JAMES I. king of Scotland in 1423, the first of the house of Stuart, was not only the most learned king, but one of the most learned men, of the age in which he flourished. This ingenious and amiable prince fell into the hands of the enemies of his country in his tender youth, when he was flying from the snares of his unnatural and ambitious uncle, who governed his dominions, and was suspected of designs against his life. Having secretly embarked for France, the ship was taken by an English privateer off Flamborough Head; and the prince and his attendants were confined in a neighbouring castle until they were sent to London. The prince was conducted to the Tower immediately after he was seized, on the 14th of April 1405 (in the thirteenth year of his age), and there kept a close prisoner till the 10th of June 1407, when he was removed to the castle of Nottingham, from which he was brought back to the Tower on the 1st of March 1414, and there confined till the 3d of August in the same year, when he was conveyed to the castle of Windsor, where he was detained till the summer of 1417, when Henry V., for political reasons, carried him with him into France in his second expedition. In this melancholy situation, so unsuitable to his age and rank, books were his chief companions, and study his greatest pleasure. That he wrote as well as read much we have his own testimony, and that of all our historians who lived near his time. Bowmaker, the continuator of Fordun, who was his contemporary, and personally acquainted with him, spends ten chapters in his praise, and in lamentations for his death; and, amongst other things, states that his knowledge of the Scriptures, of law, and
philosophy, was incredible. Hector Boyce tells us that James V. and Henry IV. and Henry V. furnished their royal prisoner with the best teachers in all the arts and sciences; that, by their assistance, he made great proficiency in every part of learning and the fine arts; and that he became a perfect master in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music, and all the secrets of natural philosophy, and was inferior to none in divinity and law. This prince's skill in music was remarkable. Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm, who was intimately acquainted with him, assures us that he played on eight different instruments, which he names, and especially on the harp, with such exquisite skill, that he seemed to be inspired.1 Above a century after his death he was celebrated in Italy as the inventor of a new and pleasing kind of melody, which had been admired and imitated in that country. This appears from the following testimony of Tassoni, a writer who was well informed, and of undoubted credit. "We may reckon amongst us moderns, James king of Scotland, who not only composed many sacred pieces of vocal music, but also of himself invented a new kind of music, plaintive and melancholy, different from all other; in which he had been imitated by Carlo Gesualdo, prince of Venosa, who, in our age, has improved music with new and admirable inventions." After spending almost twenty years in captivity, and encountering many difficulties on his return into his native kingdom, he was murdered by barbarous assassins in the prime of life. Many of the productions of his pen have perished, for only three poems that have been ascribed to him are now extant, viz. Christ's Kirk on the Green; Peebles at the Play; and the King's Quair. But slender as these remains are, they afford sufficient evidence that the genius of this royal poet was not inferior to that of any of his contemporaries, and that it was equally fitted for the gayest or the gravest strains. (See Poetical Remains of James I. Edinburgh, 1783; and Warton's History of Poetry, vol. ii. p. 12.)