, and betrays the weak pang of a
half-conscience.]

[Footnote B: Horace Walpole's character of James I., in his "Royal
Authors," is as remarkable as his character of Sir Philip Sidney; he might
have written both without any acquaintance with the works he has so
maliciously criticised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed
over the "Defence of Poetry;" and in his second edition he makes this
insolent avowal, that "he had forgotten it; a proof that I at least did
not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he
acquired." Every reader of taste knows the falseness of the criticism, and
how heartless the polished cynicism that could dare it. I repeat, what I
have elsewhere said, that Horace Walpole had something in his composition
more predominant than his wit, a cold, unfeeling disposition, which
contemned all literary men, at the moment his heart secretly panted to
partake of their fame.

Nothing can be more imposing than his volatile and caustic criticisms on
the works of James I.; yet it appears to me that he had never opened that
folio volume he so poignantly ridicules. For he doubts whether these two
pieces, "The Prince's Cabala" and "The Duty of a King in his Royal
Office," were genuine productions of James I. The truth is, they are both
nothing more than extracts printed with those separate titles, drawn from
the King's "Basilicon Doron." He had probably neither read the extracts
nor the original. Thus singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and
polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which this noble writer
startled the world by his paradoxes, and at length lived to be mortified
at a reputation which he sported with and lost. I refer the reader to
those extracts from his MS. letters which are in "Calamities of Authors,"
where he has made his literary confessions, and performs his act of
penance.]

* * * * *

THE PEDANTRY OF JAMES THE FIRST.

Few of my readers, I suspect, but have long been persuaded that James I.
was a mere college pedant, and that all his works, whatever they maybe,
are monstrous pedantic labours. Yet this monarch of all things detested
pedantry, either as it shows itself in the mere form of Greek and Latin,
or in ostentatious book-learning, or in the affectation of words of remote
signification: these are the only points of view in which I have been
taught to consider the meaning of the term pedantry, which is very
indef