realizing, in the most disadvantageous, nearly all that could be expected or desired in the most favourable. The difficulties with which he had to contend, in truth, formed the very soil out of which no small portion of his greatness grew. Among kings he is not only the Great, but the very greatest. If we look merely to his zeal and services in behalf of literature, it is impossible to name any royal personage that can be compared with him, either in classic antiquity or in modern times. A genuine love for letters, and a proficiency in them, in the possessor of a throne, is worthy of our admiration, in whatever age or country the phenomenon may be recorded to have been witnessed; because it must always be considered as a striking example of a triumph over seductions that are generally, of all others, found the most difficult to resist, and have, accordingly, been of all others the most seldom resisted. But of the other learned kings of whom we read in history, some were literary in a literary age; others, naturally unfitted for the more active duties of their station, took to philosophy, or pedantry, as a refuge from insignificance; some had caught the love and the habit of study before they had mounted a throne, or had dreamed of mounting one; above all, most, if not all of them, had been carefully educated and trained to letters in their youth. But it is told only of Alfred, that, without an example to look to, without even the advantages of the very scantiest education, in an unlearned age, and a still more unlearned country, he, who had been only a soldier from his youth upwards, withdrew himself of his own accord from the rude and merely sensual enjoyments of all his predecessors and all his contemporaries, to devote himself to intellectual pursuits, and to seek to intertwine with the martial laurels that already bound his brow, the more honourable wreath of literary distinction.

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 1394, 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 *See vol. i. p. 283.

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 tastes 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 shewed 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 Idealt 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.