It is due to the literary character of James the First to notice his prompt sympathies with the productions of genius. This monarch had not exceeded his twentieth year when we find him in an intercourse with men of letters and science at home and abroad. The death of Sidney called forth an elegiac poem, and the works of the astronomer Tycho Brahe are adorned by a poetical tribute from the royal hand; during the winter the king passed in Denmark he was a frequent visitor of the philosopher, on whom he conferred an honour and a privilege. That he addressed a letter to Shakspeare, grateful for the compliments received in Macbeth, there is little reason to doubt; for Davenant, the possessor of the letter, which was finally lost, told it to the Duke of Buckingham; few traditions are so clearly traced to their source; and indeed some mark of James’s attention to Shakspeare is positively told by Ben Jonson in his Elegy on “The Swan of Avon”—
| ————What a sight it were, To see thee on our waters yet appear; And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James![3] |
Hooker was the favourite vernacular author of James; and his earliest inquiry, on his arrival in England, was after Hooker, whose death he deeply regretted. James wrote a congratulatory letter to Lord Bacon on his great work; the king at least bowed to the genius of the man. It was by the especial command of this royal “pedant,” twenty-four years after the publication of Fairfax’s Tasso, that a second edition revived that version; and he provided Herbert the poet with a sinecure or pension, that his muse might cease to be disturbed. James the First was not only the patron of Ben Jonson, but admitted the bard to a literary intercourse; and it is probable that we owe to those conferences some of the splendour of the Masques, and in which there are many strokes of the familiar acquaintance of the poet with his royal admirer. More grave and important objects sometimes engaged his attention. It was James the First who assigned to the learned Usher the task of unfolding the antiquities of the British churches; and it was under the protection of this monarch that Father Paul composed the famous history, which, as fast as it was written, was despatched to England by our ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton; and, in this country, this great history was first published. These are not the only testimonies of his strong affection for literature and literary men; but they may surprise some who only hear of a pedant-king, who in reality was only a “learned” one.
[1] This technical term, designating the class of youthful loungers, was a new term in 1596, when Sir John Davis wrote his “Epigrams”—
| “Oft in my laughing rimes I name a Gull, But this new terme will many questions breed; Therefore, at first, I will expresse at full Who is a true and perfect Gull indeed.” |
His delineation is admirable; Gifford, in his “Jonson,” quotes it at length,—i. 14. But whoever may be curious about these masculine “birds” will be initiated into the mysteries of “Gullery” by “The Gulls’ Horn-book” of Dekker, of which we have a beautiful edition, with appropriate embellishments, by Dr. Nott.
[2] Dr. Bliss has given an excellent edition of Bishop Earle’s “Microcosmography, or a Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and Characters.”
[3] Every atom of candour is to be grudged to this hapless monarch; it is lamentable to see such a writer as Mr. Hallam prompt instantly to confirm a mere suggestion of Mr. Collier, that James could never have written a letter to Shakespeare, incapacitated to sympathize with the genial effusions of our poet.
