of imbecilitie of spirit in a king to speak obscurely,
much more untrewely, as if he stood in awe of any in uttering his
thoughts."

Should the prince incline to be an author, the king adds--

"If your engine (genius) spur you to write any workes, either in prose or
verse, I cannot but allow you to practise it; but take no longsome works
in hande, for distracting you from your calling."

He reminds the prince with dignity and truth,

"Your writes (writings) will remain as the true picture of your minde, to
all posterities; if yee would write worthelie, chuse subjects worthie of
you." His critical conception of the nature of poetry is its best
definition. "If ye write in verse, remember that it is not the principal
part of a poem to rime right, and flow well with many prettie wordes; but
the chief commendation of a poem is, that when the verse shall bee taken
sundry in prose, it shall be found so ritch in quick inventions and
poetick floures, and in fair and pertinent comparisons, as it shall retain
the lustre of a poem although in prose."

The king proceeds touching many curious points concerning the prince's
bodily exercises and "house-pastimes." A genuine picture of the customs
and manners of the age: our royal author had the eye of an observer, and
the thoughtfulness of a sage.

The king closes with the hope that the prince's "natural inclination will
have a happie simpathie with these precepts; making the wise man's
schoolmaister, which is the example of others, to be your teacher; and not
that overlate repentance by your own experience, which is the
schoolmaister of fools."

Thus have I opened the book, and I believe, the heart of James I. The
volume remains a perpetual witness to posterity of the intellectual
capacity and the noble disposition of the royal author.

But this monarch has been unfairly reproached both by the political and
religious; as far as these aspersions connect themselves with his
character, they enter into our inquiry.

His speeches and his writings are perpetually quoted by democratic
writers, with the furious zeal of those who are doing the work of a party;
they never separate the character of James from his speculative principles
of government; and, such is the odium they have raised against him, that
this sovereign has received the execration, or the ridicule, even of those
who do not belong to their party. James maintained certain abstract
doctrines of the times, and had writte