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]