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.
- ↑ Cf. p. xiii.
- ↑ The Essayes of a Prentise, in the Divine Art of Poesie. Imprinted at Edinburgh by Thomas Vautroullier. 1584.
- ↑ 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.
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