The table of James I. was a trial of wits, says a more learned courtier, who often partook of these prolonged conversations:  those genial and convivial conferences were the recreations of the king, and the means often of advancing those whose talents had then an opportunity of discovering themselves.  A life so constant in its pursuits was to have been expected from the temper of him who, at the view of the Bodleian library, exclaimed, “Were I not a king, I would be an university man; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, I would have no other prison than this library, and be chained together with all these goodly authors."[A]

[Footnote A:  In this well-known exclamation of James I., a witty allusion has been probably overlooked.  The king had in his mind the then prevalent custom of securing books by fastening them to the shelves by chains long enough to reach to the reading-desks under them.]

Study, indeed, became one of the businesses of life with our contemplative monarch; and so zealous was James to form his future successor, that he even seriously engaged in the education of both his sons.  James I. offers the singular spectacle of a father who was at once a preceptor and a monarch:  it was in this spirit the king composed his “Basilicon Doron; or, His Majesty’s Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince,” a work of which something more than the intention is great; and he directed the studies of the unfortunate Charles.  That both these princes were no common pupils may be fairly attributed to the king himself.  Never did the character of a young prince shoot out with nobler promises than Henry; an enthusiast for literature and arms, that prince early showed a great and commanding spirit.  Charles was a man of fine taste:  he had talents and virtues, errors and misfortunes; but he was not without a spirit equal to the days of his trial.

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FACILITY AND COPIOUSNESS OF HIS COMPOSITION.

The mind of James I. had at all times the fulness of a student’s, delighting in the facility and copiousness of composition.  The king wrote in one week one hundred folio pages of a monitory address to the European sovereigns; and, in as short a time, his apology, sent to the pope and cardinals.  These he delivered to the bishops, merely as notes for their use; but they were declared to form of themselves a complete answer. “Qua felicitate they were done, let others judge; but Qua celeritate, I can tell,” says the courtly bishop who collected the king’s works, and who is here quoted, not for the compliment he would infer, but for the fact he states.  The week’s labour of his majesty provoked from Cardinal Perron about one thousand pages in folio, and replies and rejoinders from the learned in Europe.[A]