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of James as a Jacobean and not as a belated Elizabethan, or to judge his work by more severe standards than those applied to the lyrics of Gascoigne and Googe or the translations of Golding and Phaer.
Like the work of the last-mentioned writers, James's translations from Du Bartas are in fourteeners, and whatever poetical beauty they may have had for contemporary ears[1] is greatly diminished for modern readers by the lilt and flop of this almost fatal measure. The translations are further weakened by the crabbed literalness with which they follow the original. Even in the King's own invention in the same metre, The Lepanto, Dr. Irving searches vainly for "felicity of expression or elevation of thought."[2] Graces such as he implies are truly lacking, but James, as in his prose and conversation, had a gift of picturesque and racy phrase. His style in the description of the battle between the Christian and the Turkish navies is concrete and lively, and at times achieves an almost ballad-like simplicity, as in the account of the gathering of the Christian forces, ll. 268-279:—
"There came eight thousand Spaniards brave,
From hotte and barren Spaine,
Good order kepars, cold in fight,
With proud disdainfull braine.
From pleasant fertill Italie,
There came twelve thousand als,
With subtill spreites bent to revenge,
By craftie meanes and fals.
Three thousande Almans also came,
From Countries colde and wide,
These monney men with awfull cheare
The chok will dourelie bide."
The Dreame on his Mistris (XVII) is perhaps a better example of the author's ability to handle "eights and
