Of the royal personages of our own country who have distinguished themselves by their love and cultivation of letters, the most eminent, next to Alfred, is JAMES I of Scotland, whose poem, entitled the 'King's Quhair,' composed by him during his imprisonment in Windsor Castle, we have already mentioned.* James was born in 1334, but having been taken prisoner by the king of England in 1405, was detained in that country, mostly in close confinement, till his thirtieth year; after which, having been allowed to return to Scotland, he reigned for thirteen years, and was at last cruelly assassinated in the Carthusian monastery, at Perth, on the 20th of February, 1437, by a faction of his nobles, whom his attempted reforms dissatisfied. Literature had been the principal solace of James's long imprisonment, and he brought with him to the throne the tastes which he had acquired in his exile. He certainly contributed very essentially, even during his short reign, to promote the civilization of his native country. Nothing can exceed the warmth of the admiration with which all the old historians speak of his genius and accomplishments, and of the effect which his example had in diffusing among his people that spirit of literary cultivation, and love for all elegant and intellectual accomplishments by which he was himself distinguished. He was a proficient, we are told, in the Latin language, and some authorities add, even in the Greek, although this last statement must be regarded as apocryphal, all things considered. His mastery over his native tongue was, at all events, his most remarkable endowment. The songs and other metrical pieces which he composed in the Scottish dialect, long continued to be the delight of all classes of his countrymen; and to their influence we are, in all probability, to trace much of

that universal sensibility to poetry, which has ever since distinguished the Scottish peasantry, and which has displayed itself in the creation of a body of traditionary verse, of wonderful extent and richness. Give me, some one has said, the making of a people's ballads, and I care not who has the making of their laws. If the opinion conveyed in this remark be correct, James I perhaps influenced the character of his countrymen quite as much as any of their legislators. Some authorities also claim for this prince the honour of being the father of the music, as well as of the poetry, of his country. He is recorded by our old chroniclers to have been eminently skilled both in vocal and instrumental music, and to have performed on no less than eight different instruments, of which the one on which he most excelled is stated to have been the harp. But it is certain that from the time of James we may date the birth at least of the literature of Scotland; to which, indeed, he seems to have also given not a little of the peculiar character that long distinguished it. His own writings, as has been stated, were poetical compositions, in the style that had been so recently introduced by Chaucer, whom, in his Quhair, he expressly mentions as his master. Those of them that have come down to us, evince powers both of pathos and of humour of the very highest order, and such as no other Scottish poet, with the exception of Burns, can be considered as having equalled. Before his day, Fordun had written his prose chronicle of Scottish kings, and Barbour his metrical work entitled The Bruce; but these, notwithstanding some passages of vivid description in the latter, which certainly give its author considerable pre-eminence among the class to which he belongs, were merely such works as have been produced among every people having the use of letters, as soon as they have acquired for themselves

what may be called a history; and indicate not so much that a national literature has taken root among them, as simply that they have reached a certain antiquity, and have a past national existence to look back upon. That which alone we can properly call the authorship of Scotland commences with the works of king James, and is continued by those of Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay; who may all in some sort be considered as his imitators, or at least as having, like himself, taken their inspiration from that new-born poetry of England with which he, there can be little doubt, was the first to make his countrymen acquainted.

Few kings, therefore, in spite of the failure of many of his projected political reforms, have done more for their subjects than James did for his. He regenerated them by means more powerful than any merely political contrivances, when he exhibited before them for the first time the graces and attractions of intellectual cultivation, and gradually seduced them by the charm of his example to the love of the arts and elegances of civilized life. Laws and institutions are, after all, in themselves but the dead skeleton of society, and can only derive their life and efficiency from the spirit breathed into them by the character and moral condition of the people. They are the body; this is the animating soul. In giving, therefore, to his countrymen the first impulses of literary refinement, he gave them something better even than good laws, because it was that which, while it would eventually enable them to secure good laws for themselves, at the same time could alone fit them for their enjoyment. His life, not less than his death, was a sacrifice to his zeal for their improvement; for, with taste and habits that tended to separate him so completely from his subjects, his residence, even as a king, in Scotland, must have been

felt by him as far more truly exile than even his previous imprisonment. Yet we have no reason to think that, although his days were spent first in durance abroad, and then in worse than durance at home, he ever indulged in any weak or undutiful murmuring at his fate. On the contrary, we gather from all that is related of him, that, during the short period of his life when he was permitted to mix with the world, he showed himself of a cheerful and even joyous spirit, and found the means of making himself happy even in the midst of the hardest fortune that was dealt out to him. With his intellectual endowments and his love of letters, he had sources of happiness which few in his station have ever enjoyed, and these were blessings which the vicissitudes of outward fortune had but little power to affect.

We might add several names to the list of learned kings, even from the monarchs of our own country. HENRY I, in the early part of the twelfth century, obtained the surname of Beauclerc, or the Learned, from his proficiency in the literature of the times. During the sixteenth century, classical and theological erudition was so much in fashion, that persons of the very highest rank, and of both sexes, very generally received what is called a learned education. It is related of the emperor Charles V, that having been_upon one occasion addressed by an ambassador in a Latin oration, he was so much affected at finding himself unable perfectly to follow the speaker, that he publicly reproached himself for his inattention, when a boy, to the instructions of his tutor, who, he remarked, had often warned him, that a day would come when he would regret his negligence. So universally in those days was this sort of learning expected in crowned heads. Accordingly we find al

*The same who afterwards became Pope, under the title of Adrian VI. - See vol. i, p. 269.

most all our sovereigns of that age proficients in the ancient languages, and adepts in polemical divinity. Henry VIII disputed, through the press, with Luther, in Latin. His son, Edward VI, had he lived, would probably have given proofs of still greater accomplishments in the same department of scholarship. One of his tutors was Sir John Cheke, of whom Milton speaks, in a well-known sonnet, as having taught Cambridge, and King Edward, Greek;" and it is a curious illustration of the times, that this learned individual was soon after selected to fill the office of Secretary of State. Queen ELIZABETH, We need hardly remark, is famous as a learned princess. She also, like her royal predecessor, King Alfred, completed an English translation of Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy a work which, in addition to having been thus rendered into the vernacular tongue by two of the greatest of our monarchs, had the honour of receiving the same service from Chaucer, the father of our poetry.* Elizabeth's successor, JAMES, had more learning than good sense, and was a pedant rather than a scholar; but, with less learning, he certainly would not have been a wiser king. He is the instance, however, that has perhaps contributed more than any other to confirm the common prejudice, that a taste for letters is, after all, no very desirable quality in the possessor of a throne. If it be meant that literary kings have generally been bad kings, the notion is certainly not borne out by the facts of history. It may be asserted with much greater truth that, in all of those who, notwithstanding their scholarship, have shown themselves unworthy of their high station, that scholarship has yet been a

*The original copy of Queen Elizabeth's translation of Boethius, partly in her majesty's hand-writing, and partly in that of her secretary, was discovered, about five years since,