swearing he neither loved them, nor their fashions: another time, bringing him roses on his shoes, he asked, if they would make him a ruff-footed dove? one yard of sixpenny ribband served that turn: His diet and journies were so constant, that the best observing courtier of our time was wont to say, were he asleep seven years, and then awakened, he would tell every day where the king had been, and every dish he had had at his table. He was unfortunate in the marriage of his daughter, and so was all Christendom besides; but sure the daughter was more unfortunate in a father, than he in a daughter. He was very liberal of what he had not in his own gripe, and would rather part with one hundred pounds he never had in his keeping, than one twenty shillings piece within his own custody; and, had rather spend one hundred thousand pounds on embassies to keep or procure peace with dishonour, than ten thousand pounds on an army that would have forced peace with honour. He would make a great deal too bold with God in his passion, both in cursing and swearing, and one strain higher, verging on blasphemy. He was crafty

and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing any great man,* the change of a favourite, &c.; insomuch, as a very wise man was wont to say, he believed him the wisest

* Of this deep dissimulation we have innumerable proofs; but none, perhaps, more striking, than his behaviour to his former favourite, Somerset, when he had determined to relieve himself from such an incumbrance.

"The Earl of Somerset never parted from him with more seeming affection than at this time, when he knew Somerset would never seen him more; and, had you seen that seeming affection, (as the author himself did,) you would rather have believed he was in his rising than setting. The earl, when he kissed his hand, the king hung about his neck, slabbering his cheeks, saying, 'For God's sake, when shall I see you again? On my soul, I shall neither eat nor sleep till you come again.' The earl told him on Monday (this being on the Friday). For God's sake, let me,'said the king, 'shall I, shall I?' then lolled about his neck: "Then, for God's sake, give thy lady this kiss for me.' In the same manner, at the stairs' head, at the middle of the stairs, and at the stairs' foot. The earl was not in his coach, when the king used these very words following (in the hearing of four servants, of whom one was Somerset's great creature, and of the Bedford chamber, who reported it instantly to the author of this History): 'I shall never see his face more.'"-Osborne, p. 410.

fool in christendom; meaning him wise in small things, but a fool in weighty affairs. He had a trick to cousen himself in bargains underhand, by taking one thousand pounds, or ten thousand pounds, as a bribe, when his council was treating with his customers to raise them to so much more yearly. He was infinitely inclined to peace, but more out of fear than conscience; yet sometimes would he shew petty flashes of valour, which might easily be discerned to be forced, not natural: and, being forced, could have wished it rather to have recoiled back into himself, than carried to that king it had concerned, lest he might have been put to the trial to maintain his seeming valour."*

However unfavourable Welldon's portrait of King James may be, we must admit that other writers have painted it in still darker colours; so as fully to justify the caustic remarks of Bolingbroke and the Abbè Raynal. "He had no virtues to set off, (says his Lordship,) but he had vices to conceal. He could

* Secret Hist. of the Court of James I., v. ii. p. 1, et infra.

not conceal the latter; and, void of the former, he could not compensate for them. His failings and his vices, therefore, stand in full view: he passed for a weak prince, and an ill man; and fell into all the contempt wherein his memory remains to this day."* To which the Abbè adds, with great perspicuity and keenness," He wanted to appear pacific, and he was only indolent; wise, and he was only irresolute; just, and he was only timid; moderate, and he was only soft; good, and he was only weak; a divine, and he was only a fanatic; a philosopher, and he was only extravagant; a doctor, and he was only a pedant. No one ever carried the pretensions of the crown further than James; and few princes have contributed so much to vilify it. He found it easier to suffer injuries than revenge them; to dispense with the public esteem, than to merit it; and to sacrifice the rights of his crown than to trouble his repose by maintaining them. He lived on the throne, like a private man in his family he retained of the royalty only the gift of healing the evil. One would have

* Letters on Patriotism, p. 214.

said, he was only a passenger in the vessel of which he might have been the pilot. This inaction made his days pass in obscurity, and prepared a tragical reign for his successor."*

Buchanan had been his tutor, and (base as he was in other respects) had, doubtless, taken all due pains to infuse into him a portion of that erudition, which he so largely possessed himself: but the mind of James was too weak to concoct and digest it; and his learning, passing through such a laboratory, became a crude and heterogeneous mass, inapplicable to any great, or useful, or respectable purpose. Such as it was, however, he stood entirely indebted for it to his preceptor; and common gratitude should have inspired him with sentiments of respect and esteem, if not of affection, for the pains which this cultivator of his early powers had bestowed on so untoward a soil. But James was insensible to the feeling of gratitude. He hated the man and his memory; and spoke and wrote of him, and his works, in terms of the most sovereign contempt.t

*

Monthly Review, 1751, p. 448.

King James's Works, p. 480, 176, fol. edit. 1616.