Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 38

All were hurrying on in a stream of venality, dissipation, and want; and the nation, amid the prosperity of the kingdom in a long reign of peace, was nourishing in its breast the secret seeds of discontent and turbulence.

From the days of Elizabeth to those of the Charleses, Cabinet transmitted to Cabinet the caution to preserve the kingdom from the evils of an overgrown metropolis. A political hypochondriacism: they imagined the head was becoming too large for the body, drawing to itself all the moisture of life from the middle and the extremities. A statute against the erection of new buildings was pa.s.sed by Elizabeth; and from James to his successors proclamations were continually issued to forbid any growth of the city. This singular prohibition may have originated in their dread of infection from the plague, but it certainly became the policy of a weak and timid government, who dreaded, in the enlargement of the metropolis, the consequent concourse of those they designated as "masterless men,"--sedition was as contagious as the plague among the many. But proclamations were not listened to nor read; houses were continually built, for they were in demand,--and the esquires, with their wives and daughters, hastened to gay or busy London, for a knighthood, a marriage, or a monopoly. The government at length were driven to the desperate "Order in Council" to pull down all new houses within ten miles of the metropolis--and further, to direct the Attorney-General to indict all those sojourners in town who had country houses, and mulct them in ruinous fines. The rural gentry were "to abide in their own counties, and by their housekeeping in those parts were to guide and relieve the meaner people _according to the ancient usage of the English nation_." The Attorney-General, like all great lawyers, looking through the spectacles of his books, was short-sighted to reach to the new causes and the new effects which were pa.s.sing around. The wisest laws are but foolish when Time, though not the lawyers, has annulled them. The popular sympathy was, however, with the Attorney-General, for it was imagined that the country was utterly ruined and depopulated by the town.

And so in the view it appeared, and so all the satirists chorused! for in the country the ancient hospitality was not kept up; the crowd of retainers had vanished, the rusty chimneys of the mansion-house hardly smoked through a Christmas week, while in London all was exorbitantly prosperous; ma.s.ses of treasure were melted down into every object of magnificence. "And is not this wealth drawn from our acres?" was the outcry of the rural censor. Yet it was clear that the country in no way was impoverished, for the land rose in price; and if manors sometimes changed their lords, they suffered no depreciation. A sudden wealth was diffused in the nation; the arts of commerce were first advancing; the first great ship launched for an Indian voyage, was then named the "Trade's Increase." The town, with its multiplied demands, opened a perpetual market for the country. The money-traders were breeding their h.o.a.rds as the graziers their flocks; and while the goldsmiths' shops blazed in Cheap, the agriculturists beheld double harvests cover the soil.

The innumerable books on agriculture published during these twenty years of peace is an evidence of the improvement of the country--sustained by the growing capitals of the men in trade. In this progress of domestic conveniency to metropolitan luxury, there was a transition of manners; new objects and new interests, and new modes of life, yet in their incipient state.

The evils of these luxuriant times were of quick growth; and, as fast as they sprung, the Father of his people encountered them by his proclamations, which, during long intervals of parliamentary recess, were to be enforced as laws: but they pa.s.sed away as morning dreams over a happy, but a thoughtless and wanton people.

JAMES THE FIRST DISCOVERS THE DISORDERS AND DISCONTENTS OF A PEACE OF MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS.

The king was himself amazed at the disorders and discontents he at length discovered; and, in one of his later speeches, has expressed a mournful disappointment:

"And now, I confess, that when I looked before upon the face of the government, _I thought, as every man would have done_, that the people were never so happy as in my time; but even, as at divers times I have looked upon many of my coppices, riding about them, and they appeared, on the outside, very thick and well-grown unto me, but, when I turned into the midst of them, I found them all bitten within, and full of plains and bare spots; like the apple or pear, fair and smooth without, but when you cleave it asunder, you find it rotten at heart. Even so this kingdom, the _external_ government being as good as ever it was, and I am sure as learned judges as ever it had, and I hope as honest administering justice within it; and for peace, both at home and abroad, more settled, and longer lasting, than ever any before; together with as great plenty as ever: so as it may be thought, every man might sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree," &c. &c.[A]

But while we see this king of peace surrounded by national grievances, and that "this fair coppice was very thick and well-grown," yet loud in murmurs, to what cause are we to attribute them? Shall we exclaim with Catharine Macaulay against "the despotism of James," and "the intoxication of his power?"--a monarch who did not even enforce the proclamations or edicts his wisdom dictated;[B] and, as Hume has observed, while vaunting his prerogative, had not a single regiment of guards to maintain it. Must we agree with Hume, and reproach the king with his indolence and lore of amus.e.m.e.nt--"particularly of hunting?"[C]

[Footnote A: Rushworth, vol. i. p. 29; sub anno 1621.]

[Footnote B: James I. said, "I will never offer to bring a new custom upon my people without the people's consent; like a good physician, tell them what is amiss, if they will not concur to amend it, yet I have discharged my part." Among the difficulties of this king was that of being a foreigner, and amidst the contending factions of that day the "British Solomon" seems to have been unjustly reproached for his Scottish partialities.]

[Footnote C: La Boderie, the French Amba.s.sador, complains of the king's frequent absences; but James did not wish too close an intercourse with one who was making a French party about Prince Henry, and whose sole object was to provoke a Spanish war: the king foiled the French intriguer; but has incurred his contempt for being "timid and irresolute." James's cautious neutrality was no merit in the Frenchman's eye.

La Boderie resided at our court from 1606 to 1611, and his "Amba.s.sades,"

in 5 vols., are interesting in English history. The most satirical accounts of the domestic life of James, especially in his unguarded hours of boisterous merriment, are found in the correspondence of the French amba.s.sadors. They studied to flavour their dish, made of spy and gossip, to the taste of their master. Henry IV. never forgave James for his adherence to Spain and peace, instead of France and warlike designs.]

THE KING'S PRIVATE LIFE IN HIS OCCASIONAL RETIREMENTS.

The king's occasional retirements to Royston and Newmarket have even been surmised to have borne some a.n.a.logy to the horrid Capraea of Tiberius; but a witness has accidentally detailed the king's uniform life in these occasional seclusions. James I. withdrew at times from public life, but not from public affairs; and hunting, to which he then gave alternate days, was the cheap amus.e.m.e.nt and requisite exercise of his sedentary habits: but the chase only occupied a few hours. A part of the day was spent by the king in his private studies; another at his dinners, where he had a reader, and was perpetually sending to Cambridge for books of reference: state affairs were transacted at night; for it was observed, at the time, that his secretaries sat up later at night, in those occasional retirements, than when they were at London.[A] I have noticed, that the state papers were composed by himself; that he wrote letters on important occasions without consulting any one; and that he derived little aid from his secretaries. James was probably never indolent; but the uniform life and sedentary habits of literary men usually incur this reproach from those real idlers who bustle in a life of nothingness. While no one loved more the still-life of peace than this studious monarch, whose habits formed an agreeable combination of the contemplative and the active life, study and business--no king more zealously tried to keep down the growing abuses of his government, by personally concerning himself in the protection of the subject.[B]

[Footnote A: Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, Part I. p. 27.]

[Footnote B: As evidences of this zeal for reform, I throw into this note some extracts from the MS. letters of contemporaries.--Of the king's interference between the judges of two courts about prohibitions, Sir Dudley Carleton gives this account:--"The king played the best part in collecting arguments on both sides, and concluded that he saw much endeavour to draw water to their several mills; and advised them to take moderate courses, whereby the good of the subject might be more respected than their particular jurisdictions. The king sat also at the Admiralty, to look himself into certain disorders of government there; he told the lawyers 'he would leave hunting of hares, and hunt them in their quirks and subtilities, with which the subject had been too long abused.'"--MS.

Letter of Sir Dudley Carleton.

In "Winwood's Memorials of State" there is a letter from Lord Northampton, who was present at one of these strict examinations of the king; and his language is warm with admiration: the letter being a private one, can hardly be suspected of court flattery. "His Majesty hath in person, with the greatest dexterity of wit and strength of argument that mine ears ever heard, compounded between the parties of the civil and ecclesiastical courts, who begin to comply, by the king's sweet temper, on points that were held to be incompatible."--Winwood's Mem. iii. p. 54.

In his progresses through the country, if any complained of having received injury from any of the court, the king punished, or had satisfaction made to the wronged, immediately.]

DISCREPANCIES OF OPINION AMONG THE DECRIERS OF JAMES THE FIRST.

Let us detect, among the modern decriers of the character of James I., those contradictory opinions, which start out in the same page; for the conviction of truth flashed on the eyes of those who systematically vilified him, and must often have pained them; while it embarra.s.sed and confused those, who, being of no party, yet had adopted the popular notions. Even Hume is at variance with himself; for he censures James for his indolence, "which prevented him making any progress in the practice of foreign politics, and diminished that regard which all the neighbouring nations had paid to England during the reign of his predecessor," p. 29.

Yet this philosopher observes afterwards, on the military character of Prince Henry, at p. 63, that "had he lived, he had probably promoted _the glory; perhaps not the felicity, of his people_. The unhappy prepossession of men in favour of ambition, &c., engages them into such pursuits _as destroy their own peace, and that of the rest of mankind_." This is true philosophy, however politicians may comment, and however the military may command the state. Had Hume, with all the sweetness of his temper, been a philosopher on the throne, himself had probably incurred the censure he pa.s.sed on James I. Another important contradiction in Hume deserves detection. The king, it seems, "boasted of his management of Ireland as his masterpiece." According to the accounts of Sir John Davies, whose political works are still read, and whom Hume quotes, James I. "in the s.p.a.ce of nine years made greater advances towards the reformation of that kingdom than had been effected in more than four centuries;" on this Hume adds that the king's "_vanity_ in this particular was not without foundation." Thus in describing that wisest act of a sovereign, the art of humanising his ruder subjects by colonisation, so unfortunate is James, that even his most skilful apologist, influenced by popular prepossessions, employs a degrading epithet--and yet he, who had indulged a sarcasm on the _vanity_ of James, in closing his general view of his wise administration in Ireland, is carried away by his n.o.bler feelings.

--"Such were the arts," exclaims the historian, "by which James introduced humanity and justice among a people who had ever been buried in the most profound barbarism. n.o.ble cares! much superior to the vain and criminal glory of conquests." Let us add, that had the genius of James the First been warlike, had he commanded a battle to be fought and a victory to be celebrated, popular historians, the panders of ambition, had adorned their pages with b.l.o.o.d.y trophies; but the peace the monarch cultivated; the wisdom which dictated the plan of civilisation; and the persevering arts which put it into practice--these are the still virtues which give no motion to the _spectacle_ of the historian, and are even forgotten in his pages.

What were the painful feelings of Catharine Macaulay, in summing up the character of James the First. The king has even extorted from her a confession, that "his conduct in Scotland was unexceptionable," but "despicable in his Britannic government." To account for this seeming change in a man who, from his first to his last day, was always the same, required a more sober historian. She tells us also, he affected "a sententious wit;" but she adds, that it consisted "only of quaint and stale conceits." We need not take the word of Mrs. Macaulay, since we have so much of this "sententious wit" recorded, of which probably she knew little. Forced to confess that James's education had been "a more learned one than is usually bestowed on princes," we find how useless it is to educate princes at all; for this "more learned education" made this prince "more than commonly deficient in all the points he pretended to have any knowledge of." This incredible result gives no encouragement for a prince; having a Buchanan for his tutor. Smollett, having compiled the popular accusations of the "vanity, the prejudices, the littleness of soul," of this abused monarch, surprises one in the same page by discovering enough good qualities to make something more than a tolerable king. "His reign, though ign.o.ble to himself, was happy to his people, who were enriched by commerce, felt no severe impositions, while they made considerable progress in their liberties." So that, on the whole, the nation appears not to have had all the reason they have so fully exercised in deriding and vilifying a sovereign, who had made them prosperous at the price of making himself contemptible! I shall notice another writer, of an amiable character, as an evidence of the influence of popular prejudice, and the effect of truth.

When James went to Denmark to fetch his queen, he pa.s.sed part of his time among the learned; but such was his habitual attention in studying the duties of the sovereign, that he closely attended the Danish courts of justice; and Daines Barrington, in his curious "Observations on the Statutes," mentions, that the king borrowed from the Danish code three statutes for the punishment of criminals. But so provocative of sarcasm is the ill-used name of this monarch, that our author could not but shrewdly observe, that James "spent more time in those courts than in attending upon his destined consort." Yet this is not true: the king was jovial there, and was as indulgent a husband as he was a father. Osborne even censures James for once giving marks of his uxoriousness![A] But while Daines Barrington degrades, by unmerited ridicule, the honourable employment of the "British Solomon," he becomes himself perplexed at the truth that flashes on his eyes. He expresses the most perfect admiration of James the First, whose statutes he declares "deserve much to be enforced; nor do I find any one which hath the least tendency to extend the prerogative, or abridge the liberties and rights of his subjects." He who came to scoff remained to pray. Thus a lawyer, in examining the laws of James the First, concludes by approaching nearer to the truth: the step was a bold one! He says, "_It is at present a sort of fashion_ to suppose that this king, because he was a pedant, had no real understanding, or merit." Had Daines Barrington been asked for proofs of the pedantry of James the First, he had been still more perplexed; but what can be more convincing than a lawyer, on a review of the character of James the First, being struck, as he tells us, by "his desire of being instructed in the English law, and holding frequent conferences for this purpose with the most eminent lawyers,--as Sir Edward c.o.ke, and others!" Such was the monarch whose character was perpetually reproached for indolent habits, and for exercising arbitrary power! Even Mr. Brodie, the vehement adversary of the Stuarts, quotes and admires James's prescient decision on the character of Laud in that remarkable conversation with Buckingham and Prince Charles recorded by Hacket.[B]

[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 334.]

[Footnote B: Brodie's "History of British Empire," vol. ii. p. 244, 411.]

But let us leave these moderns perpetuating traditional prejudices, and often to the fiftieth echo, still sounding with no voice of its own, to learn what the unprejudiced contemporaries of James I. thought of the cause of the disorders of their age. They were alike struck by the wisdom and the zeal of the monarch, and the prevalent discontents of this long reign of peace. At first, says the continuator of Stowe, all ranks but those "who were settled in piracy," as he designates the cormorants of war, and curiously enumerates their cla.s.ses, "were right joyful of the peace; but, in a few years afterwards, all the benefits were generally forgotten, and the happiness of the general peace of the most part contemned." The honest annalist accounts for this unexpected result by the natural reflection--"Such is the world's corruption, and man's vile ingrat.i.tude."[A] My philosophy enables me to advance but little beyond. A learned contemporary, Sir Symond D'Ewes, in his ma.n.u.script diary, notices the death of the monarch, whom he calls "our learned and peaceable sovereign."--"It did not a little amaze me to see all men generally slight and disregard the loss of so mild and gentle a prince, which made me even to feel, that the ensuing times might yet render his loss more sensible, and his memory more dear unto posterity." Sir Symond censures the king for not engaging in the German war to support the Palsgrave, and maintain "the true church of G.o.d;" but deeper politicians have applauded the king for avoiding a war, in which he could not essentially have served the interests of the rash prince who had a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of King of Bohemia.[B] "Yet," adds Sir Symond, "if we consider his virtues and his learning, his augmenting the liberties of the English, rather than his oppressing them by any unlimited or illegal taxes and corrosions, his death deserved more sorrow and condolement from his subjects than it found."[C]

[Footnote A: Stowe's Annals, p. 845.]

[Footnote B: See Sir Edward Walker's "Hist. Discourses," p. 321; and Barrington's "Observ. on the Statutes," who says, "For this he deserves the highest praise and commendation from a nation of islanders."]

[Footnote C: Harl. MSS. 646.]

Another contemporary author, Wilson, has not ill-traced the generations of this continued peace--"peace begot plenty, plenty begot ease and wantonness, and ease and wantonness begot poetry, and poetry swelled out into that bulk in this king's time which begot monstrous satyrs." Such were the laseivious times, which dissolving the ranks of society in a general corruption, created on one part the imaginary and unlimited wants of prosperity; and on the other produced the riotous children of indolence, and the turbulent adventurers of want. The rank luxuriance of this reign was a steaming hot-bed of peace, which proved to be the seed-plot of that revolution which was reserved for the unfortunate son.

In the subsequent reign a poet seems to have taken a retrospective view of the age of peace of James I. contemplating on its results in his own disastrous times--

--States that never know A change but in their growth, which a long peace Hath brought unto perfection, are like steel, Which being neglected will consume itself With its own rust; so doth Security Eat through the hearts of states, while they are sleeping And lulled into false quiet.

NABB'S _Hannibal and Scipio_.

SUMMARY OF HIS CHARACTER.

Thus the continued peace of James I. had calamities of its own! Are we to attribute them to the king? It has been usual with us, in the solemn expiations of our history, to convert the sovereign into the scape-goat for the people; the historian, like the priest of the Hebrews, laying his hands on Azazel,[A] the curses of the mult.i.tude are heaped on that devoted head. And thus the historian conveniently solves all ambiguous events.

[Footnote A: The Hebrew name, which Calmet translates _Bouc Emissaire_, and we _Scape Goat_, or rather _Escape Goat_.]

The character of James I. is a moral phenomenon, a singularity of a complex nature. We see that we cannot trust to those modern writers who have pa.s.sed their censures upon him, however just may be those very censures; for when we look narrowly into their representations, as surely we find, perhaps without an exception, that an invective never closes without some unexpected mitigating circ.u.mstance, or qualifying abatement.

At the moment of inflicting the censure, some recollection in opposition to what is a.s.serted pa.s.ses in the mind, and to approximate to Truth, they offer a discrepancy, a self-contradiction. James must always be condemned on a system, while his apology is only allowed the benefit of a parenthesis.

How it has happened that our luckless crowned philosopher has been the common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite obvious when so many causes were operating against him. The shifting positions into which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will unriddle the enigma of his life. Contrarieties cease to be contradictions when operated on by external causes.

James was two persons in one, frequently opposed to each other. He was an ant.i.thesis in human nature--or even a solecism. We possess ample evidence of his shrewdness and of his simplicity; we find the lofty regal style mingled with his familiar bonhommie. Warm, hasty, and volatile, yet with the most patient zeal to disentangle involved deception; such gravity in sense, such levity in humour; such wariness and such indiscretion; such mystery and such openness--all these must have often thrown his Majesty into some awkward dilemmas. He was a man of abstract speculation in the theory of human affairs; too witty or too aphoristic, he never seemed at a loss to decide, but too careless, perhaps too infirm, ever to come to a decision, he leaned on others. He shrunk from the council-table; he had that distaste for the routine of business which studious sedentary men are too apt to indulge; and imagined that his health, which he said was the health of the kingdom, depended on the alternate days which he devoted to the chase; Royston and Theobalds were more delectable than a deputation from the Commons, or the Court at Whitehall.

It has not always been arbitrary power which has forced the people into the dread circle of their fate, seditions, rebellions, and civil wars; nor always oppressive taxation which has given rise to public grievances. Such were not the crimes of James the First. Amid the full blessings of peace, we find how the people are p.r.o.ne to corrupt themselves, and how a philosopher on the throne, the father of his people, may live without exciting grat.i.tude, and die without inspiring regret--unregarded, unremembered!

THE END.