with which he solved the enigmatical and ungrammatical letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts has even been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs. Macaulay acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery to the king's sagacity. Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the detection of imposture might be adduced; and the reader may, perhaps, be amused at these. There existed a conspiracy against the Countess of Exeter by Lady Lake, and her daughter, Lady Ross. They had contrived to forge a letter in the Countess's name, in which she confessed all the heavy crimes they accused her of, which were incest, witchcraft, &c. ;* and, to confirm its authenticity, as the king was curious respecting the place, the time, and the occasion, when the letter was written, their maid swore it was at the countess's house at Wimbledon, and that she had written it at the window, near the upper end of the great chamber; and that she (the maid) was hid beneath the tapestry, where she heard the countess read over the letter after writing. The king appeared satisfied with this new testimony; but, unexpectedly, he visited the great chamber at Wimbledon, observed the distance of the window, placed himself behind the hangings, and made the lords in their turn not one could distinctly hear the voice of a person placed at the window. The king further observed, that the tapestry was two feet short of the ground, and that any one standing behind it must inevitably be discovered. "Ŏaths cannot confound my sight," exclaimed the king. Having also effectuated other discoveries with a confession of one of the parties, and Sir Thomas Lake being a faithful servant of James, as he had been of Elizabeth, the king, who valued him, desired he would not stand the trial with his wife and daughter; but the old man pleaded that he was a husband and a father, and must fall with them. "It is a fall!" said the king: "your wife is the serpent; your daughter is Eve; and you, poor man, are Adam!" *Camden's "Annals of James I., Kennet II., 652." The suit cost Sir Thomas Lake 30, 0007.; the fines in the star-chamber were always heavy in all reigns. Harris refers to this cause as an evidence of the tyrannic conduct of James I., as if the king was always influenced by personal dislike; but he does not give the story. The sullen Osborne reluctantly says, "I must confess he was the promptest man living in detecting an imposture." There was a singular impostor in his reign, of whom no one denies the king the merit of detecting the deception-so far was James I. from being credulous, as he is generally sapposed to have been. Ridiculous as the affair may appear to us, it had perfectly succeeded with the learned fellows of New College, Oxford, and afterwards with heads as deep; and it required some exertion of the king's philosophical reasoning to pronounce on the deception. One Haddock, who was desirous of becoming a preacher, but had a stuttering and slowness of utterance, which he could not get rid of, took to the study of physic; but recollecting that, when at Winchester, his schoolfellows had told him that he spoke fluently in his sleep, he tried, affecting to be asleep, to form a discourse on physic. Finding that he succeeded, he continued the practice: he then tried divinity, and spoke a good sermon. Having prepared one for the purpose, he sat up in his bed and delivered it so loudly that it attracted attention in the next chamber. It was soon reported that Haddock preached in his sleeep; and nothing was heard but inquiries after the sleeping preacher, who soon found it his interest to keep up the delusion. He was now considered as a man truly inspired; and he did not in his own mind rate his talents at less worth than the first vacant bishopric. He was brought to court, where the greatest personages anxiously sat up through the night by his bedside. They tried all the maliciousness of Puck to pinch and to stir him: he was without hearing or feeling; but they never departed without an orderly text and sermon; at the close of which, groaning and stretching himself, he pretended to awake, declaring he was unconscious of what had passed. "The king," says Wilson, no flatterer of James, "privately handled him so like a chirurgeon, that he found out the sore." The king was present at one of these sermons, and forbade them; and his reasonings, on this occasion, brought the sleeping preacher on his knees. The king observed, that things studied in the day-time may be dreamed of in the night, but always irregularly, without order; not, as these sermons were, good and learned as particularly the one preached before his Majesty in his sleep-which he first treated physically, then theologically; "and I observed," said the king, "that he always preaches best when he has the most crowded audience." "Were he allowed to proceed, all slander and treason might pass under colour of being asleep," added the king, who, notwithstanding his pretended inspiration, awoke the sleeping preacher for ever afterwards. BASILICON DORON. THAT treatise of James I., entitled "Basilicon Doron; or, His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," was composed by the king in Scotland, in the freshness of his studious days; a work, addressed to a prince by a monarch which, in some respects, could only have come from the hands of such a workman. The morality and the politics often retain their curiosity and their value. Our royal author has drawn his principles of government from the classical volumes of antiquity; for then politicians quoted Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. His waters had, indeed, flowed over those beds of ore;* but the growth and vigour of the work comes from the mind of the king himself: he writes for the Prince of Scotland, and about the Scottish people. On its first appearance Camden has recorded the strong sensation it excited: it was not only admired, but it entered into and won the hearts of men. Harris, forced to acknowledge, in his mean style and with his frigid temper, that "this book contains some tolerable things," omits not to hint that "it - might not be his own:" but the claims of James I. are evident from the peculiarity of the style; the period at which it was composed; and by those particular passages stamped with all the individuality of the king himself. The style is remarkable for its profuse sprinkling of Scottish and French words, where the Doric plainness of the one, and the intelligent expression of the other, offer curious instances of the influence of manners over language; the diction of the royal author is a striking evidence of the intermixture of the two nations, and of a court which had marked its divided interests by its own chequered language. This royal manual still interests a philosophical mind; like one of those antique and curious pictures we sometimes dis * James, early in life, was a fine scholar, and a lover of the ancient historians, as appears from an accidental expression of Buchanan's, in his dedication to James of his "Baptistes ;" referring to Sallust, he adds, apud TUUM Salustium. cover in a cabinet,-studied for the costume; yet where the touches of nature are true, although the colouring is brown and faded; but there is a force, and sometimes even a charm, in the ancient simplicity, to which even the delicacy of taste may return, not without pleasure. The king tells his son : : "Sith all people are naturally inclined to follow their prince's example, in your own person make your wordes and deedes to fight together; and let your own life be a lawbook and a mirror to your people, that therein they may read the practice of their own lawes, and see by your image what life they should lead. "But vnto one faulte is all the common people of this kingdome subject, as well burgh as land; which is, to judge and speak rashly of their prince, setting the commonweale vpon foure props, as wee call it; euer wearying of the present estate, and desirous of nouelties." The remedy the king suggests, "besides the execution of laws that are to be vsed against vnreuerent speakers," is so to rule, as that "the subjects may not only live in suretie and wealth, but be stirred up to open their mouthes in your iust praise.' JAMES THE FIRST'S IDEA OF A TYRANT AND A KING. THE royal author distinguishes a king from a tyrant on their first entrance into the government : : "A tyrant will enter like a saint, till he find himself fast under foot, and then will suffer his unruly affections to burst forth." He advises the prince to act contrary to Nero, who, at first, "with his tender-hearted wish, vellem nescire literas," appeared to lament that he was to execute the laws. He, on the contrary, would have the prince early show "the severitie of justice, which will settle the country, and make them know that ye can strike: this would be but for a time. If otherwise ye kyth (show) your clemencie at the first the offences would soon come to such heapes, and the contempt of you grow so great, that when ye would fall to punish the number to be punished would exceed the innocent; and ye would, against your nature, be compelled then to wracke manie, whom the chastisement of few in the beginning might have preserved. In this my own dear-bought expe rience may serve you for a different lesson. For I confess, where I thought (by being gracious at the beginning) to gain all men's heart to a loving and willing obedience, I by the contrarie found the disorder of the countrie, and the loss of my thanks, to be all my reward." James, in the course of the work, often instructs the prince by his own errors and misfortunes; and certainly one of these was an excess of the kinder impulses in granting favours; there was nothing selfish in his happiness; James seemed to wish that every one around him should participate in the fulness of his own enjoyment. His hand was always open to scatter about him honours and wealth, and not always on unworthy favourites, but often on learned men whose talents he knew well to appreciate. There was a warmth in the king's temper which once he himself well described; he did not like those who pride themselves on their tepid dispositions. "I love not one that will never be angry, for as he that is without sorrow is without gladness, so he that is without anger is without love. Give me the heart of a man, and out of that all his actions shall be acceptable." The king thus addresses the prince : On the Choice of Servants and Associates. re "Be not moved with importunities; for the which cause, as also for augmenting your Maiestie, be not so facile of access-giving at all times, as I have been."-In his minority, the choice of his servants had been made by others, commending servants unto me, more for serving, in effect, their friends that put them in, than their maister that admitted them, and used them well, at the first rebellion raised against me. Chuse you your own servantes for your own vse, and not for the vse of others; and, since ye must be communis parens to all your people, chuse indifferentlie out of all quarters; not respecting other men's appetites, but their own qualities. For as you must command all, so reason would ye should be served of all.-Be a daily watchman over your own servants, that they obey your laws precisely: for how can your laws be kept in the country, if they be broken at your eare!-Bee homelie or strange with them, as ye think their behaviour deserveth and their nature may bear ill.-Employ every man as ye think him qualified, but use not one in all things, lest he wax proud, and be envied by his fellows. As for the other sort of your companie and servants, they ought to be of perfect age, see they be of a good fame; otherwise what can the people think but that ye have |