How it has happened that our luckless crowned philosopher has been the common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite obvious when so many causes were operating against him.  The shifting positions into which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will unriddle the enigma of his life.  Contrarieties cease to be contradictions when operated on by external causes.

James was two persons in one, frequently opposed to each other.  He was an antithesis in human nature—­or even a solecism.  We possess ample evidence of his shrewdness and of his simplicity; we find the lofty regal style mingled with his familiar bonhommie.  Warm, hasty, and volatile, yet with the most patient zeal to disentangle involved deception; such gravity in sense, such levity in humour; such wariness and such indiscretion; such mystery and such openness—­all these must have often thrown his Majesty into some awkward dilemmas.  He was a man of abstract speculation in the theory of human affairs; too witty or too aphoristic, he never seemed at a loss to decide, but too careless, perhaps too infirm, ever to come to a decision, he leaned on others.  He shrunk from the council-table; he had that distaste for the routine of business which studious sedentary men are too apt to indulge; and imagined that his health, which he said was the health of the kingdom, depended on the alternate days which he devoted to the chase; Royston and Theobalds were more delectable than a deputation from the Commons, or the Court at Whitehall.

It has not always been arbitrary power which has forced the people into the dread circle of their fate, seditions, rebellions, and civil wars; nor always oppressive taxation which has given rise to public grievances.  Such were not the crimes of James the First.  Amid the full blessings of peace, we find how the people are prone to corrupt themselves, and how a philosopher on the throne, the father of his people, may live without exciting gratitude, and die without inspiring regret—­unregarded, unremembered!

INDEX.

ABERNETHY’S opinion of enthusiasm, 145.

ABSTRACTION of mind in great men, 133-136.

ACTORS, traits of character in great, 137.

ADRIAN VI., Pope, persecutes literary men, 18.

AESTHETIC Critics, 282.

AKENSIDE on the nature of genius, 30.

ALFIERI, childhood of, 32;
  loneliness of his character, 96;
  excited by Plutarch’s works, 141.

ANGELO, Michael, illustrates Dante, 21;
  his ideas of intellectual labour, 85;
  his reason for a solitary life, 111;
  his picture of battle of Pisa destroyed by Bandinelli, 158;
  his elevated character, 252;
  his letter to Vasari describing the death of his servant, 373.

ANTIPATHIES of men of genius, 160-163.

ANXIETY of genius, 74;
  of authors and artists over their labours, 80-88.