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training in dialectic, his wide reading in theology and the theory of government as revealed in history, and his special fondness for the magic, witchcraft, and pseudo-physiology of Pliny, Plutarch, and such contemporary writers as Hemmingsen and the physician Cardanus.[1]
The library gathered together for these pursuits was probably larger and more varied than any other in Scotland at the time.[2] Many of Queen Mary's books were included, about a hundred and fifty of which had been left in Edinburgh Castle and the remainder in part handed over to James. This collection was rich in medieval romances and in the works of contemporary French poets. The King's own library contained over four hundred volumes, which, with other recorded acquisitions not mentioned by Young, bring the total to about six hundred books accessible to the King in 1578. Buchanan and Young were guided in their purchases by their own scholarly tastes and a solicitude for the edification rather than the entertainment of their pupil. More than half of the books in Young's list are, as one might expect, in Latin, perhaps one hundred and fifty in French, a few in Greek, Italian, and Spanish, and scarcely two score in English. The latter include Ascham's Toxophilus and The Schoolmaster, Elyot's Governour and The Institution of a Gentleman, Hoby's translation of Il Cortegiano, and almost nothing else of literary interest — though Gibson's list ends pleasantly with Lustie Juventus. In contrast with the absence of English verse, James had in French, either in his own collection or his mother's, the poems of Rcnsard nearly complete, Du Bellay's sEneid and L'Olive augmentêe, and volumes of Marot, Magny/Thyard,
- ↑ Cf. notes, especially to poems XVII, XVIII, LIV, and LVI.
- ↑ Lists of the books left by Mary at Holyrood and Edinburgh Castle were published by the Bannatyne Club in the Inventaires de la Royne Descosse, 1863, and carefully annotated in Julian Sharman's monograph, The Library of Mary Queen of Scots, London, 1889. The Edinburgh Castle list, together with Gibson's bill and an earlier bill for thirty-one books purchased for James, had previously been printed in the Maitland Club Miscellany cited above. The King's books are given in G. F. Warner's Library of James VI, 1573-1583, Scot. Hist. Soc., 1893, from a MS. in the hand of Peter Young, with introduction and notes, to which the reader is referred for more detailed study.
