of Charles I. was one Mr. Beely, a Dane,' which fact was disclosed by Beely himself to the author in great secrecy.' We only mention this libel as a specimen of one of the memoir-writers who are mildly termed 'satirical.' Peyton was apparently a zealot of the highest strain. Sweet indeed must have been the counsel of the saints, if these morsels may be taken as a sample !

During his seasons of activity, James took exceeding delight in the practice of his trade, as he called it, that king-craft, which has been the subject of so many sneers. With a remarkable, though not uncommon inconsistency, he applied himself promptly and zealously to those tasks which were not properly within the scope of his craft,' while he flagged in the prosecution of its ordinary business. After Cecil's death, he resolved to perform the duties of secretary himself, and at first he took delight to show his readiness and ability' in this office, but in about half a year his vigour began to relent,' and he found out the necessity of attending to his own health and quiet*. He wished to sit with his judges in the courts of law. When at Edinburgh in 1617, he attended personally and infallibly' every day in the parliament, 'so that there fell not a word amongst them but his majesty was of council with it." He moderated between the lawyers on the thorny subject of prohibitions; he arbitrated between the older and younger fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, respecting the performance of plays at Shrovetide+. He sent a code of academical regulations, signed with his own hand, to Oxford. no man, indeed, was more ambitious to maintain, in public and in private, the character of a disciplinarian, which his indolence and easiness of temper peculiarly disqualified him from supporting. Even in affairs of gallantry he forebore not to interpose his instructions, for when Prince Charles was at the court of Madrid, he counselled him how to distribute his presents of jewels, and how to compliment the Infanta. If, however, his officiousness was a folly, it was that of the wisest fool in Christendom.' The acuteness and vigour of mind which he exhibited on many occasions of the kind to which we have alluded, drew forth the genuine applauses of intelligent men, and his practical good sense would have been more uniformly conspicuous, if the operations of his judgment had not been subject to disturbance, as Wilson too truly observes, by his choler and fear. That he was, to use Osborne's

Nichols, ii. 517,

+ The ancientest of them said, that these times required rather prayers and fasting than plays and feasting, which was ill taken, and order given for the plays to go on.' -Nichols, hii. 810.

Life and Reign of King James I. Wilson, though sufficiently bitter against King James, is not to be confounded with the mere libellers of this period; he writes

borne's expression, the promptest man living at discovering an imposture, was proved in the well-known cases of Lady Lake, Haydock the sleeping preacher, and the Leicestershire boy, whose juggle the king detected after nine women had been executed as witches on his testimony, by the judges Winch and Crew, and several others committed, whose lives were saved by James's interposition. When we are enabled by documents to measure the king's talent for business with that of other men placed in contact with him, we find him generally equal, often superior. 'The speaker of the House of Commons,' observes Hume, is usually an eminent lawyer; yet the harangue of his majesty will always be found much superior to that of the speaker in every parliament during this reign.' The compliment, however, must be applied to the royal orator's genius, not his policy; for his speeches too often gave an opening and temptation to those very attacks which he was least able to bear or repel. At Oxford, when he mixed in the disputations, the scholar appeared to no disadvantage, however we may judge of the king. In the Hampton Court conference, his knowledge and acuteness were highly distinguished, though he may have incurred some just censure for occasional forwardness of manner and indiscretion in language. This latter point, indeed, was one in which he often failed, as when he called the devil a busy bishop,' in the presence of the reverend bench; whereupon Bancroft said drily to Harrington, that he thought his majesty might have chosen another name. In the case of Essex and his countess, James replied to the speech of Archbishop Abbot, in many particulars, with great justness of reasoning; but we abandon to condemnation his most unkingly interference in this proceeding, though there appears no reason to suspect him of having consciously participated in the conspiracy against the earl-and some admissions of Essex himself might have misled a more impartial inquirer.

The literary character of James is, in general, unduly depreciated, and the reproach of pedantry has been cast without reserve on him and on his times, by many who never affix any distinct idea to the term. But whatever blame it infers may well be borne by the age which enjoyed Shakspeare and Jonson; which, we do not say possessed, but, in spite of party feeling, did unanimous justice to, Bacon; which gave the first seeds of poetry to the mind of Milton; and which perfected that solid and majestic monument of the English language, the last translation of the Bible. The husk and shell which, as Sterne says, grow up with

with much talent, often with very striking effect; and he displays, perhaps, more moderation than could have been expected from an adherent of the injured Earl of Essex.

learning,

learning, were not always thrown away, either by the sovereign of by his people, but the fruit was relished and digested. There is a prejudice, very commonly felt, against a writing monarch, especially when he mingles in controversy with subjects; but Henry the Eighth had been a polemical author, Elizabeth was celebrated for her intellectual attainments, and whatever ridicule may attach to the scholar-like pursuits of James, it would doubtless have given occasion to far bitterer sarcasm, if the peaceful and unenterprising Stuart had shrunk from following the career of his predecessors, even in the field of literature. We cannot here enter into the examination of James's merits as a man of letters; but on this, as on many other points, we shall leave his cause in very good hands if we refer to the able pleading of Mr. D'Israeli,~~ a writer who seldom fails to bring new facts, original views, and the candour of a philosophic spirit, to his subjects—and who has few rivals in a delightful department of our literature. James's choice of themes was, in general, unfortunate for his posthumous reputation; the mass of his works would have met with neglect in modern times, whatever had been their quality; but in those which afford to readers of this day the fairest criterion of his abilities, we consider him, at least, entitled to the praise of a sensible and discerning writer, thinking justly, sometimes deeply, expressing his thoughts plainly, and happy in illustration. To compare him with the great wits and philosophers of his own or subsequent times would be extravagant; but many essayists have obtained celebrity without more substantial merit. Two of his works, the Dæmonology and the Counterblast to Tobacco, are a standing jest with numbers who probably never saw them. The Counter blast is a pamphlet drawn up for the people, in great good tem per, with an occasional quiet strain of humour, and an ingenious array of familiar arguments, in a style directly opposed to pedantry, and in language, for the most part, as plainly English as that of Swift himself, a circumstance worthy of remark in this and some other works of the king, considering how much he had been accustomed, during his earlier life, to write in the Scottish dialect, and how many of its peculiarities he is said to have retained in: his conversation. Had the Counterblast been Greenes or Decker's, it would have passed as a very pleasant old tract. The Dæmonology is a compilation of the most prevailing doctrines as to certain supernatural agencies, the summary treatise of a learned man, on a subject which had long occupied the learned. on

While James was yet a stripling, says Mr. Gifford, in an excel Tent passage on this subject, he had been indulged with the crossexamination of the Scottish witches; for the defaults of his education, Introduction to Ford's Plays, vol. i., p. clxxi. EXXXITOK JIJ which

which (thanks to the satellites of the regent and Elizabeth) was at once frivolous and gloomy, had rendered him eagerly inquisitive after supernatural agencies, in which he had been trained from infancy to believe. He appears to have furnished himself with all the magical lumber of the times; and from this, together with his small gleanings on the spot, to have drawn up his Dialogue, on which he apparently prided himself not a little. But James was an honest man; those who made him credulous could not make him cruel and unjust, and many things occurred which disturbed his confidence in his creed before he came to the throne of this kingdom. It may be reasonably doubted whether there was an individual in England who cared less about witches than James I., at the moment of his accession. In the act which made witchcraft felony, he rather followed than led, and was pushed on by some of the wisest and best men of the age, who could scarcely restrain their impatience for the re-enactment of the old severities. Even then the king hesitated, and the bill was recalled and re-cast three several times; yet we are required to believe that witchcraft was scarcely heard of in this country" till the example of the sapient James made the subject popular!"

To credit the tales of witchcraft was an error shared by James with a great majority of his people, both vulgar and refined; but that very inquisitiveness on the subject which has drawn upon him so much ridicule, at length enabled him to emancipate his mind almost, if not entirely, from the popular superstition. He disbelieved, or doubted, on inquiry and reflection; of those who sneer at his weakness, the greater number reject these fables, as the multitude of that day put faith in them, from prepossession, and the influence of general opinion. Because men have more light than their forefathers, they are too apt to imagine that they have better eyes. The anxiety of James to prevent wanton or careless sacrifices under the law which he had passed, was evinced by his caution to the judges on this point, his admonition to the young Prince Henry, on the same head, in a very kind and judicious letter, and his dissatisfaction with Winch and Crew, followed by his own saving interference, in the case of the Leicestershire witches.

It was not this calumniated prince,' says Mr. Gifford, who, in 1645, despatched that monster of stupidity and blood, Hopkins, the witchfinder, and Stern, accompanied by two puritan ministers, and occasionally assisted, as it appears, by Mr. Calamy, "to see that there was no fraud or wrong done!" and the good Mr. Baxter, who took no small satisfaction in the process. "The hanging of a great number of witches," as the latter says, "by the discovery of Hopkins in 16451646, is famously known." And, indeed, so it ought to be, for it was

Where he observes, Ye have often heard me say that most miracles now-a-days prove but illusions.'-Progresses of King James, vol. i., p. 304,

VOL. XLI. NO, LXXXI.

G

famously

famously performed. In Suffolk, and the neighbouring counties, in two years only, Mr. Ady says there were nearly a hundred hanged; Hutchinson computes them at above fourscore; Butler says that, within the first year, threescore were hung in one shire alone; and Zachary Grey affirms that he "had seen a list of those who suffered for witchcraft during the Presbyterian domination of the Long Parliament, amounting to more than three thousand names!" Yet we hear of nothing but the persecution of witches by "the sapient James," and this base and sottish calumny is repeated from pen to pen without fear and without shame.'-Introduction to Ford's Plays.

The king's attention to literature was, at least, free from the censure of costliness and prodigality which has attached to some of his habits. A negligent profusion was, indeed, one of his predominant vices, and it has been suggested (seriously or satirically) that his presents of money must have been calculated in pounds Scots. But, whatever imputation of weakness or improvidence may attach to the king on this head, it must always be remembered that the expenditure of his reign did, in fact, press very lightly on a peaceful and thriving nation; and that the difficulties he experienced in raising money sprang, not from the exhaustion of his subjects, but from the desire of their representatives to make rigid terms with a monarch whose predecessor had left the crown too proud and too poor. The magnificence which James encouraged in his family and favourites, if it be a reproach, was that of the country and the time. With the increase of wealth, a taste for luxury and exhibition had spread through all classes. The dramatists of that age perpetually revel in descriptions of vast riches, splendid show, and prodigal enjoyment. Long before James's accession, the citizens of London had petitioned for a relaxation of the sumptuary laws respecting apparel; and, on the other hand, it had been found necessary to prohibit the apprentices from wearing swords, rings, embroidery, silk, or jewels of gold or silver, and from going to any dancing, fencing, or musical schools. We wonder at the gorgeous attire of Hay and Buckingham; but the dress of a common-place gallant in their time exceeded, in richness and expense, the most elaborate extravagance of our own simpler age. The sober liverymen of London decked themselves, on days of state, with chains of gold, pearl, or diamonds. The wealthy merchant, Sir Paul Pindar, had a diamond valued at thirty thousand pounds, which he lent to the king on great occasions, but refused to sell. It was said by the Prince of Anhalt, in 1610, after seeing the pleasant triumphs upon the water, and within the city, which, at this time, were extraordinary, in honour of the lord mayor and citizens,' that +Ibid. iii. 611. n. 9.

Progresses of K. James, iii. 551,

'there