Page:New Poems by James I.djvu/86

 content, apparently, that his reputation should rest on the accomplishments of bis greener years. He and Alexander still at times pottered with the psalms, but, aside from these, only two or three fragments of his verse are of a later date than 1603. Even the collection of poems now printed, though perhaps intended for publication at the same time as the folio volume of his prose, does not seem to have been generally known during his life.

Obviously, therefore, whatever influence the King may have had on the trend of English poetry was not by direct example, but by the effect of his personal likes and dislikes on the taste of the court and on the work of writers whose verse was intended partly to meet his approval. It would of course be absurd to attribute to any single influence, and in particular to an influence so limited as that of the King, fashions so widespread as those of the so-called "metaphysical school," which prevailed during his reign; and, as will appear, though his verse and prose have some of the defects of this school, his later views were distinctly opposed to its subtlety of thought and rough obscurity of style. But on the other hand, the opposite tendency, toward more familiar themes and a more conventional treatment of metre and diction, shown especially in a preference for the closed and regular or 'classical' pentameter couplet, developed chiefly among a group of court poets, who catered to a small body of courtly readers and who would have special reason to make their verse conform to the tastes of royalty. A priori, at least, there is nothing unreasonable in the postulate that in the reign of James, as in France during the same period and later in England during the Restoration, the taste of King and court had a definite and marked influence on contemporary literature.

Among English poets who sought court favor, Ben Jonson's way was made easy by his Scottish extraction,