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of final principles impossible, it is nevertheless quite likely that the King retained in later years his early precisian views. He had at least this trait of the pedant that he was fond of formulating principles and sticking to them regardless of facts or consequences, as may easily be seen by noting the conformity of many of the doctrines in the Basilikon Doron to the actual conduct of his government. Furthermore, Scottish versemen, from the northern Chaucerians to Drummond and even later, were more conscientious and often more successful metricians than their English contemporaries, and Montgomerie, the King's mentor, was especially adept. In the case of James, one may see the trend of his taste not only by his practice, but by his Sonnet on Sir William Alexander's Harshe Verses after the Ingliche Fasone (XLVI) and by his liking for Forth Feasting, the most correct of Drummond's polished verse. Whatever his direct influence, the King's tastes were on the side of formal accuracy.[1]
In turning to the King's actual accomplishment in verse, the early date of most of it should be borne in mind, and the fact that it was written when the influence of the old native poetry was nearly dead in Scotland, and when the new lyric impulse from abroad was just beginning to make itself felt. James corresponds in Scotland to the Elizabethan tentatives of the sixties, seventies, and eighties; and his amatory lyrics are not on a much lower level than the "fragrant flowers," "pleasant delites," and "daynty devises" which represent the average of the miscellanies from Tottel's to the Phœnix Nest of 1583. It is a mistake to think
- ↑ A less elementary discussion of style in verse and prose occurs in the Basilikon Doron, where it has attracted less attention, though parts of it are quoted in Mr. Rail's introduction to the volume entitled A Royal Rhetorician, London, 1900. The chief points in James's remarks are that prose should be plain and short, but stately ; that one's work should be passed to others for criticism; that a poem should be "so rich in quicke inventions, and poeticke flowers, and in faire and pertinent comparisons, as it shall retaine the lustre of a poem, although in prose"; and that "since there is nothing left to be saide in Greeke and Latine alreadie, and ynew of poore schollers would match you in these languages, . . . it best becometh a King to purify and make famous his own tongue, wherein he may go before all his subjects."
