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fifth, and perhaps the ninth. It should be remembered that James's middle course in politics and religion exposed him to the attack of both extremes, and especially to the abuse of writers such as Wilson, Osborne, and Welden, who, like Prynne, fed the ears of credulous Puritans with the dregs of court scandal. Curiosity hunters in the eighteenth century and later found the accounts of these "caper-witted" writers, as Bishop Hackett calls them, more attractive reading than those of soberer annalists, and even the James of The Fortunes of Nigel, vivid as it is, is an effective caricature and not a truthful portrait. Its influence, however, is not easily counteracted by the soberer judgments of Von Ranke, Gardiner, Pattison, Spedding, Tytler, and the majority of later historians. Most of the King's faults can be traced to love of pleasure and lack of self-control, which were inherited traits ; his lavishness of expense, devotion to favorites, dislike of business, impatience at prolonged mental exertion or even tedious entertainment, all are manifestations of common Stuart failings. Though he had the intelligence and wit of his family, he had no great share of its dignity. His fits of tears, his absurd displays of affection, his coarseness, though this is not in his writings and perhaps did not so much trouble old courtiers of Elizabeth like Sir John Harington,[1] made it hard for him to command the respect even of his friends.
- ↑ Author of The Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596). His Nugæ Antiquæ (ed. Th. Park, 1804) is one of the chief sources for court gossip of the first ten years of James's reign in England. Portions of it, however, should be taken in the light of his earlier performance.
