provided me with a secretary who can
neither write nor read, and a groom of my bedchamber who cannot truss my
points,"--this latter person having but one hand! It is evident, since
Lord Conway, the most inefficient secretary ever king had--and I have
myself seen his scrawls--remained many years in office, that James I.
required no secretary, and transacted his affairs with his own mind and
hand. These habits of business and of study prove that James indulged much
less those of indolence, for which he is so gratuitously accused.

* * * * *

HIS WIT.

Amid all the ridicule and contempt in which the intellectual capacity of
James I. is involved, this college-pedant, who is imagined to have given
in to every species of false wit, and never to have reached beyond
quibbles, puns, conceits, and quolibets,--was in truth a great wit; quick
in retort, and happy in illustration; and often delivering opinions with a
sententious force. More wit and wisdom from his lips have descended to us
than from any other of our sovereigns. One of the malicious writers of his
secret history, Sir Anthony Weldon, not only informs us that he was witty,
but describes the manner: "He was very witty, and had as many witty jests
as any man living: at which he would not smile himself, but deliver them
in a grave and serious manner." Thus the king was not only witty, but a
dextrous wit: nor is he one of those who are recorded as having only said
one good thing in their lives; for his vein was not apt to dry.

His conversations, like those of most literary men, he loved to prolong at
table. We find them described by one who had partaken of them:

"The reading of some books before him was very frequent, while he was at
his repast; and otherwise he collected knowledge by variety of questions,
which he carved out to the capacity of different persons. Methought his
hunting humour was not off, while the learned stood about him at his
board; he was ever in chase after some disputable doubts, which he would
wind and turn about with the most stabbing objections that ever I heard;
and was as pleasant and fellow-like, in all these discourses, as with his
huntsman in the field. Those who were ripe and weighty in their answers
were ever designed for some place of credit or profit."[A]

[Footnote A: Hacket's curious "Life of the Lord-keeper Williams," p. 38,
Part 11.]

* * * * *

SPECIMENS OF HIS