James I

“ It is not perhaps too much to assume that the men whose lives have been outlined—at least Montgomerie, Fowler, and the Hudsons—were among the King's most intimate companions in his youth. He matured early, and was busy in statecraft and intrigue before most young noblemen of his age were free from their tutors and about the court. ”

“ In all of these respects the practice of James conspicuously resembles that of the older poet. Of the quotations in the Reulis, three are from the author's own works, three unidentified, and seven from Montgomerie.
An examination of the treatise [4] shows that the King, as an apprentice in the divine art, is interested not so much in the high purposes of poetry as in details of verse-making and diction. While it is not enough, it is still his chief concern that a poem shall "flow well, with many pretie wordes." In matters of technique he prefers the definite and positive rule. ”

“ A minor poet is fortunate if he has thus surpassed himself in two or three poems. Yet in the case of James, while it is hardly necessary to apply Sir James Melville's remark regarding Mary Stuart's lute playing, that she did "reasonably for a queen," it is still true that his verse derives its interest chiefly from his high political station and the consequent value attached to an intimate revelation of his personal character. In this respect, his poems do not reflect the vices and extreme feebleness of which he is often accused. ”

“ George Stevenson [5] make it clear that, while he was born not later than 1545, he belonged to a younger generation of the Hessilheid Montgomeries than the one with which he has hitherto been connected, and that his mother, who died after a long widowhood in 1583, was a great granddaughter of Sir John Stewart of Dernely, first Earl of Lennox, from whom James and d'Aubigny were also directly descended. The poet was thus a member of the Stewart clan, and his kinship with the King helps to explain the favor in which he stood at court. ”

“ The verse of these writers, it is true, was in many ways different from that of Waller and the later school, especially in the absence of stereotyped epithet, smart antithesis, and a general air of urbanity. But conservatism is not innovation, and so far as the correctness of the later poets was a return to accepted tradition, it found sanction in the theory and practice of the court poets of the reign of James. Drummond, Jonson, and George Sandys have usually been considered as the immediate precursors of Waller, especially in the use of the confined or classical heroic couplet. ”

“ Sandys, it will be remembered, was a gentleman of the chamber to Charles, and wrote a part of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses in the early twenties of the century. Waller also was about the court when the opposition to the school of conceits was gathering head.
All of this evidence is intended chiefly to support two conclusions: (1) that during James's reign there was a well-defined sentiment at court in favor of a smooth, clear style in poetry (and also in prose) ; (2) that the writers who anticipated the manner and matter of later classicism came directly under this influence. ”

“ Aside from the influence of older native poetry, the poetic theory and practice of both James and Montgomerie were based chiefly on French models.
Nothing very serious, one might think, could be wrong with a young gentleman who would undertake so profitable a course of reading as the one just outlined. James, indeed, emerged or escaped from the hands of his guardians a mixture of curious and not wholly unlikable qualities. Whatever he was willing to pretend or call himself for political purposes, it must be admitted that his religious convictions were reasonably founded and sincere. ”

“ PATRONAGE OF PROSE
AND THE DRAMA
"The very poets with their idle pamphlets, promise themselves large part in his favour." James's reputation as a poet and patron reached England long before his accession to the throne, and heightened the chorus of welcome on his actual arrival. Sidney's mention of "King James of Scotland" [1] as patron of poetry undoubtedly refers to the author of The Kingis Quair, though if the Apology were written as late as 1583 Sidney must have been aware of the younger Stuart's scholarly accomplishments. ”

“ In general, patronage during the reign — aside from small gifts for dedications — was distributed in this way, either by means of a pension or a place in one of the households into which the court was divided. The royal family lived much apart; the establishments of the King and the Queen, of Prince Henry (prior to his death, November 6, 1612) , and of Prince Charles (after his creation, November 4, 1616) , were distinct from each other, and separate accounts were kept of wages, fees, annuities, and similar disbursals. ”

“ For though in termes of art their skill they close, And joy in darksome words as well as those : They yet have perfect sense more pure and cleare Than envious Muses, which sad garlands weare Of dusky clouds, their strange conceits to hide. ”

“ Buchanan and Young together were chiefly responsible for the King's training in morals and scholarship during the twelve quiet years he spent at Stirling Castle. The choice of the former was predetermined by his eminence not only in Scotland but in all Europe as a teacher, scholar, and writer. Though at the time of his appointment he had written nothing in the vernacular, he had a wide reputation as a poet and dramatist in Latin, 3 and as a leader of Protes- tant thought in politics and theology. ”

“ The King's own library contained over four hundred volumes, which, with other recorded acquisitions not mentioned by Young, bring the total to about six hundred books accessible to the King in 1578. Buchanan and Young were guided in their purchases by their own scholarly tastes and a solicitude for the edification rather than the entertainment of their pupil. More than half of the books in Young's list are, as one might expect, in Latin, perhaps one hundred and fifty in French, a few in Greek, Italian, and Spanish, and scarcely two score in English. ”

“ Barclay's father was a Scottish Catholic who in the reign of Mary had settled at Pont-á-Mousson as professor of law in a Jesuit college, and who as a Catholic had attracted attention in 1600 by a treatise defending the rights of kings against the Pope. [21] Father and son paid a short visit to England in 1603, and in 1606 the son was again in London, seeking patronage in the usual fashion by the composition of adulatory verses in Latin. ”

“ At its head was Sir Thomas Chaloner, formerly an English agent abroad, and in Scotland during the winter preceding the death of Elizabeth. He was a gentleman of scholarly parts, author of one of the elegies in Sylvester's Lachrymæ Lachrymarum on the death of Henry, and in his later years interested especially in scientific studies. Adam Newton, the Prince's tutor, acted as secretary; and Sir David Murray, who like others of his kindred seems to have possessed both practical and poetical talents, was groom of the stole and keeper of the privy purse. ”

“ It will be seen that the titles in the Museum MS. frequently indicate the occasions or sources of the poems. Obscurities and breaks in the Bodleian MS. are also at times remedied in the Museum copy. The Bodleian, it is true, presents the poems in the dialect in which they were originally written; but it was the King's intention and it will be the preference of many readers that his verse, like his prose, should appear in the more familiar, not to say less uncouth, Southern language and spelling. The change is made without seriously affecting either the meter or the sense. ”

“ The poems of 1591 are greeted by Fowler, Constable, and Henry Lok (or Locke) , and in Greek and Lathi verses by Hadrian Damman. Locke and Constable were Englishmen, the one of Puritan sympathies and the other a Catholic, and Damman was a native of Flanders.
The lives of these gentlemen are less worthy of note for their own sake than as an indication of the King's literary intercourse and the culture of his Scottish court. The Hudsons belonged to a family of four brothers, of English descent, [24] who were musicians to the King in his earliest childhood. ”

“ In milder language, James was easily distracted by less elevated phases of humanism than the study of the classics and Calvinistic theology.
Among those who found the change not unpleasant was Alexander Montgomerie, author of The Cherrie and the Slae, and the only Scottish poet of importance who was writing in this period. In the next ten years his life connects itself closely with the King's, and affords the best approach to the latter's relations with Scottish literature. There is reason to suppose that he numbered among his companions the English poet Constable ”

“ On another occasion, Ben told the King plainly that "his master, M. G. Buchanan, had corrupted his eare when young, and learned him to sing verses when he should have read them." [15] One may infer that there had been a discussion of the old question as to whether verse stands by metre or sense, in which the King's position was not so ill-taken as in his remarks on English writers. One of Jonson's epigrams, To King James (No. IV) , plays on the familiar theme of his excellence as prince and poet:
"How, best of kings, dost thou a scepter bear ? ”

“ Among the more important English writers who came to the King's defense were Launcelot Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester, William Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, William Tooker, Dean of Lichfield, John Donne the poet, John Barclay, and Samuel Collins, Regius Professor at Cambridge. "On y travaille," writes Boderie of the Premonition, "et il y a une petite congrégation de gens doctes qui tous les jours s'assemblent devant le dit Roi, pou revoir et corriger les traductions qui en ont été faites." ”

“ Most of the King's faults can be traced to love of pleasure and lack of self-control, which were inherited traits ; his lavishness of expense, devotion to favorites, dislike of business, impatience at prolonged mental exertion or even tedious entertainment, all are manifestations of common Stuart failings. ”

“ That, to make a good Sound there must still be first a short Syllable, and then a long, which is not positively long of itself, but comparatively, when it followeth a shorter; so that one Syllable may be long in one Place and short in another, according as it is matched; for a Syllable seems short when it is as it were born down with a longer." [32]
With this comment on a point of prosody may be joined James's sonnet (XLVI) on Sir William Alexander's Harshe Verses after the Ingliche Fasone, the clearest expression of his distaste for the rough obscurity of the metaphysical poets:
". . . ”

“ The study is further confined to the King's relations with poetry, with only incidental attention to his prose writings, his political and theological controversies, or the vexed question of court influence on the drama. Matters of political and biographical interest (so far as they have no literary bearing) are for the most part treated in the notes at the end of the book, where an account is given of the King's journey to Denmark, his relations with Lady Glamis, the raids of Bothwell, and other episodes dealt with in the poems. ”

“ His "real and sincere" passion for Lady Margaret Montgomerie, to whom he addressed sonnets at the time of her marriage in 1582, is also wholly mythical, since she was many years his junior and of a higher social station. In spite of the restoration, his pension was still withheld, and it is doubtful if Montgomerie ever regained favor at court. James was in Denmark from October, 1589, until May of the next year, and after his return there was another reordering and reduction of his household. ”

“ After the third chapter, James has four shorter ones on comparisons and ornaments, and ends with an interesting list of "the kyndis of versis." It is notable that while he condemns the pentameter couplet as "ryme quhilk servis onely for lang histories, and yet are nocht verse," Beaumont considers it the best of metres and in his published verse
uses it almost exclusively :
"The relish of the Muse consists in rime,
One verse must meete another like a chime.
In many changes these may be exprest :
But those that joyne most simply, run the best." ”

“ Poesy is not a Thing that is yet in the finding and search, or which may be otherwise found out, being already condescended upon by all Nations, and as it were established jure Gentium, amongst Greeks, Romans, Italians, French, Spaniards. ”

“ Henry Locke, the last of the prefatory sonneteers, was a poet of slightly greater prominence. Bodenham, for his quotations from Locke in Belvedére, probably used the volume of friendly and devotional sonnets "by H. L. Gentleman" 2 which was licensed for publication in 1593, and issued again in 1597 with a number of scriptural paraphrases under the title of "Ecclesiastes, otherwise called The Preacher — Whereunto are annexed sundrie sonets of a feeling conscience of the same authors." ”

“ Casual remarks of the latter recorded in Drummond's Conversations suggest such intercourse, though no great respect on the part of the poet for the opinions of his sovereign. On one occasion, according to Jonson, the King expressed the view that "Sir P. Sidney was no poet. Neither did he see ever any verses in England equal to the scullor's [Taylor the Water Poet] ." [12] The natural inference from this is that James was no critic, but it may well be rather that the remark was not intended seriously or that Jonson was a malicious reporter. ”

“ James is most nearly inspired on the subject of the divine right of kings; the sonnet to Henry at the beginning of the Basilikon Doron (App. II, V) opens with the finely Tamburlanian line,—
"God gives not Kings the stile of Gods in vaine."
and maintains something of this high and stately dignity throughout. Three other sonnets, written towards the close of the King's reign in Scotland, are easily distinguished from the rest as the summit of his achievement in poetry. ”

“ Forth Feasting, written for the King's return to Edinburgh, is not more grossly flattering than a hundred others, and is a model of smoothly flowing, neatly confined couplets.
Flattery somewhat more subtle than Jonson's, and additional evidence that the King's verse and criticism had some circulation in England, is contained in a poem by Sir John Beaumont, consisting of sixty-six carefully polished lines To his late Maiesty, concerning the True Forme of English Poetry. ”

“ If the Pseudo-Martyr was not written at the King's command — and of course such authority would not in any case be spoken of in the book itself — it was at least dedicated to the King and written chiefly to win his regard. When, in November, 1614, the poet's claims were finally presented definitely to James, he evidently had already formed an opinion of Donne's gifts and a plan for his career: "I know Mr. Donne is a learned man, has the abilities of a learned Divine, and will prove a powerful preacher ”

“ The King of Scots (now living) is a Poet
As his Lepanto and his Furies show it."
Meres, in Palladis Tamia (1598) , quotes the last two lines of Barnfield, [4] while Vaughan in The Golden Grove (1600) writes that "James . . . is a notable Poet, and daily setteth out most learned poems, to the admiration of all his subjects." [5]
In Allott's England's Parnassus (1600) , [6] there are ten quotations from James, nine from the Uranie and one from the Phœnix, amounting in all to about seventy lines. ”