Amenities of Literature Part 58

What were the emotions of Bodley through this long period, what his first intentions, and what his immutable decision, have fortunately been laid open to us in a close correspondence with his first librarian. Our parent-founder of a public library, with the forcible simplicity of the natural colloquial style of that day, has developed his own character.

"Examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I might take, and having sought, as I thought, all the ways to the wood, to select the most proper, I concluded, at the last, to set up my staff at the library door in Oxon; being thoroughly persuaded, that in my solitude and surcease from the commonwealth affairs, I could not busy myself to better purpose." He early discovered that the formation of his library required the co-operation of many favourable circ.u.mstances: "some kind of knowledge, some purse-ability, great store of honourable friends; else it would prove a vain attempt and inconsiderate." After many perplexities, the great resolve seemed to sanction the act, and he exclaims--"The project is cast, and whether I live or die, to such ends altogether I address my thoughts and deeds!" Such was the solemn pledge, and such the deed of gift, which Bodley, in the greatness of his mind, contracted with posterity.

But the minor cares and the minuter anxieties were to open on him; and it must be confessed that he tried the patient duties of the learned Dr.

James, whom he had judiciously elected for the first librarian, but who often vents a groan on his interminable labours. Sir Thomas gently reproaches him: "I am toiled exceedingly, no less than yourself, with writing, buying, binding, disposing, &c.; but I am fed with pleasure of seeing the end." Bodley had not only to form a universal library, but to build one on the desolate ruins of that founded by Duke Humphrey, whose royal name could not save his books and ma.n.u.scripts, which had all been purloined and wasted. The pledges left for their loan not being worth half the value of the books, the volumes were never returned; and those which remained in the reign of Edward the Sixth were burned as "superst.i.tious," for their rubrics and illuminations. The history of this library might have deterred our new founder, by reminding him of the fate which may await even on public libraries. At all events, for many years it required all his fort.i.tude to encounter a rabble of master-carpenters, joiners, carvers, glaziers, builders, claspers, and stringers, and the chain-smiths; for at that day books were chained to their shelves, with chains long enough to reach the desk. A book was tethered, and could never stray from its paddock. Then came the cla.s.sification and the arrangements! discussions not easily to be adjusted with his librarian, whether a book should be cla.s.sed as a work of theology or of politics? Sir Thomas found an incessant business at London in packing up "dry fats," or vats of books, barging them for Oxford; he was receiving fresh supplies from Italy, from Spain, from Turkey, and designed to send a scholar to travel in the East, to collect Arabic and Persian books, on which he sagaciously observed, that "in process of time, by the extraordinary diligence of some one student, these Eastern languages may be readily understood." Bodley antic.i.p.ated our Society for Oriental Literature.

But not merely solicitous to erect a vast library, Bodley was equally anxious to consecrate the spot to study itself. He is uneasy at too public an admission, lest idlers should mix among the students, and, as he plainly tells, "be daily pestering the room with their gazing and babbling, and trampling up and down, disturbing the real studious." With what fervour he rejoices when, at length, he lived to witness the day of the opening of the library, and found that "all proceeded orderly, and with such silence!" But although he had bestowed all his cares and his fortune on this inst.i.tution, it still was but an infant, and he had to look towards spirits as enlarged as his own, to protect the orphan of the public. It met with some who adopted it, and Bodley had their names inscribed in the register of this public library; but he was as cautious as he was courteous--the vain were not to be gratified for penurious gifts. Books, and not names, were wanted. At first, impatiently zealous, he murmurs of "promises received for performances." But latterly, he had occasion to exhort the university to mark by their particular acknowledgments, the donations in volumes or in money. The honourable roll on which the names are inscribed, includes not only those of the most eminent of our county, but also of several ladies, who rivalled those heroes and statesmen who had the honour of laying the foundation of the Bodleian Library.[3]

In Sir Thomas Bodley's character we view the conscious dignity of a great design, yet combined with the sedate reflection of a man practised in the world. There were certain traits of vanity, which may give a colour to the insinuations of some--who might consider they had been deprived of legacies--that it was his enormous vanity which raised this edifice of learning. It is amusing to discover, that when the Bishop of Exeter proposed to visit the library, a letter of Sir Thomas immediately precedes his visitor. "I pray you, observe his speeches, and liking or disliking, and in your next let me know it." When James the First was preparing to visit the library, he furnished hints to the librarian for his speech to the literary monarch: "It must not carry greater length than for half a quarter of an hour's utterance. It must be short and sweet, and full of stuff." The librarian was desirous to hide Buchanan when the king came down to Oxford; but Bodley, probably not approving the concealment of any of his literary stores, observed, "It will not avail to conceal him in his desk since he is in the catalogue, nor have we any reason to take any notice of the king's dislike; but," he warily adds, "should it excite his Majesty's notice, we must allege that the books were put there in the Queen's time." But nothing save the most delicate attention towards an author could have prompted his order concerning Coryat the traveller, who had presented his book to the library. On the author's coming to Oxford, Sir Thomas desired that "it should be placed in such a manner, that when the author came down, it may seem to magnify the author and the book." In his ardour for the general interests of his library, Bodley absolutely insisted that his librarian should persevere in his forlorn fellows.h.i.+p, for "marriage,"

opined the founder of the Bodleian Library, "is too full of domestic impeachments to afford him so much time from his private affairs." The doctor decided against the celibacy of a librarian, and was gravely admonished on the absurdity of such conduct in one who had the care of a public library! for "it was opening a gap to disorder hereafter." With a happier prescience, Bodley foresaw that race of generous spirits who, long after, and at distant intervals, have carried on his great views.

Listen to the simplicity and force of the venerable style of our first founder of a PUBLIC LIBRARY.

"We cannot but presume that, casting (counting) what number of n.o.ble benefactors have already concurred in a FERVOUR OF AFFECTION to that PUBLIC PLACE OF STUDY, we shall be sure in TIME TO COME to find some OTHERS OF THE LIKE DISPOSITION to the advancement of learning."[4]

With such a hallowed purpose ever before him, can we conceive the agonies of the founder of a public library, on being for ever denied an entrance into it? and yet such was the fate of one of the most ill.u.s.trious of this race. The mournful history of the founder of the Cottonian Library will ever excite the regrets of a grateful posterity, and its catastrophe will witness how far above life he loved and valued his collected lore! It happened that among the many rare ma.n.u.scripts collected by Sir ROBERT COTTON, one reached his hands, which struck him by the singularity of the subject; it was a political theory to show the kings of England "how to bridle the impertinency of Parliaments." An unfaithful amanuensis, the son of the Dr. James whom we have just noticed, took copies and sold them to the curious. When the original was at length traced to the Cottonian collection, Sir Robert was sued in the Star-chamber, and considered as the author of a work whose tendency was to enslave the nation. It was long afterwards discovered that this ma.n.u.script had been originally written by Sir Robert Dudley, when in exile at Florence. Cotton was now denied all access to his library; his spirits sunk in the blackest melancholy; and he declared to an intimate friend, that "those who had locked up his library from him had broken his heart." Now deprived of that learned crowd who once were flowing into his house, consulting and arranging his precious ma.n.u.scripts; torn away from the delightful business of his life, and in torment at the doubtful fate of that ma.n.u.script collection, which had consumed forty years at every personal sacrifice to form it for the "use and service of posterity," he sunk at the sudden stroke. In the course of a few weeks, he was so worn by injured feelings, that from a ruddy-complexioned man, "his face was wholly changed into a grim blackish paleness, near to the resemblance and hue of a dead visage." Such is the expression of one who knew him well. Before he died, Sir Robert requested the learned Spelman to acquaint the Privy Council that "their so long detaining his books from him had been the cause of his mortal malady." "On this message,"

says the writer of a ma.n.u.script letter of the day, "the Lord Privy Seal came to Sir Robert, when it was too late to comfort him, from the King, from whom also the Earl of Dorset came within half an hour of Sir Robert's death, to condole with Sir Thomas Cotton, his son, for his father's death; and with an a.s.surance that as his Majesty loved his father, so he would continue his love to him: Sir Robert hath intailed his library of books as sure as he can make it upon his son and his posterity. If Sir Robert's heart could be ripped up, his library would appear in it, as Calais in Queen Mary's." Such is the affecting fate of the founder of the Cottonian Library, that great individual whose sole labour silently formed our national antiquities, and endowed his country with this wealth of ma.n.u.scripts.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sir Simonds d'Ewes feelingly describes in his will, his "precious library." "It is my inviolable injunction that it be kept entire, and not sold, divided, or dissipated." It was not, however, to be locked up from the public good. Such was the feeling of an eminent antiquary.

A later Sir Simonds d'Ewes was an extravagant man, and seems to have sold everything about 1716, when the collection pa.s.sed into the possession of the Earl of Oxford.

[2] Tirabosohi, VI. pt. i, 131.

[3] See Gutch's edition of Wood's "Annals of the University of Oxford," vol. I. pt. ii. p. 928.

[4] The vigilant curiosity of Tom Hearne, the antiquary, collected the singular correspondence of the Founder of the Bodleian Library with Dr. James, the first librarian, and published it under the t.i.tle of "Reliquiae Bodleianae, or Some Genuine Remains of Sir Thomas Bodley," 1703, 8vo. The curious reader will find in Gutch's edition of Wood's "Annals of the University of Oxford" many letters by Bodley, and his liberal endowments to provide a fixed revenue after his decease.

EARLY WRITERS, THEIR DREAD OF THE PRESS; THE TRANSITION TO AUTHORS BY PROFESSION.

At the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the public, awakening at the first dawn of knowledge, with their stirring pa.s.sions and their eager curiosity, found their wants supplied by a new race of "ready writers,"

who now teased the groaning press--a diversified race of miscellaneous writers, who had discovered the wants of the people for books which excited their sympathies and reflected their experience, and who caught on their fugitive pages the manners and the pa.s.sions of their contemporaries. No subject was too mean to be treated; and had domestic encyclopaedias been then invented, these would have been precisely the library the people required: but now, every book was to be separately worked. The indiscriminate curiosity of an uneducated people was gratified by immature knowledge; but it was essential to amuse as well as to inform: hence that mult.i.tude of fugitive subjects. The mart of literature opened, and with the book-manufactory, in the language of that primeval critic, WEBBE, of innumerable sorts of English books, and infinite fardles of printed pamphlets, "all shops were stuffed."

It has been attempted to fix on the name of that great patriarch, the Abraham of our Israel, who first invented our own book-craft; but it would be indiscreet to a.s.sign the honour to any particular person, or even to inquire whether the cupidity of the book-vender first set to work the ingenuity of the book-weaver. Who first dipped his silver pen into his golden ink, and who first conceived the notion of this literary alchemy, which trans.m.u.tes paper into gold or lead? It was, I believe, no solitary invention; the rush of "authors by profession" was simultaneous.

Former writers had fearfully courted fame; they were the children of the pleasures of the pen; these were a hardier race, who at once seized on popularity; and a new trade was opened by the arts of authors.h.i.+p. In the primitive age of publication, before there existed "a reading public," literary productions were often anonymous, or, which answered the same purpose, they wore the mask of a fict.i.tious name, and were pseudonymous, or they hid themselves under naked initials, by which means the owners have sometimes lost their own property. It seems a paradox that writers should take such great pains to defraud themselves of their claims.

This coyness of publication was prevalent among our earliest writers, when writing and publis.h.i.+ng were not yet almost synonymous terms. Before we had "authors by profession," we had authors who wrote, and seemed to avoid every sort of publicity. To the secluded writers of that day, the press was arrayed with terrors which have ceased to haunt those who are familiar with its daily labours, and our primeval writers trembled before that halo of immortality, which seemed to hang over that ponderous machinery. Writers eagerly affixed their names to polemical tracts, or to devotional effusions, during the melancholy reigns of EDWARD the Sixth and MARY, as a record of their zeal, and sometimes as an evidence of their voluntary martyrdom; but the productions of imagination and genius were yet rare and private. The n.o.ble-minded hardly ventured out of the halcyon state of ma.n.u.script to be tossed about in open sea; it would have been compromising their dignity, or disturbing their repose, to submit themselves to the cavils of the Cynics, for even at this early period of printed books we find that the ancient family of the _Malevoli_, whom Terence has noticed, had survived the fall of Rome, and here did not find their "occupation gone." With many scholars, too, it was still doubtful whether the vernacular muses in verse and prose were not trivial and homely. In the inchoate state of our literature, some who were imbued with cla.s.sical studies might have felt their misgivings, in looking over their "gorgeous inventions," or their "pretty devices," as betraying undisciplined strength, bewildering fancies, and unformed tastes. They were not aware, even at that more advanced period, when a series of "poetical collections" appeared, of what they had already done; and it has been recently discovered, that when the printer of "England's Helicon" had innocently affixed the names of some writers to their pieces, to quiet their alarms, he was driven to the clumsy expedient of pasting slips of paper over their names. This was a spell which Time only dissolved, that great revealer of secrets more deeply concealed.

When publication appeared thus terrible, an art which was not yet valued even the artists themselves would slight. We have a striking instance of this feeling in the circ.u.mstance of a sonnet of our Maiden Queen, on the conspiracies then hatching by the party of her royal sister of Scotland.

One of the ladies of her bedchamber had surrept.i.tiously transcribed the poem from her majesty's tablet; and the innocent criminal had thereby cast herself into extreme peril. The queen affected, or at least expressed, her royal anger lest the people should imagine that she was busied in "such toys," and her majesty was fearful of being considered too lightly of, for so doing. The grave sonnet might, however, have been accepted as a state-paper. The solemn theme, the grandeur of the queenly personages, and the fortunes of two great nations at issue, communicated to these verses the profound emotions of contemplative royalty, more exquisite than the poetry. Yet Elizabeth could be checked by "the fear to be held too lightly by such toys."

The same motive had influenced some of the great personages in our literature, who, by the suppression of their names, anxiously eluded public observation, at the very moment they were in reality courting it!

_Ignoto_ and _Immerito_, or bare initials, were the concealing signatures of Rawleigh, of Sidney, and of Spenser. The works of the Earl of Surrey, then the finest poems in the language, were posthumous. "The Arcadia" of Sidney possibly was never intended for the press. The n.o.ble Sackville, who planned the grand poem of "The Mirror of Magistrates,"

willingly left his lofty "Induction" anonymous among the crowd. In the first poetical miscellany in our language collected by the printer Tottell, are "The Poems of _uncertain Authors_;" so careless were the writers themselves to preserve their names, and so little aware of having claims on posterity. Some years after, when those other poetical collections, "The Paradise of Dainty Devices" and "England's Helicon,"

were projected by their publishers, they were borrowed or stolen from ma.n.u.scripts which lay neglected with their authors, and who for the most part conceal themselves under quaint signatures.

The metropolis, in the days of Elizabeth and James, bore a pretty close resemblance to those ancient cities now existing before us on the Continent, famous in their day, but which, from causes not here necessary to specify, have not grown with the growth of time. Cologne, Coblentz, and Mayence, are such cities; and the city of Rouen, in its more ancient site, exhibits a picture of the streets of London in the days of Shakspeare. Stationary in their limits and their population, the cla.s.ses of society are more distinctly marked out; but the individual lives more constantly under the survey of his neighbours. Their art of living is to live in the public eye; to keep up appearances, however this pride may prove inconvenient. No one would seem to have an established household, or always care to indicate its locality; their meals are at a public table, and their familiar acquaintance are found in the same public resorts; their social life becomes contracted as their own ancient narrow streets.

Such was London, when the Strand was a suburb, with only a few scattered mansions; the present streets still retain the family names, thus separating London from its regal sister. The glory of the goldsmiths and the mercers blazed in Cheapside, "the beauty of London;" and Fleet-street was the Bond-street of fas.h.i.+onable loungers. In this contracted sphere, where all moved, and the observers had microscopical eyes, any trivial novelty was strangely magnified, and the great personage was an object for their scrutiny as well as the least considerable. Thus we find that the Lord Chancellor Bacon is censured by one of the gossiping pens of that day for his inordinate pride and pomp on the most ordinary occasions. He went in his state robes "to cheapen and buy silks and velvets at Sir Baptist Hicker's and Burner's shops."

James the First, I think, once in Parliament alluded to the "goldsmiths at Cheap, who showed not the bravery of former days," as a mark of the decline of national prosperity. One of the popular alarms of that day was "the rising of the apprentices," whenever the city's clumsy "watch and ward" were put to the rout; the apprentices usually made an attempt on their abhorrence, Bridewell, or pulled down two or three houses on Shrove-Tuesday. Once, on the trying of some ordnance in Moorfields, the court was seized by a panic of "a rising in the city." From all this we may form some notion of the size of the metropolis, and its imbecile police. In a vast and flouris.h.i.+ng metropolis the individual in liberty and security pa.s.ses among the countless waves of this ocean of men.

A metropolis thus rising from its contracted infancy, extending in growth, and diversified by new cla.s.ses of society, presented many novelties in its crowded scenes; mutable manners, humorous personages, all the affectations or the homeliness of its citizens. Many writers, among whom were some of admirable genius, devoted their pens to fugitive objects and evanescent scenes, sure of finding an immediate reception from the sympathy of their readers. New modes of life, and altered manners during a lengthened peace, brought men into closer observation of each other; the ranks in society were no longer insulated; their haunts were the same localities, the playhouse, the ordinary, and Paul's Walk. There we find the gay and the grave--the disbanded captain--the critic from the inns of court--fantastic "fas.h.i.+on-mongers"--the coney-catcher who watches "the warren,"--and the gull, "town or country," a term which, unlike that of "the coney-catcher," has survived the times before us, and is imbedded in the language.[1] They even touched on the verge of that last refinement in society, critical coteries. We learn from Jonson, that there was "a college of critics,"

where a new member, "if he could pay for their suppers," might abuse the works of any man, and purchase for himself "the terrible name of a critic;" and ladies "lived free from their husbands," held coteries, and "gave entertainments to all the wits." This was the incipient state of the new world of manners, and what we now call "society;" and society provokes satire!

It was at the close of the Elizabethan period that our first town-satirists arose, from whom we learn the complicate system of manners, in the artifices practised in society; and in looking on their phantasmagorias, we are often startled among their grotesque forms by discovering our own exact faces. Satires on manners, descriptive of the lighter follies and the more involved artifices of social life, could hitherto have had no scope. The great in station alone const.i.tuted what may be considered as society, without any of those marking differences resulting from the inequalities of fortune. Satire then, as with Skelton, was an invective discharged at some potent individual at the risk of life; or it was an attack on a whole body, as Piers Ploughman's on the clergy of the times, while Will, or John, or Piers, whatever was his name, hid himself behind a hedge on Malvern Hills. Society, in the modern acceptation, of a miscellaneous mixture, which equalizes men even in their inequality, supplying pa.s.sing objects for raillery or indignation, opened that wider stage, which a growing metropolis only could exhibit. We must become intimate with men to sound even the depths of superficial follies, and declamation may even fall short in the conception of some enormous criminal. Society must have considerably advanced before a town-satirist could appear.

The change in style was not less remarkable than that in manners.

Towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, after the wild luxuriance of fancy which had everywhere covered the fresh soil of the public mind, in the riot of our genius, a great change was occurring in the minds of our writers. Nature, in her open paths of suns.h.i.+ne, no longer busied them, while they stole into the bye-corners of abstract ideas, and roved after glittering conceits. Philosophy introduced itself into poetry, and wit became the subst.i.tute for pa.s.sion. It was then that Sir John Davies wrote his "Immortality of the Soul," which still remains a model of didactic verse; and Donne, "The Progress of the Soul," a progress which he did not venture to conclude--a poem the most creative and eccentric in the language, but which must be reserved for the few. Donne, who closed his life as a St. Austin, had opened it as a Catullus.

The depth of sentiment was contracted into sententious epigrams, alike in prose and verse; and in the display of their ingenuity, the remotest objects were brought into collision, and the most differing things into a strange coherence, to startle by surprises, and to make us admire these wonders by their novelty. They cast about them their pointed ant.i.theses, and often subsided into a clink of similar syllables, and the clench of an ambiguous word.

In all matters they affected curt phrases; and it has been observed that even the colloquial style was barbarously elliptical. They spoke gruff and short, affecting brevity of words, which was probably held to be epigrammatic. It became fas.h.i.+onable to write what they ent.i.tled books of "Epigrams" and books of "Characters." They appear to have taken their notion of an epigram from the Greek anthology, where the term was confined to any inscription for a statue or a tomb, or any object to be commemorated. Modern literature, in adopting the term, has applied it to a different purpose from its original signification. An epigram now is a short satire closing with a point of wit. Wit, in our present sense, was yet unpractised, and the modern epigram was not yet discovered. Ben Jonson has composed books of epigrams; but, though he has censured Sir John Harrington's as not being epigrams, but mere narratives, has written himself in the prevalent style of his day. They are short poems on persons, and on incidents in his own life, which he poured out to relieve his own feelings when they were outraged, and, so far, they are a reflection of the poet's state of mind--the autobiography of his potent intellect. As among these epigrammatists we never had a Martial, so among these character-writers we could hardly expect a La Bruyere for his refined causticity; but the most skilful, as Sir Thomas Overbury and Bishop Earle, are so witty as to seem grotesque, but it is human nature disguised in the fas.h.i.+ons of the day.[2]

This infection of style must have come from a higher source than a mere fas.h.i.+onable affectation of the day, for it endured through half a century. The axiomatic style of Bacon in his "Essaies," which first appeared in 1597, probably set the model of the curt period for these Senecas in prose and verse, who found no difficulty in putting together short sentences, without, however, having discovered the art of short thoughts.

This change in style is considered as characteristic of the age of James, but it began before his reign. The age of this monarch has been universally condemned as the age of pedantry, and of quibbles and conceits, all which, indeed, have been liberally ascribed to his taste; but in the plentiful evidence of his wit and humour, it would be difficult to find an instance of these b.a.s.t.a.r.d ornaments of style.

In the history of literature the names of sovereigns usually only serve to mark its dates; and an "author-sovereign," to use Lord Shaftesbury's emphatic expression, can exercise no prerogative, and yields even his precedence. In more than one respect JAMES THE FIRST may form an exception, for the barren list of his writings alone might serve to indicate the age; their subjects were not so peculiar to this monarch's taste as they were common with higher geniuses than his majesty.

When on the throne of England, it was deemed advisable to collect his majesty's writings, the honour of the editors.h.i.+p was conferred on Montague, Bishop of Winton, whom Fuller has characterised as "a potent courtier;" and the courtly potency of the prelatical editor effuses itself before the "majesty of kings" in the most awful of all prefaces.

Cavillers there were, who, on distinct principles, objected to a king being a writer of books, carrying on war "by the pen instead of the pike, and spending his pa.s.sion on paper instead of powder." This was a military cry from those whose "occupation had long gone." Others, more critically nice, a.s.sumed that, "since writing of books had grown into a trade, it was as discreditable for a king to become an author as it would be for him to be a pract.i.tioner in a profession." Such objectors were not difficult to put down, and the bishop has furnished an ample catalogue of "royal authors" among all great nations; and, in our own, from Alfred to Elizabeth. The royal family of James were particularly distinguished for their literary acquirements. As that was the day when no argument could be urged without standing by the side of some authority, the bishop had done well, and no scholar in an upper cla.s.s could have done better; but this bishop was imprudent, his restless courtliness fatigued his pen till he found a _divine origin of king-writing_! "The majesty of kings," he a.s.serts, "is not unsuited to a writer of books;" and proceeds--"_The first royal author_ is the King of kings--G.o.d himself, who doth so many things for our imitation. It pleased his divine wisdom to be _the first in this rank_, that we read of, that did _ever write_. He wrote on the tables on both sides, which was the work of G.o.d." This was in the miserable strain of those unnatural thoughts and remote a.n.a.logies which were long to disfigure the compositions even of our scholars. How James and the bishop looked on one another at their first meeting, after this preface was fairly read, one would like to learn; but here we have the age!

One work by this royal author must not pa.s.s away with the others; it is not only stamped with the idiosyncrasy of the author, but it is one of those original effusions which are precious to the history of man. "THE BASILICON DORON, or His Majesty's Instructions to His Dearest Son Henry the Prince," is a genuine composition in the vernacular idiom; not the prescribed labour of a secretary, nor the artificial composition of the salaried literary man, but warm with the personal emotions of the royal author. He writes for the Prince of Scotland, and about the Scottish people; he instructs the prince even by his own errors and misfortunes.

Some might be surprised to find the king strenuously warning the prince against pedantry; exhorting his pupil to avoid what he calls any "corrupt leide, as book-language and pen-and-ink terms;" counselling him _to write in his own language_, "for it best becometh a king to purify and make famous his own tongue." To have ventured on so complete an emanc.i.p.ation from the prevalent prejudices, in the creation of a vernacular literature, is one evidence, among many, that this royal author was not a mere pedant; and the truth is, that his writings on popular subjects are colloquially unostentatious; abstaining from those oratorical periods and rhetorical fancies which the scholar indulged in his speeches and proclamations--the more solemn labours of his own hand.

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 pa.s.sed 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 _Ta.s.so_, 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 a.s.signed 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 amba.s.sador, 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This technical term, designating the cla.s.s 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."