the pursuit, that in less than a month all the murderers were taken and executed. Graham, the arch-traitor, who had been the principal contriver and executioner of the whole, maintained his firm and vindictive character to the last,-enduring without a murmur the complicated tortures inflicted on him, and not only justifying his conduct but glorying in his success. He audaciously pleaded before his judges, that, having renounced his allegiance, he could not be accused of treason to a monarch of whom he was no longer a subject; that he had defied the King as his mortal enemy, and had a right to slay him wherever they met, as his feudal equal, without being amenable to any human tribunal. As for the rest, he said, although they might now exhaust their ingenuity in his tortures, the time would soon arrive when they would gratefully acknowledge that his sword had delivered them from a merciless tyrant. These sentiments were no vain or empty boasts. They were uttered in the midst of tortures, at the recital of which humanity shudders,-when the flesh of the victim was torn off by burning pincers, and his son, who had been the companion of his crime, was exposed, mangled and dying, before the eyes of his father. The rest of the conspirators, Sir Robert Stewart, Chambers, the two Halls, and Athole, were all executed at the same time. This aged conspirator, who was now on the borders of seventy, although he admitted his knowledge of the plot, denied his being, in any degree, concerned in it. We have traced the history of James as a captive and as a monarch. It remains to speak of him as a man of varied and remarkable accomplishments, and, without entering too deeply into antiquarian discussion, to give the general reader some idea of his excellence as a poet and his endowments as a scholar. In both these respects, the circumstances of his checquered life conferred on him great advantages. His education in Scotland under Wardlaw, his lengthened nurture in England, his repeated residence in France, and the leisure for study and mental cultivation which was given by his tedious imprisonment, were much in his favour; yet, giving full weight to all this, James the First was unquestionably endowed by nature with original genius;—that rare quality of mind, which, had he been a subject instead of a sovereign, would still have marked him for an extraordinary man. As a boy, it is probable he had read and delighted in the works of Barbour *, and we may conjecture that the exploits of the renowned Bruce, the chivalry of the good Sir James, and the counsels, sage and calm, of the great Randolph, cheered many a lonely hour in his confinement at Windsor. From the Chronicle,' too, of the venerable Prior of Lochlevent, with which it is impossible that a mind so eager and inquisitive as his should not have been acquainted, he must have derived, not a bare chronology of the history of his kingdom, but many fresh and romantic pictures, descriptive of the scenery of the period and the manners of a feudal age. But whilst the literature of his own country could furnish him with two such authors, he has himself informed us that his poetical ambition was chiefly kindled by * Life of Barbour, vol. ii., p. 158. + Ibid., p. 173. the pursuit, that in less than a month all the murderers were taken and executed. Graham, the arch-traitor, who had been the principal contriver and executioner of the whole, maintained his firm and vindictive character to the last,-enduring without a murmur the complicated tortures inflicted on him, and not only justifying his conduct but glorying in his success. He audaciously pleaded before his judges, that, having renounced his allegiance, he could not be accused of treason to a monarch of whom he was no longer a subject; that he had defied the King as his mortal enemy, and had a right to slay him wherever they met, as his feudal equal, without being amenable to any human tribunal. As for the rest, he said, although they might now exhaust their ingenuity in his tortures, the time would soon arrive when they would gratefully acknowledge that his sword had delivered them from a merciless tyrant. These sentiments were no vain or empty boasts. They were uttered in the midst of tortures, at the recital of which humanity shudders,-when the flesh of the victim was torn off by burning pincers, and his son, who had been the companion of his crime, was exposed, mangled and dying, before the eyes of his father. The rest of the conspirators, Sir Robert Stewart, Chambers, the two Halls, and Athole, were all executed at the same time. This aged conspirator, who was now on the borders of seventy, although he admitted his knowledge of the plot, denied his being, in any degree, concerned in it. We have traced the history of James as a captive and as a monarch. It remains to speak of him as a man of varied and remarkable accomplishments, and, without entering too deeply into antiquarian discussion, to give the general reader some idea of his excellence as a poet and his endowments as a scholar. In both these respects, the circumstances of his checquered life conferred on him great advantages. His education in Scotland under Wardlaw, his lengthened nurture in England, his repeated residence in France, and the leisure for study and mental cultivation which was given by his tedious imprisonment, were much in his favour; yet, giving full weight to all this, James the First was unquestionably endowed by nature with original genius;—that rare quality of mind, which, had he been a subject instead of a sovereign, would still have marked him for an extraordinary man. As a boy, it is probable he had read and delighted in the works of Barbour*, and we may conjecture that the exploits of the renowned Bruce, the chivalry of the good Sir James, and the counsels, sage and calm, of the great Randolph, cheered many a lonely hour in his confinement at Windsor. From the Chronicle,' too, of the venerable Prior of Lochlevent, with which it is impossible that a mind so eager and inquisitive as his should not have been acquainted, he must have derived, not a bare chronology of the history of his kingdom, but many fresh and romantic pictures, descriptive of the scenery of the period and the manners of a feudal age. But whilst the literature of his own country could furnish him with two such authors, he has himself informed us that his poetical ambition was chiefly kindled by 6 * Life of Barbour, vol. ii., p. 158. + Ibid., p. 173. the study of Chaucer and Gower. dere' 'His maisters -'that on steppes sate Of rhetoric, while they were lyvand1 here.' Of Chaucer, a man whose genius, in many of its distinguishing peculiarities, has been yet unrivalled in the history of English literature, it was the highest praise that he created a new style, and clothed it in a new language; that out of the rude and unformed materials of his native tongue, which lay scattered around him, disdained and deserted by the pedantry of the age, he erected a noble and original edifice, full of delightful chambers of imagery, furnished with the living manners and crowded with the breathing figures of his own age, clothed in their native dresses, and speaking their native language. 6 The same praise, though certainly in an inferior degree, is due to James the First. Although preceded by Barbour and Winton, he is the father of the tender and romantic poetry of Scotland,—the purifier and the reformer of the language of his country. His greatest work, the 'King's Quhair,' or King's Book,' is in no part unworthy of Chaucer, and, not unfrequently, in the delicacy and tenderness of its sentiment, superior even to that master of the shell. The design, or theme, of this work,' says that excellent author, to whose taste and research the literary world is indebted for its first publication, is the royal poet's love for his beautiful mistress, Jane Beaufort, of whom he became enamoured whilst a prisoner at the castle of Windsor. The recollection of the mis · living. |
