James was a man of a very eccentric and grotesque fancy, combined with a considerable amount of intelligence and learning.  He was particularly fond of religious controversy, and wrote what he considered to be an important work on “Demonologie.”  From one passage we might suppose that he thought it sinful to laugh, as he says that man can only laugh, because he can only sin.  But he kept two clowns for his amusement, and also appreciated Ben Jonson, to whom he gave the direction of the Court Masques.  He occasionally made some caustic remarks, which have come down to us, such as, “Who denys a thing he even now spake, is like him that looks in my face and picks my pocket.”  “A travelling preacher and a travelling woman never come to any good at all.”

Sir Henry Wooton told him how the Prince of Conde sued for the title of Altesse from the Synod of Venice.  The King replied, “The Prince had good reason to sue for it, and that the Seigniory had done ill to deny it him, considering that the world knew how well he deserved it; it being his custom to raise himself upon every man’s back, and to make himself the higher by every man’s tail he could get upon.  And for that cause he hoped to see him elevated by the just Justice of God to as high a dignity as the gallows at last.”

James the First’s writings were mostly of a religious character, and some of them were sufficiently ludicrous.  But in his “Counterblaste to Tobacco,” his indignation is often mixed with humour.  He observes that smoking came from the Indians, and continues—­

“And now, good countreymen let vs (I pray you) consider what honour or policy can move vs to imitate the barbarous and beastly maneres of the wilde, Godlesse and slavish Indians, especially in so vile and stinking a custome?  Shall wee that disdaine to imitate the manners of our neighbour France....  Shall wee, I say without blushing abase ourselves so farre as to imitate these beastly Indians, slaves to the Spaniards, refuse to the world, and as yet aliens from the Holy Covenant of God?  Why doe wee not as well imitate them in walking naked as they doe? in preferring glasses, feathers, and such toyes to gold and precious stones, as they doe?  Yea, why do wee not deny God, and adore the divel as they doe?”

He proceeds to combat the theory, “That the braines of all men beeing naturally cold and wet, all drie and hote things should be good for them.”  “It is,” he says, “as if a man, because the liver is hote, and as it were an oven to the stomache, would therefore apply and weare close upon his liver and stomache a cake of lead; he might within a short time (I hope) bee susteined very cheape at an Ordinarie, besides the clearing of his conscience from that dreadful sinne of gluttonie.”

Towards the end he gives some medical testimony—­

“Surely smoke becomes a kitchin farre better than a dining chamber, and yet it makes a kitchin also oftentimes in the inward parts of men, soyling and infecting them with an vnctuous and oily kind of soote, as hath been found in some great tobacco takers, that after their death, were opened.”