The literary characters who flourished in the reign of James were very numerous; and we must, of course, place at the head of them our old acquaintance the "Swan of Avon," as some goose has most irreverently christened him. Shakespeare adorned the time of James by dying in it, as, by living in it, he shed a lustre on that of Elizabeth. One of our predecessors * in the gigantic task we have undertaken—and, by the way, it is said that Mr. Macaulay, fired by our shining example, is preparing himself to follow it by a retirement from public life—one of our predecessors, we repeat, has thrown cold water upon the warm admiration which is felt for Shakespeare to this day, and which at this very moment is urging the whole nation to buy his house at Stratford, though the town was burnt, great at first for the possession of this relic, has, we confess, a little abated since our research put us in possession of the unpleasant fact, that the bard must have been burnt out, notwithstanding the assurance of the auctioneer, who acts, of course, on what he considers the best policy. Whatever we may think of the house the poet left or did not leave behind him, the houses he still draws by the magic of his genius are sufficient to refute the argument of the hypercritical Hume, that Shakespeare appeared greater than he really was, because he happened to be irregular. We are not aware that irregularity and grandeur must necessarily seem to be combined, and indeed, irregularity in payment, which considerably aggrandises an account, is the only instance we can call to mind in which we see some ground for our fellow-historian's strange hypothesis, ** down at about the time when the poet lived in it. Our own enthusiasm, which was Fletcher, the dramatist, and his partner Beaumont, belonged to the reign of James; but when the latter died, in 1616, the firm was broken up; and as each had been nothing by himself, Fletcher fell into wretched insignificance. His name had only been known in connection with that of Beaumont, and if he attempted to play the lion afterwards at an evening party, a cool inquiry of "Fletcher! Fletcher! who's Fletcher?" was the only sensation the announcement of his name elicited. Some say he died of the plague in 1625, but it is more probable that the plaguy indifference shown towards him everywhere, after he lost poor Beaumont, was in reality the death of him.
* Home.
** Stratford-upon-Avon was all destroyed by fire in
September, 1614, two years before Shakespeare's death.
Honest Jack Stowe, the antiquarian, ought not to be overlooked, though time has long since stowed away his works among the lumber of our libraries. His Survey of London was his greatest literary labour, and he was preparing a new edition in 1605, when he was obliged to "Stow it" by an attack of illness that unhappily proved fatal.
Donne, the poet, can hardly be mentioned among the literary dons of the age; but Bacon is a luminary that must not be snuffed out in a single sentence. It has been said that his wit was far-fetched, but a thing is certainly not the less valuable for having been brought from a long way off; for if it were so, the diamond would lose much of its value in the London market. If Bacon's wit was far fetched, it was not only worth the carriage, but it has been found sufficiently valuable to warrant its being forwarded on from generation to generation: and it will, we suspect, find its way to a still remote posterity, before it arrives at the terminus of its journey.
James himself was but a contemptible writer, and would have been scarcely worth his five pounds a week in these days, as the London correspondent of a country newspaper. His imagination would not have been vigorous enough to supply him with the "latest intelligence," which must always be in type at least two days before the date on which the facts it professes to impart are stated to have happened. As an industrious chronicler of early gooseberries, new carrots, gigantic cabbages, irruptions of lady-birds, and showers of frogs, he would have been useful in his way, or he might have undertaken that branch of periodical literature which embraces the interesting recollections—or non-recollections rather—of the oldest inhabitant.
CHAPTER THE THIRD. CHARLES THE FIRST.
ON the afternoon of Monday, the 28th of March, 1625, Charles the First was proclaimed at Charing Cross, amid a tremendous shower of rain and hail, so that the commencement of his reign was hailed in a somewhat disagreeable manner. His first care was to turn out the fools and buffoons that his father had kept at Court, or rather, as Buckingham called it, to get rid of the comic and pantomimic company which had been established in the palace. He next determined to send over for his new bride, who appeared to have been forgotten in the hurry of business, and who was waiting at Paris, "to be left till called for." Buckingham was despatched to take charge of the precious cargo; but his behaviour at the French Court was so disreputable that he received some very broad hints as to the propriety of his speedy return to England. He made love to the young Queen Anne of Austria, and flirted with every female member of the royal family, to the extreme disgust of Cardinal Richelieu, who told him, plainly, that such conduct could not be permitted, at any price.
Buckingham took his departure, with the young Henrietta, on the 23rd of May; but there must have been pretty goings on, or dreadful standing stills, during the journey, for it was the 27th of June before they arrived at Dover. Charles, who had naturally begun to wonder what had become of his minister and his bride, set off to meet them, and having slept at Canterbury on the 27th of June, he reached Dover on the 28th, and found his intended, who had "put up" at the Castle.