The "bagage littéraire" of James VI is but slight, and if the profound
indifference of all and the absolute ignorance of most as to its very
existence be taken as representing a fair estimate of its merit it must
in truth be worthless. But if, on the other hand, we consult his
contemporaries we must, unless we are prepared to dismiss them all as
more shamelessly fulsome in their adulation than the average of courtly
flatterers, at least recognize the possibility of his having been a
little better than posterity has been taught to believe. Long before
James VI became James I his reputation as a poet had reached England,
and helped to swell the chorus of welcome that greeted him on his
arrival. In 1598 Barnfield made the King's love of poetry the point of
one of his sonnets:--
And you, that discommend sweet Poesie,
(So that the Subject of the same be good)
Here may you see your fond simplicitie,
Sith Kings have favored it, of royal Blood.
The King of Scots--now living--is a poet,
As his "Lepanto" and his "Furies" show it.[251]
Before this, Harvey in his _Pierce's Supererogation_, had already
proclaimed the poetical merit of "Lepanto", declaring it, in his
high-flown style, to be "a short, but heroicall worke, in meeter, but
royall meeter, fitt for a David's harpe".[252] Two years later the
judgment of Vaughan was that "James is a notable Poet, and daily setteth
out most learned poems, to the admiration of all his subjects".[253] In
1600 Allott gave ten quotations from James in his _England's Parnassus_,
and Bodenham claims that in "The Garden of the Muses", from "what workes
of Poetrie have been put to the world's eye by that learned and right
royall King and Poet, James King of Scotland, no one sentence of worth
has escaped".[254] After the accession to the English throne, Jonson
addressed "To King James" an epigram of ten lines, in which he expanded
the idea of the monarch's excellence as both prince and poet:--
"How, best of kings, dost thou a scepter bear?
How, best of poets, dost thou the laurel wear?
But two things rare the Fates had in their store,
And gave thee both, to show they could no more.
For such a poet, while thy days were green,
Thou wert, as chief of them are said t'have been.
And such a prince thou art, we daily see,
As chief of those still promise they will be.
Whom should my Muse then fly to, but the best
Of Kings, for grace; of poets, for my test?"[255]
And Sir John Beaumont, in a carefully polished poem written before, but
published after James's death, and entitled "To His late Maiesty,
concerning the True Forme of English Poetry", bestowed upon him the more
subtle flattery of calling him the Master whose "judicious rules" have
been his guide.[256] Here the reference is to James, not only as a poet
but as a critic also. For one of his early prose treatises was entitled
_Reulis and Cautelis to be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie_.
This was the manifesto of a group of poets, amongst whom were, in
addition to the King himself, Alexander Montgomerie, the author of _The
Cherry and the Slae_; Fowler, and the Hudsons, and whose aim was to
found a school of Scottish poetry. This document contained a passage
which is interesting enough to be quoted. Setting forth the "twa
caussis" that have induced him to compose his treatise, the Royal
lawgiver of Parnassus says: "The ane is; as for thame that wrait of
auld, lyke as the tyme is changeit sinsyne, so is the ordour of poesie
changeit. The other cause is; that as for thame that has written in it
of late, there has never ane of thame written in our (Scottis) languag.
For albeit sindrie hes written of it in English, quhilk is lykest to our
language, zit we differ from thame in sindrie reulis of poesie, as ze
will find be experience."[257] And we believe there are Scotsmen who
will account it to James for righteousness that he at least made an
attempt, abortive though it proved, to maintain Scotland's autonomy in
language and in poetry.
In forming an estimate of the King's poetical productions, it is but
fair to bear in mind that "all of his poems, save three or four sonnets
and the revisions of his early paraphrases of the Psalms, belong to the
period of his reign in Scotland", and that "the greater portion of them
were composed either before the publication of the first volume of his
poems in his nineteenth year or in the time of romantic enthusiasm
excited by his marriage".[258] We have "The First Verses that ever the
King Made". They are written in a sententious vein which might be looked
upon as characteristic of the author, were it not that this special
feature "is one of the commonest in Scottish poetry of the Chaucerian
tradition". And if, on the one hand, it cannot be claimed for them that
they bear evidence of exceptional talent, on the other it must be
admitted that, as the production of a lad of fifteen, they were quite
creditable:--
Since thought is free, thinke what thow will,
O troubled heart, to ease thy paine!
Thought unreveeled can doe no ill,
But words past out turne not again.
Be cairfull, ay, for to invent
The way to gett thyne owne intent.
To play thyself with thy conceate,
And lett none know what thow doth meane;
Hope ay at last, though it be lait,
To thy intent for to atteane:
Whiles, lett it breake furth in effect,
By ay lett witt thy will correct.
Since fool-haste is not greatest speed,
I would thou shouldest learne to know
How to make vertue of a need,
Since that necessitie hath no law.
With patience, then, see thow attend,
And hope to vanquishe in the end.[259]
James was still, as he puts it himself, in his "verie young and tender
yeares: wherein nature (except shee were a monster) can admit no
perfection", when he wrote his "Lepanto", which his contemporaries seem
to have looked upon as the best of his poems, and to which Du Bartas
paid the compliment of translating it into French. It is no masterpiece,
but Mr. Westcott, the editor of the _New Poems by James I of England_,
does not exaggerate the author's merit when he says that "his style in
the description of the battle between the Christian and the Turkish
navies is concrete and lively, and at times achieves an almost
ballad-like simplicity". This seems to us to be justified by such lines
as those which describe the gathering of the Christian forces:--
There came eight thousand Spaniards brave
From hotte and barren Spaine,
Good order kepars, cold in fight,
With proud disdainfull braine.
From pleasant, fertill Italie
There came twelve thousand als,
With subtill spreites bent to revenge,
By craftie meanes and fals.
Three thousande Almans also came,
From Countries colde and wide;
These monney men with awfull cheare
The chok will dourelie bide.[260]
James did not make frequent use of this metre, but he adopted it for
another poem of a very different kind, "A Dreame on his Mistris my Ladie
Glammes", in which he displays some ingenuity and inventive skill.
Interpreting one of the tokens that have been left him--an amethyst--he
says:
The secret vertues that are hidd
Into this pretious stone
Indues me with meete qualities
For serving such a one;
For as this stone by secret force
Can soveraignlie remeade
These daizeled braines whome Bacchus' strength
Ou'rcomes as they were deade,
And can preserve us from the harme
Of the envenomed sting,
Of poysoned cuppes, that to our tombe
Untymelie does us bring,
So shall my hart be still preserved
By vertue from above,
From staggering like a drunken man
Or wavering into love:
Bot by this soveraigne antidote
Of her whom still I serve,
In spite of all the poysoned lookes,
Of Dames I shall not swerve.[261]
There are 268 lines altogether, and the discovery of them ought to
contribute in some degree to the poetical rehabilitation of the author.
As a knowledge of James's character would suggest, his interest in the
art of poetry was mainly directed to the details of verse making and
diction, and it seems natural in such a stickler for metrical propriety
that in his shorter poems his favourite form should have been the
sonnet. His highest achievement in this department has always been
considered to be the sonnet to his son Henry, at the beginning of the
_Basilicon Doron_:--
God gives not Kings the stile of Gods in vaine,
For on his Throne his Scepter doe they swey:
And as their subjects ought them to obey,
So Kings should feare and serve their God againe:
If then ye would enjoy a happie raigne,
Observe the Statutes of your heavenly King,
And from his Law make all your Lawes to spring:
Since his Lieutenant here ye should remaine,
Reward the just, be stedfast, true and plaine,
Represse the proud, maintayning aye the right,
Walk alwayes so, as ever in his sight,
Who guardes the godly, plaguing the prophane;
And so ye shall in Princely virtues shine,
Resembling right your mightie King Divine.
Of this poem Bishop Percy said that it would not dishonour any writer of
that time, and a later critic has pronounced that it is by far James's
best performance, "which just misses being really fine". By the side of
it there may now be placed, by reason of their "sustained music,
conformity to the technique of the sonnet, and prettiness of fancy, if
not elevation", at least three others which figure amongst the
twenty-six hitherto unpublished poems included in the manuscript which
Mr. Westcott has discovered. One of them refers to a lady, probably the
daughter of Sir John Wemyss, whose name was Cicely:--
Faire famous Isle, where Agathocles rang;
Where sometymes, statly Siracusa stood;
Whos fertill feelds were bathed in bangster's blood
When Rome and ryvall Carthage strave so lang:
Great Ladie Mistriss, all the Isles amang,
Which standes in Neptune's, circle mouving, flood;
No, nather for thy frutefull ground nor good;
I chuse the, for the subject of my sang:
Nor for the ould report, of scarce trew fame;
Nor heeretofore, for farelies in the found;
But, for the sweet resemblance of that Name,
To whom thou seemest, so sibb, at least, in sound;
If then, for seeming so, thy prays bee such,
Sweet She herselfe, dothe merit more than much.[262]
On the strength of this, or of anything we have quoted from James's
poems, it would be supremely unreasonable to claim for him a place on
the same level as that of the authors either of "The King's Quhair" or
of "The Gaberlunzie Man". But it may be less unjustifiable to suggest
that he is not absolutely undeserving of a corner in anthologies of the
Scottish poems of the sixteenth and of the early seventeenth century.
That he is altogether contemptible is an opinion that might be
maintained if we had nothing better of his than the string of punning
rhymes quoted in the notes to Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_, for
the purpose of making him appear ridiculous.[263]