New Poems by James I/Preface

by Allan Ferguson Westcott

PREFACE

Though a more complete description and history of the MS. now published is given in the note following the Preface, a brief account of the nature of its contents seems at once necessary. The MS. itself has never been drawn upon for editions of King James's works, and so far as the writer is aware no critic or biographer has used it in his studies. None of the prose contents has appeared in print from this or other sources. Of the fifty-seven poems, twenty-six, or a little less than half including most of the Amatoria, the long pieces addressed to Lady Glamis, all the poems referring directly or indirectly to political events in Scotland, and the excellent sonnets on page 39 have never been published in any form; and nine^[1] more are now first discovered to be of royal authorship and properly arranged among the poems with which they belong. These, it will be seen, are among the more attractive and intimately personal of the King's verse, and such as by the nature of their contents were kept out of print during his lifetime. Of the remaining twenty-two, seven are found in The Essayes of a Prentise^[2] and Exercises at vacant houres;^[3] eight first appear in the volume entitled Lusus Regius, edited by R. S. Rait, Constable & Co., 1901; and the rest are in scattered sources not easily accessible. All of these in other words, the entire verse contents of the MS.—are now printed, in the order and the text to which the King gave his final sanction. Thus, if one excepts the poems in the volumes of 1584 and 1591 (available in reprints) and the Paraphrase of the Psalms (still in MS.), the present volume forms with its appendices a complete corpus of the King's poetry.

The Introduction is intended not primarily as a critical study of James's verse, but as an account of his intercourse with poets and influence on the development of poetry. It is the product of research begun some time before the discovery of the MS. poems, and now condensed to make room for their publication. The writer has not felt called upon to attempt a complete or properly proportioned biography, though such a biography is still unwritten,^[4] but has sought chiefly to present, in the light of newly discovered material, such facts of literary significance as have remained unknown or insufficiently recognized. The study is further confined to the King's relations with poetry, with only incidental attention to his prose writings, his political and theological controversies, or the vexed question of court influence on the drama. Matters of political and biographical interest (so far as they have no literary bearing) are for the most part treated in the notes at the end of the book, where an account is given of the King's journey to Denmark, his relations with Lady Glamis, the raids of Bothwell, and other episodes dealt with in the poems.

From a literary standpoint, the King's friendship with the Scottish poet Montgomerie constitutes perhaps the most noteworthy phase of his reign in Scotland, and it may be pointed out that not only the approximate date of the poet's death, but many of the details of his life, are altered by the information now accessible.^[5]The King's early intercourse with the English poet Constable and with the minor writers of his own court also calls for attention; indeed, so confined to the court was such poetical activity as existed in the period that a full account of the King's literary dealings might almost become a history of "school" poetry in Scotland in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Later, during his reign in England, though the King's interests were chiefly in other matters, he was still surrounded by a coterie of somewhat amateurishly poetical friends and companions, mostly Scotchmen like Sir William Alexander, Sir David and John Murray, and Sir Robert Ker. Jonson, Donne, Drayton, and other English poets were friendly with the members of this circle, and there is some tangible evidence that changes in literary taste and fashions which were taking place during the reign were affected by court influence. In this connection an effort has been made to gather together such information as is available with regard to the extension of court patronage to men of letters. Accounts of the royal households and similar documents in the Public Records Office and the British Museum, as well as calendars of state papers and reports of the Historical MSS. Commission, have been searched for records of payments or biographical data of any kind. The results of this search are contained in Chapters V and VI of the Introduction.

In the preparation of the book, the writer has placed himself under many obligations, which it is difficult adequately to acknowledge. Gratitude is due especially to the guardians of the British Museum and the Records Office, for hospitality and courtesy which make his studies in London a pleasant memory; to Sir J. Balfour Paul, of Edinburgh, and Sir James Murray, of Oxford University, for information more exact and complete than a stranger could reasonably expect. The transcript of the epitaph on the tomb of Sir John Maitland was kindly supplied by the Rev. W. Proudfoot, of Haddington, Scotland.

Students who have worked at Columbia University will appreciate the author's debt to members of the English Department. In particular, Professor H. M. Ayres and Professor G. P. Krapp of Columbia have given assistance in linguistic difficulties which have arisen in the preparation of the notes. At all stages in its progress, the book has been under the supervision of Professor W. P. Trent and Professor A. H. Thorndike, and for such merits as it may have their guidance and practical counsel are largely responsible.

1. Cf. p. xiii.
2. The Essayes of a Prentise, in the Divine Art of Poesie. Imprinted at Edinburgh by Thomas Vautroullier. 1584.
3. His Maiesties Poeticaall Exercises at vacant houres. At Edinburgh. Printed by Robert Waldegraue. [1591.] This and the Essayes were reprinted in one volume, with a prefatory memoir, by R. P. Gillies, Edinburgh, 1814. The Essayes were reprinted by Arber, London, 1870, and again published, with the omission of Uranie, Phoenix, and other pieces, in a volume entitled A Royal Rhetorician, edited by R. S. Rait, London, 1900.
4. T. F. Henderson's excellent James VI and I (Gouphil & Co., London, 1904) is prohibitively expensive, and chiefly political in character. The biographies by W. Harris (London, 1753) and by Robert Chambers (Edinburgh, 1830) are both antiquated, and rendered practically worthless by the prejudices of the authors, and their efforts, in Chambers' words, "to make the book as amusing as the nature of the subject might lead the public to expect."
5. Cf . the author's article on Montgomerie's biography, Modern Language Review, January, 1911, which calls attention to his service under James and Lennox, his friendship with Constable, and his death prior to the King's departure for England. This was written before the appearance of Mr. George Stevenson's admirable edition of Montgomerie for the Scottish Text Society, 1910, which supplies new texts for the longer poems, and for the first time places his biography on a firm foundation. Mr. Stevenson's edition was not accessible to the writer before the text and notes of the present volume were in press, and quotations from Montgomerie are therefore from the earlier edition of Dr. Cranstoun (S. T. S., 1887). Chapter II of the Introduction, however, has been altered and corrected in the light of Mr. Stevenson's researches.