Page:New Poems by James I.djvu/27

 thought was in the air while the first Stuart king of England was still an infant. Much of this teaching James absorbed, and it appears later oddly mixed with his own natural and, in his situation, justifiable views of royal prerogative. In later years, James usually spoke of Buchanan with respect. He told ScaraveUi, the Venetian Secretary in England, of "the days . . . when my tutor, Buchanan, gave me in- struction in the excellence of that government [the Venetian Republic] " ; 1 and he ascribed the correctness of his Latin pronunciation to Buchanan, "who is well-known one of the best Latin scholars in all Europe."

To the same influence James, no doubt, owed the begin- ning of his ambition to become a scholar and writer ; some of his shorter poems, notably An Mnigme of Sleepe and A Sonnet on the Moneth of May, are similar in theme and treatment to Latin poems of his tutor, and it is quite pos- sible that many of the classical ornaments and allusions in his verse could be traced to the same source. Yet in the final fixing of his literary tastes and of his character in gen- eral, the older teacher probably did not have so large a share as is commonly supposed. A letter from Buchanan to Rodolph Gualter, July 24, I579, 2 refers to his increasing illness, and suggests that his relations with the King were already becoming strained: "I have now been from the court more than six weeks by reason of ill health ; but as soon as I return hither, I will endeavor that the King shall steal a few moments from his occupations to give you a testimony of his favorable regard . . . and should I not be able to accomplish this myself, I will take care that it shall be managed by my colleague the pious and learned Peter Young." Buchanan at this time was in his seventy- fourth year; he speaks again in the dedication to James of his History of Scotland (September, 1581) of the 'incurable illness which had prevented him from carrying on the duties of instruction.' It is clear, moreover, from the

Cal. S. P. Venetian, Vol. X, No. 78 (1603).

Zurich Letters, Parker Soc., 1845, Second Series, p. 310. Gualter had dedicated to James his Homilies on St. Paul (1576).