Speed then the clerkes of warned harmes with good,
And let the hidden blade noe wrong thee worke:
For when most shewe by gazers eyen is spide,
And presence great thy honour most advance,
This gift retaine as fellowe to thy roome:
Disdain may frowne, but envy thrust thee through.

The queen's poetical efforts seem to have
been highly esteemed by the learned men of her
own day. " But last in recitall," says one of
these, " first in degree, is the quene, our
sovereigne lady, whose learned, delicate, noble
muse, easily surmounteth all the rest that have
written before her time or since, for sence,
sweetnesse, and subtillitie, be it in ode, elegie,
epigram, or any other kinde of poeme, wherein
it shall please her majestic to employ her penne."
Nor are such panegyrics confined to Elizabeth's
poetical performances. Roger Ascham in one of
his treatises indignantly rebukes the " young
gentlemen of England " for allowing themselves
to be outdone in diligence and application by a
"mayd who goes beyond them all in excellencie
of learnyng and knowledge of divers tonges;"
while Savile, in his translation of Tacitus, goes
a step further, and says, " The principall cause of
undertaking my translation was to incite your
majestic by this, as by a foile, to communicate
to the world, if not those admirable compositions
of your owne, yet at the least those most
rare and excellent translations of histories, if I
may call them translations which have so
infinitely exceeded the originals." The queen seems
to have been far from indifferent to these
tributes of admiration, and those who knew her
weakness would often take advantage of her
passion for praise, and further the advancement
of their own objects by pandering to it. James
the First may be regarded—it is not saying
much for him after all—as the chief among the
royal authors. His works are well known,
easily accessible, and little doubt has ever been
thrown on their authenticity. One of the
earliest of them is the " Basilicon Doron." It
is a treatise on the art of government, and it is
on this composition, more than on such fanciful
performances as the " Dæmonologia " or the
"Counterblast to Tobacco," that James's literary
reputation is thought to rest. As some
publishers quote in their advertisements the
"opinions of the press " on the works whose
merits they are setting forth, so might the
opinions of the press of James's time—the learned
writers, namely, of those and subsequent days—
be quoted in favour of this voluminous essay.
Camden says, " that in this book is most
elegantly pourtrayed and set forth the pattern of a
most excellent, every way accomplished king."
Bacon considered it as " excellently written."
Locke described its author as " that learned king
who well understood the notions of things,"
and Hume says that " whoever will read the
' Basilicon Doron,' particularly the two last
books, will confess James to have possessed
no mean genius." Such were the " favourable
criticisms" of these illustrious persons,
to which must be appended, to make the
"opinions" complete, certain lines by a
contemporary poet on the death of Prince Henry,
to whom this wonderful book was originally
"given," as the phrase of the time goes, or
as we now say, dedicated. Speaking of the
death of the prince, this courtier poet says,

                                       I grieve the lesse
Thy kingly gift so well prevaild to make him
Fit for a crowne of endlesse happinesse,
And that it was th' Almightie's hand did take him,
Who was himself a book for kings to pore on,
And migh have bin thy Basilikon Doron.

A few sentences extracted from this much
praised treatise will serve to give the reader some
idea of the general nature of the book. Here
is something about the conspicuousness of the
position occupied by a king:

"It is a true olde saying, that a king is as
one set on a stage, whose smallest actions and
gestures all the people gazingly doe beholde:
and therefore, although a king be never so
precise in the discharging of his office, the people,
who seeth but the outward part, will ever judge
of the substance by the circumstances; and
according to the outward appearance, if his
behaviour be light or dissolute, will
conceive pre-occupied conceite of the king's
inward intention. . . . Be carefull, then,
my sonne, so to frame all your indifferent
actions and outward behaviour, as they may serve
for the furtherance and forthsetting of your
inward vertuous disposition. . . . The
whole indifferent actions of a man I divide in
two sorts: in his behaviour in things necessarie,
as food, sleeping, raiment, speaking,
writing, and gesture; and in things not necessarie,
though convenient and lawfull, as pastimes
or exercises, and using of companie for recreation."

But the Basilicon, with all its ponderous and
sententious wisdom, is hardly the kind of
production which most characteristically displays
the peculiar bent of King James's genius—such
as it was. This sovereign seems to have aimed
at a certain whimsicality and fancy in his
writings far more than any of his predecessors.
The comic element pervades them, indeed,
throughout. The well-known " Counterblast
to Tobacco"—spoken of by Horace Walpole
as being made up of " quotations, puns,
scripture, witticisms, superstitions, oaths,
vanity, prerogative, and pedantry"—is an excellent
specimen of the peculiar bias of James's
clumsy humour. So is the " Demonologia," a
treatise undertaken, as its royal author
informs us, " not in anywise to serve as a shew
of learning and ingine, but onely to resolve
the doubting harts of many, that such
assaultes of Sathan are most certainly practized,
and that the instrumentes thereof merit most
severly to be punished: against the damnable
opinions of two principally; whereof the one
called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in
publike print to deny that there can be such a
thing as witchcraft; and the other, called
Wierus, a German physition, sets out a public
apologie for all these craftes-folkes." By these
two works—the Demonologia and the Counterblast
—James is said to have lost as much
reputation as he had gained by his Basilicon. He