King, to purifie and make famous his owne tongue; therein he may goe before all his subjects, as it setteth him well to doe in all honest and lawful things." No scholar of a pedantic taste could have dared so complete an emancipation from ancient, yet not obsolete prejudices, at a time when many of our own great authors yet imagined there was no fame for an Englishman unless he neglected his maternal language for the artificial labour of the idiom of ancient Rome. Bacon had even his own domestic Essays translated into Latin; and the king found a courtier-bishop to perform the same task for his majesty's writings. There was something prescient in this view of the national language, by the king, who contemplated in it those latent powers which had not yet burst into existence. It is evident that the line of Pope is false which describes the king as intending to rule "senates and courts" by "turning the council to a grammar-school."

* * * * *

HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES.

This censure of the pedantry of James is also connected with those studies of polemical divinity, for which the king has incurred much ridicule from one party, who were not his contemporaries; and such vehement invective from another, who were; who, to their utter dismay, discovered their monarch descending into their theological gymnasium to encounter them with their own weapons.

The affairs of religion and politics in the reign of James I., as in the preceding one of Elizabeth,[A] were identified together; nor yet have the same causes in Europe ceased to act, however changed or modified. The government of James was imperfectly established while his subjects were wrestling with two great factions to obtain the predominance. The Catholics were disputing his title to the crown, which they aimed to carry into the family of Spain, and had even fixed on Arabella Stuart, to marry her to a Prince of Parma; and the Puritans would have abolished even sovereignty itself; these parties indeed were not able to take the field, but all felt equally powerful with the pen. Hence an age of doctrines. When a religious body has grown into power, it changes itself into a political one; the chiefs are flattered by their strength and stimulated by their ambition; but a powerful body in the State cannot remain stationary, and a divided empire it disdains. Religious controversies have therefore been usually coverings to mask the political designs of the heads of parties.

We smile at James the First threatening the States-general by the English Ambassador about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused the doctrines of Arminius, and had also vented some metaphysical notions of his own respecting the occult nature of the Divinity. He was the head of the Remonstrants, who were at open war with the party called the Contra-Remonstrants. The ostensible subjects were religious doctrines, but the concealed one was a struggle between Pensionary Barnevelt, aided by the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English; even to our own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be the pretext.[B]

[Footnote A: I have more largely entered into the history of the party who attempted to subvert the government in the reign of Elizabeth, and who published their works under the assumed name of Martin Mar-prelate, than had hitherto been done. In our domestic annals that event and those personages are of some importance and curiosity; but were imperfectly known to the popular writers of our history.—See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 296, et seq.]

[Footnote B: Pensionary Barnevelt, in his seventy-second year, was at length brought to the block. Diodati, a divine of Geneva, made a miserable pun the occasion; he said that "the Canons of the Synod of Dort had taken off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says Brandt in his curious "History of the Reformation," is very injurious to the Synod, since it intimates that the Church loves blood. It never entered into the mind of these divines that Barnevelt fell, not by the Synod, but by the Orange and English party prevailing against the French. Lord Hardwicke, a statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public history, is a more able judge than the ecclesiastical historian or the Swiss divine, who could see nothing in the Synod of Dort but what appeared in it. It is in Lord Hardwicke's preface to Sir Dudley Carleton's "Letters" that his lordship has made this important discovery.]

What was passing between the Dutch Prince and the Dutch Pensionary, was much like what was taking place between the King of England and his own subjects. James I. had to touch with a balancing hand the Catholics and the Nonconformists,[A]—to play them one against another; but there was a distinct end in their views. "James I.," says Barnet, "continued always writing and talking against Popery, but acting for it." The King and the bishops were probably more tolerant to monarchists and prelatists, than to republicans and presbyters. When James got nothing but gunpowder and Jesuits from Rome, he was willing enough to banish, or suppress, but the Catholic families were ancient and numerous; and the most determined spirits which ever subverted a government were Catholic.[B] Yet what could the King expect from the party of the Puritans, and their "conceited parity," as he called it, should he once throw himself into their hands, but the fate his son received from them?

[Footnote A: James did all he could to weaken the Catholic party by dividing them in opinion. When Dr. Reynolds, the head of the Nonconformists, complained to the king of the printing and dispersing of Popish pamphlets, the king answered, that this was done by a warrant from the Court, to nourish the schism between the Seculars and Jesuits, which was of great service, "Doctor," added the king, "you are a better clergyman than statesman."—Neale's "History of the Puritans," vol. i. p. 416, 4to.]

[Footnote B: The character and demeanour of the celebrated Guy or Guido Fawkes, who appeared first before the council under the assumed name of Johnson, I find in a MS. letter of the times, which contains some characteristic touches not hitherto published. This letter is from Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, our ambassador at the court of Brussels—dated 19th November, 1605. "One Johnson was found in the vault where the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. He was asked if he was sorry! He answered that he was only sorry it had not taken place. He was threatened that he should die a worse death than he that killed the Prince of Orange; he answered, that he could bear it as well. When Johnson was brought to the king's presence, the king asked him how he could conspire so hideous a treason against his children and so many innocent souls who had never offended him? He answered, that dangerous diseases required a desperate remedy; and he told some of the Scots that his intent was to have blown them back again into Scotland!"—Mordacious Guy Fawkes!]

In the early stage of the Reformation, the Catholic still entered into the same church with the Reformed; this common union was broken by the impolitical impatience of the court of Rome, who, jealous of the tranquillity of Elizabeth, hoped to weaken her government by disunion;[A] but the Reformed were already separating among themselves by a new race, who, fancying that their religion was still too Catholic, were for reforming the Reformation. These had most extravagant fancies, and were for modelling the government according to each particular man's notion. Were we to bend to the foreign despotism of the Roman Tiara, or that of the republican rabble of the Presbytery of Geneva?

[Footnote A: Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, in the trial of Garnet the Jesuit, says, "There were no Recusants in England—all came to church howsoever Popishly inclined, till the Bull of Pius V. excommunicated and deposed Elizabeth. On this the Papists refused to join in the public service."—"State Trials," vol. i. p. 242.

The Pope imagined, by false impressions he had received, that the Catholic party was strong enough to prevail against Elizabeth. Afterwards, when he found his error, a dispensation was granted by himself and his successor, that all Catholics might show outward obedience to Elizabeth till a happier opportunity. Such are Catholic politics and Catholic faith!]

* * * * *

POLEMICAL STUDIES WERE POLITICAL.

It was in these times that James I., a learned prince, applied to polemical studies; properly understood, these were in fact political ones. Lord Bolingbroke says, "He affected more learning than became a king, which he broached on every occasion in such a manner as would have misbecome a schoolmaster." Would the politician then require a half-learned king, or a king without any learning at all? Our eloquent sophist appears not to have recollected that polemical studies had long with us been considered as royal ones; and that from a slender volume of the sort our sovereigns still derive the regal distinction of "Defenders of the Faith." The pacific government of James I. required that the King himself should be a master of these controversies to be enabled to balance the conflicting parties; and none but a learned king could have exerted the industry or attained to the skill. In the famous conference at Hampton Court, which the King held with the heads of the Nonconformists, we see his majesty conversing sometimes with great learning and sense, but oftener more with the earnestness of a man, than some have imagined comported with the dignity of a crowned head. The truth is, James, like a true student, indulged, even to his dress, an utter carelessness of parade, and there was in his character a constitutional warmth of heart and a jocundity of temper which did not always adapt it to state-occasions; he threw out his feelings, and sometimes his jests. James, who had passed his youth in a royal bondage, felt that these Nonconformists, while they were debating small points, were reserving for hereafter their great ones; were cloaking their republicanism by their theology, and, like all other politicians, that their ostensible were not their real motives.[A] Harris and Neale, the organs of the Nonconformists, inveigh against James; even Hume, with the philosophy of the eighteenth century, has pronounced that the king was censurable "for entering zealously into these frivolous disputes of theology." Lord Bolingbroke declares that the king held this conference "in haste to show his parts." Thus a man of genius substitutes suggestion and assertion for accuracy of knowledge. In the present instance, it was an attempt of the Puritans to try the king on his arrival in England; they presented a petition for a conference, called "The Millenary Petition,"[B] from a thousand persons supposed to have signed it; the king would not refuse it; but so far from being "in haste to show his parts," that when he discovered their pretended grievances were so futile, "he complained that he had been troubled with such importunities, when some more private course might have been taken for their satisfaction."

[Footnote A: In political history we usually find that the heads of a party are much wiser than the party themselves, so that, whatever they intend to acquire, their first demands are small; but the honest souls who are only stirred by their own innocent zeal, are sure to complain that their business is done negligently. Should the party at first succeed, then the bolder spirit, which they have disguised or suppressed through policy, is left to itself; it starts unbridled and at full gallop. All this occurred in the case of the Puritans. We find that some of the rigid Nonconformists did confess in a pamphlet, "The Christian's modest offer of the Silenced Ministers," 1606, that those who were appointed to speak for them at Hampton Court were not of their nomination or judgment; they insisted that these delegates should declare at once against the whole church establishment, &c., and model the government to each particular man's notions! But these delegates prudently refused to acquaint the king with the conflicting opinions of their constituents.—Lansdowne MSS. 1056, 51.

This confession of the Nonconformists is also acknowledged by their historian Neale, vol. ii. p. 419, 4to edit.]

[Footnote B: The petition is given at length in Collier's "Eccles. Hist.," vol. ii. p. 672. At this time also the Lay Catholics of England printed at Donay, "A Petition Apologetical," to James I. Their language is remarkable; they complained they were excluded "that supreme court of parliament first founded by and for Catholike men, was furnished with Catholike prelates, peeres, and personages; and so continued till the times of Edward VI. a childe, and Queen Elizabeth a woman."—Dodd's "Church History."]

The narrative of this once celebrated conference, notwithstanding the absurdity of the topics, becomes in the hands of the entertaining Fuller a picturesque and dramatic composition, where the dialogue and the manners of the speakers are after the life.

In the course of this conference we obtain a familiar intercourse with the king; we may admire the capacity of the monarch whose genius was versatile with the subjects; sliding from theme to theme with the ease which only mature studies could obtain; entering into the graver parts of these discussions; discovering a ready knowledge of biblical learning, which would sometimes throw itself out with his natural humour, in apt and familiar illustrations, throughout indulging his own personal feelings with an unparalleled naivete.

The king opened the conference with dignity; he said "he was happier than his predecessors, who had to alter what they found established, but he only to confirm what was well settled." One of the party made a notable discovery, that the surplice was a kind of garment used by the priests of Isis. The king observed that he had no notion of this antiquity, since he had always heard from them that it was "a rag of popery." "Dr. Reynolds," said the king, with an air of pleasantry, "they used to wear hose and shoes in times of popery; have you therefore a mind to go bare-foot?" Reynolds objected to the words used in matrimony, "with my body I thee worship." The king said the phrase was an usual English term, as a gentleman of worship, &c., and turning to the doctor, smiling, said, "Many a man speaks of Robin Hood, who never shot in his bow; if you had a good wife yourself, you would think all the honour and worship you could do to her were well bestowed." Reynolds was not satisfied on the 37th article, declaring that "the Bishop of Rome hath no authority in this land," and desired it should be added, "nor ought to have any." In Barlow's narrative we find that on this his majesty heartily laughed—a laugh easily caught up by the lords; but the king nevertheless condescended to reply sensibly to the weak objection.

"What speak you of the pope's authority here? Habemus jure quod habemus; and therefore inasmuch as it is said he hath not, it is plain enough that he ought not to have." It was on this occasion that some "pleasant discourse passed," in which "a Puritan" was defined to be "a Protestant frightened out of his wits." The king is more particularly vivacious when he alludes to the occurrences of his own reign, or suspects the Puritans of republican notions. On one occasion, to cut the gordian-knot, the king royally decided—"I will not argue that point with you, but answer as kings in parliament, Le Roy s'avisera"

When they hinted at a Scottish Presbytery the king was somewhat stirred, yet what is admirable in him (says Barlow) without a show of passion. The king had lived among the republican saints, and had been, as he said, "A king without state, without honour, without order, where beardless boys would brave us to our face; and, like the Saviour of the world, though he lived among them, he was not of them." On this occasion, although the king may not have "shown his passion," he broke out, however, with a naive effusion, remarkable for painting after the home-life a republican government. It must have struck Hume forcibly, for he has preserved part of it in the body of his history. Hume only consulted Fuller. I give the copious explosion from Barlow:—

"If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings; then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus; then Dick shall reply, Nay, marry, but we will have it thus. And therefore here I must once more reiterate my former speech, Le Roy s'avisera. Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, I may hearken to you; for let that government once be up, I am sure I shall be kept in breath; then shall we all of us have work enough: but, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone."

The king added,

"I will tell you a tale:—Knox flattered the queen-regent of Scotland that she was supreme head of all the church, if she suppressed the popish prelates. But how long, trow ye, did this continue? Even so long, till, by her authority, the popish bishops were repressed, and he himself, and his adherents, were brought in and well settled. Then, lo! they began to make small account of her authority, and took the cause into their own hands."

This was a pointed political tale, appropriately told in the person of a monarch.

The king was never deficient in the force and quickness of his arguments. Even Neale, the great historian of the Puritans, complaining that Dean Barlow has cut off some of the king's speeches, is reluctantly compelled to tax himself with a high commendation of the monarch, who, he acknowledges, on one of the days of this conference, spoke against the corruptions of the church, and the practices of the prelates, insomuch that Dr. Andrews, then dean of the chapel, said that his majesty did that day wonderfully play the Puritan.[A] The king, indeed, was seriously inclined to an union of parties. More than once he silenced the angry tongue of Bancroft, and tempered the zeal of others; and even commended when he could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of the Puritans; the king consented to the only two important articles that side suggested; a new catechism adapted to the people—"Let the weak be informed and the wilful be punished," said the king; and that new translation of the Bible which forms our present version. "But," added the king, "it must be without marginal notes, for the Geneva Bible is the worst for them, full of seditious conceits; Asa is censured for only deposing his mother for idolatry, and not killing her." Thus early the dark spirit of Machiavel had lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. The grievances of our first dissenters were futile—their innovations interminable; and we discover the king's notions, at the close of a proclamation issued after this conference: "Such is the desultory levity of some people, that they are always languishing after change and novelty, insomuch that were they humoured in their inconstancy, they would expose the public management, and make the administration ridiculous." Such is the vigorous style of James the First in his proclamations; and such is the political truth, which will not die away with the conference at Hampton Court.

[Footnote A: The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them, "potent courtiers," and too worldly-minded men. Bancroft was a man of vehement zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an epigrammatic epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson—

"Here lies his grace, in cold earth clad, Who died with want of what he had."

We find a characteristic trait of this Bishop of London in this conference. When Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, observed that "livings rather want learned men, than learned men livings, many in the universities pining for want of places. I wish therefore some may have single coats (one living) before others have doublets (pluralities), and this method I have observed in bestowing the king's benefices." Bancroft replied, "I commend your memorable care that way; but a doublet is necessary in cold weather." Thus an avaricious bishop could turn off, with a miserable jest, the open avowal of his love of pluralities. Another, Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, when any one preached who was remarkable for his piety, desirous of withdrawing the king's attention from truths he did not wish to have his majesty reminded of, would in the sermon-time entertain the king with a merry tale, which the king would laugh at, and tell those near him, that he could not hear the preacher for the old—bishop; prefixing an epithet explicit of the character of these merry tales. Kennet has preserved for us the "rank relation," as he calls it; not, he adds, but "we have had divers hammerings and conflicts within us to leave it out."—Kennet's "History of England," ii. 729.]

These studies of polemical divinity, like those of the ancient scholastics, were not to be obtained without a robust intellectual exercise. James instructed his son Charles,[A] who excelled in them; and to those studies Whitelocke attributes that aptitude of Charles I. which made him so skilful a summer-up of arguments, and endowed him with so clear a perception in giving his decisions.

[Footnote A: That the clergy were somewhat jealous of their sovereign's interference in these matters may be traced. When James charged the chaplains, who were to wait on the prince in Spain, to decline, as far as possible, religious disputes, he added, that "should any happen, my son is able to moderate in them." The king, observing one of the divines smile, grew warm, vehemently affirming, "I tell ye, Charles shall manage a point in controversy with the best studied divine of ye all." What the king said was afterwards confirmed on an extraordinary occasion, in the conference Charles I. held with Alexander Henderson, the old champion of the kirk. Deprived of books, which might furnish the sword and pistol of controversy, and without a chaplain to stand by him as a second, Charles I. fought the theological duel; and the old man, cast down, retired with such a sense of the learning and honour of the king, in maintaining the order of episcopacy in England, that his death, which soon followed, is attributed to the deep vexation of this discomfiture. The veteran, who had succeeded in subverting the hierarchy in Scotland, would not be apt to die of a fit of conversion; but vexation might be apoplectic in an old and sturdy disputant. The king's controversy was published; and nearly all the writers agree he carried the day. Yet some divines appear more jealous than grateful: Bishop Kennet, touched by the esprit du corps, honestly tells us, that "some thought the king had been better able to protect the Church, if he had not disputed for it." This discovers all the ardour possible for the establishment, and we are to infer that an English sovereign is only to fight for his churchmen. But there is a nobler office for a sovereign to perform in ecclesiastical history—to promote the learned and the excellent, and repress the dissolute and the intolerant.]

* * * * *

THE WORKS OF JAMES THE FIRST.

We now turn to the writings of James the First. He composed a treatise on demoniacs and witches; those dramatic personages in courts of law. James and his council never suspected that those ancient foes to mankind could be dismissed by a simple Nolle prosequi. "A Commentary on the Revelations," which was a favourite speculation then, and on which greater geniuses have written since his day. "A Counterblast to Tobacco!" the title more ludicrous than the design.[A] His majesty terrified "the tobacconists," as the patriarchs of smoking-clubs were called, and who were selling their very lands and houses in an epidemical madness for "a stinking weed," by discovering that "they were making a sooty kitchen in their inward parts."[B] And the king gained a point with the great majority of his subjects, when he demonstrated to their satisfaction that the pope was antichrist. Ridiculous as these topics are to us, the works themselves were formed on what modern philosophers affect to term the principle of utility; a principle which, with them indeed, includes everything they approve of, and nothing they dislike.

[Footnote A: Not long before James composed his treatise on "Daemonologie," the learned Wierus had published an elaborate work on the subject. "De praestigiis Daemonum et incantationibus et Veneficiis," &c., 1568. He advanced one step in philosophy by discovering that many of the supposed cases of incantation originated in the imagination of these sorcerers—but he advanced no farther, for he acknowledges the real diabolical presence. The physician, who pretended to cure the disease, was himself irrecoverably infected. Yet even this single step of Wierus was strenuously resisted by the learned Bodin, who, in his amusing volume of "Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593, refutes Wierus. These are the leading authors of the times; who were followed by a crowd. Thus James I. neither wanted authorities to quote nor great minds to sanction his "Daemonologie," first published in 1597. To the honour of England, a single individual, Reginald Scot, with a genius far advanced beyond his age, denied the very existence of those witches and demons in the curious volume of his "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584. His books were burned! and the author was himself not quite out of danger; and Voetius, says Bayle, complains that when the work was translated into Dutch, it raised up a number of libertines who laughed at all the operations and the apparitions of devils. Casaubon and Glanvil, who wrote so much later, treat Scot with profound contempt, assuring us his reasonings are childish, and his philosophy absurd! Such was the reward of a man of genius combating with popular prejudices! Even so late as 1687, these popular superstitions were confirmed by the narrations and the philosophy of Glanvil, Dr. More, &c. The subject enters into the "Commentaries on the Laws of England." An edict of Louis XIV, and a statute by George II, made an end of the whole Diablerie. Had James I. adopted the system of Reginald Scot, the king had probably been branded as an atheist king!]

[Footnote B: Harris, with systematic ingenuity against James I., after abusing this tract as a wretched performance, though himself probably had written a meaner one—quotes the curious information the king gives of the enormous abuse to which the practice of smoking was carried, expressing his astonishment at it. Yet, that James may not escape bitter censure, he abuses the king for levying a heavy tax on it to prevent this ruinous consumption, and his silly policy in discouraging such a branch of our revenues, and an article so valuable to our plantations, &c. As if James I. could possibly incur censure for the discoveries of two centuries after, of the nature of this plant! James saw great families ruined by the epidemic madness, and sacrificed the revenues which his crown might derive from it, to assist its suppression. This was patriotism in the monarch.]

It was a prompt honesty of intention to benefit his people, which seems to have been the urgent motive that induced this monarch to become an author, more than any literary ambition; for he writes on no prepared or permanent topic, and even published anonymously, and as he once wrote "post-haste," what he composed or designed for practical and immediate use; and even in that admirable treatise on the duties of a sovereign, which he addressed to Prince Henry, a great portion is directed to the exigencies of the times, the parties, and the circumstances of his own court. Of the works now more particularly noticed, their interest has ceased with the melancholy follies which at length have passed away; although the philosophical inquirer will not choose to drop this chapter in the history of mankind. But one fact in favour of our royal author is testified by the honest Fuller and the cynical Osborne. On the king's arrival in England, having discovered the numerous impostures and illusions which he had often referred to as authorities, he grew suspicious of the whole system of "Daemonologie," and at length recanted it entirely. With the same conscientious zeal James had written the book, the king condemned it; and the sovereign separated himself from the author, in the cause of truth; but the clergy and the parliament persisted in making the imaginary crime felony by the statute, and it is only a recent act of parliament which has forbidden the appearance of the possessed and the spae-wife.

But this apology for having written these treatises need not rest on this fact, however honourably it appeals to our candour. Let us place it on higher ground, and tell those who asperse this monarch for his credulity and intellectual weakness, that they themselves, had they lived in the reign of James I., had probably written on the same topics, and felt as uneasy at the rumour of a witch being a resident in their neighbourhood!

* * * * *

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AGE.

This and the succeeding age were the times of omens and meteors, prognostics and providences—of "day-fatality," or the superstition of fortunate and unfortunate days, and the combined powers of astrology and magic. It was only at the close of the century of James I. that Bayle wrote a treatise on comets, to prove that they had no influence in the cabinets of princes; this was, however, done with all the precaution imaginable. The greatest minds were then sinking under such popular superstitions: and whoever has read much of the private history of this age will have smiled at their ludicrous terrors and bewildered reasonings. The most ordinary events were attributed to an interposition of Providence. In the unpublished memoirs of that learned antiquary, Sir Symouds D'Ewes, such frequently occur. When a comet appeared, and D'Ewes, for exercise at college, had been ringing the great bell, and entangled himself in the rope, which had nearly strangled him, he resolves not to ring while the comet is in the heavens. When a fire happened at the Six Clerks' Office, of whom his father was one, he inquires into the most prominent sins of the six clerks: these were the love of the world, and doing business on Sundays: and it seems they thought so themselves; for after the fire the office-door was fast closed on the Sabbath. When the Thames had an unusual ebb and flow, it was observed, that it had never happened in their recollection, but just before the rising of the Earl of Essex in Elizabeth's reign,—and Sir Symonds became uneasy at the political aspect of affairs.

All the historians of these times are very particular in marking the bearded beams of blazing stars; and the first public event that occurs is always connected with the radiant course. Arthur Wilson describes one which preceded the death of the simple queen of James I. It was generally imagined that "this great light in the heaven was sent as a flambeaux to her funeral;" but the historian discovers, while "this blaze was burning, the fire of war broke out in Bohemia." It was found difficult to decide between the two opinions; and Rushworth, who wrote long afterwards, carefully chronicles both.

The truth is, the greatest geniuses of the age of James I. were as deeply concerned in these investigations as his Majesty. Had the great Verulam emancipated himself from all the dreams of his age? He speaks indeed cautiously of witchcraft, but does not deny its occult agency; and of astrology he is rather for the improvement than the rejection. The bold spirit of Rawleigh contended with the superstitions of the times; but how feeble is the contest where we fear to strike! Even Rawleigh is prodigal of his praise to James for the king's chapter on magic. The great mind of Rawleigh perceived how much men are formed and changed by education; but, were this principle admitted to its extent, the stars would lose their influence! In pleading for the free agency of man, he would escape from the pernicious tendency of predestination, or the astral influence, which yet he allows. To extricate himself from the dilemma, he invents an analogical reasoning of a royal power of dispensing with the laws in extreme cases; so that, though he does not deny "the binding of the stars," he declares they are controllable by the will of the Creator. In this manner, fettered by prevalent opinions, he satisfies the superstitions of an astrological age, and the penetration of his own genius. At a much later period Dr Henry More, a writer of genius, confirmed the ghost and demon creed, by a number of facts, as marvellously pleasant as any his own poetical fancy could have invented. Other great authors have not less distinguished themselves. When has there appeared a single genius who at once could free himself of the traditional prejudices of his contemporaries—nay, of his own party? Genius, in its advancement beyond the intelligence of its own age, is but progressive; it is fancifully said to soar, but it only climbs. Yet the minds of some authors of this age are often discovered to be superior to their work; because the mind is impelled by its own inherent powers, but the work usually originates in the age. James I, once acutely observed, how "the author may be wise, but the work foolish."

Thus minds of a higher rank than our royal author had not yet cleared themselves out of these clouds of popular prejudices. We now proceed to more decisive results of the superior capacity of this much ill-used monarch.

* * * * *

THE HABITS OF JAMES THE FIRST THOSE OF A MAN OF LETTERS.

The habits of life of this monarch were those of a man of letters. His first studies were soothed by none of their enticements. If James loved literature, it was for itself; for Buchanan did not tinge the rim of the vase with honey; and the bitterness was tasted not only in the draught, but also in the rod. In some princes, the harsh discipline James passed through has raised a strong aversion against literature. The Dauphin, for whose use was formed the well-known edition of the classics, looked on the volumes with no eye of love. To free himself of his tutor, Huet, he eagerly consented to an early marriage. "Now we shall see if Mr. Huet shall any more keep me to ancient geography!" exclaimed the Dauphin, rejoicing in the first act of despotism. This ingenuous sally, it is said, too deeply affected that learned man for many years afterwards. Huet's zealous gentleness (for how could Huet be too rigid?) wanted the art which Buchanan disdained to practise. But, in the case of the prince of Scotland, a constitutional timidity combining with an ardour for study, and therefore a veneration for his tutor, produced a more remarkable effect. Such was the terror which the remembrance of this illustrious but inexorable republican left on the imagination of his royal pupil, that even so late as when James was seated on the English throne, once the appearance of his frowning tutor in a dream greatly agitated the king, who in vain attempted to pacify him in this portentous vision. This extraordinary fact may be found in a manuscript letter of that day.[A]

[Footnote A: The learned Mede wrote the present letter soon after another, which had not been acknowledged, to his friend Sir M. Stuteville; and the writer is uneasy lest the political secrets of the day might bring the parties into trouble. It seems he was desirous that letter should be read and then burnt.

"March 31, 1622.

"I hope my letter miscarried not; if it did I am in a sweet pickle. I desired to hear from you of the receipt and extinction of it. Though there is no danger in my letters whilst report is so rife, yet when it is forgotten they will not be so safe; but your danger is as great as mine—

"Mr. Downham was with we, now come from London. He told me that it was three years ago since those verses were delivered to the king in a dream, by his Master Buchanan, who seemed to check him severely, as he used to do; and his Majesty, in his dream, seemed desirous to pacify him, but he, turning away with a frowning countenance, would utter those verses, which his Majesty, perfectly remembering, repeated the next day, and many took notice of them. Now, by occasion of the late soreness in his arm, and the doubtfulness what it would prove; especially having, by mischance, fallen into the fire with that arm, the remembrance of the verses began to trouble him."

It appears that these verses were of a threatening nature, since, in a melancholy fit, they were recalled to recollection after an interval of three years; the verses are lost to us, with the letter which contained them.]

James, even by the confession of his bitter satirist, Francis Osborne, "dedicated rainy weather to his standish, and fair to his hounds." His life had the uniformity of a student's; but the regulated life of a learned monarch must have weighed down the gay and dissipated with the deadliest monotony. Hence one of these courtiers declared that, if he were to awake after a sleep of seven years' continuance, he would undertake to enumerate the whole of his Majesty's occupations, and every dish that had been placed on the table during the interval. But this courtier was not aware that the monotony which the king occasioned him was not so much in the king himself as in his own volatile spirit.

The table of James I. was a trial of wits, says a more learned courtier, who often partook of these prolonged conversations: those genial and convivial conferences were the recreations of the king, and the means often of advancing those whose talents had then an opportunity of discovering themselves. A life so constant in its pursuits was to have been expected from the temper of him who, at the view of the Bodleian library, exclaimed, "Were I not a king, I would be an university man; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, I would have no other prison than this library, and be chained together with all these goodly authors."[A]

[Footnote A: In this well-known exclamation of James I., a witty allusion has been probably overlooked. The king had in his mind the then prevalent custom of securing books by fastening them to the shelves by chains long enough to reach to the reading-desks under them.]

Study, indeed, became one of the businesses of life with our contemplative monarch; and so zealous was James to form his future successor, that he even seriously engaged in the education of both his sons. James I. offers the singular spectacle of a father who was at once a preceptor and a monarch: it was in this spirit the king composed his "Basilicon Doron; or, His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," a work of which something more than the intention is great; and he directed the studies of the unfortunate Charles. That both these princes were no common pupils may be fairly attributed to the king himself. Never did the character of a young prince shoot out with nobler promises than Henry; an enthusiast for literature and arms, that prince early showed a great and commanding spirit. Charles was a man of fine taste: he had talents and virtues, errors and misfortunes; but he was not without a spirit equal to the days of his trial.

* * * * *

FACILITY AND COPIOUSNESS OF HIS COMPOSITION.

The mind of James I. had at all times the fulness of a student's, delighting in the facility and copiousness of composition. The king wrote in one week one hundred folio pages of a monitory address to the European sovereigns; and, in as short a time, his apology, sent to the pope and cardinals. These he delivered to the bishops, merely as notes for their use; but they were declared to form of themselves a complete answer. "Qua felicitate they were done, let others judge; but Qua celeritate, I can tell," says the courtly bishop who collected the king's works, and who is here quoted, not for the compliment he would infer, but for the fact he states. The week's labour of his majesty provoked from Cardinal Perron about one thousand pages in folio, and replies and rejoinders from the learned in Europe.[A]

[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge, in his "Illustrations of British History," praises and abuses James I. for the very same treatises. Mr. Lodge, dropping the sober character of the antiquary for the smarter one of the critic, tells us, "James had the good fortune to gain the two points he principally aimed at in the publication of these dull treatises—the reputation of an acute disputant, and the honour of having Cardinal Bellarmin for an antagonist." Did Mr. Lodge ever read these "dull treatises?" I declare I never have; but I believe these treatises are not dull, from the inference he draws from them: for how any writer can gain the reputation of "an acute disputant" by writing "dull treatises," Mr. Lodge only can explain. It is in this manner, and by unphilosophical critics, that the literary reputation of James has been flourished down by modern pens. It was sure game to attack James I.!]

* * * * *

HIS ELOQUENCE.

The eloquence of James is another feature in the literary character of this monarch. Amid the sycophancy of the court of a learned sovereign some truths will manifest themselves. Bishop Williams, in his funeral eulogy of James I., has praised with warmth the eloquence of the departed monarch, whom he intimately knew; and this was an acquisition of James's, so manifest to all, that the bishop made eloquence essential to the dignity of a monarch; observing, that "it was the want of it that made Moses, in a manner, refuse all government, though offered by God."[A] He would not have hazarded so peculiar an eulogium, had not the monarch been distinguished by that talent.

[Footnote A: This funeral sermon, by laying such a stress on the eloquence of James I., it is said, occasioned the disgrace of the zealous bishop; perhaps, also, by the arts of the new courtiers practising on the feelings of the young monarch. It appears that Charles betrayed frequent symptoms of impatience.

This allusion to the stammering of Moses was most unlucky; for Charles had this defect in his delivery, which he laboured all his life to correct. In the first speech from the throne, he alludes to it: "Now, because I am unfit for much speaking, I mean to bring up the fashion of my predecessors, to have my lord-keeper speak for me in most things." And he closed a speech to the Scottish parliament by saying, that "he does not offer to endear himself by words, which, indeed is not my way." This, however, proved to be one of those little circumstances which produce a more important result than is suspected. By this substitution of a lord-keeper instead of the sovereign, he failed in exciting the personal affections of his parliament. Even the most gracious speech from the lips of a lord-keeper is but formally delivered, and coldly received; and Charles had not yet learned that there are no deputies for our feelings.]

Hume first observed of James I., that "the speaker of the House of Commons is usually an eminent man; yet the harangue of his Majesty will always be found much superior to that of the speaker in every parliament during this reign." His numerous proclamations are evidently wrought by his own hand, and display the pristine vigour of the state of our age of genius. That the state-papers were usually composed by himself, a passage in the Life of the Lord-keeper Williams testifies; and when Sir Edward Conway, who had been bred a soldier, and was even illiterate, became a viscount, and a royal secretary, by the appointment of Buckingham, the king, who in fact wanted no secretary, would often be merry over his imperfect scrawls in writing, and his hacking of sentences in reading, often breaking out in laughter, exclaiming, "Stenny has provided me with a secretary who can neither write nor read, and a groom of my bedchamber who cannot truss my points,"—this latter person having but one hand! It is evident, since Lord Conway, the most inefficient secretary ever king had—and I have myself seen his scrawls—remained many years in office, that James I. required no secretary, and transacted his affairs with his own mind and hand. These habits of business and of study prove that James indulged much less those of indolence, for which he is so gratuitously accused.

* * * * *

HIS WIT.

Amid all the ridicule and contempt in which the intellectual capacity of James I. is involved, this college-pedant, who is imagined to have given in to every species of false wit, and never to have reached beyond quibbles, puns, conceits, and quolibets,—was in truth a great wit; quick in retort, and happy in illustration; and often delivering opinions with a sententious force. More wit and wisdom from his lips have descended to us than from any other of our sovereigns. One of the malicious writers of his secret history, Sir Anthony Weldon, not only informs us that he was witty, but describes the manner: "He was very witty, and had as many witty jests as any man living: at which he would not smile himself, but deliver them in a grave and serious manner." Thus the king was not only witty, but a dextrous wit: nor is he one of those who are recorded as having only said one good thing in their lives; for his vein was not apt to dry.

His conversations, like those of most literary men, he loved to prolong at table. We find them described by one who had partaken of them:

"The reading of some books before him was very frequent, while he was at his repast; and otherwise he collected knowledge by variety of questions, which he carved out to the capacity of different persons. Methought his hunting humour was not off, while the learned stood about him at his board; he was ever in chase after some disputable doubts, which he would wind and turn about with the most stabbing objections that ever I heard; and was as pleasant and fellow-like, in all these discourses, as with his huntsman in the field. Those who were ripe and weighty in their answers were ever designed for some place of credit or profit."[A]

[Footnote A: Hacket's curious "Life of the Lord-keeper Williams," p. 38, Part 11.]

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SPECIMENS OF HIS HUMOUR, AND OBSERVATIONS ON HUMAN LIFE.

The relics of witticisms and observations on human life, on state affairs, in literature and history, are scattered among contemporary writers, and some are even traditional; I regret that I have not preserved many which occurred in the course of reading. It has happened, however, that a man of genius has preserved for posterity some memorials of the wit, the learning, and the sense of the monarch.[A]

[Footnote A: In the Harl. MSS. 7582, Art. 3, one entitled "Crumms fallen from King James's Table; or his Table-Talk, taken by Sir Thomas Overbury. The original being in his own handwriting." This MS. has been, perhaps, imperfectly printed in "The Prince's Cabala, or Mysteries of State," 1715. This Collection of Sir Thomas Overbury was shortened by his unhappy fate, since he perished early in the reign.—Another Harl. MS. contains things "as they were at sundrie times spoken by James I." I have drawn others from the Harl. MSS. 6395. We have also printed, "Wittie Observations, gathered in King James's Ordinary Discourse," 1643; "King James his Apothegmes or Table-Talk as they were by him delivered occasionally, and by the publisher, his quondam servant, carefully received, by B.A. gent. 4^to. in eight leaves, 1643." The collector was Ben'n. Agar, who had gathered them in his youth; "Witty Apothegmes, delivered at several times by King James, King Charles, the Marquis of Worcester," &c., 1658.

The collection of Apothegms formed by Lord Bacon offers many instances of the king's wit and sense. See Lord Bacon's Apothegms new and old; they are numbered to 275 in the edition 1819. Basil Montague, in his edition, has separated what he distinguishes as the spurious ones.]

In giving some loose specimens of the wit and capacity of a man, if they are too few, it may be imagined that they are so from their rarity; and if too many, the page swells into a mere collection. But truth is not over-nice to obtain her purpose, and even the common labours she inspires are associated with her pleasures.

Early in life James I. had displayed the talent of apt allusion, and his classical wit on the Spaniards, that "He expected no other favour from them than the courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses—to be the last devoured," delighted Elizabeth, and has even entered into our history. Arthur Wilson, at the close of his "Life of James I.," has preserved one of his apothegms, while he censures him for not making timely use of it! "Let that prince, who would beware of conspiracies, be rather jealous of such whom his extraordinary favours have advanced, than of those whom his displeasure have discontented. These want means to execute their pleasures, but those have means at pleasure to execute their desires." —Wilson himself ably develops this important state-observation, by adding, that "Ambition to rule is more vehement than malice to revenge." A pointed reflection, which rivals a maxim of Rochefoucault.

The king observed that, "Very wise men and very fools do little harm; it is the mediocrity of wisdom that troubleth all the world."—He described, by a lively image, the differences which rise in argument: "Men, in arguing, are often carried by the force of words farther asunder than their question was at first; like two ships going out of the same haven, their landing is many times whole countries distant."

One of the great national grievances, as it appeared both to the government and the people, in James's reign, was the perpetual growth of the metropolis; and the nation, like an hypochondriac, was ludicrously terrified that their head was too monstrous for their body, and drew all the moisture of life from the remoter parts. It is amusing to observe the endless and vain precautions employed to stop all new buildings, and to force persons out of town to reside at their country mansions. Proclamations warned and exhorted, but the very interference of prohibition rendered the crowded town more delightful. One of its attendant calamities was the prevalent one of that day, the plague; and one of those state libels, which were early suppressed, or never printed, entitled, "Balaam's Ass," has this passage: "In this deluge of new buildings, we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another's faces; and your Majesty has most truly said, England will shortly be London, and London, England." It was the popular wish, that country gentlemen should reside more on their estates, and it was on this occasion the king made that admirable allusion, which has been in our days repeated in the House of Commons: "Gentlemen resident on their estates were like ships in port —their value and magnitude were felt and acknowledged; but, when at a distance, as their size seemed insignificant, so their worth and importance were not duly estimated." The king abounded with similar observations; for he drew from life more than even from books.

James is reproached for being deficient in political sagacity; notwithstanding that he somewhat prided himself on what he denominated "king's-craft." This is the fate of a pacific and domestic prince!

"A king," said James, "ought to be a preserver of his people, as well of their fortunes as lives, and not a destroyer of his subjects. Were I to make such a war as the King of France doth, with such tyranny on his own subjects—with Protestants on one side, and his soldiers drawn to slaughter on the other,—I would put myself in a monastery all my days after, and repent me that I had brought my subjects to such misery."

That James was an adept in his "king's-craft," by which term he meant the science of politics, but which has been so often misinterpreted in an ill sense, even the confession of such a writer as Sir Anthony Weldon testifies; who acknowledges that "no prince living knew how to make use of men better than King James." He certainly foresaw the spirit of the Commons, and predicted to the prince and Buckingham, events which occurred after his death. When Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, whom James considered a useful servant, Buckingham sacrificed, as it would appear, to the clamours of a party, James said, "You are making a rod for your own back;" and when Prince Charles was encouraging the frequent petitions of the Commons, James told him, "You will live to have your bellyful of petitions." The following anecdote may serve to prove his political sagacity:—When the Emperor of Germany, instigated by the Pope and his own state-interests, projected a crusade against the Turks, he solicited from James the aid of three thousand Englishmen; the wise and pacific monarch, in return, advised the emperor's ambassador to apply to France and Spain, as being more nearly concerned in this project: but the ambassador very ingeniously argued, that, James being a more remote prince, would more effectually alarm the Turks, from a notion of a general armament of the Christian princes against them. James got rid of the importunate ambassador by observing, that "three thousand Englishmen would do no more hurt to the Turks than fleas to their skins: great attempts may do good by a destruction, but little ones only stir up anger to hurt themselves."

His vein of familiar humour flowed at all times, and his facetiousness was sometimes indulged at the cost of his royalty. In those unhappy differences between him and his parliament, one day mounting his horse, which, though usually sober and quiet, began to bound and prance,—"Sirrah!" exclaimed the king, who seemed to fancy that his favourite prerogative was somewhat resisted on this occasion, "if you be not quiet, I'll send you to the five hundred kings in the lower house: they'll quickly tame you." When one of the Lumleys was pushing on his lineal ascent beyond the patience of the hearers, the king, to cut short the tedious descendant of the Lumleys, cried out, "Stop mon! thou needst no more: now I learn that Adam's surname was Lumley!" When Colonel Gray, a military adventurer of that day, just returned from Germany, seemed vain of his accoutrements, on which he had spent his all,—the king, staring at this buckled, belted, sworded, and pistolled, but ruined, martinet, observed, that "this town was so well fortified, that, were it victualled, it might be impregnable."

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EVIDENCES OF HIS SAGACITY IN THE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH.

Possessing the talent of eloquence, the quickness of wit, and the diversified knowledge which produced his "Table-talk," we find also many evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth, with that patient zeal so honourable to a monarch. When the shipwrights, jealous of Pett, our great naval architect, formed a party against him, the king would judge with his own eyes. Having examined the materials depreciated by Pett's accusers, he declared that "the cross-grain was in the men, not in the timber." The king, on historical evidence, and by what he said in his own works, claims the honour of discovering the gunpowder plot, by the sagacity and reflection with which he solved the enigmatical and ungrammatical letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts has even been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs. Macaulay acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery to the king's sagacity. Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the detection of imposture might be adduced; and the reader may, perhaps, be amused at these.