Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/139

 altho I be bewitched with the neatness of your pieces, yet, finding heir in my selve conscions, I daire hardly be bold to crave a quholl sheitt of you; howsoever, I will be yours quhill I am ""



Sir,—You desyre of me quholl sheitts, I must confess a symboll of our inteirest affections. Bot I, conscious of my own imbecility, rather prove a Laconick. No wounder altho my vaine be stopt, since this longe tyme you have not lanced it, aither with the reiding of some of your pieces, or with so much as with a lyne of your hand. Whence, then, is it that you should become such a usurer to him that has not receved so long aney learnid annuity of you. Your starrie Urania, on the wings of a strong wind, flees by us, in every ones handes: quherfor, I intreid you, wold you have me deprived of it? Have you thought me dead to the Muses, that aither I could not judge of it, or so dull that I could not praise it. In so doing, you have dirogatt much from my genius, and daily conversatione. Nevertheless, in despight of your interdictione, I have gained a sight of it. I wold conceill my thoughts with silence. I wold be revenged, if the admiratione of your writtings did not breke all sense of injury; and though you scatter abroad your pieces (yet ceasse not to love me,) I sall enjoy them, though by the bountifull hand of ane other. Faire ye weill."

The poetical temperament of Sir James, and the courtly grace which generally is, and ever ought to be the accompaniment of that character, is further shown in the following epistle to a lady, which we consider a very elegant specimen of the English prose of the age of Charles I., and, indeed, singularly so, when the native country of the writer is considered:—



"Madam,—You must appardone me if, after the remembring of my best love to you, I should rander you hartly thanks for your affectione, since thankes are the best knowen blossomes of the hartes strongest desyres. I never, for my pairt, doubtit of your affectione, bot persuadit myselve that so good a creature could never prove unconstant, and altho the fairest dayes may have some stormy overshadowings, yet I persuade myselve that these proceids not from heavenly thinges, bot from vapors arising from below, and though they for a tyme conte [ract] the sun's heat, yet make they that heat in the end to be more powerfull. I hope your friends sall have all the contentment that layes in my power to gif them: And, since Malice itselve can not judge of you bot noblie, I wisch that tyme make your affectione als constant, as my harte sall ever prove, and remaine loyall; and lest I seime to weirey you more than myselve, again I must beg pardone for all my oversights (if you think of aney) wich will be a rare perfectione of goodness in you to forgive freely, and love constantly him quhosse greatest happines under heaven is always to leive and die "Your trewly affectionat servant."

Sir James seems to have spent some of the years subsequent to 1626 in foreign countries, where he is said to have improved himself much by observing the manners of nations more polished than that to which he himself belonged, and by forming the acquaintance of eminent literary men. At the close of his continental travels, he spent some time in London, and obtained the friendship of the distinguished antiquary, Sir Robert Cotton, and also of Sir William Segar, Garter King at Arms. He had now turned his attention to the study of heraldry, and the friendship of these men, which he obtained rather through the intense sympathy produced by a common taste for rare pursuits, than by the recommendations of others, was of material service in the completion of what might be called his professional education. He also contracted a literary acquaintance with Roger Dodsworth, and Sir William Dugdale, to whom he